“So you’ve told me.” We have a weird moment of silence before he interrupts with a loud yawn and stretch. “All right. Let’s make a list.”
Brainstorming is one of my talents. It’s where I excel in group projects. And yet, as I stare at the blank page, I can’t help but watch Renner. He’s slouched over, writing furiously in his chicken scratch, crossing things out, strumming his bearded chin. Meanwhile, I’m seemingly incapable of thinking about anything other than how his lips felt against mine yesterday.
I remember the way my breath caught against his mouth. The strum of his heartbeat against my chest. The way his low hum sizzled through me like a jolt of electricity.
Focus, Charlotte.
I can’t let my mind go there. Of all the moving parts in my life with my parents, Mom’s general chaos, the stress of senior year, having Renner as my rival has been my one constant. But this truth has suddenly flipped everything on its head.
Fifteen agonizing minutes tick by, and I have a total of three crappy bullet points to show for it. Renner, seeming to notice my lack of ideas, slides his two completely filled pages across the table for my viewing pleasure.
I pull the papers toward me. “Renner, you just listed a bunch of time-travel movies,” I say, tone cut with disappointment. Tomorrow War. Avengers: Endgame. The Adam Project. That movie with the ginger guy.
He remains unruffled. “Hear me out. Maybe we should watch these movies for inspiration. Like, look at this one.” He points to Outlander. “This is a TV show about a woman who accidentally goes back in time after touching some ancient magical stone in Scotland. My mom is obsessed with it. Even went on an Outlander tour in Scotland with my aunt a couple years ago. And guess what? Those stones exist. She took pictures with them.”
“Magical stones? Really, Renner?” I flop myself back into the chair, aggrieved. “What are we supposed to do? Fly to Scotland in search of this magic stone?”
“Hey, this is called brainstorming. I brainstormed. More than you from the looks of it.” He lifts his chin in the direction of my paper.
“Point taken. But the time travel in most of these movies is possible because of futuristic technology. We don’t have a time machine. Or a magical stone.”
He runs his finger along the arm of the couch. “Well, let’s think about it. We got here by falling off a ladder. Obviously, falling off the ladder isn’t working. But maybe it’s something super simple like that.”
“I don’t know. Yesterday I tried falling off my bike, slapping myself. Everything short of hurling myself into oncoming traffic. Nothing worked.”
He squints, resting his chin on his fist. “There has to be something. I listed some other ideas on the back.” When he reaches to flip the page, our fingers brush ever so slightly, eliciting that tingling sensation again.
Am I really that desperate for affection? I stomp down the fireflies in my belly and continue looking at Renner’s list.
“Bermuda Triangle?” I read aloud, barely holding back a whimper.
“Well, what are your ideas, then?” He reaches for my list. “Time machine, magical wardrobe, and police,” he rattles off. “Really, Char?” When he says them out loud, they do seem pretty bad. Though the prospect of curling into a ball and remaining motionless in a dark wardrobe would be preferable to our strange reality.
I hang my head in my hands. “We need help. Outside help from an actual adult.”
“We are adults.”
“An adultier adult.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “We just ran from the cops last night, in case you forgot. You really want to walk into the police station and tell them we’ve come from the past?”
“Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
“That’s because it is. To the average person. Especially the police. We don’t want to wind up committed in a hospital or something. We can’t tell anyone, Char.”
“There has to be someone out there who believes in time travel. A psychic maybe?”
His eyes light up. “Wait. I might know someone. My uncle Larry.”
“He’s a psychic?” I try picturing him flipping tarot cards in front of a beaded curtain.
“No. Remember I told you he used to be a physics professor? He studied wormholes. Time travel.”
I bolt up. “We have to go see him right now.”
Renner seems to like this plan, following me out. “All right. Let’s go see Uncle Larry.”
NINETEEN
Renner wasn’t exaggerating Uncle Larry’s collection of Star Wars memorabilia. When we stepped onto his porch, there was a mat that read WELCOME YOU ARE accompanied by a picture of Yoda’s face. Turns out, he has a second mat inside that says THE FORCE IS STRONG, WITHOUT SHOES.
The living room contains a life-size statue of a Stormtrooper next to a china cabinet filled with delicate action figures and a Death Star made of LEGO. The lamp on the side table even has a Darth Vader emblem spray-painted on the shade.
“Told you he’s a nerd,” Renner whispers as Uncle Larry leads us down a short corridor to his office. He was a little weirded out that we stopped in unannounced, especially given his Dungeons & Dragons meetup in an hour. But when Renner told him we needed his expert advice, he invited us in, so long as we “don’t expect food.”
The Star Wars theme extends to his office. There’s a plaque containing a signed comic book and at least fifteen bobbleheads of the characters along the bookshelf housing what appear to be thick physics textbooks. He gestures for us to take a seat on the worn black love seat.
“So, what can I help you with?” His chair groans as he leans back. It’s one of those hard-core chairs gamers use. From this angle, he looks nearly identical to Renner’s dad, though slightly softer in the belly. I can see the family resemblance in the thick lashes, in the contemplative yet kind expression.
“We were curious about time travel,” Renner tells him, shooting me a look. We already agreed that we aren’t telling him the truth. Larry would immediately call his dad, who would call his mom, who would naturally freak out. This meeting is purely for information gathering.
Uncle Larry’s thick, bushy brows part. “Time travel? Didn’t expect that.”
“You taught physics, right? We figured you might know a bit about it,” I say.
“Time travel wasn’t my exact field of study, but I know a thing or two, yes. What’s your question?”
“Could you, um, maybe explain how it works? A quick 101? Time travel for dummies?” I squeak.
This elicits a rumble of laughter. “No one knows for sure. There are multiple theories. Time travel via speed, via light, gravity, suspended animation, wormholes . . .” My eyes glaze over as he starts to explain quantum mechanics, general relativity, and quantum gravity. Renner nods along, pretending to grasp each concept, though I know he has no clue what the hell Uncle Larry is saying.
I clear my throat at the first opportunity. “Hypothetically speaking, if a hypothetical person traveled into the future, could they hypothetically change an outcome?” I ask, thinking about Nori’s question yesterday morning, about whether we’d been sent to the future to prevent something from happening.
“You’re asking, hypothetically, whether that future would be predetermined no matter what, or if you could change it?”
“Yes. Hypothetically,” I add.
He leans back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach, eyes tilted up as though the answer is on the ceiling. “You’re talking about a reverse grandfather paradox.”
“What’s the grandfather paradox?” Renner asks.
“It’s the theory that history can’t be changed, even if one goes back in time to try to alter it.” He can see we’re both still confused, so he continues. “Take Back to the Future, for example. You’ve seen it, right?”
We both shake our heads. “Nope.”
He shakes his head. “No wonder your generation is so . . . Anyway. In the movie, when Marty McFly goes back in time, he accidentally almost stops his parents from meeting, which would be disastrous because . . .”