Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (23 page)

CHAPTER 25

Tesla opened her eyes and saw herself reflected in the pupils of Finn’s.

“What the hell?” She jerked her hand free and stepped back from him.

“I decided to see if someone else could jump along with you,” he said with a grin that was calculated to irritate Tesla. “What?” he asked with a shrug, his hands raised to suggest he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. He laughed when she glared at him.

“That’s what Schrödinger is for!” she said.

“Well, you forgot to put him in your bag,” he pointed out, taking a step toward her. “Just think of me as another adorable creature you can pet. But you should know up front, my whiskers may tickle….”

“You could have been killed, you absolute moron! Or, or ripped to shreds at the subatomic level, or—”

Her sentence was cut short by Finn’s mouth, which he had suddenly pressed to hers. “Cut it out!” she said as she pushed back from him again.

“Thanks for worrying about me, Abbot.
It’s really sweet,” Finn said, but Tesla was too angry to respond. “So, you’re the old hand at this,” he continued, his eyes amused, as usual. “What do we do next?” He rubbed his hands together, so obviously pleased with himself it set her teeth on edge.

Tesla was determined to stay on task and not let Finn get under her skin—who did he think he was, anyway?
He’d treated her like crap since Sam arrived, ignored her after she’d made the decision to jump, and then snuck into the Bat Cave to jump with her, without anybody’s permission—and now kissed her, again, as if she had no say in it!

“Um, hello?” Finn said quietly, eyebrows raised.

On task. Right
. Tesla took a deep breath, blew it back out, slowly, and turned from Finn to look around them. The new coffin was, indeed, more like a big closet now. Eight and a half feet square, with a nine foot ceiling, Tesla calculated with a glance. Mirrors sat in each corner, semi-translucent, just like the ones in the Bat Cave.

“First, we get out of this box. Then we get to work,” Tesla said with an authority Lydia would have recognized.

“Here’s the door,” Finn said as he spied a recessed metal handle on what looked to be solid wall. He pulled the handle toward him as the door swung silently inward on unseen hinges, and they saw that it was a seamless, perfect fit, visible only after it was opened. He stood aside and allowed Tesla to look cautiously through the door.

She pulled her head back inside and spoke quietly. “We’re in the lab, and I don’t see anyone. There’s a light outside the lab door.
This is how it looks every time I jump.”

Finn nodded and stepped in front of Tesla and into the lab. He looked around, noted the work areas, the cabinets, the chalkboards and desks, and began to walk toward the door.

“Wait, let’s stop and think a minute,” Tesla whispered. Finn turned toward her and waited. “I’ve only ever been here when Sam was here,” she began. “I’m not sure if I can find my way to the exit, and I’m pretty sure Sam always used a security key card to get outside.”

Finn frowned. “A key card, even from the inside?”

Tesla nodded.

“I guess we have no choice, then,” Finn said. “Let’s go find your boyfriend.”

Tesla rolled her eyes but said nothing, and followed Finn out the door and into the brightly lit hallway. They moved along the hall cautiously, ears strained for the sound of anyone else. At the first point where they had to make a decision on whether to go straight or turn left or right, Finn stopped.

“Look familiar?” he asked.

“Maybe… yeah, but give me a minute.” She paused, closed her eyes, and tried to remember when she had walked out of the lab with Sam, headed down the hallway and made their way to the—

“Left,” she said.
She turned confidently down the adjacent corridor. “The break room and snack machines are down here. We’ve walked essentially the same number of steps Sam and I did before we changed directions, even given the probability of a slight variation in stride length.”

“Wicked smart,” Finn said quietly behind her as he shook his head.

They walked another thirty yards and were suddenly aware of the sound of footsteps from the hall that now opened up on the right. Tesla froze, pressed her back up tightly to the wall and looked frantically around as she realized that there were no doors for them to duck into, and not time enough to return the way they’d come and hide in the lab. She opened her bag and felt around for the canister of pepper spray. Finn caught her eye and put his finger to his lips. The footsteps grew louder. Finn stepped in front of Tesla, fists clenched by his sides, to face the corner where the owner of those footsteps would emerge in seconds.

It was Sam.

“Oh my god,” Tesla exhaled and leaned heavily against the wall.

The boy made no sound as he came around the corner and found himself face to face with Finn, who was quite a bit taller and obviously stronger and more athletic than Sam was at fifteen. His eyes had widened a bit, and he’d stopped dead, but he stood his ground.

