Time Change

The truck was backing up in front of me, going beep beep beep, but the driver couldn’t see me. And I couldn’t move. My legs were stuck to the ground as if I was melting into a pile of quicksand. I tried to scream but my mouth was glued shut. Even if I had been able to open my mouth, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, because I had no voice. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the impact, but suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me to safety.
“Alanna, Alanna, wake up!”
My eyes flew open and I saw my mother standing over me.
“Sweetie, you slept through your alarm clock. It’s been going off for the past five minutes,” she said, stroking my shoulder.
Instinctively I flung my arm to the side, pressing down on the raised blue button of the clock on my nightstand. Immediately the beeping stopped. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and turned to my mother.
“Thanks for waking me up,” I began, and then paused. Slowly I said, “ I was actually in the middle of a nightmare,” I couldn’t remember the last time I had had a nightmare and had woken up to see my mother there. It was comforting.
“You’re sweating,” she said, feeling my cheek.
“Yeah,” I pulled at the collar of my nightshirt.
“Well, you’d better take a quick shower then. You want to make a good impression today,” she patted me on my knee and then got up off my bed.
“The interview!” I exclaimed, sitting straight up. “I almost forgot!”
The next twenty minutes were a blur of brushing teeth, showering, dressing, and wolfing down a quick breakfast. As I left my house, my mother straightened the collar on my suit jacket.
“You should have let me iron this,” she mumbled, patting down a crease. “But it’s too late now. You look very professional anyway. If the nursing home doesn’t give you the internship they’re crazy.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I smiled. “I love you.”
I grabbed my purse and closed the door behind me. Going down the stairs I noticed the Jefferson Times laying in its plastic wrapper in the bed of weeds we grew next to our porch. Picking it up out of a patch of clover, and tossing it onto the porch, I took a double take at the ground.
“Is that a…woa!” I exclaimed, pinching one of the clover stalks at the stem and snapping it off. “Four leaves! No way!”
This had to be a good sign. I had never found a four-leaf clover in my entire nineteen years of life, although many summers at Camp Tacoma had been spent searching for one. I stared at the perfectly symmetrical leaves for a moment, and then placed it gently in my jacket pocket. Smiling smugly to myself, I sauntered down Reade Lane, knowing that with a four-leaf clover in my pocket I was sure to nail the interview.
Lexington Manor was a residential home catering to seniors unable to care for themselves in the Jefferson area. My friend, Danielle, was shadowing a nurse there this summer, and told me that they had available internships in the nutritional sector. Not only would I gain experience in a field I had interest in, the Health and Nutrition Science department of our school would give me three credits for it.
After walking a few blocks I began to feel the hot summer sun pounding on my head. I considered taking off my jacket, but knew that my mother would freak if she found out. This suit wrinkled just by looking at it, so there was no way I was going to carry it in my arms. Waiting for the light to change at the corner of Reade and Wilkins, I looked at the clock on the bank across the street. 9:05. I had twenty-five minutes left, and had only ten blocks to go. Good. I then examined the bottom of my dress shoes where the rubber was peeling away from the heel. The traffic signal changed to walk just then, but I was distracted by the flash of something metallic on the ground.
“Hey, a dime!” I said excitedly. Between the four-leaf clover in my pocket and a lucky coin, I’d never have bad luck again!
I bent to pick up the dime but was taken aback when I saw that it was not a dime at all.
“Which country has a one-cent silver coin?” I asked myself, then looked right below the “one-cent” at the words “United States of America.” I flipped the coin over and saw Abraham Lincoln under the words “In God We Trust.” “Huh? What is this, fake money?” The date 1943 was rubbed out, just barely recognizable. Even if this coin was a fake, it was still old. It could be worth a lot of money. I pocketed it with the four-leaf clover.
I looked back up to see if I still had the walk signal, and froze. The traffic signal was no longer there. Neither was the bank. I felt the blood drain from my face and my heart begin to palpitate. I spun around but nothing looked familiar. The only indications that I was where I had been a moment earlier were the street signs, “Reade Lane” and “Wilkins Road.” I swallowed hard.
“What in the world is going on?!” I said out loud.
No one was on the street to answer me. I began to panic. I bit my right pinkie nail down all the way, and when that was done, started on my bottom lip. Realizing that I was not helping the situation by mutilating body parts, I decided to be rational.
