Series Wednesday: Timetopia Page 4

                Rev hides her teeth. “I’m sorry, our mother is waiting for us at home.” She says it so innocently, I was shocked by her tone.  He smiled at us and I take a breath of relief. “I don’t think so. Like I said you’re going to need to come with me.” Rev smiles as he steps in front of us. “Tell Richard he can shove it.”  I look over at her. Who is Richard? Then two wellness checkers grabbed us from behind. I didn’t even see them come up. Rev still has a huge smile on her face. She leans forward and throws her head into the wellness checker’s face. He lets her go and she turns and laughs. “Come on boys I haven’t had a good fight in a long time.”  Rev slides her leg back and squats just slightly as she reaches in her back pack and pulls out two knives- one for each hand. The wellness checkers pull out a long black stick with a metal tip. He laughs as he turns the tip on and sparks start to come out of it. Rev laughs loudly. “Oh, look who has a taser.” Everyone stops and looks at her, so lost by the word taser. She looks at me, winks, and looks down. My dad used to do the same thing to signal me to duck, when he would play around with my mom and throw veggies at her. So I ducked the same way, and as I do Rev throws a knife right in the chest of the guy holding me. He let me go and went down. I didn’t want to look back, but the other wellness checkers grabbed Rev again. She is shifting her body back and forth, struggling with one of them. He pulls her long black hair off and there it is, her red hair. Bright red like a fire. I have never seen hair that bright before. The two wellness checkers stop all of a sudden and I look down to see a red puddle underneath me. Now I’m definitely not going to look back. Rev is swinging her knife back and forth at the wellness checkers. They have their sticks out, but I notice that no one is paying attention to me. That’s when I remember the control room. If all three wellness checkers are out, the room is empty. So I run to the back and the door is open. Okay I can do this, I tell myself. If I set off the alarm, the metal mesh will drop in front of the doors until the mangers come. I start to put in the codes to give me just enough time to grab Rev. I try to enter the codes as fast as I can. I hear the first alarm go off which means I have 2 mins to get to Rev and get out. I start running to her when I see one of the wellness checker sticking her with the metal part of the stick. She starts screaming and I see the wellness checker with the knife sticking out of his head, his stick on the floor. So I run and grab it. I see the knob to turn it on and I rush to the guy hitting Rev and I smack him in the back of the head and shock him. As he goes down I grab Rev and we run. We barely make it out before the metal hits the floor. We run straight to the van.

                Rev is speeding away and the wellness center fades into the distance. I can finally catch my breath. I lay my head back on the seat and that’s when my mind starts racing. “How did my dad know your name?? Do you know him??” I ask Rev as calmly as I can. “Know him? How well does anyone really know somebody?” That’s her response. I’m not sure why but it makes me so mad. I grab the wheel and swerve the van. She brakes and we are now pulled over. I’m not sure why I did that. Now we are just sitting here. “We are never going to make it to your grandmothers this way.” Rev says as she starts to pull back onto the road. “I just want to know something, anything.” I feel so frustrated but oddly not alone. “Yes I know your dad, but not well. I have met him a few times here and there.” I feel better that she has at least told me something. I think about all the questions I have for her. Wait we are still on the way to my grandmother’s house. I can’t go there knowing that my mom is at the Questions hall. “We need to get my mom from the Questions hall.” Rev looks over at me just as confused as I do whenever she talks about things I’ve never heard of. “The Questions hall??”  I’m not sure what she is asking. “Yes the Questions hall, where they are holding my mom.” Rev sighs. “I get that, what is the Questions hall? Is it like jail?” How does she not know what the questions hall is? “You said you’re from the Bronx. What part of Timetopia is that?”  She laughs. “It’s not, so I have no idea what the Questions hall is.” I sit there dumbfounded, Timetopia is all the land so how is she not from it? “So are you going to tell me what the Questions hall is? Or just sit there and look out the window?” Rev says. There are so many things I want to ask, but first things first. “The Questions hall is where people go to ask the hard questions. It holds all the answers and where the Question masters do the interrogating, but they will do anything to get the answers they seek.” Rev’s face goes blank. “So they’re going to torture your mom...” She says in a low voice. “What is torture?” I need to know what this word means. “It is where they hurt her until she tells them what they want to know.” I stop breathing. I never really thought about how they got their answers before. “We need to save her!” Rev pulls over. “We can’t.” She puts her head down as she says this. “Fine. I’ll go alone.” I get out of the van. Rev gets out behind me. “Stop walking. I’ll help you. But you better have one hell of a plan.” I turn back at her and smile. I don’t have a plan, but she doesn’t need to know that.