Come With Me If You Want to Live - Day 4 of 31 Stories (January 2022)

Whew, this one got long, and I need to figure out a better ending. Again, using a prompt from The Writing Network: your character discovers time travel. Enjoy draft zero of Come With Me If You Want to Live!

The snow crunched under our feet as we walked the normal path between school and home. Our breath formed clouds in the air ahead of us, growing and blowing until they intermingled in the air over our heads. The idea of our breaths intermingling made me feel a little funny, and I hugged my arms around my chest to keep myself warm and to keep from reaching out to hold her hand. I'd only been walking to school with her and home for about a week now, and I didn't want to move too quickly. She was the first girl I'd ever really, REALLY liked, and I didn't want to screw things up. (I was also absolutely terrified and didn't really know what I supposed to do, but that was besides the point.)

"Elisa?" she asked, twisting her gloved hands together as we walked. I focused on her fingers, clad in bright pink and purple woolen stripes, to keep from staring at her face too intensely. I'd already learned that looking at someone's face for too long made them uncomfortable. Anna's voice was soft, almost squeaking, ,like she wanted to talk to me but didn't want me to hear here at the same time.

"What is it, Anna?" I said. I kept my voice soft, too, since I didn't want to raise my voice to be louder than hers. If she wanted to be quiet, I could be quiet, too. I glanced up from her fingers to her face, and stopped walking. "Is everything OK?"

I don't know why I asked that. Her face made it clear that everything was not, in fact, OK. Everything, in fact, was terrible, and she was crying, and it was probably my fault somehow. I didn't know what to do or how to fix it, but I knew I didn't want Anna to cry anymore. I dropped my hands down into my pockets and hastily handed her the napkins that I always kept in my coats. (Mom always said to take extra napkins when we went to get food, because they were always useful. Mom might be a lot of things, but she wasn't wrong about that.) "Here, if you need them."

Anna took the napkins and wiped her eyes, but she kept looking up at me, and her eyes kept overbrimming with more tears. I was panicking. What do I do know? Why didn't I ask my big brother Jake how to handle crying girls? I'd seen him with his girlfriends enough, he'd been around enough of them when they were crying, he would know what to do! I thought for a second, letting out a slow breath, and I noticed that Anna was doing the same thing. Maybe that would help! I started taking the big, long, deep breaths Daddy always had me take when I got "wound up," and letting them out real slow, and watched Anna do the same thing with me. After a few breaths, she smiled a little, and I smiled back at her.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked, my hands still in my pockets. My phone only had three numbers programmed into it, but one of them was Daddy, and he would be able to help. He always did. I ran my finger around the edge of the phone in my pocket while I waited for her to answer.

Anna shook her head, then stopped, staring at the snow in front of her. Then she mustered up her strength, and pulled one of my hands out of my pocket to take it in hers. I was too stunned to stop her. "Come with me, if you want to live," she whispered fiercely, then she turned, still clutching my hand, and ran. Since I'm very attached to my hand, I ran after her.

Running on hard snow isn't easy, and her short legs and my long ones didn't really mesh well to run together, but we managed it. We ran past my house, past her house, and around behind her house to the abandoned pharmacy on the corner. She kept marching forward, but I started pulling back. She stopped and turned to face me. "What is it, Elisa?"

"I'm not allowed to go in there," I said automatically, sounding like the little baby that I secretly was. I was a big girl of twelve, almost thirteen, really, but I couldn't do something my mom and daddy had told me I wasn't allowed to do! "There are people who use that place to shoot up drugs and stuff. It's not safe for kids."

Anna came closer, still holding my hand, and put her other gloved hand on my cheek. I'd never had another girl touch my cheek like that before, and I was surprised she didn't burn her hand from the heat of my blush. "I know you're scared," she whispered, and every word made her sound a little different, a little older, than she had before. "Don't be scared. I won't take you any place where you'll get hurt. Do you trust me?"

I blinked furiously, trying to kickstart my brain back into gear. Did I trust her? I'd known her for all of three weeks, maybe? I'd never seen her before she showed up at school one day as a new kid, whose dad had moved the whole family to our little town in the middle of the year because of some great job that Anna had never been able to explain properly. Though, to be fair, I didn't really know what Mom or Daddy did for work, so that didn't really matter. But she'd been shy, and then she'd sat down next to me at lunch, and we'd started chatting, and she had such a pretty smile, and she didn't know anyone else, and did I trust her?

Well, no, not really. But did I have a choice right now? Probably? I wasn't think about that part right then, though - I was just thinking about how nice her hand felt in mine, and how close her face was to mine, and how much I really, really didn't want to mess things up.

"Of course!" I squeaked, and she grinned. I'd given the right answer after all. She squeezed my hand, then turned and walked to the door of the abandoned pharmacy. I was going to be in so much trouble, but I really, really hoped it would be worth it.

The glass part of the door had been boarded up for years, and there was a big padlock and chain across the handle. I figured that she would walk away once she realized it was locked, until she pulled a key out of her jacket pocket and touched it to the padlock. The lock disappeared, taking the chain with it, and I did a double-take. That wasn't how chains worked. And I had a lock like that for my bike before - those keys didn't just touch the lock to make it go away, you had to fight to get it into the lock and then force it to turn. Before I could say anything, though, Anna had dragged me through the door, closing it carefully behind me. In the silence, I could just make out the sound of a chain slithering against the door.

I was a little distracted for that, though - in the center of the room, where the aisles of the pharmacy used to be, was a huge metal cage, lit up from inside with a bunch of orange lamps. The cage was open on one side, and it was angular, not round like a bird cage. It was big enough to take up most of the space in the pharmacy, and I could make out a set of bunk beds and a dresser inside. I also saw an adult woman moving around inside, standing at a panel with a lot of switches and dials on it, who didn't even look up when Anna cleared her throat.