“Okay, Alanna,” I spoke to myself out loud. “Maybe you fell and hit your head and now you have amnesia and don’t recognize where you are.” I suddenly remembered what I had learned in one of my classes last semester. People who suffer from amnesia usually can’t remember names. The fact that I had called myself Alanna just a second earlier proved that I in fact remembered my name, therefore I did not have amnesia.
“Okay, okay. You don’t have amnesia, then. Yay!” I let out a nervous giggle. “Maybe…maybe I’m dreaming! Maybe I’m having another nightmare like this morning.” I pinched the flesh between my thumb and index finger. Hard. The skin turned white and began to throb, but I did not wake up. “Maybe I’m not dreaming then.”
The street was deserted but suddenly a man exited a store on the corner where my bank had been minutes earlier. “There are other people here! Maybe they can help me!” Talking out loud to myself had become somewhat normal by now.
I crossed the street, but by then the man had already gotten into the only car on the street and driven away. I took a good look at the car as it drove off into the distance. It was black and had curves all over, like some of the cars I had seen at the antique auto show last summer. That guy must have been rich to own a car like that. But now he was gone, and there was no way I was going to catch up with him.
I looked up at the sign of the store the man had just come out of. “Jefferson Drugstore” it read. So I was still in Jefferson. Maybe there was a pharmacist in there who could prescribe me something to restore my sanity. I pushed open the door, setting off a tinkling of chimes. As I entered I scanned the drugstore, and then made my way over to the left hand side where a series of tall swivel stools stood in front of a counter that reminded me of a Starbucks. Written in chalk on a blackboard that hung above the counter was “Ricky’s Soda Fountain. Try any of our seven delicious flavors!” Sitting on one of the stools was a young woman with short wavy brown hair wearing a dress. She was sipping some red liquid through a straw while reading a magazine. She looked up and smiled as I sat down next to her.
“Ricky!” she called. “You’ve got a customer!”
“Oh, no, I’m not buying anything, I just-”
Ricky appeared behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron.
“I was just checking the batteries in the flashlights. I heard they’re planning a blackout today.”
“Today? We just had one last week,” the girl next to me groaned.
“Well, you know, apparently you can never be too prepared,” Ricky shrugged, then turned to me. “I’m sorry, Miss, what can I get you?”
I wasn’t sure what to ask first. Why was there going to be a planned blackout? Why was there one last week? What was I doing in this strange place?
Instead I surprised myself by saying, “can I get a Diet Coke?”
Ricky looked confused. “Sorry? Diet Coke? We don’t have any. What is it?”
“What is it?” I exclaimed, then seeing blank stares on both Ricky and the girl, I said slowly, “it’s like regular coke…just not.”
Still blank stares. Finally Ricky said, “Coke…as in Coca-Cola?”
“Yes! Coca-Cola! Do you have any?” I said, semi-relieved.
“Of course we’ve got Coca-Cola! Wouldn’t be real Americans without it, now would we?” Ricky smiled, reaching into a white chest behind him. He popped off the lid with a bottle opener, and placed the six-ounce glass bottle in front of me next to what looked like a paper straw.
I knew I had seen a bottle like that somewhere before. Oh yes, it had been a few years ago when I was helping my grandmother clean out her apartment when she was moving to Florida. “This was the drink your grandfather bought me on our first date. I kept this bottle all these years. Even today it still smells like him.”
“That’ll be a nickel,” Ricky said cheerfully.
“A nickel! Seriously?” I burst out.
Ricky must have mistaken my surprised tone for one of annoyance, because he said apologetically, “I gotta make a living somehow, Miss.”
My mouth hung open. Whatever alternate universe I was now in, I was starting to like it. Sure these people didn’t have Diet Coke, but you could get a regular one, however small, for five cents. I reached into my purse, opened my wallet, and saw that all I had was a twenty-dollar bill and a couple pennies. I remembered the funny silver coin in my pocket, and as a joke, placed it on the counter.
“Will this do you any good?” I laughed.
“Sure,” Ricky smiled. “I just need four more.”
I stifled a laugh. Apparently in this universe you could pay for things with fake money too. I started fishing through my change compartment, placing pennies on the counter as I found them.
Ricky held up a penny. “This, though, I can’t take.” He looked stern for once.
“What do you mean you can’t take it? It’s more real than that phony over there,” I pointed at the silver penny on the counter.
“Look at the date on this copper penny. 1993. Come back to me in fifty years and I’ll accept that.”
Doing some mental math I exclaimed, “1943!”
“Happy New Year, Kiddo!” Ricky smirked. “Where have you been?” He waved the copper penny back and forth. “The future?”
