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Sep. 21st, 2020 at 1:14 AM
Who: Molly Hernandez, Gert Yorkes, and Old Lace
What: Travel through time, space and reality
When: Depends on who you ask, but they end up in Sunday afternoon
Where: On their way to NYC
Walking out the side door of Atlas Academy, into the hot California sun beating down on the senior parking lot, Molly pulled on her beanie and slung her backpack strap over one shoulder and the duffel bag with her dance gear over the other. “Great work guys, the new routine is really coming together,” she said as they split up heading toward their cars. Gert was waiting in the Rolls, reading out of a textbook. Molly threw her bags into the backseat and climbed in. “Hey, let’s get Chinese,” she said as Gert started the car and headed toward home.
The hostel was quiet when they stepped inside, light filtering through the skylight onto the dining table. “Hey Chase, we brought dinner! Get down here!” Molly called up the stairs. She moved toward the table to dump the food and her bags, but stopped, feeling… not dizzy exactly, but off. She blinked hard. “Gert?” she asked, right before everything went black.
Gert’s fingers gripped the steering wheel as if she thought relaxing even one iota might result in it flying out the window, she glanced in Paloma’s rearview mirror, “Lacey, please……. I know you’re bored, but please, please please, just lay down. Do you want to cause another accident?” The thought that the deinonychus sent in response made Gert sigh.
“Lacey! Stop using your reptilian brain as an excuse to be a giant butthead. It’s unbecoming!” Gert pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and sighed, “Okay. We’ll stop for a potty break, but if it’s crowded you’re going to have to hold it.” Thankful that they had just passed a sign indicating that there was only four miles to the next rest stop, she reminded herself that she didn’t need to turn her blinker on a mile before the exit, that she had not one, but two extra keys hidden on the VW and that she had an air horn and a can of mace in her purse.
As she pulled off onto the exit, Gert felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. She’d only just rolled into a parking spot, as her vision began to fade to black her last thought was, I better not be dying again..
Molly shivered as she opened her eyes. She dropped her duffel bag to the ground and fumbled the takeout, managing, but just barely, to not drop the vegetarian lo mein (hers), beef and broccoli (Chase’s), and general tso’s seitan (Gert’s obvi), all over the sidewalk. Her brain still felt fuzzy and she blinked hard again, trying to figure out why she was outside. And why it was 20 degrees colder than it had been a minute ago.
She looked around. She was standing outside a generic brown rest stop building, with picnic tables, a few trees, and signs reminding visitors to keep their pets on leashes, dotting the lawn. Nothing looked familiar, until she turned back to the parking lot. A hot pink VW van was parked in a space near the entrance. If Molly didn’t know better, she’d say it was THE hot pink VW van that Gert had found online yesterday. How many people in 2022 had VW vans? Then the van roared. Did I get brainwashed by a stupid phone again? she wondered, scooping up her bag and running toward the van.
“Hey Lacey-girl,” Molly opened the sliding door and tossed her bags in, keeping the food with her. She trusted the Deinonychus with her life, but definitely not with her dinner. “Gert?” Her sister looked how she felt. And also off, in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Do you know where we are? Is this another magical phone thing? …..Are those new glasses? You were definitely wearing your ‘Notorious RBG’ shirt to school today, when did you change?”
When the door of the van slid open, Gert let out a shriek and tried to reach for her purse, and then jerked back at the sound of Molly’s voice, she took a deep breath, “Molly….. am I dead? Because there was no General Tso’s Seitan the last time I died.”
Gert eyed her sister a little suspiciously and then said, “Lacey, are you sure this is Molly?” The sound of Old Lace snorting seemed especially loud in the early morning light, “Molly, when we walked in on Stacy and Dale what was he wearing?”
“God, Gert,” Molly made a disgusted face, “I’m going to need to bleach my brain again if you make me think about Dale in that French maid outfit. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
She adjusted her hat on her head. “If you’re dead, then I think we both are. We were at home like 10 minutes ago, waiting for Chase to come down to dinner. And you told me you were going to look at this van tomorrow. So it could be a heaven van? Or I could be losing time again.” She looked back at Old Lace, who was still making snuffly noises, and opened the container of stir fried beef on her lap, tossing a piece back to the dinosaur. “Don’t tell Chase I let you have his dinner, okay?”
