Free Loop by Karen Akins

her the better.
    Two other students were working, so I picked a station in the opposite corner. An audiovisual message from a sender I didn’t recognize popped up. Curious, I opened it and immediately wished I hadn’t.
    “Hey, kiddo.” Leto Malone’s ugly mug materialized before me. His gravelly voice filled the air. “Just thought I’d—”
    I slammed my hand against his soligraphic mouth and hissed, “Mute, mute, mute!”
    The two students peered over at me, but I blocked their view of Leto as best I could. They turned back around to their own work.
    “Shrink display. Readable Audio.”
    Leto shrank to the size of a chipmunk and his message scrolled above him:
    Hey, kiddo. Just thought I’d check in. The boys here’ve been taking bets over whether you went through with it. But I got faith in ya, kid. Little reminder, though. The bank code is due now. As in now . Of course, if you didn’t make the delivery, return the goods, no questions asked. But one of those things better be in my hands within forty-eight hours or I’m afraid some unpleasantness might occur.
    Forty-eight hours? Every last drop of blood in my body drained to my toes as I trudged to my room. All I’d wanted to do was help my mom, pay her bills so she could get decent care. So she wouldn’t end up in that madhouse Resthaven. So there might be some slim chance of her being normal again. Of us being normal again.
    I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t make up a pretend bank code. Leto’d check it before he let me out of his sight. But I didn’t have any device to give back.
    “Unpleasantness.” That could mean anything. But like any good snake, Leto knew where to strike first to hit deepest. He knew my weak spots, my mom and her skyrocketing medical bills for starters. Or he could turn me in at the Institute and I’d lose the only home I had left. Of course, maybe he had even more— gulp —unsavory plans. He didn’t become a top chronosmuggler by passing out kittens and lollipops.
    When I reached the room, I put on my everything-is-okay face. Mimi was sprawled on our couch in full mope mode.
    “My life is over.”
    I bent over and checked her pulse. “Dang it. So close to a single room.”
    Mimi held up her QuantCom, lips all pouty. (And yet still magically perky. How did she do that?) “I got tomorrow’s mission assignment. Botany. It’s a full-dayer.”
    “I can see why this has compromised your very existence.”
    “I was supposed to go to the dance with Charlie.” She chucked her Com on the seat beside her. “So much for that.”
    “He asked you to the dance?” About time.
    “Yes. No. Kind of. He asked me if I was going. Does that count?” Mimi curled up in a ball and groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
    “You are not. He’s into you; I can tell.”
    “You can? Really?” Mimi perked up.
    I laughed. “I bet old Bergin can probably tell.” When I said his name, I imagined our headmaster sitting at his desk, drawing matchy-match hearts between his pupils in the Institute roster. “Okay, maybe not Bergin.”
    Mimi sighed. “It’s such a bumzoo. I thought maybe this was it, us finally … y’know.” She sat up and wiped away a nonexistent tear. Oh, to have Mimi problems.
    “Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway,” she said. “I’ll be in twenty-first-century Maryland.”
    Whah? I scooped Mimi’s Com off the couch and flipped to the top of the mission screen. The date was right around my midterm’s, about three months later. As long as the Mastersons hadn’t found the gadget and destroyed it, I’d be fine.
    In the most nonchalant voice I could muster, I said, “Why don’t I switch with you?”
    “You have a mission tomorrow, too?”
    “Yeah, and mine’s a quickie.” I slid my own Com over to her. “You’d be home in time to primp.”
    The glow of the mission screen made Mimi’s impossibly blue eyes even bluer. “Our transporters would be in trouble, too, if we got caught. And our teachers would kill us