“Nothing will work,” said Freddy, “but I can try.”
Heart thumping in her chest, she went downstairs. Perhaps as an apology for her creation of the time portal, Cuerva Lachance was allowing the house to stay relatively stable. There was only one corridor and one staircase at the moment. At the back door, Freddy and Josiah looked at each other. “Well,” said Josiah, “this is it, then.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy.
She didn’t know if she would miss the weirdness or not. She thought she sort of would and very much wouldn’t. Her own bedroom had only four walls that never changed into anything.
“It’s been fun,” Josiah said, sounding as if someone had forced the words out of him at gunpoint. Freddy smiled. She was pretty sure Josiah actually quite liked her now, even if he refused to show it.
Clutching her time-travelling bag, which was bulging with books from her house, she crept across the yard and into the lane and back into her own yard. Everything was still. As quietly as she could, she unlocked the back door and pushed it open.
She nearly shoved it into Mel, who had apparently been on her way out.
19
For one brain-freezing moment, Freddy and Mel stood and stared at each other. Idiot, Freddy’s brain screamed. Ducklings! She was following you. Mel’s eyes travelled from Freddy’s boots all the way up to the top of her head, which was so much higher than it should have been that Freddy briefly considered the kneeling option. There was no way of hiding anything. She saw the shock spread over Mel’s face, then the recognition. Unbearably, there had been a moment at the very beginning when Mel hadn’t known who she was.
Freddy pushed past Mel into the house. She ran up the stairs to her room, slammed the door, flung her bag in a corner, dived into her bed, and pulled the covers over her head. It was a completely stupid thing to do, but she could see no other option.
There was quite a lot of silence for quite a long time. The bedroom door opened. It didn’t have a lock. She should, thought Freddy, have shoved some furniture against it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” said Mel.
“Go away,” said Freddy.
Mel sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing a little. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said thoughtfully. “You seem a couple of years older, at least.”
“Eighteen months,” said Freddy, and then, “That’s impossible. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. Growth spurt,” said Mel. “It’s encouraging to know I may not be short forever myself.”
What Freddy was mainly feeling was a monstrous embarrassment. It had come out of nowhere. She didn’t think she could stand to have Mel in the room for a second longer. “Go away,” she moaned, “go away, go away.”
“What I can’t figure out,” said Mel, “is how eighteen months passed for you while five minutes passed for me. I’m very interested in this phenomenon and would like you to stop being so dramatic about it so we can discuss the implications.”
She pulled back the covers. Freddy tried to yank them over her face, but Mel bundled them into her arms and flung them across the room.
The sisters looked at each other. Time passed.
“Why aren’t you in denial about this?” asked Freddy at last.
“I’ve never found denial very useful,” said Mel. Freddy could see nothing in her expression but interest. “Observation tells me you’ve aged even though you haven’t had time for that. So we accept that and move on. How did it happen?”
Freddy sat up. There was no point in trying to hide anything from Mel now. “Time travel.”
“From the beginning,” said Mel.
She didn’t tell her sister everything. There were some bits of what had happened to her that she didn’t feel ready to share, as she wasn’t finished thinking about them yet herself. She left out Mika and the creation story, and she didn’t mention her doubts about Three or the puzzling role of Ban in all this. She thought Mel may have picked up on the doubts about Three anyway. Listening to herself, she knew she was making the whole experience sound more like a rollicking adventure than it had really been. Mel was certainly awash in envy. “This isn’t fair,” she said when Freddy fell silent. “Do you know what I would give to travel in time?”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Freddy. “It wasn’t just … fun. It was scary and way too weird for me.”
“I don’t think it was.” Mel propped her chin on her chubby little fist. “You’re different.”
Freddy shook her head. “I don’t know why you even believe me.”
“Are you kidding?” said Mel. “You go off for five minutes and come back a year and a half older, then tell me a story that explains it perfectly? Why wouldn’t I believe you? It’s still not fair. You’ve solved the mystery without me.”
“Not all of it,” said Freddy, and she opened her mouth to say something more about Three, then shut it without speaking at all.
“I don’t think I’m Three,” said Mel, considering. “I haven’t had any meaningful dreams or anything.”
“That’s not a requirement,” said Freddy. “I haven’t, either.” But she wondered. There had been a dream, hadn’t there? She remembered Cuerva Lachance floating on a piano.
“If you knew who Three was,” said Mel, “would you tell them?”
“No.”
Mel narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Me neither, and I’m not sure why. We should think about that. I think there are bits of the story we don’t know.”
Her doubts had come through, then. “Yeah, probably.”
“We have to ask Roland,” said Mel.
“No!” Freddy hadn’t meant the word to emerge so violently. She saw her sister jerk away. “No,” she repeated more quietly. “I don’t want him to see…”
Mel regarded her for a moment. “Wait here.” She levered herself up off the bed and waddled out into the corridor. Freddy stared after her, not knowing what to do. Mel’s reaction was … useful … but it had knocked her off balance. Mel was telling her she did still fit.
Mel reappeared in the doorway, Roland behind her.
“No. No,” said Freddy, scrunching down onto the bed. It seemed unbearable that he should see her like this. Roland scowled across the room at her. She’d forgotten how angry he had been with her today. They had really been screaming at each other only about half an hour before.
“Stand up, Freddy,” said Mel.
“Get him out of here,” she whispered, scrabbling in her pocket for her key.
“Rip off the Band-Aid. Stand up.”
There was no way out of the room except through the window, and she didn’t feel like breaking both her legs. “Traitor,” said Freddy.
Mel said, “You’re being unreasonable. It’s not as bad as you think. Stand up or I’ll come over there and make you stand up.”
“Fine,” said Freddy. Everything was hopeless anyway. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and rose.
As Mel had done earlier, Roland started at her feet and moved up to her head. Freddy saw the colour drain from his face. Then the red flooded back. He turned and ran from the room.