“Tesla?” Sam ignored Finn and rushed over to Tesla.

Finn, preoccupied with their safety, had not seen Tesla slump against the wall.
He turned and put his hand on her shoulder and leaned toward her, alarmed. Her eyes were closed, though she remained upright.

“Tesla—is it your heart? Tesla!”
Finn felt a surge of adrenaline course through his body, almost as if he himself were in mortal danger, and it shocked him to his core. He was
afraid
!

Tesla opened her eyes. “I’m fine, Finn, geez. I’m relieved—you scared the crap out of us, Sam!” She pushed off from the wall and Finn’s hands dropped to his sides.
Shaken and confused, not to mention irritated by the implication that he was overprotective, Finn’s jaw set hard when Sam laughed, oblivious to whatever that bizarre moment was.

“Hey, you’re the time traveler,” he teased Tesla.
“You’re the one who sneaks around inside a high-security facility. You better get used to the rush.”

Tesla laughed with him until she glanced into Sam’s smoke-dark eyes and suddenly remembered the feel of his mouth when he’d kissed her earlier…. No, that hasn’t happened yet, she
reminded herself, unconsciously touching her mouth with her fingertips as she stared at the boy in front of her.

“Okay, we’re here, we found our guide, now how about we get some work done?” Finn asked pointedly.

Grateful to drop her head and break the unexpected and startling connection to Sam—which of course he knew absolutely nothing about—Tesla fished in her bag until she found the smartphone Lydia had given her. She dialed Lydia’s number and she got a click and then dead air, not even a recorded not-in-service message. She emailed and texted, but received an error message each time: delivery failure. Tesla put the phone back in her bag. “Well, Bizzy was right.”

“Bizzy usually is,” Finn acknowledged.

“Who’s Bizzy?” asked Sam.

“Long story,” said Tesla. “Should we head right over to my dad’s office?”

“Tesla, it’s early—just after six a.m.—which is one of the reasons I was so surprised to see you,” said Sam. “You’ve come at night, early in my shift the other times. I’m usually gone by now—you’re lucky you didn’t run into anyone else. I’m pretty sure your mom—Dr. Petrova—is in her office right now, catching up on lab reports and stuff. And her office is right next to your dad’s.”

When Finn looked at him, a puzzled frown on his face, Sam explained. “Since I met Tesla, I’ve been sort of keeping an eye on her folks,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Not in a big way, but, you know, she could come back at any time, and I wanted to be able to help her steer clear of them, fill her in on how they were. You know. Stuff like that.”

“Thanks,” Tesla said as she put her hand on Sam’s shoulder for a moment. “I guess we have to wait to have another go at my dad’s desk. Anybody object to Dodie’s Diner for breakfast? I’m buying—oh, wait, is it open in this timeline?”

“It is, and I’m definitely in,” said Sam.
“Lemme just change and clock out. I’m starved.”

“You’re buying?” Finn said. “Do you even have a job?”

Tesla waived the credit card Lydia had given her. “Just call me Ellie.”

“I think that’s for emergencies only,” he teased her.

“Well you heard Sam. Starvation certainly qualifies as an emergency. I am a humanitarian.”

Sam returned, dressed now in faded jeans, black boots and a red T-shirt, a motorcycle helmet in his hand. “Ready?”

Tesla looked at Finn, who winked at her. “Lead on, Ellie.”

After they’d eaten their fill—Tesla had been appalled at what it took to fill Finn and Sam up—they sat at their booth and made a plan. Sam slurped the last drops of chocolate milk through his straw as both Tesla and Finn watched him.

“Dude, you can eat,” Finn said.
Tesla could never understand guy-admiration for the ability to eat gross amounts of food.

Sam shrugged.
He tried to look humble but grinned like a champ. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Seriously,” Finn said. “Eggs benedict and a club sandwich. With fries and chocolate milk. Impressive.”

“Yeah, impressive,” Tesla agreed, by which she meant exactly the opposite. “So what do we do now?”

Finn answered her, without hesitation. “I think we should split up.”

“Why?” Tesla asked, concerned. At least she could get back on her own, as long as she could get to the lab, but Finn needed her physical presence to jump. What if he got stuck here, without ID or money?

“Because we’ll be more effective if we separate. I want to go to the library, as well as the courthouse. We might as well play to our strengths.
I know how to follow a paper trail, put a story together, talk to people and charm them out of information they don’t want to divulge,” he said. “I am very, very charming.”

