Free The Bellbottom Incident by Neve Maslakovic

and all the annoying changes it entails?”
    Dr. Little’s mouth turned downward. I heard him swear under his breath as we moved toward a less busy spot by the cafeteria. “Right. It’s October 31—DST ended last night. I still had my original run date in mind.”  
    Xavier—the older one—had sent us forty-eight hours ahead of Dr. Little’s original coordinates. Instead of being one o’clock when we’d arrived, apparently it had only been noon.
    “I should have remembered that,” Dr. Little continued in the tone of an academic mortified to have gotten something wrong. He adjusted his watch, and I did the same with mine. “We wasted the last hour of daylight waiting for Mooney to show up.”
    We had, but it was no one’s fault. I said as much. “We rushed here to 1976 without much planning. And Steven, you haven’t been getting enough sleep since Piper was born.”
    “That’s no excuse.” I couldn’t tell if he was glaring at me because I had used his first name or what.
      Xave raised an eyebrow at us. “So this is what time travel is like, huh? Girls lost in time. People bickering over an hour here and there.”
    “It does mess with your head,” Abigail conceded.  
    “Far out. I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Well?” I demanded. “Did you ask around the physics building and St. Olaf’s Hall?”
    “I did.”
    “And?”
    He shook his head at us. “No luck. Sorry.”
    We digested the news silently.
    Xave regarded us for a moment, then said, “Look, it seems to me that what you need is a good meal and some rest, and then we can put our heads together and see what to do about finding Sally. Why don’t you join me for”—he raised his voice as a speaker started shouting into a microphone, eliciting an approving roar from the crowd—“DINNER?”  
    Dr. Little gave him a frank look and shouted back through cupped hands. “It’s not that easy…We can’t exactly go WHEREVER WE WANT.”
    “History might STOP you, or something like that?”
    “I CAN NEITHER CONFIRM OR DENY THAT. No more questions, MOONEY.”
    “Well, what would you do in my place? I’m burning with CURIOSITY.”
    “Sure, we can join you for just dinner,” I said quickly as the speaker went temporarily quiet, getting in the words before Dr. Little had the chance to disagree. Xave had a point. We wouldn’t be doing Sabina any good if we fainted from hunger. Besides, the cafeteria was where we wanted to be anyway, the likely place Sabina would return to as night fell, wherever she was at the moment.  
    Xave had locked his bicycle into an empty spot in the rack by the front doors. “Fair warning—the cafeteria food is really bogue,” he threw over his shoulder as we followed him inside.
    “Did he say bogue ?” Abigail whispered to me. “What does that mean?”  
    “From what I know of cafeteria food, it can’t mean anything good.”

    Long rows of green plastic tables, which had thankfully been changed out at some point before my arrival at St. Sunniva as an undergrad, formed the eating area of the cafeteria. Students sat at the mostly packed tables engaged in lively conversation over their dinner trays, except for a loner here and there reading a paperback. There was a somewhat larger number of women than men, which was not a surprise since the school had only turned coed in 1968 and I knew it had taken a good decade for the numbers to even out. No one had a laptop or a tablet or an e-reader or a smartphone, which was not a surprise of course, but I couldn’t help but notice that it made for a more social setting. The only electronic device in sight was a radio blaring in one corner. I coughed. The place reeked of cigarettes. Still, they didn’t mask the cooking scents wafting from the kitchen, and I suddenly realized how ravenous I was.
    Xave pointed the three of us to a table that had just emptied, then came back after a minute to ask, “Scarily fried chicken or dismembered sausage links?”
    At first I