Chapter Text
“Goooood morning, future-campers!”
Eda kicked open and bursted through the garage’s side door, books, blueprints, and various scraps of loose paper haphazardly piled atop each other and cradled in her arms. The force of her entrance shook the walls, rattling everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Luz and Amity both awake with a jolt, going from laying parallel to the floor to being completely sat up before Eda could even put her foot down to take the first step through the doorway.
“Some things never change…” Luz muttered to no one in particular.
“Come on, now! Up! Up!” As Eda spoke, she set her various reading materials on a table and sorted them into several piles. “Especially you, Green! We’ll need some of your Blight magic to get this bad girl ready to go for Friday!”
Turning her attention to the ever present elephant in the room, Eda grabbed hold of a large lever attached to the wall and pulled it down, illuminating the DeLorean. The light reflected off its stainless steel shell and directly into the girls’ eyes, bringing more misery to their rude awakening. As they went about their impromptu morning routine, Eda continued preparing her workplace and tools, not unlike a doctor before surgery.
“Why is your hair green, by the way?” Eda asked as she wheeled over a small television she had bolted to a rolling bar cart, the camera still wired directly in. “Another symptom of the atomic wars? Spliced genomes? A freak genetic mutation?”
“Hair dye,” Amity grumbled, halfway through putting on the same before-its-time outfit she only changed out of once in the past three days.
“Fascinating. Every two in three people in 1985 has dyed hair…”
“That’s way too small of a sample size,” Amity said quietly, clearly not in the mood to take the conversation any further.
“Who’s the third person?” Luz asked. She had barely gotten out of her bed in the time it took for Amity to get up and get fully dressed.
“Me, of course!” Eda said, switching the TV on. Her future self fizzled into existence on the screen, eerily standing in an almost identical cocked hip pose as her doppelganger. “There’s no way my hair gets that white at fifty-something. Clearly it must be some kind of future-trend.”
“I-” Luz started, but didn’t have the heart to continue that thought. “Sure, Eda.”
“You’ve done it again, Dr. Clawthorne.” Eda smirked and mimed shaking her own hand through the screen. “Now let’s see if my dashing future self was smart enough to drop any more hints about how this baby works.
Struggling at first, Eda eventually found the camera’s fast forward button and started skimming through the footage. She came to a stop when the older Eda was center frame, standing next in front of the DeLorean’s driver side door.
“-oric journey through time to the date October 26th, 2005. I’ll return right here, to the Twin Pines Mall on October 26th, 1985.” Future-Eda sprang to life, voice scratchy and jumbled by the incompatibility of technology’s ages. “From your perspective, it will look like I was gone for ten minutes, but for me it may be weeks, months, perhaps years.”
“Only twenty years? Bah!” the younger Eda scoffed. “What did the 60s and 70s do to me to make me lose my spine? I should be going a hundred years into the future! At least!”
Luz couldn’t hold back a soft giggle escaping her throat. The thought of two Edas, old and young, trading metaphorical jabs at each other was something she would pay good money to see. Were the circumstances much, much different, she may have even started plotting a way to make it happen while avoiding any pesky timeline nonsense.
In the single second Luz gave herself to consider something other than their ill fated journey, a sudden shiver ran down her spine.
She remembered what came after these words.
“Seriously, Luz, I don’t know where I’d be if not for your completely unchecked optimism. And Amity, thanks for keeping me in line with some of my more.. unruly design choices ov-”
Eda cut herself off by fast forwarding the tape once more. “Ew, boring sentimental stuff. Less chatter, more action!”
“Eda, I wouldn’t-” Amity tried as she began to stand.
“No!” Luz sprang forward, grabbing the camera away from Eda.
She fumbled with the buttons, trying to hit STOP but landing on PLAY first.
“-says otherwise. Michaels, Lloyd, cuff her.”
She couldn’t hear it happen again.
“A gun! She’s got a gun!”
She couldn’t hear it happen again.
“What? No I-”
In the nick of time, she found the right button, and the video froze. The still image of asphalt that engulfed the frame was so blurry it may as well have been television static.
