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  When she didn’t contradict him, Monroe snorted and crashed onto a metal chair, dangling his long legs off the side. “I’m thrilled, thrilled that the astrolabe’s done, Char. But don’t put this on me. Bill’s a part of my life, just like I’m a part of yours.”

  “I—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Monroe swiveled himself into a seated position. “Let’s get this over with. You wanted a little alone time?” He looked pointedly at Leanor, then back to Charlotte. “You’ve got a minute or so before Bill gets back with drinks.”

  This time Charlotte didn’t respond. She didn’t take the bait about Leanor. None of this would be happening without her. Her mentor continued watching, smile faltering as Charlotte kept her lips pressed together.

  “You’re wasting your minute,” Monroe said.

  Still Charlotte didn’t speak. She stared Monroe down. Didn’t speak a fucking word for the entire two minutes. Monroe stared back with a lifted eyebrow, but didn’t argue.

  When Bill returned, Charlotte said crisply, “Good, you’re back. We didn’t want to start without you.”

  Now Monroe leaned over, snaking a hand over the metal to clutch hers again. “Char, he’s family.”

  Like a spark, that simple word changed everything. Warmth flooded Charlotte’s fingers, and she squeezed back. “I get that, ’Roe.”

  She couldn’t help but glance at Leanor, who dipped her head, acknowledging that it was okay.

  Charlotte released Monroe’s hand, and let hers fall to the table and the crushed purple velvet. It felt smooth and rich in her hands, hundreds of little fibers pressing up against her fingers. Three long years, and this was the moment. If Leanor was okay with it, then Charlotte would be too.

  If Bill was family, he was family.

  So Charlotte took hold of the velvet and wrenched it away, revealing the astrolabe.

  It almost looked like a glass softball, but instead of stitching, there was a single ridge separating the orb into two halves. Beneath the glass was a deep inky black. As Monroe and Bill leaned in, bulbous reflections peered back.

  “Whoa,” Monroe said. His face was wide-open in astonishment, not a single quip at the ready. “It’s so deep.”

  “Just wait,” Charlotte said, reaching to the astrolabe. She dragged her fingers in a C, the glass giving her no resistance. Deep within, the astrolabe glowed to life. The lights pulsed—bright, brighter, brightest—until points of light glittered everywhere. On Suni’s storefront, on Monroe, Bill, and Leanor’s faces, and on the clouds above, exactly where the stars were hidden thousands of light-years away. “The night sky.”

  Below shone the exact time and date: June 23, 2023, 9:07 p.m.

  With a grin, Monroe looked to Bill’s constellation-covered face and touched his boyfriend’s beard. “My bear,” he said, his fingers stopping at a few dots on Bill’s pale skin. “Complete with Ursa Minor on his face.”

  “It’s amazing, Charlotte. Leanor,” Bill said. “And Monroe said something about history?”

  Of course that was what would excite her history-teacher brother. “Yeah. While Leanor streamlined, I spent months inputting every star chart we found, mapping it so that you can see the stars as they looked on any night in time. Whether that’s ten years in the future …” She twisted her fingers forward and the readout spun forward ten years. “A hundred years in the past …” The date read 1923. “Or even prehistory.” She spun and spun her hand, star lines spinning on the street, until the readout showed 200 A.D.

  Charlotte squinted across the way, to where Leanor sat. Their gazes met, and Leanor nodded her permission once more. Charlotte’s heart drummed inside her chest.

  Hopefully it was true that tonight was more of a beginning than an end. That Charlotte couldn’t get rid of Leanor this easily. She was family, as much as Monroe, Felix, Charlie, and perhaps Bill were.

  When had that happened?

  And why had Leanor chosen Charlotte in the first place? She’d just been a technician, but Leanor had still brought her into this secret. Just like she was bringing Monroe in. Like she was bringing Bill in. Soon, Felix and Charlie would join them, too. Charlotte would have to trust that Leanor was right about Bill, as she had been with her.

  “Pick a date, ’Roe,” Charlotte whispered. Leanor had removed Charlotte’s crayon-scribbled list, but that didn’t matter. All of history rested in Monroe’s head, always bubbling up and out of his mouth. “Any date in history you’d like to see.”

