Emperors of Time (3 page)

“Oh, I’m… 
I’m sorry,” said Tim, just now beginning to realize how little he knew about
Julie’s family.  She had vaguely mentioned having a stepmother, sure, but
plenty of people had stepmothers…  Tim had had no idea that Julie’s mother
was gone.

“It’s… 
well, it’s not as bad as it sounds, maybe…  I mean, it’s bad but…” she was
stammering, clearly shaken up.  “She died when I was about a year
old.  Can’t have been much later than when we just were…  I was an
only child, so it was just me and my Dad for a while. My aunt came in to help
for a bit, after that, and then my Dad met Stacie.  She married my Dad
when I was 4, and she’s great, seriously…  I mean, I call her Stacie most
of the time because she was never comfortable with me calling her ‘Mom’. 
She didn’t want to try to replace my real Mom…  Still, you can tell she
loves me…  maybe just as much as she loves my brother, Mike, who they had
together…  He’s 9, by the way, so he gets home at…  shoot, what time
is it?” she was momentarily snapped out of her reminiscence.

“It’s, ah…” Tim
paused for a moment.  He wondered whether his cell-phone time would still
be reliable if he had, in fact, just travelled through time.  Then, he
noticed an alarm clock on Julie’s bedside table.  “Oh! Four o’clock. 
So we were gone for…  Just a couple minutes.”

“Okay, Mike gets
home at a quarter after.  And we’d better be there to meet him at the bus
stop, and then I’ll have to come back here without you.  Time traveler or
not, you would not
believe
the amount of tattling I’d be in for if Mikey
found out that I had a boy in my bedroom,” Julie laughed lightly. 

Tim
smiled.  “My little sister’s the same way…  Tattles on anything or
anybody.  Seriously, she tattled to my parents one time because the dog
was licking itself.”

Julie nodded, “I
remember Suzie!  Cute little girl, but a bit high strung.”  In
response to Tim’s surprised look, she stammered, “I mean, her name is Suzie,
right?”

“Sure,” Tim
said.  “But I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her to you…  I mean,
she’s twelve, so it’s not like she would have come up to the table when we were
talking at lunch.”

“No!” Julie
said.  “I met her when I was over at your house a couple months ago! 
Back when we first started--  You seriously don’t remember all this? 
Hold on, no way…”

“What?” asked
Tim, starting to worry.  Through her brief conversation with herself,
Julie had gone from confused to an apparent moment of understanding, and right
back to confusion.

“Okay,” Julie
said.  “This is going to sound weird, but I’m getting the feeling that
you’re not exactly the Tim I know.  Or at least…  I mean, I guess you
are
the Tim I know, because my Tim-- I mean the Tim that I think of when
I think of you-- would have been able to answer my history questions like you
did, and would have played that silly Mars and Venus game when we were walking,
and he would have helped me out even if I sounded crazy, but…  I think we
don’t know each other as well in this…  what’d Hopkins call it?  In
this timeline.  But I definitely think you’re the same guy.  Just to
make sure, I’ll quiz you on a couple things in a little bit.  First, do
you want to check if whatever you wrote on the side of my wardrobe is still
there?”

“Oh, you saw
that?” he asked as he went over to the wardrobe.  He pulled a long dress
aside to look at the spot where he had drawn his question mark on the wood.

“Yes.  I
have tremendous peripheral vision.  Comes from being a time-traveler, you
know?  You’ll get it soon,” she said.  “Sorry for crying earlier, I
know this isn’t easy on you either, you shouldn’t have to be my shoulder to cry
on as well.”

“No, I don’t
mind,” said Tim.  “It’s there, by the way.  The question mark I drew.
It’s faded a little over time, but it’s definitely still there.  But
seriously, you can cry if you need to.  I’m here for you, you know?” 

“I appreciate
it,” Julie acknowledged.  “But I haven’t got time right now.  I’ll be
seeing Mikey in like ten minutes, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain it to
him…  In fact, do I look alright?”  She wiped her eyes again, and
gave an exaggeratedly sweet smile.

Tim rolled his
eyes at her expression, but then added sincerely, “You look more than alright.”

Julie smiled
sweetly again, but for real this time, and said, “Why thank you.  Now
let’s head out, shall we?  I want to ask a couple more questions, to see
how close you are to the Tim I know.  Don’t worry, you’ve already proven
yourself as cool in my book, at this point it’s mostly for curiosity.  I
want to know how the timelines are different…  Timelines...”  She
shook her head, “Sorry, this is all still sinking in for me.   I
imagine it’s even worse for you, since you still thought I was making it up
fifteen minutes ago.  You holding up okay, buckaroo?”

