N0T1ME

Chapter 2

Detention that afternoon dragged on for what seemed like ages to Emma. She had contemplated sneaking away amid the crowd of her peers after dismissal at three, hoping to avoid Principal Strickland completely, but she knew in the end it would just lead to getting into more trouble and she'd likely get caught anyway. Instead, she waited patiently outside the study hall classroom she'd been told to report to for Principal Strickland and her fellow detainee to arrive.

He sat them down in the room, told them they were to sit quietly the entire time, and they weren't allowed to work on homework or talk to each other. Well, I can handle one of those things, Emma thought. Ultimately, she decided listening to everything that Strickland said was dumb, and soon she was up and pacing by her desk, muttering about how unfair this whole situation was.

"I thought you liked empty classrooms," Junior teased.

Emma glared at him, "You don't get to talk to me. It's your fault I'm even here, anyway."

"Whatever," he shrugged her off, putting his headphones on as he pulled out his phone, completely content to ignore her. Emma tried texting her friends, but the only response she got was from Marlene, who said that she couldn't talk because Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa George had just arrived and she was supposed to be grounded from using the phone, the result of an incident where she had mouthed off to her dad while in the middle of a phone conversation.

Their disciplinarian was a full half an hour late to excuse them. Regulation stated that all after-school activities were supposed to be dismissed at five-thirty, but he'd kept them until six. Supposedly he'd said the clock in his office had been broken, but the kids trusted this about as far as they could throw it. Both were convinced that he just wanted to see them suffer a while longer and potentially get them in more trouble at home for arriving home late. Which would have worked if either teen's parents had cared as much about punctuality as the school district did.

--->

When she got home it was fully dark, and her father had forgotten to leave the porch light and the thumb plate lock light on. She entered the house trying to make as much noise as possible to snap her father out of being oblivious to everything except the experiment he was working on in his private study.

The Brown family farmhouse had been built in 1987 after Doc had realized that part-time residence in both the past and the present wasn't going to work efficiently for their kids. At Marty's urging, he'd tried to have the whole family live in the garage he used as both a lab and living space, but they quickly found that this was no place to raise a family, so he built a new house on a large lot he'd been able to purchase after selling his garage to the city, which wanted to put in a larger parking lot for the garage's neighboring Burger King.

"Hey Dad, I'm home. Thanks for leaving the light on and the door unlocked." she said sarcastically.

"You're welcome, sweetie!" Jules shouted from his study, completely ignoring her sarcasm. Emma shook her head as she set her bag and books down on the dining room table. She had just made herself comfortable in the living room by flopping down on the couch when her father came in. "You're home late this evening," he said.

She threw her head back against the top of the couch and sighed. "I know, I got in trouble."

"You got in trouble?" Jules asked incredulously, "Whatever for?"

"Junior made me late to class."

"How so?" He sat next to her on the couch. "You two weren't kissing in the halls or anything to that nature, were you?"

"What? No!"

"It was a simple inquiry. In my observations, teenagers are prone to acting on impulse from certain hormonal changes that can lead to-"

"-No. No no no," she waved her hands from side to side as she sat up in her seat, frantic to stop an embarrassing talk dead in its tracks. "We're not having this conversation right now, Dad... Seriously, no... Aren't you going to say anything?"

"About what?"

"About me getting detention?" she asked, "I besmirched my academic record today," she stood up and walked back to the table where she'd left her belongings.

Jules sighed, knowing it was pointless to argue with his daughter when she was in a mood like this, but he was determined to get her to lighten up by even a minute amount. "Emma, one detention isn't the end of the world."

"It is for me," she said flatly, shrugging her shoulders. "What prestigious college is going to want a student with a 4.5 GPA and a perfect attendance record who had to serve... a detention?" she phrased the question as an impressive brag until she had to mention the infamous mark on her permanent record, at which point her voice was filled with disgust. "I'm done for."

"I'm sure getting one detention isn't going to impact your applications to that extreme."

"Have you ever been in detention?"

Jules bit the inside of his cheek and nodded. "Oh, so many times."

"What?!"

"Verne and I were quite the prankster duo in school," he started, "We got in more than enough trouble together, but it didn't stop us from becoming successful. My brother has his profession down in Los Angeles, developing video games well-loved by the masses. And I've got my nationally-acclaimed research continuing my father's work at the Institute."

"But I'm disadvantaged far more than you and Uncle Verne were." Emma argued, "I'll have to work twice as hard as any male colleague I'm up against no matter what school I go to."

Jules stood up and joined his daughter at the dining table as she unintentionally paced next to it. "Yes, I'm aware of the existence of misogyny in the scientific community, Emma. But I'm afraid you're still overreacting." Of course, Emma thought as she shook her head and looked at the floor, having stopped moving long enough to realize how worked up she'd made herself. Jules stood and watched her from by the junction between the table and their kitchen's island counter. "You're an exceptionally bright young woman with a lot to offer in any field," he continued, approaching and hunching over his tall form to meet her much smaller one at eye-level. "And nothing is going to detract from that unless you let it," he finished, placing a hand on her shoulder in consolation.

"Thanks, Dad..." she smiled. Her mind drifted back to her father's work earlier. The project that had distracted him from everything else that needed to be done, she presumed, once he had brought it home from work that afternoon. "What are you doing in the workshop?"

"It's, er-nothing," Jules lied, "Something for work that just so happens to be classified."

"Oh, okay..." she said in a dejected response before taking a guess at why the mystery object had to be so important. "So, new invention?"

"In a manner of speaking," he stated. "Well, it's more like a "refurbished" project. I'll tell you about it when it's closer to completion, I promise."

"I'm gonna hold you to that, you know," she said, wagging her phone at him. She trudged up the stairs to her room, but halfway through turned and went back down halfway to ask what they were having for dinner that night.