Missing in time // {UNDER EDITING BEFORE CONTINUATION}//

Chapter 12

Small blue lights turn on through out the machine. Tess, her face blue from the glow of the lights, stays completely still. A whirring noise starts up, and the inside of the machine starts to spin. It spins faster and faster until it's just a silver blur stripped with electric blue. Suddenly, the machine stops its violent spinning, and a handful of small red lights flicker on and off. A holographic image pops up, displaying a list of numbers, what looks like a calendar in the bottom left corner, and a small photo of a house.

"What does that mean?" Jessie says. 

"Let's check the instructions." I say, reaching for the bag. I tip the bag upside down, nothing falls out. 

"They must have fallen out when Tess opened the bag." I say. I get down on my hands and knees to search under both sofas and the coffee table. Nothing. Nothing in between the couch cushions. Nothing stuck in the bottom of the bag. Nothing in the large, dusty, dark pink curtains. Nothing anywhere. There is nothing more, no instructions, nothing explaining anything. 

"There's nothing here." I say, defeated. I take the machine from Tess and place it on the table. I sit down next to Tess while Andrea circles table like a hawk. 

"If this really is a time machine, then those must be dates or something." Andrea says, pointing at the numbers on the right side of the hologram.  Andrea reaches out to touch the numbers, and they move. She scrolls through the list until she reaches the very bottom. 3267 is the highest it goes. The lowest number is 1893.

"Ooh, I bet they are the years you can travel to." Tess says, grabbing the machine again to get a closer look. My pocket starts vibrating suddenly, I pull my phone out. My mom is calling me. I accept the call, and put the phone to my ear, walking over to the window while I talk.

"Hello?" I say.

"Kat? Where are you?" 

"I'm...uh..." for some reason I feel like it would be a bad idea to tell her we're at the lake house, "I'm at..." I turn around and my eyes land on Andrea, "...Andrea's house."

"Why are you at Andrea's house?" my mom asks.

"We have a, uh, science project due on Thursday , and we were working on it together." I say.

"Okay, well I'm coming over there now. You have soccer practice at eleven remember?"

"Yeah, right, sure." I say quickly, before hanging up. I turn around and dash back to my friends.

"Guys, we're going to Andrea's house now. Like, right now." I say.

"Why?" Jessie asks. 

"Because I may or may not have just told my mom that we were working on a science project there." I say, apologetic.

"Okay, fine. We can go to my house." Andrea says.

"But I wanna find out more about the time machine!" Tess complains as we all stand up and head for the back door.

"Tess, come on. " Jessie demands, gesturing for Tess to get up and move.

"But-"

"No buts, we're leaving." Andrea opens the back door and steps out. I'm about to follow when there's a flash of blue light. I whirl around in time to see Tess disappear.