Across Time.
Linda Kay Silva.
Acknowledgments.
A writer doesn"t climb the publishing mountain without a lot of great help along the way. I have had some of the best support anyone could ask for and I"d like to thank those people here.
Katherine V. Forrest-Thank you for fine toning, fine tuning, ah h.e.l.l, thanks for your professionalism, your patience and your keen eye for detail. You made all the difference in the world.
Spinsters Ink-Thank you for seeing the vision of Across Time.
You have been easy to work with and have made this process seam- less. Here"s to a long-term relationship!
Sandi and Shari-Thank you for being willing to read all of the many rough rough drafts I send your way. You"ve read them all and still haven"t had me committed!
And especially for.
Lori-Thank you for giving me the time and the s.p.a.ce to live in worlds that don"t exist, to be people who aren"t real, and to experi- ence adventures without ever having to do the laundry or clean the bathrooms. You are the perfect partner for the writer, the teacher, and the adventurer in me. Let"s keep cruising forever!
About the Author.
When Linda Kay Silva isn"t writing (which is seldom), she teach- es various college English courses from American Minority Litera- ture to Introduction to Fiction. Living with her incredibly patient partner of ten years, Linda Kay takes time out to play with Lucy Lui, her c.o.c.kapoo who loves walks, playing with her favorite toy and blogging. If you want to know more about either Linda Kay or Lucy, you can check either of them out at www.lindakaysilva.com.
When Jessie woke up, they were turning right on Morning Glory Drive. The name suited the street, as there were marigolds all over the hills in front of the old Victorian houses. Cracking a wary eye open, Jessie realized that she had slept through most of the ten hours it had taken to drive from her beloved San Francisco to the sticks of the Oregon Coast.
"Sleepyhead"s finally awake!" ten-year-old Daniel announced. Jessie had the feeling it was his intense staring at her profile that awoke her in the first place.
"Hush."
"We"re in New Haven, Jess! But I blinked and we almost missed it."
Daniel laughed.
"New Haven. What a stupid name."
"If you hate the name, Jess, wait till you see the town." Daniel had his nose pressed up against the window.
Sitting up, Jessie stared at the rugged Oregon coastline and sighed *
loudly. "That bad?"
Daniel shook his head. "That small. When Dad said small, I think he meant microscopic."
Jessie rolled her window down and smelled the salt air that blew her long red hair about her face. It didn"t even smell like the ocean air in San Francisco. Rolling her window back up, Jessie sighed louder. How on earth her parents expected her to adjust to Oregon after living her entire seventeen years in the lap of California luxury was so far beyond her, she couldn"t even wrap a fraction of her mind around it. It was like eating celery and having someone tell you that someday you"d enjoy it every bit as much as you did hot fudge sundaes.
"Look, hon, Jessie"s awake."
Jessie smirked at her mother, whose only response was a grin that bordered on mocking. "Jess, you missed some of the most beautiful scenery. Once you get past Redding and into the state of Oregon, it"s so green and lush. There are all sorts of greens here."
Jessie glared at the back of her mother"s head and wondered if she had practiced that sing-songy voice while watching too many 1950s sitcoms. She fancied herself a resurrected June Cleaver . . . whoever that was.
"The Oregon coast isn"t anything like California"s," Daniel added, as if he were reading from a travel magazine. He was precocious like that. Everyone loved Daniel. He was the smart kid, the Curious George kid, the kid who could do no wrong. He was the prince, and no matter how mean she was to him, he was seldom ever mean back. There had to be something wrong with him. "It"s rocky and jagged and stuff."
As the black SUV climbed higher on Morning Glory, Jessie slunk down in her seat. The Oregon coast could have been littered with gold and it would never compare to Baker"s Beach, Santa Cruz or Monterey.
How could it? This place was cold and dreary; gray even though it was the middle of June. They had left eighty-five degree weather and entered this fog bank. She had begged and begged her parents to put off their insane notion of restoring an old Victorian into a bed-and- breakfast. How hard would that have been?
"Just one year," Jessie had whined three months ago. "Next year"s *
2 *3.
my senior year! Everything happens in your senior year."
Reena, Jessie"s mother, leaned across the table and took Jessie"s hands. "Honey, it"s been such a rough year for you . . . for all of us, really. Your father and I aren"t making this decision on a whim. We believe this is the best thing we could do for our family."
"You could have waited."