“It is you! It’s not that I expected our parents to be the epitome of cisgendered heteronormative role models, but with all the money they had, don’t you think they could have gotten Dale a better fitting skirt?” Gert threw her arms around her sister, hugged her tight and then leaned back against the driver’s seat.
“How did you get here? Did you teleport? Were you keeping that a secret from me. Molly, ten minutes ago, I was telling Old Lace that she needed to stay down. I let her put her head out the window one time and now she’s impossible. Then I thought I was going to pass out.” It hit Gert all of a sudden that Molly looked…. a little younger than the last time that she’s seen her.
“Molly. What year is it?”
Molly looked at her sister with a confused expression. “I’m not sure how I got here. I’m not sure where here even is. We had just gotten home from school, I hadn’t even put the food down,” she gestured with the takeout container in her hand and Old Lace snorted from the back again until Molly threw her another piece of beef.
“I felt really weird and dizzy and then I was out there.” She pointed at the park. “It’s 2022 Gert, are you okay?”
Suddenly the hologram projector on the GPS system lit up, even though the ignition was off. “Welcome….” the message started, introducing itself as F.R.I.D.A.Y. and explaining that they had now entered a new timeline. Molly stared at Gert, speechless, as the message kindly offered to set the GPS to direct them to their new home, courtesy of Iron Man…
Watching the hologram, Gert realized she was okay, edging towards pretty good.. She'd been jumped to an alternate reality…. yes, but she had her sister and Lacey. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. “I think we better get going, I don't think there is any reality where traffic in downtown New York is good.
Molly nodded, and watched the scenery go by silently as they pulled out of the rest stop parking lot and got back on the expressway. She tried to wrap her head around yet another crazy thing happening to them. She should have expected it, evil parents and aliens and time travel and coming back from the dead were all normal, why wouldn’t alternate realities that pulled you ahead a year. “They better not make me redo my whole senior year,” she muttered, “Sorry Gert, I know you had to after… but you like school… I was so close to being done. And then, 6 more months and I can audition to be a Laker Girl.”
She looked at the side of her sister’s face as she focused on the road. “It wasn’t 2022 for you, was it? Were you already going to New York?”
Gert put Paloma’s blinker on as she merged back onto the interstate following the directions that came from the GPS. “It was 2026 for me. I graduated from Smith and well, I was on my way to my first job,” she sighed wondering if this timeline still had a community center in need of a youth engagement coordinator.
She refrained from giving Molly a lecture about the labor, pay and working condition disparities that existed between players and cheerleaders and decided she could also set aside the lecture on how the objectification of women’s bodies for mass consumption inherently fed the patriarchal system. She smiled, knowing that really, Molly just wanted to dance.
“Ummm…. Do the Yankees have cheerleaders?”
“Not cheerleaders, Gertie, dancers,” Molly reminded her. “It’s completely different. I’ll do some research.” She grinned at her sister, “OH MY GOD, that’s amazing, Gert! We’ve only been checking the mail every single day for your letter from Smith! I am literally the proudest of you of anyone in the history of ever.”
She bounced in her seat, weirdly happy to have her big sister back, even though she had been standing right next to her before she ended up here. She was more than grateful that Chase had done all that work on time travel, and that Gertie wasn’t dead anymore, but the last few months, where they had been the same age, had been… an adjustment.
Gert’s face broke into a smile, only Molly would remember just how much it had meant to her to go to Smith, “Thanks, Moll! I loved it! The only bad thing was being so far away from you!”
Her cheeks tinged pink as she realized her mistake, “Moll, I’m so sorry, cheerleaders aren’t anywhere as cool as professional dance athletes.”
Lace’s long narrow snout appeared between the two seats, she butted her head against the girls’ legs and made what sounded suspiciously like a whine. Gert was horrified, “MOLLY, you’re not going to believe what I did to poor Lacey!!!!!!” She anxiously squinted toward the GPS unit.
