The Wells Bequest Read Free

that from happening.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    I wished I had someone to discuss this with. Not my family, obviously. My best friend, Jake, was cool enough not to freak out, no matter what I told him. But he wouldn’t be any help. He wasn’t interested in thinking too hard about anything.
    I would see what my science teacher, Ms. Kang, had to say. She has lots of interesting thoughts about things like whether the universe goes on and on forever or loops back around on itself or what cavemen talked about when they were falling asleep. I wouldn’t tell her about the tiny, lamp-knocking-over time travelers, of course, but we could discuss general topics in time travel.
    I found her the next day in the little room next to the library, which used to be a coatroom. She was grading tests, bent over in a student desk chair, the kind with a big flat arm for writing on. Ms. Kang gets cold easily, so she’s always tugging the sleeves of her sweaters down over her hands. She has very dark, slightly purplish red hair, which is kind of strange—don’t most Korean people have black hair? Maybe she dyes it. Her lips are the same color as her hair, but I’m pretty sure that’s lipstick.
    â€œHi, Leo,” she said, pushing aside the tests. “What’s up?”
    â€œHi, Ms. Kang. I need to ask you something,” I said.
    â€œOkay, shoot.”
    I suddenly felt self-conscious, so instead of asking about time travel, I said, “Why do you hang out in this little room instead of the science office?”
    â€œI miss being near the library.” Ms. Kang used to be the school media specialist before she switched to teaching science. “And nobody knows where to find me here, so I can actually get my work done.”
    â€œOh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
    I started to leave, but she caught my sleeve. “Not
you,
silly! Sit down. Is that what you wanted to ask me—why I work here?”
    I sat in the other chair. “No, not really. I wanted to ask . . . What do you know about time travel?”
    â€œThat’s more like it.” She rubbed her hands together. “Well, I know that we’re all traveling forward in time together, at a rate of one second per second. But that’s probably not the kind of time travel you mean. Why do you ask?”
    â€œI was thinking about my science project.” That was true, anyway. “Has anyone ever made, you know, a real time machine? Like you could use to go backward and forward in time?”
    â€œNot to my knowledge,” said Ms. Kang. “But some physicists think it might be possible. If you could build a faster-than-light spaceship, theoretically you might be able to arrive before you left.”
    I nodded. “That’s what my sister says.”
    â€œOr you could try to find a wormhole in the space-time continuum.”
    â€œA wormhole! Where would I look?”
    â€œNobody knows for sure, but I have some books that you could start with. There’s a good one by Stephen Hawking. The thing is, nobody knows for sure whether time travel is possible. Like Hawking pointed out, if there really are time machines, why haven’t we ever met any time travelers?”
    â€œYeah, but . . .”
Yeah, but I have!!
I wanted to say.
I met two of them yesterday! And one of them was ME!
If I said that, Ms. Kang would think I was crazy. “Maybe this isn’t where they want to come,” I said. “I mean
when
they want to come. Or maybe there just aren’t that many of them. I’ve never met any travelers from Iceland, but that doesn’t mean the Icelanders don’t have airplanes.”
    â€œTrue,” said Ms. Kang.
    â€œSo do you think I should . . . I don’t know, try and make a time machine myself?”
    â€œYou mean for the science fair?”
    I nodded.
    Ms. Kang tilted her head. “No harm in trying. I