Chapter three Arrival in 2012

“It’s okay, it’s okay,it just said blend in, remember? We’ll be fine, we don’t need it.”
“Yeah yeah whatever,” Tookie leaned back and looked at her with grimaced lips and squinty eyes. He let out a strangled sigh and then said in his regular voice again, “it’s just that it would be nice to have something to go on.”

Suddenly Cheena barked and stared at the BRATT”s door. Tookie grinned.

“We’re here already—whereever here is. Where did you take us?

“I told you already—it’s still home, only its 200 years ago. My family has lived in our house forever—really!

Cool! Okay, do you have the tent? What about food? And real time?

Tookie always asked the most obvious questions like she didn’t know what she was doing, so Marianna gave him her worst look and wasn’t very tactful.

“Look, all that doesn’t matter, whatever you said—we’ll be back in time for supper. Three hours tops—real time, same here as at home. We both have done this in pod forever”

“Yeah but that was for education. This for-fun!” Tookie started to shake his head in that way that annoyed Marianna so much because it meant he was getting stubborn and was going to have to be convinced—and quick! Time was a-wasting! Meaning she wanted to leave now.

Tookie! Look! We can eat the natives' food…”

“The natives?” Tookie snorted and began to laugh.

“And we have an invisible tent , we just have to find a good place to pitch it.”

Marianna felt like she had to keep convincing him it was safe. Okay, it wasn’t natives it was ancestors, people in her family who lived only in stories and in the same house she lived in now. But also it was just cool, going on this trip in her new BRATT –her own!--for the first time.

Suddenly she felt very happy, like something good was going to happen. It had happened—it was happening! She was time-traveling and her parents weren’t there, just her best friend. And Cheena.

“Remember in fifth year we got sent in an old beat up BRATT back to see the real Julius Caesar and hear Marc Antony speak just because Beeger thought we should? And it didn’t even compact yet—it just dumped you there and pretty much you were on your own, just blend in? I wanted to see Hannibal Crossing the Alps….”

Tookie’s monotone was beginning to make Marrianna’s ears whistle.

“Stop! The time is going NOW and we have only three hours—let’s GO!” Marianna shouted at Tookie and he covered his ears.

Right on cue Cheena jumped up against the exit door, it opened, and they followed her out into the room—seemingly the same one they had just left—while the BRATT super compacted and stored itself in the closet, leaving just them and their tent in the middle of the room. The BRATT always determined the best time to leave you somewhere, a time when there would be no one around. That was true too this time.

“The house is empty, she said aloud, thinking Tookie was right behind her. Cheena was already heading for what was now the kitchen --but which was not the kitchen in 2012. It turned out to be a kind of library with all kinds of strange box-like metal things and wires coming out of them.

“Look! It’s old computers before they became houses."

She stared at the walls in amazement, fascinated in not finding screens anywhere, but instead pictures hanging everywhere.

But Tookie wasn't listening. he was sitting in a rocking chair, slowly making it go back and forth. It was the antique rocking chair!—only it looked new. It didn’t just look new , Marianna reminded herself—it was new.This was 201! It was mind-boggling.

“Come on! She shouted at him, knowing no one was around anyway—until she saw the cat, a gray cat slinking off into the bushes when it saw them coming through the back porch door out into the outside.. Cheena started to chase it but Tookie had her on a leash and dragged her after him instead. They ran out out od the kitchen (library?)door together and reached the garden and found a place to pitch the tent behind a great high lilac bush just where the woods started to thicken at the edge of the yard.

The tent was self-guiding and pretty much pitched itself in a matter of moments. They went inside it to make plans. from the outside no one should be able to distinguish their tent from the woods behind it, but from inside it Marianna and Tookie could see out in all directions. It maintained its own perfect temperature too 68 defree farenheit, no matter how hot or cold it got outside, hot or cold, rain or shine. It was reflexive too, adjusting itself to the needs of its inhabitants.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be cold? Didn't you say November or something? It feels and looks like July to me”

Marianna was day-dreaming. “Yeah,” she answered him slowly. “I just wanted to look around the house back in the old days in the summertime for a few minutes, before we do the November thing. It's strange--the garden looks almost exactly the way it does now at home--it is home I know, but I mean later. You know what I mean." It was easier to be in the past than to talk.

Chapter Two Take off

“What’d you say a brooch was?”

“I think it’s like a small metal thing that you put on your clothes? Wikipedia…”

“Why would you put metal things on your clothes?” Tookie snapped his gum. “That’s dangerous.” He kept snapping his gum and squinting his eyes at Marianna that she started to feel nervous and a little stupid.

“I don’t care about why. That’s not the point, okay?”

Tookie shook his head, leaned further back in the rocking chair, and then snapped his gum again. “How far back in this thing do you think I can go?”

