Class of '59 (American Journey Book 4) (6 page)

"Sleeping Beauty has risen."

"Try the bride of Frankenstein," Mary Beth said.

Mark started to laugh but stopped when a young woman, wearing a pink bathrobe and long brown hair tied in a ponytail, opened the door. The girl looked a lot like Mary Beth and even Sleeping Beauty, but she wore the scowl of Frankenstein's bride.

"Did you forget your key?" Piper McIntire asked.

"I did," Mary Beth said. "I went for a walk and locked myself out."

Piper gave Mark the once over and then looked at her sister.

"Who is this?"

Mary Beth smiled.

"This is Mark Ryan. He's a movie extra I met on my walk."

Mark laughed.

"It's too early for jokes," Piper said to her sister. She turned around and started to walk away. "Shut the door behind you. I'm going back to bed."

"Piper?" Mary Beth asked.

Piper turned around.

"What?"

"Stick around for a minute," Mary Beth said.

"Why?"

"We want to talk to you."

Piper glared at her sibling.

"I'm tired and grumpy, Mary Beth. I don't want to do anything but sleep."

"Trust me," Mary Beth said. "You
want
to hear what we have to say."

Piper put her hands on her hips.

"You have ten minutes."

Mary Beth smiled.

"We'll only need five."

CHAPTER 8: PIPER

Friday, June 2, 2017

Piper muttered to herself as she followed Mary Beth and the movie extra around the front of the Painted Lady to a gate, the backyard, and a stairway that led to the basement.

She did not want to traipse around the grounds in her bathrobe. She did not want to visit. She wanted to sleep. She had agreed to put off that sleep only after Mary Beth had made a fantastic claim and offered to pay Piper a hundred dollars if she could not
prove
that claim.

Mark led Mary Beth and Piper down the stairs, opened a door with a skeleton key, and then led the sisters into a dark, gloomy, tunnel-like chamber. A moment later, Mark shut the door, leaned against a wall, and looked at Piper as a string of overhead lights started to flicker.

"This will only take a few seconds," Mark said.

Piper stared at Mary Beth.

"I want the money before lunch."

Mary Beth smiled.

"You haven't earned it yet."

"I think we're good to go," Mark said. He opened the inner door, stepped into the basement, and flipped on some lights. "Please enter, ladies."

Piper followed Mary Beth into a basement that looked nothing like the one she had seen when Jeanette Bell had given her a tour of the mansion. The room had a concrete floor, hanging light bulbs, and drab, unpainted walls. It did not feature wall-to-wall white carpeting, two large sofas, and a glass-and-brass coffee table. Talk about a reverse makeover.

Piper felt a knot form in her stomach as she followed Mark and Mary Beth through the basement and up some primitive steps to the main floor of the residence. She felt the knot tighten when she stepped into a hallway and noticed even more changes.

"This way," Mark said.

Piper picked up her step as she approached what she knew to be the mansion's kitchen. She did not know what surprises awaited at the end of the hallway, but for the first time since walking out the front door, she suspected that Mary Beth was going to keep her money.

A few seconds later, Piper McIntire, a young woman of sound mind, stepped into a kitchen that looked like the set of a 1950s sitcom. She stopped when Mark and Mary Beth stopped and turned their attention to a young man seated at a small table. Like Piper, the boy wore a bathrobe. Like Piper, he looked like he needed at least another hour of quality sleep.

"Piper, this is my brother, Ben. He's a high school senior," Mark said. "Ben, this is Piper McIntire, Mary Beth's sister and a recent high school graduate."

Ben stared at Piper for several seconds but did not say a thing. He seemed as perplexed by the situation and the sudden turn of events as his teenage counterpart.

Piper looked at Mark and then at Mary Beth. She found a thoughtful expression on the former's face and an I-told-you-so smile on the latter's.

"Is this a joke?" Piper asked.

"It's no joke. At least I don't think it is," Mary Beth said. She walked to the table, picked up a newspaper, and handed it to her sister. "Look at the date."

