Victorie plus N

Chapter 22: Where is She

I'm done with Teddy making excuses to not tell me the real truth. Like, seriously done! If he gives me one more excuse, I will...!

And, so hoping he doesn't give me another excuse, I quickly head downstairs to the foyer. Teddy's waiting beside the door with Mrs. King and Sarah, avoiding eye contact. While I desperately try to make eye contact with him.

Talk about not being obvious.

The doorbell rings, and "the group" strolls in. For some reason, I'm really getting into the habit of making nicknames up for people, places, and things. I guess Ann brought me into it.

Ann.

The whole entire reason Teddy is sharing all of this information with me in the first place is so we can find Ann.

How could I have forgotten?

I sigh. It doesn't matter anyway because the rest are following Teddy up the staircase. Everyone's being really quiet while they follow Teddy, and as I trail behind them, I can almost feel the harsh gaze of Mrs. King's on my back. She knows something is up. I'm sure she knows all about curves of time, too. But... would she tell the N's if she found out Teddy told me? Or wouldn't she?

Once we've all been seated in some drawing-room on the fourth floor, Teddy begins telling the others about what happened. I tune him out because these are things I actually know (wow, what a first!), and then when he starts telling me again about the Manipulators, I come back to Earth.

"The Manipulators are nicknamed the 'N's' because, well, Nicholas," Teddy says, "And the way you can tell who the manipulators are is by their eyes. They usually have strangely colored eyes. Like auburn, or deep green, or violet, or two different colored eyes. And their not contacts. Some of them are just born like that, others travel into a time loop and get those. So, you know how I said that you've got to get back to the normal time in 10 days after being in a time loop?"

I nod.

"Yes, well, if you don't get back in time... you're stuck in a time loop. There is one way you can get out- repeating the day before the day before the 10 day repeat period to get into a time loop," Teddy says.

I look at him confusedly, the day before, before? What?

"He means if I started the 10 day repeat period Wednesday, then on Monday I would have to repeat that day to get out of a time loop," Kelly speaks up.

"Ohhh, okay, thanks."

She nods her 'your welcome' as Teddy continues.

"Thanks, Kelly," he says to her, which makes her go a little red in the face. He doesn't seem to notice. "Mhmm, so yes, that's the only way you can get out of a time loop. And the not-getting-out-of-a-curve-fast-enough is one way to get into a time loop, another is a Manipulator sending you into one. No one knows how they do it, because they're the only ones who can do it. And travel in and out of time loops. This is why the manipulators regulate everything; you have to get special permission to travel to curves and everything, and only certain several handfuls of people in Mayberry know about it. They're usually people with ancestors who live in Mayberry, too.'

"Now that you know some things about time-traveling into curves and such, we have to find out where they put Ann," Teddy says, addressing the rest of the group. "I think they hid her somewhere in time."

"I agree," Randy says.

The rest murmur agreements.

I'm kind of surprised Margy isn't speaking all that much. I mean, from what I've heard and seen, she seems like a science-type who'd be really into this kind of thing. But she hasn't said a single thing until now. She doesn't even have her notebook out to...record our conversations! Now that's strange. Ha.

"Well, then it's going to be impossible to find her then!" I exclaim, "She could be anywhere in time!"

"Well, actually, remember, you can only travel exactly 130 years back in time, and even the manipulators don't know how to travel anywhere else except for that exact year. So their options were limited," Teddy corrects me.

"Oh, right," I say, a bit embarrassed. But, I mean, how would I know this stuff? He literally just started telling me this yesterday, it's not like I knew any better.

Teddy sighs. "Let's meet at the same time tomorrow everyone, okay? We'll browse through the family-journal section of the library to see if we can find anything."

"Okay, well, bye then," J.T. says, standing up from off a white chair he was sitting on.

"Umm, bye," Owen says quietly as he turns to leave.

The rest file out behind him until it's just Teddy and me.

He sighs again. "Bye."

"Bye," I watch him leave.

I think I'm going to be too worried to fall asleep tonight.