“So you keep telling me,” Tesla retorted.
“But I was raised by scientists. I can’t just take your word for that. I need evidence, and so far, I’ve seen nothing.” Gratified when Sam laughed, Tesla continued. “What about us?”

“You need to get into your dad’s office, and Sam can monitor your mother’s movements and not raise suspicions. You’ll need Sam’s help—you should stick together, and when the coast is clear, get inside, look around.
See what’s in that drawer—Lydia gave you a camera, right? Take pictures, then get out.”

“It’ll take Finn a little while to get back here since he’ll have to walk,” Tesla pointed out.
“We have to factor that in when we decide when to meet back up.” She and Finn had walked the seven eighths of a mile to Dodie’s while Sam had ridden his motorcycle and met them there. But luckily the lab, the library, her dad’s office in the Physics building, and the courthouse were all downtown, very close together.

“Sam, why don’t you run Finn over to the courthouse, it should be open soon,” Tesla suggested.
“I’ll pay the check, and you can swing back and get me, and we’ll go see if my mom is still in her office.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said. “Should we meet back at the lab, same door we left from, at nine o’clock tonight? Everyone should be gone by then.”

“Do we need the whole day?” Tesla asked. “I’d rather we meet up earlier. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Tesla said. “Just in case. The whole point of just in case is that we don’t know what might happen, what might come up.”

“I agree,” said Finn. “Why don’t we meet back here at six.
All the government facilities will be closed by then anyway.”

“Okay,” Tesla said, and Sam nodded. “So we’ll meet back here at six.”

Finn leaned toward Tesla and spoke quietly. “Stay safe, Danger Girl.” He stood up before she had a chance to reply.

When Finn and Sam both stood and moved toward the door, Tesla signaled to their server that they were ready for the check.

“Finn,” Tesla said quickly, before the boys were out of earshot. She felt nervous, twitchy, with an odd feeling of tension in her body that left her a little breathless. Finn turned around and looked at her from thirty-two feet away, standing amid the crowded booths, waiters delivering food, Sam by his side, but Tesla saw only him. “Be careful.”

“Just this once—for you.”
He smiled, and then they were gone.

CHAPTER
26

“Her car’s still here,” Sam said. “She hasn’t left.” Tesla leaned against him, straining to hear him. Both their bodies vibrated as the motorcycle idled in the university parking lot.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“What do you want to do?”

She thought for a moment. Even with the morning sun warm on her back through the thin black hoodie she wore, and the comfort of Sam pressed up against her, she hadn’t been able to shake what she’d felt as Finn had walked away from her in the restaurant, a feeling that she was being—
stretched
, she thought.
Weird
.
Not to mention uncomfortable
.

She needed to be busy, distracted.
“Let’s go by my house,” she said.

Sam didn’t answer and Tesla wondered if he would try to talk her out of it, point out that it had upset her the last time, and that despite the fact that her father had not recognized her then, it was still a risk.
But he put the bike in gear and headed for the Abbott house on Webber.

They drove slowly as the house came into view, and then they rode past it. At the end of the street, where the road curved
and the house was no longer in sight, Sam pulled over to the curb and cut the engine.

Tesla took off her helmet, relieved to feel so calm.
The tension was still there, that weird feeling in her chest she couldn’t quite define and had certainly never experienced before, but she didn’t feel nervous or anxious anymore. She felt okay—maybe she was just getting used to everything, and that was good, right? Of course she would still feel the freak-out factor of actually traveling through time, she reasoned, and that would account for the feeling she’d had at the diner. Now, she wanted to see her house. She would do this—and she knew before she spoke that unlike Finn, Sam would not try to stop her, even if he was so inclined.

She really liked that about Sam.

She got off the bike, took the helmet off and handed it to Sam.

“Tesla…” he began.

“I’ll just take a look,” she said. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

“You can’t be seen, Tesla—make sure of it.
Without the helmet your hair and eyes are too unique. Someone could figure it out.”

It wasn’t exactly an endorsement of her plan, but she’d take it.
“You’re right, I’ll put my hood up. I won’t be seen, and I’ll be really quick.” Before he could respond she turned and walked toward the house where she once lived. Where they all had lived.