Tim laughed,
“  I don’t know what
your
Tim put up with, but nobody has ever
called me buckaroo.  But yeah, I’m still processing.  Every time I
think too hard about it, I get kind of dizzy.  We can literally travel
through time!  Or you can, anyway.  I get to hitchhike.”

“Anytime you
want, buckaroo,” Julie agreed.  The two had made their way back down the
hallway and were now on the stairs.  “Okay, first things first.  Do I
at least have your phone number?  ‘Cause I think we’re probably going to
want to talk or text tonight.”

“I think
so…  I mean, we text sometimes…” said Tim.

Julie pulled out
her phone and manipulated a few things on the screen.  “You won’t believe
this, by the way,” she said as she walked out through the front door that Tim
opened for her.  “I’ve never seen that desk before, but I had this exact
same phone in my timeline.”

Tim nodded and
said with a tone of exaggerated sagacity, “I guess some ideas are just good
ideas, whether Lincoln got assassinated or not.”

“Indeed,” agreed
Julie.  “Oh, okay, yeah I see some texts we sent each other…  ah yes,
you were helping me with a history project.  Classic you.  Well, that
meshes.  Let me see what else is the same.  What do you do for fun?”

“Read, I guess…”
said Tim, a little embarrassed.

“Yeah? 
Cool.  Read what?” asked Julie. 

“Well, either
history or…” Tim trailed off.

“Hey, come
on.  Don’t be embarrassed, I really want to know.  Besides, there’s
nothing wrong with reading fantasy…  Witches, dragons, noble heroes… 
What’s not to like?”

Tim’s jaw
dropped when she said ‘fantasy.’  Just like his sister’s name, they had
never talked about him reading fantasy books.  “What, you can read my
thoughts, now, too?” he accused, only half joking.  If she could actually
travel through time, who knew what else she could do?

Julie shook her
head.  “No, in the other timeline I knew that you read books like
that.  We must have been a little closer there than we are here.  Ah
well…  we’ve got plenty of time to fix that.  For instance…  Dog
person, or cat person?”

“Dog person,
definitely.  I remember you’re a cat person, right?” asked Tim.

“Hey,
yeah!  See, we know the important stuff.  What about ice cream
flavor?” Julie asked.

“Chocolate. 
You?” answered Tim.

“Strawberry. 
Or sherbet.  Or does that not count as ice-cream?  Anything fruity
and icy, I guess,” Julie responded.

“Mmhmm, mmhmm…”
said Tim, as if he was a journalist writing a big story on Julie.  “And if
you could be any type of dinosaur, what would it be?”

Julie
laughed.  “And you know the answer to that question, in this
timeline?  How’d that come up?”

Tim shrugged,
“We have some pretty random conversations at lunch, I guess.”

“Well, we
haven’t had that particular conversation in my timeline, and I’m almost
embarrassed to say I haven’t thought about it.  But…  probably a
brontosaurus.”

“Because of the
neck, right?” asked Tim.  “That’s what you said at lunch a couple weeks
back, anyway.”

“Well, yes, the
neck’s cool.  And the tail.  I mean, the thing was over 60
feet.   The tail was twenty feet long, and the neck was ten
feet.  Can you imagine anything quite so ridiculous?  And if it
helps, I would be a giraffe if I could be any non-human mammal,” Julie
confided.  They had now reached the intersection of the cul de sac with
the main street of the development.  Tim assumed this was where the bus
would drop Julie’s brother off.

Tim
grinned.  “I actually knew that, too.  So, are you happy?  Am I
the Tim you knew before?”

“Yeah, more or
less,” said Julie, who sounded sincere, but not quite completely
satisfied.  At this point, though, a big yellow bus came rolling down the
road.  “Well, you might as well meet Mikey, then.”

Two girls and a
boy who looked a little like Julie came darting off the bus with oversized book
bags. 

The boy ran over
to Julie.  “Who’s this?” he asked at about triple the volume that would
have been necessary.

“A friend of
mine,” said Julie patiently.  “His name’s Tim.”

“Ooooh… 
Tim.  Do you
like
him?!” Mikey asked.

Julie ignored
the question and said, “We were just hanging out, walking around the
neighborhood.  But he’s got to go home now.  My bike should be in the
garage, I think, if you didn’t steal it again Mikey.”