"We didn"t want to wait," Rick interjected. "You"re still hanging around the same kids who were busted with you for smoking dope, your grade point average is barely hovering around a two-point. You don"t do anything except sit around in that room of yours and listen to that G.o.d-awful noise you call music."
Yes, it had been a really hard year. Busted behind the bleachers smoking dope, Jessie had had to endure a drug treatment program, community service and restrictions that limited her TV viewing time, her phone time and her after-school time. She hadn"t been put on a short leash-she"d been reduced to a choke chain. Her friends weren"t allowed to come over, she couldn"t go anywhere with any of the kids who had been caught with her, and her weekends consisted of renting videos and eating pizza. She might as well have been in jail.
Her grades suffered because she refused to spend her free time studying. She did not want to be one of them. They were the dorks and weirdos who got good grades and sat around talking about important things like politics and education. Bluck! She may have been on restriction, but she refused to become boring. She had decided that she would bide her time for a year in Oregon before returning home in time to graduate with her friends in California.
California.
It felt so far away, and Oregon felt so foreign with its hippies and loggers and backwoods mentality. They didn"t even pump their own gas! How lame was that?
It would be a very long year, but Jessie was sure she could make it.
There was a life back there for her, and she wasn"t about to miss out on it because of some stupid pipe dream her parents insisted on carrying out. No, she would bide her time and make her escape at the best possible moment.
4 *5.
A few minutes later, the SUV pulled into the driveway of a lavender four-story Victorian house with white trim. It didn"t appear from the outside as if it needed the kind of work her parents had talked about, but then, if there was anything Jessie had learned in her life it was that nothing was ever as it seemed. Her parents rarely told the whole truth about anything.
"Here"s our own painted lady, kids!" Rick announced, taking his wife"s hand. "Isn"t she a beaut?"
Daniel was already out the door, excited about scouring the grounds, but it took Jessie everything she had not to ruin her father"s moment. Gazing up at the monstrosity before her, Jessie suddenly felt as though she had fallen through the Looking Gla.s.s.
"I know it doesn"t look like a lot of work yet, but that"s because the former owners dropped some pretty pennies on her exterior. It"s the inside that needs work."
"The operative word, Dad, is former. Ever wonder why someone would drop so many pretty pennies on her and then give it all up?"
Rick turned and looked stolidly at his daughter. "The wife of the former owner died suddenly, leaving him with two young kids to raise.
I think he moved so he could be closer to his family."
Jessie rolled her eyes. Her father had always been such a sucker for heart-wrenching stories. More than likely, the former owner had run out of dough and decided to cut his losses and get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge.
"She"s prettier than I remember," Reena said wistfully. "Oh look, hon, the wisteria is in bloom." Opening their car doors, Rick and Reena joined Daniel on the stairs of the centuries-old porch, leaving Jessie in her seat.
"I"m in a nightmare," Jessie muttered, folding her arms across her chest. Hundreds of miles from home, perched on a cliff, facing a mountain of manual labor, in a town whose main street was more like a dirt road to nowhere. G.o.d, if only she hadn"t been busted with that dope. Her parents didn"t trust her anymore, and now they were h.e.l.l- bent on saving her from herself. That one incident had been the catalyst that sent Rick and Reena over the edge and in a hurry to get her out of *
4 *5.
California, as if doing so would erase all that had happened.
Well, if she was being honest with herself, it wasn"t just the dope. It was also the falling asleep in cla.s.s, the drastic drop in her grades, and the desire to do nothing more than lie on her bed and listen to music.
Those were the red flags that sent her parents scurrying off looking for something they could do as a family. She never imagined this lavender beast would be their solution.
"How typically boring," Jessie said, shaking her head. "Look at them up there. You"d think they were at Disneyland."
"Come on, Jess! You just gotta see the view of the Pacific." Daniel tugged open Jessie"s door and pulled on her sleeve. "You can be depressed later. Right now, get out and look at the view. It"s really cool."
Begrudgingly, Jessie got out and walked over to the edge of the lawn. Sure enough, there was a view of the mighty Pacific, in all of its gray glory. Even the beauty of her beloved Pacific was muted in this dreary place.
"Well?" Daniel asked, looking up at her. What was it about little boys that endowed them with such a spirit of adventure? Did they ever see things as they truly were?
Shrugging, Jessie plodded toward the house. "Save it, sport. I"m never going to like it here."