Ricky and the girl began chuckling, but I once again felt my face drain of color. I retrieved my pennies, placed the copper ones in my wallet, and slowly put the silver one back in my pocket. Snippets of a coherent whole had been building up in my mind over these past few minutes. The car, the old Coke bottle, the price of the Coke. And suddenly everything clicked. I was in 1943. I was too stunned to say anything to either the girl or Ricky. I just sat there with my mouth hanging open, staring into space.
The girl next to me noticed my pale face and tapped me on the arm. “Sorry for laughing. It’s just good to get a laugh out of ordinary things these days, with the war and everything.”
I absentmindedly nodded. World War Two.
“Hey, listen. Why don’t you let me pay for this drink,” she said kindly.
I turned and smiled at her.
“My name is Margaret, by the way. Margaret Wise,” she said, extending her hand.
I shook her hand and said, “Alanna Bloom. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You as well,” Margaret replied, placing a nickel on the counter.
Ricky took the nickel and placed it in the cash register. A dinging sound rang as he closed the cash register, and at the same time the door chimes tinkled as a couple of teenage boys entered the store. They crowded around the soda fountain counter and began ordering various drinks from Ricky.
I picked up the paper straw and placed it in the bottle. With some difficulty, due to the straw’s desire to collapse on itself, I took a sip of the Coke and realized just how thirsty I had been. “Thanks for this, Margaret,” I smiled. “I don’t usually borrow money but-” I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence.
“No need to explain,” Margaret waved her hand. “I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”
I took another sip and tried to process all the scrambled thoughts in my head. I had somehow gone back in time. How did this happen? How do I get back? My thoughts were interrupted by a shrill siren screeching through the air. I nearly choked on my drink.
“I knew I checked those batteries in time,” Ricky said. “Okay, boys, we’ll finish those drink orders in a couple minutes. Margaret, would you mind closing those blackout curtains on the windows?”
Margaret got up and pulled the thick, black curtains that hung on either side of the windows closed. When she got back to the counter Ricky motioned for us to come around to his side. He opened a door and handing each of us a flashlight, waved us down the stairs. As soon as the last person was in the stairwell Ricky flicked off the light switch, closed the door behind us, and we descended down the dark, unfamiliar staircase following the few flashlight beams.
We entered what appeared to be a storeroom. Shelves full of boxes lined the walls, and Ricky invited us to sit on the wooden folding chairs placed randomly around the room. Margaret and I sat on two chairs in a far corner near boxes marked “Lorate Talc Tins.”
“So, where are you from, Alanna?” Margaret asked.
“Jefferson,” I replied without thinking.
Margaret raised an eyebrow. “Here, Jefferson? How come I’ve never seen you before?”
“Um, I, Uh…” I trailed off. I shut my eyes and rubbed the lids hard with my thumb and index finger. Opening them, I saw Margaret waiting for an answer behind the blurry floating neon shapes that obstructed my view. It was now or never. I swallowed hard and began. “I’m only telling you this because I’m hoping that you can somehow help me.”
Concerned, Margaret placed her hand on my arm. I saw the flash of diamond from an engagement ring on her left hand. “Don’t worry. Whatever it is, I’ll try to help.”
“Okay, so where I’m from. I am from Jefferson, but I’m also from-” I paused, making a last minute decision whether or not to complete the sentence. “-the future.”
Margaret stared at me, her lips turning up at the corners. Before she could say anything, I began rambling off proofs.
“Why do you think I was so surprised by the price of Coke? Why do you think I asked for a drink that apparently doesn’t exist yet? Why do you think I was so confused by the silver penny? More importantly, why do you think I had money from 1993?”
Margaret wore an intense look of concentration, as if the cranks in her brain were hard at work. Finally she responded. “Okay, I think I believe you.”
“You do?” I squealed in disbelief. “Oh my God, I thought you’d think I was crazy or something.”
“No, I don’t think you’re crazy. My fiancé is a believer in the supernatural, and well, although I’m a bit of a skeptic, it’s hard to be that way around him. Wow…” she trailed off, absentmindedly. “So, you’re from 1993, then?”
“No,” I replied. “2006, actually.”
“So the world does exist after the year 2000!” Margaret exclaimed. “Wow, I’ll have to write Peter about that!”
“Write?”
“Peter is in Europe now, fighting the Nazis,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out her wallet.
My stomach turned. The Nazis. They were a present threat. This meant that at that very moment Hitler was alive and kicking in Germany. Quite possibly sending one of my relatives to the gas chambers.
