Chapter 53
Oh, come on!” I couldn’t believe it. Back in the
waiting room again, and still no way to the front door. Or back
door. Or whatever the fuck it was. “I don’t recall your mother
mentioning that Time Travel 101 was going to take, I dunno, the
best years of my life!”
“It’s true,” Laura
said, already standing in front of a new door to try. She didn’t
look terribly put out, I was annoyed to see. She seemed to be
gaining confidence by the hour. By the door, as it were. “She
didn’t. But she keeps them close to the vest, wouldn’t you
say?”
“I would
say.”
“So,
ready?”
“Ugh, no. What’s
next? We save Laura Ingalls from being set upon by
vampires?”
“Only one way to find
out.”
“You know what’s
weird?”
She’d been reaching
for a new knob but now looked at me and grinned. “I have to pick
just one thing?”
I smiled back. Yes,
this was dangerous. Yes, it was annoying. But I’d never had the
chance to spend so much time with Laura, and I was finding the
experience pretty cool.
Okay. To be fair: I’d
never made the chance to spend so much
time with her.
“Good point. What’s
weird is, the past doesn’t stink. It sucks, make no mistake, but
it’s not smelly. I figured that with no running water or regular
showers and such, and air freshener not having been invented, or
antibacterial soap, that everyone would stink. But they didn’t.
Things were dusty, you know, but not filthy or gross. Wait’ll I
tell my mom.” My mom was a college professor specializing in the
Civil War. She’d hang on my every word but would be too polite to
say out loud, “If only you’d been exposed to death and danger
during the battle of Gettysburg!”
“She wouldn’t say it,
but she’d think it,” I muttered.
“Fascinating. So,
onward and upward, sister mine. Next stop, who knows? Watch the
birdie!”
“What? Dammit!” I
clutched my now-throbbing eye, the knob easily turned beneath
Laura’s hand, and we were off again like Magellan and Columbus. Or
Abbott and Costello.