Infinite Time: Time Travel Adventure by H.J. Lawson, Jane Lawson Page B

and holds up her wrist so I can see the watch there. “You see this? This is our lifeline.”
    “It’s a watch. It tells time.”
    Again she rolls her eyes. “For every three hours that pass here, a minute passes in our present. And during that time, our bodies are not breathing. You get it?”
    I shake my head, making her groan again.
    “Our bodies are not breathing right now,” she says. “And if we don’t return before two minutes have passed, we will die. Can you hold your breath for more than two minutes?”
    I shake my head again.
    “Yeah, me neither. The longest I’ve ever gone is two minutes, twenty seconds, and that was pretty bad.”
    “Is it the same for Vandir’s men?”
    “No. They use machines to help them travel through time. The whole mechanism is different.”
    “But we can’t just die.”
    “Yes, we can. Have you ever heard of someone dying in their sleep for no apparent reason?”
    I nod. “I read about this teenager that went to a rival school in my hometown. He died in his sleep and they finally decided it was an undiagnosed heart problem,” I say.
    “That person was probably a traveler like us who didn’t get his assignment done in time.”
    That makes me stop and think for a minute. There were others like us. And not all of them are still alive.
    “Who gives the assignments to us?”
    Scarlet stands and throws her bag over her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she says as she storms toward the door, grabbing Tora’s hand as she walks past. “But I assume it’s others like us who want to save the future. To save the world.”
    And that seems really profound to me.

Chapter 12
     
     
    We walk several quiet blocks lined with tiny orange flowers, the color brighter than Scarlet’s hair. “Where are we going?” I ask Scarlet.
    “Tora told me she has a grandfather, so we are going to visit him,” Scarlet informs me. I can hear her voice, but after that the sounds and smells become overwhelming, creating a sensory overdose as we turn down a busy street. Men and women stand closely together with tables overflowing with different types of goods for sale. The sellers yell at everyone that walks past. The smell is a mixture of soy sauce from the food stands, exhaust fumes from the racing cars, and a whiff of sewer. I screw up my nose. These smells really shouldn’t mix together.
    As we squeeze through the crowds, the smells change, as do the stands. Now I detect a cedar-wood smell and a citrus smell. This is much better.
    I’m drawn to a stand with hand-crafted woodcarvings. Dad used to like buying these types of woodcarvings for Mom when he was on different business trips. She would fill the cabin in Texas with them. Now they are in boxes in the loft. The carvings are some of the few things I kept from the cabin after we sold it.
    Losing our holiday home hurt me more than losing the home I spent most of my life in, because the cabin was full of happy memories. Every day spent there we were together, disconnected from the outside world. Dad wouldn’t work, and Mom… she was always happy there, cooking the tastiest meals. We were the perfect family.
    “Parker.” Scarlet’s voice snaps me out of my happy memory. My smile falls as I remember that’s all it is now—a faint memory.
    Scarlet is standing on the road as a yellow taxi drives toward her. The taxi looks like an old NYC cab. It’s got a red stripe running along the side of it, and an “I heart Tokyo” sticker on it.
    We all slide into the leather seats of the cab, and I think Scarlet gives the driver an address—well, I hope she does, as what she said means almost nothing to me.
    Tora curls up beside me, resting her head on my thigh. I can’t help but smooth my hand over her head, letting her silky hair fall between my fingers. There’s something about this Tora that seems to draw me to her and her to me. Maybe it’s because of my long-abandoned desire to have a sister. But that doesn’t seem quite right. There’s