Piper felt her head lighten as she scanned headlines with crazy words like "Khrushchev" and "Communist." This was a dream, she thought. This was her subconscious playing a trick. This was a sign that, at the tender age of eighteen, she was going insane.

She appealed again to Mary Beth.

"Will you please tell me what's going on?" Piper asked.

"I already have," Mary Beth said. "We've traveled to the past. We're standing in the same house we've occupied for a week. We're just doing it in 1959."

Piper closed her eyes for a moment and tried to process the unusual start to her morning. She had wanted to do something different and exciting on her California escape. Now, on the second-to-last-day of that escape, it appeared as though the vacation gods had granted her wish.

Piper glanced at the newspaper in her hands and tried again to make sense of the date, the headlines, and the photos of people with goofy haircuts. She looked at Mark.

"Can I keep this?"

"Be my guest," Mark said. "I've already read it."

"Thanks."

No one in the room said anything more for nearly thirty seconds, which Piper considered a blessing. She wanted to think this over in blessed silence. She needed time to ponder what she had seen and what two strange men and her normally levelheaded sister believed was real.

Mark finally broke the quietude. He stepped forward, placed a hand on his brother's shoulder, and said something that made no sense.

"It looks like you haven't done much since we left."

"How could I?" Ben asked. "You left a minute ago."

Mark looked at the clock and smiled.

"Thanks for confirming my suspicions."

"What suspicions?" Piper asked. "What are you talking about?"

Mark turned to Piper.

"Your sister and I returned to the same moment we left in 1959. Even though we spent fifteen minutes walking around the property and talking to you in 2017, we came back to the exact same time we left. Time stood still, as I thought it would," Mark said. He looked at Mary Beth, who returned his smile. "That opens up a whole new world of possibilities."

"What do you mean?" Piper asked.

"I mean the four of us are in a great position to spice up our vacations. Ben and I can travel to 2017 and return as if we had never left 1959. You and Mary Beth can do just the opposite. You can do anything you want."

Piper looked at Mary Beth.

"Is he serious?"

Mary Beth nodded.

"I don't like this," Ben said.

"What's the matter?" Mark asked.

"What's the
matter
? I'll tell you what's the matter. You've had fun all morning. I've done nothing but walk around in my bathrobe while you drag girls into the house."

Mark laughed.

"Is that your way of saying that you want in?"

"You're damn right," Ben said. "I want to do something today besides mow the lawn and study for my algebra exam. I want to see 2017. I want to see the future."

Piper glanced at Mark and Mary Beth and saw them exchange knowing smiles.

"I think we can arrange that," Mark said to Ben.

Mary Beth stepped forward and looked at everyone.

"I know we can," she said.

CHAPTER 9: BEN

Hollywood, California – Friday, June 2, 2017

Ben laughed to himself as he recalled the day his father had taken him to lunch at an outdoor café in a rough part of Los Angeles. He had been fifteen at the time and completely clueless about how other Californians, particularly much poorer ones, lived.

"Keep your eyes peeled and your ear to the ground," Ted Ryan had said before they started their meal. "You can learn a lot about the world by watching and listening."

Sitting with Mark, Mary Beth, and Piper at an outdoor table at Wanda's of West Hollywood, a bakery and coffee shop, he couldn't disagree. He had learned more about the twenty-first century in eighteen minutes than he had the twentieth century in eighteen years.

Dogs in 2017 wore more clothes than their human handlers. Joggers weaved between cars in the light drizzle. People of the same gender held hands and kissed. Some pedestrians spoke into strange devices attached to their ears. Others played with gadgets the size of cigarette packs. Many sported nose rings and tattoos. One man showed off a new dress.

"You seem a bit preoccupied, Ben," Mary Beth said in a playful voice. She fixed her gaze and smiled. "Are you getting your fill of the future?"

Ben looked at Mary Beth. She sat next to Piper and opposite Mark at a sidewalk table in front of the establishment.

"I'm getting my fill of something," Ben said. "That's for sure."

Mark laughed.

"I have to agree with my brother. Life is different here. It's a lot different."

Mary Beth stared at Mark.

"Different doesn't mean worse."

"You're right," Mark said. "It doesn't."