She walked leisurely, her hood dousing the flame of her hair, but her eyes were glued to the house as soon as it came in sight. She could see no movement—it was possible that no one was home, and Tasya was clearly at work—but the tall privacy fence that enclosed the backyard seemed to beckon. As she came to the house itself, she made a spontaneous decision and walked up to the gate of the fence, lifted the latch, and walked into the backyard. The
side of the house had two windows near the back, a small one, five feet up, probably a bathroom, and a larger one that began three and a half feet up from the ground. Tesla couldn’t remember the layout of the rooms—her memory of her life before her mother died was vague, at best. She moved to the side of the house and walked slowly toward the larger window, then ducked below the small bathroom window when she got to it. She knew she couldn’t be seen from the neighbor’s house, because the privacy fence would have to be at least eighteen inches shorter for the neighbors to see her from their property, unless they were on the roof, which was unlikely. Similarly, the sightline anyone inside her house would need to spot her as she crept along the outside wall of the house was impossible—they would literally need to stand inside the wall to get the right angle. In this moment, at least, she was grateful for what Finn called her “gift.”

She stopped at the edge of the window and listened. The warmth of the summer morning worked in her favor: the window was open, a soft breeze blew blue and white striped curtains, curtains with rocking horses printed on them.

Max’s room
, she thought.

She heard a baby’s gurgling laugh and knew instantly that she had to look, so she moved just enough to get one eye past the window frame.
There was baby Max in his crib—he slobbered and talked gibberish to some stuffed toy he clenched in his chubby fist.

Gross
, she thought, as he brought the toy clumsily to his wet mouth. But she couldn’t sustain the revulsion, and actually made a just-audible
Awwww
sound when he squealed happily, though she would have denied it if anyone had accused her of it.

Suddenly the door to the baby’s room opened and Tesla pulled quickly back, out of sight.

“Maxie!” came a childish voice. “You’re awake!”

Her stomach dropped, and she trembled uncontrollably. She groped in her bag, pulled out the smartphone, and tapped the camera icon. Slowly, carefully, Tesla positioned herself at the edge of the window and raised the camera.
She held it in front of her and watched the screen as her six year old self said good morning to her baby brother through the bars of his crib.

The girl wore a Spice Girls T-shirt and pink shorts, with white socks and pink sneakers that had
glitter
on them .
Good god
, Tesla thought.
Who used to dress me?
Her nine-year old self bent down a little until she was eye level with Max, who screeched in delight at the sight of her. She smiled at him and poked her finger through the bars, and Max moved his own hand, shiny with spit, toward his sister’s. When the tips of their fingers touched, the baby squealed and the little girl laughed.

Tesla took pictures, the camera both an extension of herself and a buffer, a way to shield herself from the raw emotions that coursed through her. Suddenly a mock, stern voice boomed from just outside the bedroom door, “What’s all this?”

“Maxie’s awake, Daddy!” the little girl shouted as she ran to the door and flung herself into the arms of her father, who stood in the open doorway.

“So he is!” Greg Abbott said as he hugged Tesla’s tragically pink-clad self.
Then he put her down and turned to his son.

“Hi, buddy,” this young and rather rumpled version of their father said gently as he bent to lift his son from the crib. “You ready to get up?”

Nine-year old Tesla jumped up and down. “Let’s do the sandbox, let’s do the sandbox!”

“Okay,” said her father. “Let me get Max changed, and we’ll go out in the backyard to play for a while. But your mother will be home soon, don’t you want to wait for her?”

The girl shrugged, and with the brutally pure disregard for others’ feelings that only children have, said, “No. Just you, Daddy.” And she followed her father out of the room and out of Tesla’s sight.

Tesla sat down in the grass against the wall of the house, a frown on her face. She didn’t remember this.
Had her father been her favorite? How was that possible? Her dad was a huge irritation in her life, and sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed for wishing her mother was still alive. What had happened in the last eight years to change so drastically the way she had felt about her parents?

The screen door closed with a bang around the corner at the back of the house—an eerily familiar sound—so Tesla got up and made her way to the corner, where she peered into the backyard. Her younger self was in the sandbox and had already begun to pour sand into differently shaped molds. She dumped the sand onto a pile in front of her and shaped it with her hands, intent and focused while her father stood by and watched, with Max in his arms.

The little girl’s red hair was electric in the summer sun and clashed perfectly with her pink clothes. The skin of her arms and legs was milky white, and Tesla wondered as she watched from the shadows if her Dad had put sunscreen on her.