"About time you made it back," she said, flipping another switch and noting something down on a clipboard. "Come on, I think there's some stew on the burner out back. Your father says he's just about fixed the chronotriggers, so we should be good to leave tomorrow-" she cut off when she finally looked up and saw me standing there, taking it all in.

"Anna Marie," she whispered, coming out of the cage and grabbing Anna by the arm, dragging her away from me. "What do you think you are doing?"

Anna stared stubbornly at the woman - it had to be her mother, they had the same cheekbones and scowls - and folded her arms across her chest. "We're taking her with us, or I'm not going."

Her mother started to speak, but a man's voice cut through the air. "Taking who with us? What are you trying to do, Anna-Banana?" I froze, because I knew that voice. There was no way I should have known that voice, but I knew it. Anna looked full of sorrow, while her mother still had fury in her eyes.

I forgot about both of them completely when Daddy came around the corner of the cage, carrying a pot of something hot and steaming. He froze, the same as I did, and we stared at each other for what felt like forever. I fully expected the stew to have frozen over solid by the time we moved again, but it was still steaming hot when he carefully put it down on a table in the cage. "Elisa?" His voice was filled with wonder and...sorrow? Why did he sound so sad?

"Daddy, what are you doing here?" I asked, trying to sound like the grown-up I desperately wanted to be, and failing. I knew I sounded like a little kid, and one that was going to burst into long, loud, ugly tears at any second. I knew Daddy and Mom weren't happy together, and that Mom had talked to her best friend about wanting to leave, but...did he have a whole other family? Why did Anna just now show up? Why did she have to show up now, and ruin everything?

"Elisa..." He took a step toward me, but the woman stood up and kept him from getting any closer, whispering something furiously in his ear that I couldn't hear. I turned from them to Anna, and she had her head bowed, refusing to meet my eyes. Daddy was looking at the ground the same way Anna was, nodding every now and then at whatever the woman was telling him, and everyone was ignoring me and not saying anything about why my father was in the abandoned pharmacy with a whole new family and a big glowing cage and a pot of stew!

I couldn't take it anymore. "HEY!" I shouted, stamping my feet for emphasis. Everyone looked up, and the woman stopped whispering. "Somebody tell me why my Daddy, who was just at home when I left for school this morning, is here with you two, and why he looks like he hasn't seen me in years, and who you are, and what the...what the HELL is that cage thing?" I gasped, having never used the H word before, but it was the only thing I could think of to get my point across.

The woman looked from me back to Daddy and started to whisper again, but he threw his hands in the air. "Enough! Evelyn, she's seen too much, she has to know what's going on." He pushed past her, leaving her to watch him through narrowed eyes with her arms crossed. Anna was watching a little more cautiously, and once Daddy had walked past her, she moved to her mother and the two of them started whispering.

None of that mattered, though. Daddy squatted in front of me, bringing himself down closer to my level, and chuckled when he realized that now I was a little taller than he was. I smiled, too - I couldn't help myself. He sighed, then ran his hand over his face. "Ah, Sprout," he said with another sigh. "I think you need to sit down with us for dinner."

I frowned. "Mom's not going to like that," I protested. "She always gets mad if I change my plans without telling her first."

He winced, then stood up straight and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let's get you in the vehicle, and I'll tell you all about it." He put out his other hand to the woman, who walked with Anna in front of her, and all of us walked into the cage. The door closed behind us, and the walls glowed bright orange as we all sat at the table where Daddy had set down the stew. He smiled to himself. "I wondered why we had an extra place setting this morning," he commented, and the woman sighed.

"I guess it was supposed to happen after all," she said, nodding to Anna. Anna flushed a little, then pulled her gloves off and shoved them in her jacket pockets before setting the table. "You'd better fill your other daughter in, Stan."

I winced to hear myself referred to as his "other" daughter, because it confirmed what I first thought about Anna, but I was more curious about what was going on than anything. I looked at Daddy expectantly, and he sighed again. "Elisa...Elisa, we're in a time machine right now. I'm not from around here originally - I'm from about 2525, but I travelled back to 2006 on a mission and got stuck. I met your mother, and we had you, and then Kathryn came to rescue me. Will come to rescue me. The timing is a little hazy. Either way, I came home." He started dishing up the stew to the plates that Kathryn handed him, acting as if he hadn't just spouted absolute nonsense at me.

"But...if she rescued you...why are you here now?" I asked, trying to figure out what the best question to ask in this field of ridiculousness was. Kathryn made an impressed face as she passed me a plate of stew. "She's pretty clever, Stan. Must get that from you."

He shot her a wuthering stare, which I appreciated. I might love Daddy more, but I still loved my mom. "We came back here because I'd left a few things behind when I landed here the first time, so we had to clean up. The abandoned pharmacy had been as good a place as any to leave things, but it's not good to leave futuristic tech out where just anybody can find it. Because it was going to take us some time to fix it, Kathryn thought it would be a good idea for Anna to go to school for a little bit, so it wouldn't be suspicious to have a girl her age running around and not in class. I guess that's how she met you?" He asked the last question to Anna directly, and she nodded.

"I saw her in the lunch room, and I remembered her from the picture you showed me in your wallet. We started talking, and I knew...I knew..." She looked down at her plate again, and her eyes started to well up. She sniffled. "I didn't want to let her die with the rest of them," she finished in a small voice.

"Die? With the rest of who?" I asked, looking around the table. Anna wouldn't look up, and Kathryn looked away. Only Daddy met my eyes, and they were full of sorrow again.

"I'm so sorry, Sprout," he said softly. "Your mom and your brother, they had a car accident on the way to dinner tonight. They didn't make it. And if you'd been at home when you should have been, you'd have been in the car, and you would have died, too."