​     10K.

     "Holy shit," Skip said. "You're saying that little boy has the power to send us eight thousand years into our own future?"

     "The question for me is, why here? Why now? This doesn't feel random to me at all."

     "What's he all about, anyway?"

​     "You're the one who lived with him. You tell me."

     "For a year I did, but...you know...he was never really a kid. It was like he was an old man in a baby's body in a way, and...and he never talked...but he never really spooked me because I knew he loved me and liked to hang with me and my family but...I don't know."

     "I hope one day to spend more time with that boy."

     "And how are we..." The last half of that sentence was supposed to be, "going to get home?" but he stopped when he realized that probably wasn't going to happen.

     What, he was never going to see Kathy, Alison, his ​mother, ever again?

     Skip went from being seventeen to being seven for a full ten minutes after that. He sobbed like a baby needing his mommy until the tears rolled down his neck and thick tendrils of snot dangled from the bottom of his chin.

     Then he needed a tissue to wash his face off, and where was he going to get one of those? He searched his pockets. He wore the same clothes he'd put on that morning in Seatrailia a bunch of hours and eight thousand years before. He'd hoped he'd carried a few tissues with him through time, but, no. He looked on the ground all around him. He saw nothing that looked even vaguely like either paper or tissue. He'd have to use his sleeve. Gross, but, hell, look where he was at?

     His next thought was, hey, I'm starting to get a little hungry. Where am I supposed to get my next meal?

     "We'll make food our first priority," Claudia said as if he'd spoken his thoughts out loud. 

     "Can you read my mind?"

     "I can read your body language. That's better."

     Skip's voice quavered as he said, "I-I'm scared, Claudia."

     "No, you're petrified. Body language. Like I just said."

CONTINUE