  “Not the future?” Bill asked, his dark eyebrows high. “I’ve always wondered what people will see from their flying cars and bubble homes.”

  Charlotte’s eyes darted to Leanor. This was the danger of bringing a sci-fi geek along.

  Leanor laughed. Charlotte found herself relaxing. This was supposed to be fun, she remembered. Not the serious endeavor Charlotte always made it. “For now,” Leanor said, “let’s stick with what Monroe knows.”

  Monroe frowned, eyes on his lap, ponytail falling over his shoulder. At last he looked up, face still scrunched inward. “I don’t know. Would it matter what the stars were like back then? I mean, knowing what the Lenape tribe saw, or what New Amsterdam saw above them could be cool. But after the city got too bright, no one would see the stars.”

  She couldn’t correct him; he didn’t understand yet. Her free hand lifted to the night sky. “Don’t think about the stars.” She let her hand drop, and pointed to the New Yorkers sitting outside Suni’s bar. Most of them were looking up, around, turning their hands over as the stars remained everywhere. “Think about the people, the night, New York City, and we’ll get to see it.”

  Monroe exhaled, lifting his hands, but before they fell, Bill suggested, “September tenth.”

  Charlotte swiveled her neck, intrigued despite her reservations. “September tenth when?”

  “2001.”

  Charlotte and Leanor took in a gasp at once, their eyes connecting. Not a date on Charlotte’s list.

  Monroe smiled. “The day before 9/11. The last day before the city was marred by disaster.”

  “Perfect,” Leanor whispered.

  “Okay.” There was no need to ask Monroe and Bill to stand elsewhere, to go away. Once she lifted her hand from the astrolabe, the lights would snap off. In the sudden darkness, none of the surrounding people would be able to tell what happened at this table. Anyone watching would be left with the after-image of stars. Charlotte twisted the lights backward until the readout showed the correct day. But she chose daytime, not the night. She stood and held the orb out. “Touch my arm guys. And just watch.”

  After a moment’s hesitation and a shared look of confusion, the men stood and gripped her arm. Still holding the astrolabe in her left hand, Charlotte released her right hand from the top.

  The lights within the ball blazed, spun around, growing even brighter, snapping back to their initial position. And when the lights finished spinning, their surroundings spun.

  Ghostly people sped through them and the sun sparked back up in the sky, like it had been there all along. Soon it crashed back down, leaving them in darkness. Everything moved backward, boats slid rudder-forward, leaving the river glassy and calm. The sun rose in the west and set in the east over and over, speeding up from a strobe to a blurred line.

  With a bright white flash, the Mid River filled in with streets and skyscrapers. Some amid construction unbuilt themselves as the sun flashed around, leaving nothing but empty lots.

  Still, the city kept moving at a breakneck pace, buildings vanishing or appearing at seeming random until it slowed to a stop. The sun rested to the east.

  Morning.

  A woman in a crisp suit walked by, a paper-wrapped bagel in hand. A bicyclist sped past, dodging through traffic. No one noticed the three people who had suddenly appeared.

  “Where?” Bill tried.

  Monroe followed with, “How?”

  But Charlotte shook her head. “Those aren’t the right questions.” She couldn’t help her grow
ing grin. “You mean when.”

  “What?” Bill and Monroe said together.

  Instead of answering, Charlotte lifted her hand, up from the streets, past her astrolabe, past the nearby buildings, through a crack, to two identical skyscrapers in the distance.

  The World Trade Center standing tall before New York’s skyline was marred for the first time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ANACHRONISM

  SEPTEMBER 10, 2001

  For a long minute, two, three, the men were silent. Charlotte looked on, her heart swelling. Monroe’s eyes wouldn’t stop moving. Bill’s jaw slowly fell lower and lower. Her plan was working.

  “This … This …” Bill sputtered.

  “What is this?” Monroe asked again. “Like, a hologram? A projection?”

  “Nope.” Charlotte strode away from them, toward the building that would one day, twenty-two years from now, be Suni’s bar. “We’re here.”

  “And here is … ?” Bill said.