Trudging up the creaking stairs, Jessie groaned when she saw her parents sitting on, what else? A porch swing. "I think I"ve fallen into a giant cliche."
"Come on, Jess, give it a chance. There must be something you can find to like about her."
Jessie sighed. "What is it about calling ships and cars and now, apparently, old decrepit buildings she? Can we enter the twenty-first century, please, and refrain from genderizing this piece of c.r.a.p?"
Rick shook his head. "It"s a compliment, honey, to call a beautiful thing a she."
"For crying out loud," Reena said. "Enough already. I would like to enjoy our first few moments here in peace. Smell the wisteria? This place feels like a piece of heaven. Surely, even in your bitter state, you *
6 *7.
can feel some of that, Jess."
Jessie sat at the top of the stairs wanting to bawl; not cry, not sob, but bawl so big, so loud, so hard, she might even puke. She missed her friends, her neighborhood, even her stupid school. Everything she left behind made her heart ache. Like it here? Never.
"Why don"t you go and pick out a bedroom?" Rick offered. "The third floor is our floor and there are four bedrooms to choose from."
"Just don"t pick the one with the fireplace. That"s the master bedroom," added Reena.
Slowly getting up, Jessie was all too happy to leave them to their bliss. They had always been like this, too. When other kids got to have two bedrooms and two parents vying and buying their way into their kids" hearts, Jessie had been cursed with two parents who adored each other and delighted in showing it as often as they could.
Once Jessie saw the error of her ways, she was truly thankful not to have to divide her holidays between parents" homes; not to have to remember whether she left her blue sweater at Mom"s or Dad"s, and not to have to go to court as a p.a.w.n in a game between two people who thought nothing about using their children as clubs to hurt each other.
So, even though their frequent, and often, public displays of affection made her roll her eyes and want to gag, it was preferable to what many of her friends had to endure.
"At least we don"t have any neighbors around to watch you two go ga-ga over each other. I suppose that could be a bonus." With that, Jessie walked into the old Victorian.
The first floor, it seemed, had just been upgraded, and if there was any work to do on it, it was nothing more than cosmetic. To her left was a grand staircase with dark cherry banisters and a dusty rose stair runner that dripped down the polished staircase like melting pink taffy.
The fireplace in the sitting room was one of those ornate, gothic style fireplaces that had a personality like a friendly gargoyle. There were dark wood bookshelves on either side of it, filled with dusty, leather- bound novels. The hardwood floors were in perfect condition, and the walls were a warm tan color. Jessie could already see her parents curled up on the couch in front of the fire in the winter like two bookends *
6 *7.
reading their books and stroking each other"s bare feet.
Yuck.
Moving down the hall on her right, Jessie peered into every room, marveling at how perfect everything was, right down to the paintings hanging on the walls. All of the rooms were already furnished with antiques and cozy bed linens, and Jessie found herself fighting the warmth she felt coming from these rooms.
"I. Am. Not. Going. To. Like. It. Here," she grumbled, trudging upstairs. Deciding she wasn"t even going to give this room choice any thought, she took the bedroom farthest from the master bedroom, which looked like something out of a designer magazine. Her room had a corner window that looked out onto the cliffs and over the ocean.
The sounds from the miniscule Main Street, some three hundred yards down at the bottom of the hill, could barely be heard through a second window which perched above the stairs. The Victorian did not sit on the cliffs overlooking the beaches, but instead sat tucked in a cubby of the mountain on the other side of Main Street. The Victorian was high enough to look over some of the stores and inns on the opposite side of the street. It sure as h.e.l.l wasn"t Market Street or Van Ness Avenue, and she half-expected to see a stagecoach rolling down Main Street.
"This is it," Jessie said, flopping on her bed.
"This is what?" Daniel asked, standing in her doorway.
"My jail cell for the next ten months, that"s what."
Daniel walked over to her window and looked out. "It"s a cool house, Jess. You could try giving it a chance."
Jessie put her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. She liked daydreaming about which of her acceptable friends she would invite up for a week during the summer. Surely they could find something to do in this little backwater town. Shoplift? Graffiti? Steal a horse and ride naked through the streets?
Jessie chuckled at the thought. That would sure show them, wouldn"t it? After all, she was a city girl, not some hippie-lumberjack- freak. She knew the minute she went to town that she would feel like an outcast-like maybe a girl from the future.
"The first floor is finished, but did you see the second floor? Sheesh.