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.