“Can you see how far we have left before we get there? I was supposed to let Lace out to use the bushes at the rest stop, but then you came and that Friday hologram came and now she’s threatening to pee all over Paloma. Molly, do you remember how hard it is to get the smell of dinopee out of things. She started scanning for a place to pull off.
“Ewww, Lace, you better hold it, if you ruin this pink beauty there will be no more Chinese for you.” Molly said, rapidly googling for a forest preserve. “Get off at Stamford, there should be some woods there.”
“Paloma?” She asked, registering the van’s name. “Did I miss a lecture on an international feminist world-saving icon?”
“Good call, Molls,” as she allowed the speedometer to inch four miles over the speed limit, her anxiety was rising incrementally, when Molly’s words distracted her. A giant grin spread over her face as she turned on the stereo, “I can’t believe this is happening. She’s named after Paloma Mami Gert began to sing along, “No te enamores de mí, no, no, no, No te enamores de mí, no, no, no...Tu corazón puedo partir, no no no"
[*Don't fall in love with me
No, no, no
Don't fall in love with me
No, no, no
Your heart can go
No, no, no
Don't fall in love with me, no
No, no, no]
She quickly found a side road that looked wooded enough to be safe and pulled off onto it, “Okay, Lacey, hurry up and no chasing mammals today!”
“Are you kidding, Gert? You let me name your van? That is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!”
She leaned back in her seat as they waited for Old Lace to do her business. This whole alternate reality thing was turning out to be pretty okay so far. “You know, New York is going to do wonders for my street vigilante game. Everything is too far apart in LA.”
“Of course, I let you name the van. You’re only the coolest sister anyone could ever wish for.” Gert hollered, “LACE C’MON”
As the theropod climbed in through the side door, Gert gave Molly a worried look, “Molly, I know you’re the toughest badass, ever, but do you think maybe you could hold off on your street vigilante gig,” not wanting to discourage her sister, Gert said hurriedly, “Just for a few days, you know until we know if anything else is different in this timeline.”
“I guess I can,” Molly resisted the urge to cross her fingers behind her back like she would have a few years ago. Gert was right, she needed to do some recon first anyway. Get the lay of the land. Maybe find a team-up or two. “This is going to be so cool.”
What: Travel through time, space and reality
When: Depends on who you ask, but they end up in Sunday afternoon
Where: On their way to NYC
Walking out the side door of Atlas Academy, into the hot California sun beating down on the senior parking lot, Molly pulled on her beanie and slung her backpack strap over one shoulder and the duffel bag with her dance gear over the other. “Great work guys, the new routine is really coming together,” she said as they split up heading toward their cars. Gert was waiting in the Rolls, reading out of a textbook. Molly threw her bags into the backseat and climbed in. “Hey, let’s get Chinese,” she said as Gert started the car and headed toward home.
The hostel was quiet when they stepped inside, light filtering through the skylight onto the dining table. “Hey Chase, we brought dinner! Get down here!” Molly called up the stairs. She moved toward the table to dump the food and her bags, but stopped, feeling… not dizzy exactly, but off. She blinked hard. “Gert?” she asked, right before everything went black.
Gert’s fingers gripped the steering wheel as if she thought relaxing even one iota might result in it flying out the window, she glanced in Paloma’s rearview mirror, “Lacey, please……. I know you’re bored, but please, please please, just lay down. Do you want to cause another accident?” The thought that the deinonychus sent in response made Gert sigh.
“Lacey! Stop using your reptilian brain as an excuse to be a giant butthead. It’s unbecoming!” Gert pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and sighed, “Okay. We’ll stop for a potty break, but if it’s crowded you’re going to have to hold it.” Thankful that they had just passed a sign indicating that there was only four miles to the next rest stop, she reminded herself that she didn’t need to turn her blinker on a mile before the exit, that she had not one, but two extra keys hidden on the VW and that she had an air horn and a can of mace in her purse.
As she pulled off onto the exit, Gert felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. She’d only just rolled into a parking spot, as her vision began to fade to black her last thought was, I better not be dying again..