Ben looked across the table. He wanted to see whether Piper had an opinion on the matter and was mildly disappointed to see that she did not. She tapped on one of the cigarette-pack-sized gadgets her sister had called a cell phone.

"What are you doing?" Ben asked.

"It's none of your business," Piper said.

"Are you always this rude?"

"No. Sometimes I'm ruder."

"That's good," Ben said. "I would hate to see your rudest side."

Piper looked up.

"If you must know, Mr. Ryan, I'm sending a text message. I'm telling my supervisor that I won't be able to work until Tuesday."

"What do you do?"

Piper shot Ben a pointed glance.

"I'm a lifeguard at the Madison County Aquatic Center. It's in Huntsville, Alabama, where I live when I'm not chilling with boys from the fifties."

Mary Beth turned her head.

"Knock it off, Piper."

Piper looked at Ben with softer eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm not very nice until I've had at least three cups of coffee."

"Oh," Ben said. He laughed. "Can I get you another cup?"

"No, thank you. I think I'm set."

Ben watched Piper as she sipped some coffee and returned to her phone. He wasn't sure what to make of the spirited young woman, who had mostly ignored him, but he had seen and heard enough of her to conclude three things. She was intelligent, temperamental, and gorgeous.

He took a bite out of a pastry and sipped his own coffee. Each of the four had ordered a pastry and a cup of French roast. Piper had ordered a large cup.

Mark had offered to pay for the order until he discovered that he did not have enough cash in his wallet to do so. He had been shocked to discover that a simple cup of coffee was twenty times the price he was used to paying. Mary Beth bailed him out by producing a piece of plastic she called a debit card and handing it to the cashier.

Ben looked at Mark and Mary Beth, who talked quietly, and then at Piper, who tapped her phone a few times and tucked it in her purse. He watched with interest as she lowered her purse to the ground, sipped some coffee, and returned his gaze.

"Are you ever going to talk to me?" Ben asked.

"I haven't decided," Piper said.

"Why is that? Don't you find me interesting?"

"Oh, I find you interesting. You're a little
too
interesting."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ben asked.

"It means, Ben Ryan, if that's your name, that I'm not totally convinced you're from the fifties. I'm not convinced that Professor Bell's home is not some sort of funhouse," Piper said. "I'm not convinced that someone or something is not playing a practical joke on me."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm very serious."

Mark and Mary Beth stopped talking.

"You don't believe we're from the fifties?" Mark asked Piper.

"I don't know what to believe," Piper said. "I can't explain what I saw at the mansion. I know only that it's easier to believe that you're pulling a prank than it is to believe in time travel."

Mark looked at Mary Beth.

"Do you feel the same way?"

Mary Beth blushed.

"Don't answer," Mark said. "I can see that you do."

Mary Beth put her hand on Mark's arm.

"I
want
to believe. I want to believe time travel is possible, even if my father, a physicist, says it is not. I just don't know whether I can trust my senses. People can create illusions. They can create a lot of things. This is Hollywood, after all."

"Then why are you spending time with me?" Mark asked.

"I'm spending time with you because you're nice and interesting."

Ben looked at Piper and saw her flash a self-satisfied smile. He had no doubt she found
him
mean and boring.

Mark sighed.

"What would it take to convince you we're real? What can we say or do to convince you that you really did travel through time and that 1959 is just a glowing tunnel away?"

Mary Beth offered a sheepish smile.

"I suppose we could see more of your world."

"Be specific," Mark said.

"We could walk around the neighborhood or drive around the city," Mary Beth said. "We could even take a road trip to someplace like San Diego or Las Vegas."

"We could."

Mary Beth tilted her head and looked at Mark thoughtfully.

"I don't need much proof."

Mark nodded.

"OK then. Let's do it."

"Let's do what?" Ben asked.

"Let's take a road trip. Let's go to Las Vegas," Mark said. "I'm sure we could find a lot of interesting things to do there."

Piper stared at Mark.

"We have parents coming back at six, Mark. We don't have time to run off to Vegas or San Diego or any other place. We have to pack for our return trip. We leave on Sunday."