“That’s dangerous. You shouldn’t even be sitting in that; it’s an antique.”

“Like everything else in this house.” He craned his neck around to survey the room.

Mariana stared at him, her best friend, her incredibly monotone and serious best friend, who Marianna would’ve assumed was a pedabot himself if he hadn’t had all that flesh and hair. He certainly had the personality of one. He and Andii got along just fine. Anyway, he always brought her a little down. But he also brought her a little rationality.

“So are you ready to go?” Marianna said.

“Oh. Right. Yeah. We can be back before dinner, right?”

“Sure,” she lied. As if she knew how long this was going to take. They would have to find some good disguises, and what if the climate was different? Would they need winter coats? Those don’t even exist anymore! And what if they somehow got separated? Would their chips be deactivated by going back in time? So many things could go wrong! But she had to do it. She HAD to!

They pulled the BRATT out of her closet and unfolded it. Tookie instantly grabbed the user manual and started reading all the cautions.

“Cheena!”

“They say you need to make sure you blend in.”

“Andii, where are you!?”

“And they say we shouldn’t say anything about the future, because that could mess everything up or something.”

“Can you put this collar on Cheena? I’m going to go tell my mom that we’re leaving.”

Tookie dropped the manual when he took the collar and stared at it and then the dog, back and forth. He sighed. “Fine.”

In no time at all, Marianna was back in the bedroom, with permission to leave and a backpack full of fuses. Cheena had tackled Tookie and they were wrestling on the floor. Marianna laughed and her heart grew because of the life she saw in Tookie. It was mind-boggling.

“Let’s go!” squealed Marianna, sitting in one of the two cramped seats. She slapped her leg and Cheena jumped up, though a little hesitantly. Tookie sat down in the other seat very casually, making sure to buckle his seatbelt. The BRATT company still hadn’t perfected the jostle problem. “Ready, Andii?”

Andii nodded and compacted herself into a very small version of herself, small enough to go in Marianna’s faux-wool jacket pocket. It was the closest thing she could find for a winter coat in her mother’s closet. It had to be cold in 2012!

Marianna snapped the BRATT door shut, put on the time traveling sunglasses that Tookie was already sporting, pressed the appropriate buttons, and then they were off in the dark with a bit of a jostle. And it was only two minutes into their journey that Tookie gasped and yelled out, “The manual!!”

Chapter One The question

It wasn’t that Marianna was greedy or selfish or anything—she wasn’t. She just wanted to know howcum everybody else had jewelry handed down to them from someone way back in their family and she didn’t. It just didn’t seem fair. So when she actually got what she really, REALLY wanted for her thirteenth birthday—the time machine everyone was getting—or hoping to anyway--the BRATT 3 (Be Ready for Awesome Time Travel, Model Three)—she knew exactly where she was going with it, and what she was going to try to find out. She was going to find out why no one ever, ever talked about jewelry in her family—rings, necklaces, brooches, you name it, nobody said a word about having any or giving her any or anything?

She ran into the word “brooch” in a real book once (her family had plenty of those) and asked her pedabot what one was, and Andii (her name for her pedabot) started to say “Archaic” and “fibula”—or something like that and then had a fuse blow or something. It was weird too, because usually pedabots never fused out on anything, especially when you were doing your homework. “No I didn’t do my homework, my bot fused out, sorry Mr. Beeger…” (her pod tutor)—I don’t think so!

So anyway, no one human was around that day, and when they finally trickled in, dad from his dig, and mom from her mediscript writing, and Barry excited about his new pod tutor, it turned out none of them had ever heard of a brooch—or a “fibula”—either. And then she didn’t know if they were pretending they didn’t know, or whether it was just a thing no one in the family knew about because no one in the family had ever had any—she was clueless.

—Or were they just keeping quiet—hiding something from her everyone else knew but she hadn’t been told yet?

Then mom fixed Andii, and Andii started downloading the Wikipedia on “brooch” and she learned a LOT. But it still didn’t answer all her questions.

WHY didn’t anyone in her family have any jewelry? Okay, Barry was only six, but what about the rest of them? All eight of her great grandparents were still alive and NOT ONE wore jewelry or talked about it or anything! It was just WEIRD.

So now she had the BRATT she was SO psyched!! Now she could go WAAYY back and maybe find out what had happened back there in her family (huge—you ought to see the reunions!!) that made it so she, Marianna Grady Nott, was not getting handed all these heirlooms and rings and pearls and diamonds and thingies that people her age were getting given by their relatives all the time!

And she was bringing Cheena (her dog) with her, no matter what too. And maybe, just maybe Andii too, because she really was an awesome bot as bots go. And plenty of fuses……….

And then her cell rang and it was Tookie. Tookie was thirteen too and kind of crazy, but he was her best friend. And she knew before she even picked up that he had to come too.