Molly shivered as she opened her eyes. She dropped her duffel bag to the ground and fumbled the takeout, managing, but just barely, to not drop the vegetarian lo mein (hers), beef and broccoli (Chase’s), and general tso’s seitan (Gert’s obvi), all over the sidewalk. Her brain still felt fuzzy and she blinked hard again, trying to figure out why she was outside. And why it was 20 degrees colder than it had been a minute ago.
She looked around. She was standing outside a generic brown rest stop building, with picnic tables, a few trees, and signs reminding visitors to keep their pets on leashes, dotting the lawn. Nothing looked familiar, until she turned back to the parking lot. A hot pink VW van was parked in a space near the entrance. If Molly didn’t know better, she’d say it was THE hot pink VW van that Gert had found online yesterday. How many people in 2022 had VW vans? Then the van roared. Did I get brainwashed by a stupid phone again? she wondered, scooping up her bag and running toward the van.
“Hey Lacey-girl,” Molly opened the sliding door and tossed her bags in, keeping the food with her. She trusted the Deinonychus with her life, but definitely not with her dinner. “Gert?” Her sister looked how she felt. And also off, in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Do you know where we are? Is this another magical phone thing? …..Are those new glasses? You were definitely wearing your ‘Notorious RBG’ shirt to school today, when did you change?”
When the door of the van slid open, Gert let out a shriek and tried to reach for her purse, and then jerked back at the sound of Molly’s voice, she took a deep breath, “Molly….. am I dead? Because there was no General Tso’s Seitan the last time I died.”
Gert eyed her sister a little suspiciously and then said, “Lacey, are you sure this is Molly?” The sound of Old Lace snorting seemed especially loud in the early morning light, “Molly, when we walked in on Stacy and Dale what was he wearing?”
“God, Gert,” Molly made a disgusted face, “I’m going to need to bleach my brain again if you make me think about Dale in that French maid outfit. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
She adjusted her hat on her head. “If you’re dead, then I think we both are. We were at home like 10 minutes ago, waiting for Chase to come down to dinner. And you told me you were going to look at this van tomorrow. So it could be a heaven van? Or I could be losing time again.” She looked back at Old Lace, who was still making snuffly noises, and opened the container of stir fried beef on her lap, tossing a piece back to the dinosaur. “Don’t tell Chase I let you have his dinner, okay?”
“It is you! It’s not that I expected our parents to be the epitome of cisgendered heteronormative role models, but with all the money they had, don’t you think they could have gotten Dale a better fitting skirt?” Gert threw her arms around her sister, hugged her tight and then leaned back against the driver’s seat.
“How did you get here? Did you teleport? Were you keeping that a secret from me. Molly, ten minutes ago, I was telling Old Lace that she needed to stay down. I let her put her head out the window one time and now she’s impossible. Then I thought I was going to pass out.” It hit Gert all of a sudden that Molly looked…. a little younger than the last time that she’s seen her.
“Molly. What year is it?”
Molly looked at her sister with a confused expression. “I’m not sure how I got here. I’m not sure where here even is. We had just gotten home from school, I hadn’t even put the food down,” she gestured with the takeout container in her hand and Old Lace snorted from the back again until Molly threw her another piece of beef.
“I felt really weird and dizzy and then I was out there.” She pointed at the park. “It’s 2022 Gert, are you okay?”
Suddenly the hologram projector on the GPS system lit up, even though the ignition was off. “Welcome….” the message started, introducing itself as F.R.I.D.A.Y. and explaining that they had now entered a new timeline. Molly stared at Gert, speechless, as the message kindly offered to set the GPS to direct them to their new home, courtesy of Iron Man…
Watching the hologram, Gert realized she was okay, edging towards pretty good.. She'd been jumped to an alternate reality…. yes, but she had her sister and Lacey. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. “I think we better get going, I don't think there is any reality where traffic in downtown New York is good.
Molly nodded, and watched the scenery go by silently as they pulled out of the rest stop parking lot and got back on the expressway. She tried to wrap her head around yet another crazy thing happening to them. She should have expected it, evil parents and aliens and time travel and coming back from the dead were all normal, why wouldn’t alternate realities that pulled you ahead a year. “They better not make me redo my whole senior year,” she muttered, “Sorry Gert, I know you had to after… but you like school… I was so close to being done. And then, 6 more months and I can audition to be a Laker Girl.”