“Here’s his picture,” Margaret said, showing me a black-and-white photograph. In black ink was written “Peter Stark, 1943.” “He sent me this picture a few months ago, but I haven’t seen him for a year and a half.”
“Wow,” I said sadly. “And you’ve been engaged all that time?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “The war has destroyed a lot of things but not love.”
I grinned at that sappy but touching comment, and took a look at Peter. “You can tell he has bright blue eyes even though the picture is black-and-white.”
“His eyes were what first drew me to him,” she said, placing the photograph back in her wallet, and placing it gently into her purse on the floor.
“How long are we going to be down here?” I asked.
“It could be a few minutes, maybe a half-hour.”
“A half-hour? What’s this blackout for?”
“It’s practice. In case we’re ever bombed. Every now and then they have these drills where we turn out all the lights in the whole town so the buildings aren’t visible from airplanes.”
“Bombed? Is there a chance that we could be bombed now?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“There’s always a chance, but we’ve never actually been hit, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Just be happy you’re not in England. They have these drills almost every night. Only they’re not drills. People spend the night in their basements or air-raid shelters, and then in the morning they’re lucky if their house is in one piece.”
“Wow,” I breathed slowly, unsure of what else to say.
“Do you have any other questions? This is fun.”
“Fun? This is scary stuff. How is it fun?” I asked.
“Not fun in that sense. I mean, explaining this all to an outsider. I want to be a teacher, so I like practicing.”
“Then, actually yes, you can explain to me what the deal is with that weirdo penny. Why is it silver?”
Margaret laughed. “It’s not actually silver, it’s steel plated with zinc. The army needs copper for ammunition and military equipment, so the U.S. Mint had to find some other material to make pennies from.”
“But don’t you confuse them with dimes?” I asked, thinking of my own mistake.
“All the time! I can’t stand these pennies. The worst part is that they don’t galvanize the edges, so when you touch the penny, oil from your skin gets onto it, and then a little while later your coin begins to rust. I can’t figure out how your penny stayed in such good shape all those years. It didn’t look one bit rusty.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe someone had it in a collection or something and then lost it recently. Or maybe it’s a fake after all.”
Margaret shook her head. “No, I don’t think it’s a fake.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Well, you got here, didn’t you? I mean, to 1943. Only something that was made in 1943 could have brought you here.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, my heart beginning to beat faster. Maybe Margaret would help me get back to 2006!
“Peter,” she smiled. “It’s one of the things he talks, rather, talked about. Now he just writes. But when we first started dating he would take me to science fiction movies and then explain why everything was logical to him. Time travel was one of his favorite topics. He always spoke about what he called the object of epoch; basically the thing that gets you to where you eventually end up. And about the reversal object, like how has to be from the same category. ”
“Really?” I asked, eyes wide. “What else do you know about time travel? Do you know how to get me out of here?”
“Not for certain, but we could try. You already have your object of epoch, your penny-“
I cut her off. “But my penny is from 1943.”
“You had pennies from your era also. The reversal object.”
“Right, but the one I showed you was from 1993! I don’t want to go back to 1993! I need to get back to 2006!” I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Calm down, Alanna. We’ll figure this out. You have other pennies, don’t you?”
“Yes!” I breathed a sigh of relief. I quickly unzipped my purse and opened my wallet’s change compartment. Dumping the four pennies onto my lap, Margaret and I began checking the dates on all the coins.
“1984, 1993,” I said. “What do you have?”
“1972-”
“I could go visit hippies,” I joked nervously. The pressure was building. Whatever date was on that last penny would seal my fate.
“Hippies?” Margaret raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, they’re eccentric, nature-oriented people from the Vietnam era in the late 60’s and early 70’s.”
“Vietnam era?”
“Yeah, during the Vietnam War. The hippies-”
“Wait! Don’t continue!” Margaret shouted, placing her hands over her ears.
“What? Why not?” I asked, taken aback.
“I can’t hear about future. I can’t believe I almost forgot! Peter talked about the awareness complex all the time. When time traveling, you can never mention events of the future to residents of the past. They could modify their actions based on what you say, and the course of history could be changed forever.”
“Wow. Okay, I’ll be quiet. But flip that penny over before I have a heart attack.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for Margaret’s answer.
Finally she said it. “2004.”
My heart fell to the floor. “What do you mean 2004? It has to be 2006! I have to get back!” I was almost in tears.
“I’m sorry, Alanna. Are you sure you don’t have any other money on you?”