“Never! 
It’s pink!” Mikey shouted, with much of the same outraged tone of denial that
he might have used if he had been accused of passing gas in the middle of
class.

“Oh, no?” asked
Julie patiently, in what was clearly a practiced big-sister voice.  “You
would
never
steal it?”

“Come on! 
I was six!” said Mikey indignantly.  “I don’t bring up things you did when
you were six!”

“That’s because
you weren’t born at the time.  But about the bike,” said Julie, who had to
speak over Mikey’s accusations that there were things she’d done last week that
she didn’t want Tim knowing about, either.  “Tim, if you wanted to borrow
it to get home, you can.  You live about three miles away, right? 
That’s pretty far to walk.”

“Er, yeah… 
that would be great,” said Tim, without much enthusiasm.

So, Tim made his
three mile journey home on Julie Chapman’s pink bike.  He thought about
the fact that he had just spent more time alone with Julie than he had ever
done before, but was also trying to get his mind to stop reeling over the fact
that, speaking of time, he and Julie had just traveled back and forth through
it.  He had dozens of questions, ranging from what they should do next
about the time travelling issue to just what exactly Julie had been doing last
week that Mikey thought she wouldn’t want Tim knowing about.  But as far
as today went, Tim could at least categorically say it hadn’t been dull.

Later that
night, Tim was less than thrilled when he realized that, even with the prospect
of time travel on the table, he couldn’t bring himself to initiate a phone call
with Julie.  It turned out to be a moot point when his phone lit up and
showed Julie’s name and number at 7:03.  As he reached to pick up the
phone, his heart thumped in his chest in a way that wasn’t completely related
to the excitement of time travel.

“Hey,” said Tim.

“Hello,” said
Julie.  “So…  I’ve been thinking about next steps.  Now, I don’t
want to sound like a dork, but with something like time travel, I think it’s a
good idea to stick to the rules until we know more.  So the things I think
are on our to-do list--  well,
my
to-do list…  it’s only our
to-do list if you agree to help.  But the things on my to-do list are
finding two more confidantes and digging up whatever’s buried next to the oak
tree in my backyard.  Hopkins made it sound like there would be some more
information in it.  Thoughts?”

“Well, it sounds
like you have to be the one to pick the confidantes,” said Tim.

“I’m asking for
your help, though,” said Julie amicably.

“Yeah, but,
Hopkins made it sound like it hinges on you.  And you just said we’d
follow the time travel guru’s rules,” argued Tim.

Julie
laughed.  “The time travel guru?  All right, fine, I suppose they can
be my confidantes.”

“Good,” said
Tim.  “Besides, I’m not even sure I
have
any confidantes.  I
mean, my best friend is Sam, from lunch, and I’m not sure I’d trust him to
watch my french fries.  I mean, he’s a nice guy and all but…  I just
think he’s more someone to joke around with than the kind of guy I’d have watch
my back.  You know?”

“I guess,” said
Julie.  “Well, I can think of a couple people who I’d want to watch my
back, but I’ve got to make sure they’re the same people in this timeline as in
mine.  For instance:  Have I ever mentioned Rose Williams?”

Tim thought for
a minute.  “Yeah.  You guys are best friends or something.  She
lives a couple doors down from you but goes to some private school…  The
Catholic school, I think?  I’ve never met her, but you’ve talked about
her.  You’ve taught me a few card games you play with her, I think. 
She’s way into card games, from what you’ve said,” Tim remembered.

“Bingo!” said
Julie.  “Good, I’m glad Rose won’t look at me like I’m crazy if I try
talking to her tomorrow.  I swear, that happened to me on the way to lunch
today.  I was just beginning to think I had been imagining all the time
travel stuff, and then I said ‘hi’ to Lucy Peterson, who I was pretty good
friends with, like…  yesterday… and she looked at me like it was the
strangest thing she’d ever heard.  So if I looked confused when I came
into lunch today, that was why.”

“Was a lot
different?” Tim asked.  “Like at school?  You didn’t seem to know who
Mr. Kauffman was…  He’s the history teacher, remember?”

“Right. 
No, yeah…  he wasn’t in my timeline at all.  Um…  well, he might
have existed, but not at our school.  A couple of teachers are the same
though.  I would have been completely lost if I didn’t still have my
schedule from the beginning of the year, although I did forget to look at it at
lunch, so I had to check with Bridget about where to go next.  So if
you’ve ever thought I was silly for carrying it around halfway into the school
year, I just found a situation where it still comes in handy to have.”