She looked at the side of her sister’s face as she focused on the road. “It wasn’t 2022 for you, was it? Were you already going to New York?”
Gert put Paloma’s blinker on as she merged back onto the interstate following the directions that came from the GPS. “It was 2026 for me. I graduated from Smith and well, I was on my way to my first job,” she sighed wondering if this timeline still had a community center in need of a youth engagement coordinator.
She refrained from giving Molly a lecture about the labor, pay and working condition disparities that existed between players and cheerleaders and decided she could also set aside the lecture on how the objectification of women’s bodies for mass consumption inherently fed the patriarchal system. She smiled, knowing that really, Molly just wanted to dance.
“Ummm…. Do the Yankees have cheerleaders?”
“Not cheerleaders, Gertie, dancers,” Molly reminded her. “It’s completely different. I’ll do some research.” She grinned at her sister, “OH MY GOD, that’s amazing, Gert! We’ve only been checking the mail every single day for your letter from Smith! I am literally the proudest of you of anyone in the history of ever.”
She bounced in her seat, weirdly happy to have her big sister back, even though she had been standing right next to her before she ended up here. She was more than grateful that Chase had done all that work on time travel, and that Gertie wasn’t dead anymore, but the last few months, where they had been the same age, had been… an adjustment.
Gert’s face broke into a smile, only Molly would remember just how much it had meant to her to go to Smith, “Thanks, Moll! I loved it! The only bad thing was being so far away from you!”
Her cheeks tinged pink as she realized her mistake, “Moll, I’m so sorry, cheerleaders aren’t anywhere as cool as professional dance athletes.”
Lace’s long narrow snout appeared between the two seats, she butted her head against the girls’ legs and made what sounded suspiciously like a whine. Gert was horrified, “MOLLY, you’re not going to believe what I did to poor Lacey!!!!!!” She anxiously squinted toward the GPS unit.
“Can you see how far we have left before we get there? I was supposed to let Lace out to use the bushes at the rest stop, but then you came and that Friday hologram came and now she’s threatening to pee all over Paloma. Molly, do you remember how hard it is to get the smell of dinopee out of things. She started scanning for a place to pull off.
“Ewww, Lace, you better hold it, if you ruin this pink beauty there will be no more Chinese for you.” Molly said, rapidly googling for a forest preserve. “Get off at Stamford, there should be some woods there.”
“Paloma?” She asked, registering the van’s name. “Did I miss a lecture on an international feminist world-saving icon?”
“Good call, Molls,” as she allowed the speedometer to inch four miles over the speed limit, her anxiety was rising incrementally, when Molly’s words distracted her. A giant grin spread over her face as she turned on the stereo, “I can’t believe this is happening. She’s named after Paloma Mami Gert began to sing along, “No te enamores de mí, no, no, no, No te enamores de mí, no, no, no...Tu corazón puedo partir, no no no"
[*Don't fall in love with me
No, no, no
Don't fall in love with me
No, no, no
Your heart can go
No, no, no
Don't fall in love with me, no
No, no, no]
She quickly found a side road that looked wooded enough to be safe and pulled off onto it, “Okay, Lacey, hurry up and no chasing mammals today!”
“Are you kidding, Gert? You let me name your van? That is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!”
She leaned back in her seat as they waited for Old Lace to do her business. This whole alternate reality thing was turning out to be pretty okay so far. “You know, New York is going to do wonders for my street vigilante game. Everything is too far apart in LA.”
“Of course, I let you name the van. You’re only the coolest sister anyone could ever wish for.” Gert hollered, “LACE C’MON”
As the theropod climbed in through the side door, Gert gave Molly a worried look, “Molly, I know you’re the toughest badass, ever, but do you think maybe you could hold off on your street vigilante gig,” not wanting to discourage her sister, Gert said hurriedly, “Just for a few days, you know until we know if anything else is different in this timeline.”
“I guess I can,” Molly resisted the urge to cross her fingers behind her back like she would have a few years ago. Gert was right, she needed to do some recon first anyway. Get the lay of the land. Maybe find a team-up or two. “This is going to be so cool.”