A small box pops up on the screen in front of me. Tgirl123 is inviting you to a private chat. I click on the link provided, and a new page loads.
Tgirl123: Heyya. Where the hell you been?
I slowly type out a response.
Montauk17: Sorry. Been busy. Anything new?
Tgirl123: Resister’s all over the private chats. He’s close.
Montauk17: To what?
Tgirl123: Are you kidding? The rebellion!
I sit up straighter. How is this safe to talk about here? With nothing to lose, I ask her.
Tgirl123: Girl, please. You know Resister is all over that shit. He’s hidden this board from everyone! Not even the MP could find it.
So not only is the Resister organizing against the Project, but he knows enough about computers to hide an entire internet community from their eyes?
Montauk17: What’s the next step?
Tgirl123: Says there’s a recruit he’s close to cracking. He’s getting a spy in the Project. Once we know how they work we can start the takedown.
Montauk17: How do we do that?
Tgirl123: It’s all in the time machine! We’re making our own!
These conspiracy theorists must be trying to get to a recruit in order to access Dr. Faust’s prototype for the time machine. Or Tesla’s machine, as Wes called it—the TM.
But how do they know about the recruits? I never even knew that information, not until Wes told me about how they kidnapped him.
Before I can ask, the words Gotta go. Later. appear on the screen.
Tgirl123 signs out, and I’m in this private chat room by myself. I close it and search through a few of the main forums, but no one is talking about anything I haven’t heard before. There’s nothing on the rebellion, and I wonder if maybe this is a private idea, shared only among a few select people.
I read through back entries until my eyes hurt, but there’s nothing to connect my grandfather to the Montauk Project. And no Resister in sight.
Why does it seem like no matter what I do, I only create more questions, more mysteries?
Frustrated, I slam the laptop shut and shove it across the cluttered desk. It skids a few inches on the piles of paper and crashes into Wes’s leaf. I reach out, but it’s too late: the dried leaf is crushed into small pieces.
I stand up so quickly my desk chair falls to the floor.
This is so pointless. I don’t even know that the leaf was from Wes. Anyone could have left those things on the windowsill. It was probably Grant, trying to be romantic. Or a squirrel.
I spin around and fall face-first onto my bed.
Anything could have happened to Wes since I last saw him in the time-machine room, blood leaking out of his shoulder. His life is always in danger, with the constant fear that if he doesn’t die from the effects of the time machine, he’ll die on a mission he’s forced to go on. The odds he’d reach out to me, with the Project watching his every move, are slim. Would he take that risk just to leave me some trinkets? Or am I so desperate for some sign of him that I’ve been convincing myself he’s thinking of me at all?
Is he even still alive?
Please let him still be alive.
If only I could see him one more time, I might not feel so alone.
I reach under my pillow and pull out a neatly folded piece of paper. I carefully smooth it out and stare down at a photocopy of an old wedding announcement.
Jacob and Harriet Bentley have the pleasure of announcing the marriage of their daughter, Mary Bentley, a local nurse, to former army sergeant Lucas Clarke. The two were wed this past Saturday, June 5, 1945, at the home of Dr. Bentley and his wife. They will retire to Mr. Clarke’s family farm in White Plains, Georgia, to start their life together.
I rub my finger over the small black-and-white photo of Mary and Lucas that accompanies the article. She is in a simple white dress, her hair in curls, and she’s beaming up at Lucas. He has his arm around her and is looking straight at the camera. Even in the faded ink I can see his crooked bottom teeth as he smiles.
As soon as I got back to 2012, I went to the local library and looked up information on the Bentleys. Aside from old case files of Dr. Bentley, this was the only thing I could find.
This picture was taken almost seventy years in the past, and yet it feels like yesterday I was at the USO dance, watching Mary and Lucas spin across a crowded floor. I was worried that I had screwed up their destinies too, by going back into the past. But even though Dean went missing, they still ended up together, and they look happy.
I clutch the paper in my hands. How can I feel so homesick when I’m technically home? Mary and Lucas are gone. I might still have Hannah, but I don’t have my family. I don’t have Wes. And my grandfather disappeared because I inadvertently changed his destiny.
There is no time or place that I belong to, not anymore.
I can’t stop them; the tears come, burning my eyes and soaking the pillow beneath me. I try to keep quiet at first, but then I remember that these parents probably wouldn’t care either way.
I’ve lost everything.
Sometime in the night, I jerk awake. I’m lying on my back, still in my jean shorts and loose T-shirt. My face feels puffy and raw, and the tears have dried into salty tracks that run down my cheeks.
My heart is pounding, though I’m not sure why. I reach up, my hand closing around the