The garage was silent. Luz slowly backed away from the TV, carefully widening the distance between herself and Eda. Amity was stuck frozen halfway between sitting and standing, ultimately deciding to sit back down after several moments. Eda similarly didn’t dare move at first. Her eyes were transfixed on the camera, like it was hypnotizing her.
“Eda…” Luz began after the quiet had become all but suffocating. “There’s something about that night that we-”
“No!” Eda interrupted, crossing the room as fast as she could. “Don’t tell me! No man should know too much about their own destiny!”
Luz followed close behind. “But you don’t understand, Eda! The-”
“Yes, Luz! Yes I do!” Eda continued to widen the gap between them, pressing or turning seemingly random buttons and knobs as she did so and eventually completing a whole circle around the DeLorean. “If I know too much about my own future, I would be endangering my own existence!”
“Ed-!”
“Luz!” Amity’s voice rang out, causing the other two to come to a screeching halt.
Amity silently beckoned Luz to come to her side, which now was several feet away from where she and Eda had ended up. Luz begrudgingly complied, kneeling down to match Amity’s sitting height when she signalled to do so.
“She’s right,” Amity said quietly, barely above a whisper.
“But Phi-!”
“Shhh!” Amity put her hand over Luz’s mouth to quiet her. “Adding one or two conversations to someone’s life probably isn’t a huge deal. Telling someone exactly when, where, and how they die is completely different.”
Luz lightly grasped Amity’s hand and lowered it, letting the touch linger for an extra moment before letting go. She glanced over to Eda, who was very purposefully turned away from the couple, absorbed in her own world as she constructed something on the workbench.
“I don’t want her to die.” Luz scarcely audible to herself.
Amity sighed and shook her head. “Me neither, Luz. But…”
“I know. The timeline.”
Amity nodded.
Luz’s gaze wandered to the TV, frozen on the image of the asphalt her friend died on. Just a few days ago, she watched Eda finally prove all of the time, strife, and sacrifice she had been through was worth it. She watched Eda prove time travel to be possible. She watched Eda prove herself.
And minutes after, she watched Eda die.
She was standing in the room with a dead woman.
“Hey, Eda?” Luz called.
Eda stopped whatever work she was doing and looked over her shoulder towards Luz.
“Would it be safe to go outside for a bit? I… need some fresh air.”
“Well…” Eda said, turning around and leaning against the workbench. “As long as no one sees you and you stay away from the fence. And I mean it. Do not let anyone see you.”
The familiar well-mannered scolding only enforced Luz’s need to get out as soon as possible.
“Can do,” Luz replied quickly, making a beeline for the door.
She didn’t so much as glance over her shoulder as she slammed the door behind her. The crisp fall air provided an immediate relief from the suffocatingly stuffy garage. A long, relieved sigh escaped Luz as began walking away from the garage.
It was so odd stepping out of the garage and onto grass rather than a Burger King parking lot. She didn’t exactly miss the lifeless concrete that would overtake the area one day, but if nothing else, it was familiar. She had grown up her whole life with the entire area memorized, every shortcut, every hideaway, every nook and cranny that she could sneak off into alone or with friends or with Amity. Seeing Gravesfield so small and open and full of life was just unnerving.
Luz chuckled. It wasn’t just Gravesfield that was suddenly “full of life”.
Her face dropped and she paused. Any time the image of the older Eda or, god forbid, her father popped into her head, a rush of emotions unlike anything she had ever experienced coursed through her entire body. She had gone through the experience of watching them die, and in her father’s case had time to fully process the loss with her mother right by her side and now…
“Damn it,” she muttered to no one as she continued on. “Grieving is so much harder when they’re not dead.”
She mumbled a string of curses and unintelligible noises that barely counted as words. She didn’t care if it didn’t make sense, she just needed to vocalize something so her brain could focus on anything but the living dead.
“Carrie!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the distance.
Luz stopped in her tracks. She didn’t dare look up. A very brief glance so her side confirmed that she had mindlessly wandered into the path of the gate, right into the sightline of whoever would happen to be walking on the sidewalk across the street.
“Carrie! Over here! It’s me! Manny! From school!”