  Monroe squinted at her. His voice shuddered as he asked, “Time travel?”

  Charlotte’s grin grew, and she nodded.

  Monroe exhaled a breath of surprise. She’d never seen him speechless, but as his grin grew, she could tell that moment was over. “The astrolabe can fucking time travel?” He slugged her. “And you didn’t fucking tell me?” He threw another punch, but this time Charlotte dodged, grabbed his fist. Held it and stared into his glimmering eyes. “This is fucking incredible, Char!”

  “T-time travel?” Bill’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t tear them from the World Trade Center in the distance.

  Leanor had been right to let him come along. The only people who would appreciate the device more than the technicians who’d created it stood before her: a historian and a sci-fi geek.

  Had Leanor told Monroe to invite Bill? Behind Charlotte’s back?

  Charlotte blinked the thought away.

  But Leanor hadn’t been surprised by his presence.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Bill said, at last turning his head and body away from the identical towers. “Time travel, the butterfly effect, every moment here is like a ticking time bomb.”

  Monroe stretched his lips into a wide smile, every one of his perfect teeth visible. “Time bomb, I like that.”

  “I’m serious,” Bill said. He reached a hand out to the astrolabe, dark now but still in Charlotte’s hand. “Haven’t either of you heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? Take us back.”

  Charlotte set the astrolabe into her leather purse. “It’ll be fine, Bill. We’ve come back hundreds of times, bought items, exchanged cash, even interrupted George Washington on his way through town.”

  “No, no.” Bill shook his head. “That’s Novikov’s Self-Consistency Principle. But it’s bullshit, Charlotte. Bullshit.”

  Monroe’s eyes flicked from Bill to Charlotte.

  She and Leanor had traveled so much, but Charlotte had never heard of either of these people. “But Bill,” she said, “we really have come back hundreds of times.”

  Bill bit his lip. His gaze turned to the streets: a kid wearing headphones and a thick iPod, a woman running in a velour jogging suit, a pair of boys with bleached-blond hair running to school together, massive backpacks on their backs. The more people that passed, the more Bill’s green eyes glittered.

  At Bill’s silence, Monroe asked his question for a third time. “But how, Char? How is this even possible? I thought it was just a—well, I guess not normal—astrolabe.”

  “I thought so too,” Charlotte said. “I implemented GPS, historical stars, touch sensitive glass. Leanor worked on most of the theory, the programming. I didn’t think anything of it, until I tested a prototype and …” She’d ended up a thousand years ago. Leanor had retrieved her and explained everything. From then on, knowing what they were building, Charlotte fell into her work.

  “That was a year ago,” Monroe said.

  Charlotte frowned, then realized how he knew. About a year ago, for the very first time, she’d cancelled their brother-sister night. But Monroe would forgive her, she could see. Soon so would Charlie and Felix. They’d see how important an achievement this was. They’d agree with why Leanor believed this device important—in the right hands, in the right way, this could showcase history better than any book. No one would be doomed to repeat the past, unless they wanted to learn from it. “But now we’re done,” Charlotte reminded him.

  “What else?” Monroe asked. “GPS, stars, touch, that doesn’t sound like much.”

  Charlotte fiddled with a wire necklace Charlie had made her a little over a year ago. Since the moment she’d learned about the astrolabe’s true purpose, she and Leanor worked harder than ever, perfecting it, traveling the world and doing minor tests that couldn’t affect time much. But even though Charlotte had read through every line of code, she hadn’t been able to comprehend the theory. “Leanor’s the quantum mechanics expert. I don’t even really understand how that part works.”

  Bill’s attention snapped from the people of 2001. “What?”

  “She’s smarter than me,” Charlotte said, frowning Bill’s way. Why did that matter? Why weren’t either of them focusing on where they were?

  Bill crossed his arms over his chest. “If you don’t understand, then who’s to say what’s really happening? Whether this is okay to visit?”

  He shouldn’t even be here.

