The Thyme Travelers

Chapter Two: My Life at Home

"Hey Mom, I'm home!" I yelled. I didn't know if she was home or not, but whatever.

"Hey booger." Oh God. That was my sister Eliza, the only normal one here. She's in eleventh grade, but she always finds a way to annoy me.

"Eliza," I regarded her quietly. I secretly thought Eliza was really pretty. She had no freckles littering her face, no pimples, with perfect dark brown hair (the color my hair used to be, but not so perfect), blue eyes (I have brown), and she's tall. Oh, and she's got average grades.

"I saw you sitting with that adorable guy at lunch today," she said in her preppy way. Adorable? Okaaaay... "Why?" she then asked in disgust, examining me.

"Zachariah?" I asked, and she flashed a smile full of perfect teeth, perfectly whitened to perfection. Makes me sick. She bit her bottom lip and looked up, as if he came from Heaven.

"Duh!" she said. I grabbed an apple and bit into it.

"He's in my science class. We got partnered up together for the Invention Showcase thing," I said, trying to sound uninterested. Really, he piqued my interest, but I wasn't allowing myself to show it, especially in front of Eliza. "We were discussing what we could invent for science."

"God, that guy is so.... eep!" Eliza screeched. I don't understand her with her world that revolves around boys. It got really annoying. "Why aren't you eeping twerp?" she asked me in disgust.

"Because. I have more important things to do than "eep" about boys," I replied. "I have homework." Which really wasn't true; I had finished it all at school. All I had to think about was the project, and we still had a month. Probably, since it was Monday, Hyde was going to give us the rest of this week to discuss project ideas. Really, that was more fun than discussing light and lenses. Ugh.

"You are too serious-and you're the one with the blue hair!" my sister groaned. True. I just walked away. I threw my apple core in the trash and went to the living room, turning on the TV. "This is your homework?" Eliza questioned me.

"Eliza, just leave me alone!" I yelled at her. She was sooooo annoying. I threw a throw pillow at her.

"MOOOOM! Cassi's throwing things at me again!" Eliza yelled upstairs to my mom, who was probably at the computer. That's where she works. She owns her own business, and she makes a lot of money. My dad works at a company that makes cars, and he makes a lot of money too.

"CASSANDRA!" my mom yelled.

"Eliza's being annoying!" I yelled back.

"Both of you, STOP!" mom yelled. "I've had enough!!" I glared at Eliza, and she glared back, but that was it. After a while I got tired of being in her presence so I decided to go to my room and spitball ideas for an invention. I sat down at my desk, grabbed a sticky note pad and a pen. I leaned back in my rolly chair, thinking about what Zachariah-Zach had told me. He said he didn't have time... wanted to fix time...the way his green eyes lit up-No Cassi, don't think like that. He's just your science partner. Now think of something that could help with timing. I walked over to my closet that was littered with old inventions I had made with my gran. To be honest, as much as I hate science, we had made ingenious inventions. They were simply battery operated. Some could pick stuff up, and it resembled a Mars Rover. Another we had programmed with a whole bunch of information-I went onto the website that my math book from last year had listed, and we downloaded the info to the robot. For a while I used that robot to help me with my math homework. It talked too. I called it the R.A.H. The Really Amazing Helper. I walked back to my desk. On the note pad, I wrote:

Time: Not enough. Zachariah wishes he had done his homework, but can't go back in time.

That's where I stopped. Can't go back in time... Well, it was a strange thought, and against the laws of science...but then again, video calling seemed like an impossible dream, and here we are. I said it out loud.

"Time traveling." It sounded really stupid out loud, so I brushed the thought aside. What else could we do to "fix time"? We could make a time manager. Cassi, you're so stupid. That's called a calendar. I looked back at my notebook and wrote:

Problem: Can't find ideas for project.

Solution: research.

I was searching problems that need solving. Which was waaay too vague. All sorts of problems came up, like the oil spill, global warming, the disappearing Amazon rainforest, the "lung of the world". Then I saw something about a type of bat that was on the verge of endangerment. I clicked on the link just because I was just really bored. It gave me tons of useless information, like how bats use echolocation-the sounds that are too high pitched for humans to hear. Then it said that the wavelengths of their sound (or something, I could be wrong; I only skimmed over the article) were too fast for their brains to process, so they had to stretch out the wavelengths... therefore slowing down time.

Bats slow down time: Tell Zach

Wavelengths too fast to process. Stretch out wavelengths- slowing down time.

Zach was going to love this new information. This could be it-all because of some endangered flying mammal. The idea of time traveling seemed too far fetched still, but we could study the bats and figure out what they say to each other, or maybe make a device that does the same thing the bats do: stretch out the wavelengths.

I looked over at my digital clock and in bright red letters it read 7:00. Wow. Time flies. Oh wow. Haha. I took a quick shower and then came down for our 7:30 dinner. Yes, dinner at my house was orderly; always at 7:30. I sat down at the table. My parents and sister were already eating, and I served myself a little bit of spaghetti.

"So," my mom began through a mouthful of linguini, "I got an email from your science teacher. He told me how you're always drifting off into another world in his class." I swallowed the spaghetti I had in my mouth before answering.

"But I'm not flunking the class," I pointed out.

"It's very rude to tune out information," my father interrupted.

"But I'm not flunking the class," I said again.

"Mr. Hyde also told me about the Invention Showcase next month. He says he expects a lot from you." Well, that's... decent expectations.

"Cassi's paired up with Zachariah," my sister threw in. She said Zachariah like I liked him. Where did she get that?

"Ooh, who is he?" my mom asked. My dad obviously found this awkward, but my mom and sister didn't care. Frankly I thought my dad was right.

"He's my science partner," I said, even though they knew. "I don't know him well." And I hoped that was the end of the conversation, but my sister had to drag it on.

"He's a total cutie," she said.

"No one talks to him," I said. "He keeps to himself."

"Oh," my mom said. And that was the end of conversation. I got up and rinsed my plate in the sink. There was still half an hour left of dinner. Yes, we had hour-long dinners, but sometimes my parents didn't care if I left the table early.

"Hey mom, I'm going to go study," I said. Since she thinks I'm average, then I have to keep up the act. My mom doesn't even know about the science sessions with Gran, or all the inventions we made together. I wanted to keep it that way.

I went back to my room and sat down at my desk again, thinking. First about the science thing, then about how Hyde is a (insert word of choice here), then about the bats, and finally about Zach. He was... interesting. I wanted to get to know him better, but he didn't seem like the "talking" type. Frankly, I wasn't either. I liked to take action, or just sit and think. I loved to think-about anything. I didn't care what. Global problems, politics, the latest innovations, you name it. I just sat and thought. When I woke up from my reverie, I checked out the clock and it was 9:00. I decided it would be a good idea to go to sleep now, since I always have problems getting up in the morning. While lying on my back, I just thought some more. Time travelling...bats...slowing down time...Zach's piercing green eyes.