I looked in my wallet and suddenly pulled out the twenty-dollar bill. I shoved it into Margaret’s hands and covered my eyes with my own hands. “I can’t look! Tell me!”
Margaret slowly lifted to bill to her face. A moment later I felt her grab my wrists. “It’s from 2006!” She cried.
“Aaah!” I screeched. Both of us began jumping up and down maniacally, much to the stares of the men across the room.
Our shrieks were drowned out by the sound of another siren.
“Phew,” Ricky exhaled. “The all-clear siren. Let’s go back upstairs, everyone!”
We all filed up the stairs and Ricky turned the light on again. Margaret opened the black curtains, and sunlight poured into the room. I glanced over at my Coke bottle and saw that the cardboard straw had practically disintegrated and now lay in a crumple at the bottom. I decided to forget about finishing the drink and instead turned to Margaret.
“Is there any chance we can do this thing now?”
“Sure,” she said, then turned to Ricky and motioned towards her own red drink with dissolved straw. “I’ll be back soon. I’m just walking Alanna somewhere.”
“Sure thing. Nice meeting you, Alanna. Come back soon,” he called out as we left the store.
“I will!” I called out and almost burst out laughing along with Margaret.
As soon as we were outside the store Margaret turned to me. “Okay, so where were you when this all happened?”
I pointed across the street. “That corner.”
“Okay, let’s go there, then. The locality factor can make a big difference in determining where you end up when you get back to your own time.”
We crossed the street.
“You have your reversal object, and we’re in the right location. Now all that’s left is the causal element. What were you doing at the time?”
“I just picked up the penny. Um…I put it in my pocket…”
“Was there anything else in your pocket?”
I stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and felt the soft leaves of the clover stalk. “This!” I exclaimed, pulling it out.
Margaret examined the plant. “A four-leaf clover? That’s definitely what caused this all. The causal element is usually something from the occult.”
“Great! Now what do I do?”
“Exactly what you did last time, only with the twenty-dollar bill.”
“I just put it in my pocket?”
“Yes, but make sure the four-leaf clover is already in there.”
I gave Margaret a hug. “Thank you so much for everything. For the Coke, for not freaking out, and for helping me get back to 2006.”
“It’s my pleasure. I can’t wait to write Peter about this!”
I placed the clover back in my pocket, and stared intently at the twenty-dollar bill in my hand. I winked at Margaret, and dropped it into my pocket.
I looked back up, but Margaret wasn’t there. Instead, some man shouting Spanish into his cell phone walked by. My heart skipped a beat. I was back home! I looked across the street at the bank. This was the Jefferson I knew! The clock read 9:05. Time hadn’t passed at all while I was gone! I ran across the street as the red hand began blinking, trying to remember edverything that had gone on in all that time, yet it had been no time at all.

“I think you will fit in very nicely here, Miss Bloom,” Shannon Young, the head nutritionist at Lexington Manor said, shaking my hand. “If you’d like, I can introduce you to some of our residents that you will get to know over the course of this summer.”
I smiled and nodded as Dr. Young took me into the lobby. A man and three women sat watching Dr. Phil on the flat screen television, two men, one in a wheelchair, played chess in the corner, and a man and woman sat together on a couch, talking.
“This is Alanna Bloom,” Dr. Young introduced me to the TV group. “She’s going to be interning here starting next week. This is Jasper Reynolds, Susan Jackson, Emily Van Oxen, and Harriet Wile.”
I shook all their hands, and we moved onto the two men playing chess.
“Arthur and Larry Feinstein are brothers. Arthur won the college chess championship when he was a student at Berkeley, isn’t that so?”
Approaching the couple on the couch I felt a familiar tingle, but I couldn’t place it. Something about the man’s blue eyes made me feel as if I had seen him before.
“Alanna, this is Peter and Margaret Stark. Peter was an accountant before he retired, and Margaret was a teacher for over fifty years.”
The moment her initial words were out of her mouth my jaw dropped. Realizing how embarrassing that was, I quickly clamped my mouth shut, and mumbled something about having a dry mouth.
“Can I get you anything to drink? Water? Soda?” Dr. Young asked.
“Sure, thank you. Do you have Diet Coke?”
At the mention of Diet Coke Margaret looked me in the eyes and I saw a flicker of recognition there. Dr. Young left to get me the drink, and I sat down on an armchair across from the Starks.
“You look familiar, Sweetie,” Margaret said. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
I couldn’t believe it. This was all too much for one day. I looked Margaret in the eyes and said, “I think I owe you money.”

THE END