  “I trust her,” Charlotte said. “With my life. She knows what’s going on, and we’ve been careful. Never making big changes, never crossing our paths. We don’t want to do anything that will hurt our world, Bill, whether or not we even can. And if you think we’ve been reckless, if you’re accusing her …”

  Monroe’s hands were on Charlotte’s shoulders immediately. “Whoa, Char, whoa. He’s not accusing her of anything.” Monroe shot back a warning glance. “It’s just a little weird—to time travel and not know how.”

  “Or why,” Bill added.

  “Why?” Charlotte sputtered. “Why are you so resistant to this? I thought … ’Roe, this is history. Right before your eyes!” She gestured to the dirty asphalt, a classic Mustang driving by, the buildings that didn’t exist in their time because of the Blast. “We should be racing to see the World Trade Center. And then you can pick a date, any date, and we’ll go. We’ll see it. Every week, any time. We’ll get to see everything, ’Roe.” She fixed her gaze on Bill. “And I see your indecision. You want so badly for this to be okay. For this to be possible. You’re only acting this way, being ridiculous, because you’re desperate to be here. Right? Am I right?”

  “Char, hey …” Monroe rubbed her shoulders, tilting his head to meet her gaze. “We’re just freaked out, okay? One minute it was nighttime. And now it’s so goddamn bright.” He shook his head. “We’re freaked. How did you act your first time?”

  Time had degraded, and then she was in a forest. Spinning, terrified, scrambling for the prototype she’d dropped in surprise. “Freaked.”

  “Exactly.”

  Bill stepped forward, his eyebrows low, his lips squished to one side. “It’s a lot.” He lifted his gaze, his green eyes boring into hers. “Too much, maybe. Magical, but if it got into the wrong hands?”

  “Time self-corrects,” Charlotte said. “We’ve seen it.”

  Bill shook his head. “Like how the ozone self-corrects? Or how animals just move out once humans move in? That’s why Novikov is bullshit. If time travel is possible, then time is malleable, just like our planet, like our lives.” He bit his lips, his eyes flicking back to the World Trade Center. “We’re here, and I guess we oughta see it. What we came for. But when we get back, I’m gonna keep asking questions.”

  Monroe nodded; the two of them followed her to the subway and accepted a token that would get them through the turnstiles. But they were silent, not gushing over how prepared she was, how people dressed, what they were reading, or the bulky headphones wrapped around their heads.

  Bill and Monroe looked
around, but they exchanged worried glances even more.

  Despite all of her travel, all of Leanor’s reassurances, could this be dangerous? One second displaced in time, and already Monroe and Bill were questioning time travel. Worried about the “wrong hands,” accusing Leanor of being careless, accusing Charlotte of allowing such a thing to happen.

  Charlotte and Leanor had gone over this. The need for caution, but the need to explore, too. To experience the past. To learn from it and bring those lessons forward. To embrace history.

  The train slowed at Cortlandt Street—the stop that would be closed for years after tomorrow, reconstructing, renovating, reimagining. But still, Charlotte couldn’t help worry about Leanor, left alone in the future. Did she know what criticism she’d invited?

  Was time malleable, as Bill said? He knew all the names, all the theories at the drop of a hat. Did Leanor, too? Or did she never consider that time would be anything other than self-correcting?

  Charlotte led Monroe and Bill up the steps, to the World Trade Plaza amongst the New Yorkers ready to get to work, and all thoughts of Leanor vanished.

  The shadow of one of the towers fell on them, blotting out the sun. The plaza was busy, people moving to and fro, pushing through doors, visiting, working, or just seeing the once-tallest skyscrapers in the world. A golden ball rested in a fountain in the center of the plaza, ringed by benches. Businessmen and -women pushed through the revolving doors they’d flee tomorrow. One by one they entered, visiting the front desks of either building, talking with one another, oblivious. Charlotte swallowed, trying to focus. This was history, unchangeable. She, Monroe, and Bill were here to witness. It was horrible, but …

  Charlotte tilted her head up from the plaza, away from the central golden orb, following the metal ridges that led from the World Trade Center’s lower windows to the sky.

  But there, where a high cloud rested, a plane would fly. It would slam into the building, a plume of smoke coming out and then another plane … Charlotte flinched away. Pressed her eyelids shut so tight her vision turned red.