“What are you building?” Greg Abbott asked his daughter.

“The town. This is your office,” she answered without looking up.

“That looks very realistic. You have a good memory,” he said.

“Yup,” she said simply, all concentration.

Her father watched, along with her older self with camera in hand as the sand structure took shape.
The L-shape was an exact replica of the three-story physics building on campus, the longer wing that housed the labs, the shorter, perpendicular piece that formed the base of the L where the offices were.

It was a perfect scale model.
Greg Abbot watched as his daughter made holes with her index finger to indicate the three horizontal rows of windows. “How do you know how many windows to make?”

“Cuz that’s how many windows there are,” she said simply. “And look, here’s your window. She pointed to the third window from the left on the shorter base of the L.

“Tesla…” her father said. “That
is
my window. How do you know that?”

Tesla squinted a little in the sun’s glare as she looked up at him from her sandbox. “I don’t know. I’ve been in your office. It’s your window.”

“Did you count them?” he persisted.

“No,” she said after she’d thought it over. “I don’t think so. But there’s fourteen of them.”

“And why aren’t there any windows in the other part?” he asked as he pointed to the longer section. “You’ve never been in those rooms.”

“There is one,” she said, and pointed to the very end of the wing, the highest point of the L. “This is the stair’s window. All the rest is for those rooms with no windows to the outside.”

“That’s right,” he said, speaking very slowly now. He stared at his daughter with an odd expression. “Tesla, do you know how many diapers your brother has left in the house?”

“Twelve, not counting the one he has on,” she answered without hesitation, her hands busy with her shovel as she poured sand into the bucket by her side.

“And how many steps is it from your sandbox to the back door?”

“Thirty-six, unless I take giant steps, and then it’s thirty-one,” she said.

“How many little girls, just your size, could sit in the sandbox with you?” he asked, his voice oddly tense.

She thought for a moment. “Are the girls all sitting Indian style, or with their legs out like this?” she asked as she demonstrated the two positions.

“Indian style,” he said, choking a little on the last word.

“Twenty-five, and they’d have to be touching each other,” she said with absolute confidence. “But there wouldn’t be room for any toys, or for sand castles. We’d all be squished, and bored.”

Her father could only nod, and watch his daughter as she returned to her task.

At the corner of the house, Tesla’s hand shook so badly she had to put the camera back in her bag. Her mathematical skills, her strange, intuitive grasp of the spatial realities around her, were old news in her family. It was too weird to watch her father as he recognized them for the first time. Way too weird.

Tesla felt like she’d already pushed her luck, so she walked quickly and quietly back to the gate, slipped out, and closed it again. It took her only a few minutes to make her way back to Sam, who paced nervously next to his bike.

“What the hell took you so long?” he hissed as soon as she was close enough to hear him.

“It wasn’t that long,” she said defensively. She took the helmet from his hand and put it on. “I was looking around. Like I said.”

Sam exhaled in exasperation, a scowl on his face, and got on the bike without another word. Tesla climbed up behind him, and before she was fully situated he gunned the motor and they took off like a shot.
She had to grab him quickly around the waist to stay on the bike, and for a brief moment this Sam, and an older Sam, a taller, stronger Sam, who had pulled her to him, his mouth on hers, were one and the same.

He drove too fast, took the on-ramp to I-76, and they flew.
The wind tore at their eyes, their cheeks, pushed its way into their nostrils, made conversation impossible. Sam drove for ten minutes, then slowed and took the next exit. Only when they’d stopped at the first traffic light in town did Tesla loosen her grip around his waist. She’d had to hold on for dear life.

“Sorry, Sam,” she said, her chin on his shoulder so he could hear her.

“Yeah. Me, too,” he said, but he did not turn around. “Let’s go see what your mom’s up to—and try not to do anything stupid, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.
“If you try not to kill us in a fiery motorcycle crash.”

“Okay,” he said, and they moved forward as the light turned green.

They found Tasya Petrova’s car—a faded old Peugeot with rusted-out wheel wells—in exactly the same spot.

“What now?” Tesla asked, crestfallen. “We’ve got to get into my dad’s office, but my mom’s is right next door, we can’t risk it as long as she’s in there.”

Sam thought for a minute. “I’d be really surprised if she’s still in her office,” he finally said. “She hates paperwork, and she makes as quick a job of it as she can. Your dad teases her about it all the time.”