Page 133 of The Girl Out of Time
“Exactly.” She stopped and put a finger to her mouth. Was that a buzz? Not from her phone, though, from—“The tablet! Will is calling!” She rushed past James, who quickly but carefully dropped the groceries and followed her into the living room. The glass of the coffee table vibrated as Emily’s time traveling tablet lit up, crawling across the surface as if it had come to life.
Emily jumped on the couch and activated the call. “Will, thank god! We’d been worried—” Will’s frowning, worried face was far from that of a relieved survivor. Behind him was a darkly lit room. “Gramps, that’s not the Statue of Liberty. What did I say to you?”
“Emily.” Will’s voice was heavy, matching the feeling of dread spreading through her stomach. “I’m still on the ship.”
“You—why—I told you—”
James sat down next to her, flashing her a worried glance.
“Sylvia and the children are in the boats,” Will said. “They’re safe, right? They’re going to be fine?”
“Yes, yes, they’ll be fine on the boats. But why aren’t you?” Her hands started to sweat, leaving fingerprints on the brass frame of the tablet as she nervously adjusted her grip.
“Emmeline has gone missing. We searched and couldn’t find her anywhere in first class or on deck. She’s gone to see that boy, Leon. I went to look for her. She’s somewhere in third class …”
Emily’s chest squeezed.Not the third class quarters in the bow. Those were the ones that flooded first.
Her voice shook as she asked, “And did you—where are you—did you find her?”
“No. I’m somewhere on E Deck, near third class. I may be in a bit of trouble.” The camera shook as Will redirected it to the side. In the gloom,Emily barely made out a white-painted pole and Will’s hand, chained to it by a thick metallic band.
Her chest squeezed more, pushing the air out of her lungs. “Gramps. No.”
“I ran into an officer—Kinsley, I saw him earlier on the bridge. He said he’d help, but he ambushed me.”
“Can’t you do something? If you try to focus, like you’re freezing time, maybe you’ll be able to phase your hand through the handcuffs. I did that once. If you just try—”
“I did. I’ve been trying for the past fifteen minutes. I don’t know how you do it, but I can’t.” He readjusted the camera back to his face. “Emily, I’m not calling you to brainstorm ideas.”
Her hands shook. “Gramps, no.”
“I’m up on a cupboard, but the water’s coming in fast. I know …” His voice got lower, close to breaking. “That boy has to save Emmeline. He has to. And you’ll figure out how to get back in contact with my family, I know you will. When you do, tell my parents … tell Sylvia and the children that I love them. You will, won’t you?”
“No.” She shook her head, wilder and wilder. “Not like this, Gramps. You’re not leaving me like this.”
He gave her a pale smile. “Should’ve asked you to give me spoilers about my future, anyw—”
The screen went dark as the tablet died.
Emily stared into it for a solid minute, unmoving. “No. No. No,” she repeated in a rhythm, her voice growing higher and higher, like drops of rain falling onto a metal roof. She scratched at the tablet, not that it could bring it back to life. The battery on Will’s side must’ve gone. “Gramps!”
She looked at James. Without words, he hugged her and held her tight, sinking his fingers into her hair. Over her sniffling, she heard his attempts of trying to hold it back. But how were they supposed to help each other, console each other, when they were both grieving?
Flashes of memories whizzed through her head. A strange boy in old-fashioned clothes, running up to her, begging her not to destroy her father’s watch—Will, he said his name was—the little crease between his eyebrows that appeared every time he didn’t approve of her actions, which was often—oh, how she’d argued with Sylvia and gave Will grief for kissing her, even though she had no right to meddle—and the first time she’d seen Emmeline, as a little baby wrapped in lacy blankets, Will’s face shining with pride—his firstborn, his darling daughter, Emily’s favorite niece, her Blue …
Blue.Not because of her eyes, although Emily never explained the origin of the nickname, and everyone thought it was so. No, it was because of that little finger that had colored blue for a second, back when Emmeline was a baby. It had never happened again, not to Emily’s knowledge, and it could still have been a camera glitch, but it stuck with her because it looked like her own finger did when the blood underneath came in contact with raw almonite.
Emily blinked away her tears as the little detail on the edge of her memory, the one that’s been bothering her ever since James showed her that newspaper clipping, inched ever so closer, begging her to snatch it.
Blue. Emmeline. Leon.
Emmeline and Leon.
She shot up, narrowly missing James’s chin. “Emmeline is not on the ship.”
He frowned at her. “What?”
“She’s—we’re—I’m—” With her mind suddenly in overdrive, she started walking, realized she didn’t know where she was going, and paced from the kitchen back to the living room. “I know why I can time travel again. And I know where Emmeline is. The newspaper, James! She’s a time traveler, too!”