Every added word was another heavy feeling of dread stacking atop each other, threatening to fall at the smallest whisper. Every nerve in Luz’s body was screaming at her to just walk away and pretend she couldn’t hear him.
The bones in her neck grinded against each other as she tilted her head in Manny’s direction.
There, across the street, was Manny, dressed in an awkward tweed jacket and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Much to Luz’s horror, he wasn’t alone, as Camila stood by his side, looking at Luz with something unreadable in her eye. Luz had spent her whole life memorizing her mother’s various faces and emotional tells, but she had never seen this one before.
“Manny! Heeeey!” she drew out, forcing a small wave to make everything seem somewhat natural.
“Camila, this is Carrie! She’s the girl from the closet I was talking about,” Manny excitedly nudged Camila’s shoulder. She didn’t budge. “Carrie, this is Camila! She’s my girlfriend!”
Camila’s eyes grew three times as wide. That was an expression Luz could recognize. Manny just let slip a secret -- or at least something Camila wanted to keep hush-hush.
“Cool!” Luz replied, not sure of what else to say.
Manny nodded, smiling unfazed, and took a step closer to the street. “We’re heading to school right now! Wanna come with us?”
Somehow, Camila’s eyes grew even more in size to the point that Luz, even from across the street, could swear she could see them coming out of their sockets.
“Manny!” Camila hid his name between fake coughs.
Manny broke from his unending optimistic trance and turned to Camila.
“We always walk to school together. Alone,” Camila said.
Manny’s expression shifted to one of pleading. “She’s a new friend, amor. Just this once?”
“I’m actually not going today.” A wave of relief washed over Luz when she realized her out. “I’m pretty sick.”
To sell the illusion, she faked a cough not dissimilar to her mother’s. Camila seemed to reluctantly settle with Luz’s excuse, but Manny wasn’t satisfied.
“I couldn’t even convince you to come with… this?”
Manny took his backpack off, unzipped it, and dug through its content before pulling out a thick hardback book. He took another step closer to the street -- the toes of his shoes hanging off the sidewalk -- and held the book out in front of him and over his head. The sun was at the perfect angle to catch the sparkly golden lettering which adorned Manny’s first edition printing of The Good Witch Azura: Book One. The very same copy which Luz kept on her bookshelf back home (though luckily not the one she lended Eda).
Then, in a sudden blur, it was gone, and Manny was flat on the ground at Camila’s feet. What Luz initially believed to be a hyper-localized tornado was in fact a jet black convertible racing down the road.
The car was filled with familiar faces, though Luz couldn’t quite place how she knew them. Two teenage girls, around the same age if not older than her, sat in the back, one of them waving Manny’s book in the air like a trophy. A third sat in the passenger seat, pumping her fist in the air and gesturing for the driver to speed up. Once the driver herself looked back to witness the aftermath and the stunned victims, Luz realized exactly why those faces looked familiar.
Odalia was at the wheel, driving the same cronies from the bar.
A rage built up in Luz’s chest, almost immediately making itself known as she ran to the Clawthorne Estate’s gate, clambered over it, and broke into a sprint down the street. Luz wasn’t entirely sure where the desire for justice came from in that specific moment, but it being rooted in her DNA was confirmed for her as Camila came up alongside her, seemingly sharing in the hatred of Odalia’s petty scheme. Though the initial burst of adrenaline carried them far, they both ended up winded after an unbroken sprint of about two blocks.
“Puta…” Camila said under her breath.
“Guys it’s…” Manny coughed, throat clearly dry from trying to catch up to the girls. “It’s fine. I have a paperback copy at home.”
“Are you kidding me? That was a first edition! It’s priceless!” Luz said, exacerbated.
“I got it for four dollars.”
“I- it…” Luz shook her head, refusing to dig herself into a deeper hole. “It’s your book! You should have it!”
“We have short little legs. They have a car,” Camila said.
Luz groaned. Perhaps it wasn’t that big of a deal, perhaps Manny would simply save up a little and buy a new copy, but it wouldn’t be the copy to Luz. Even if she didn’t spend more than a moment thinking about it consciously, the back of her mind knew she had to recover that book. Perhaps this line of thinking was where the rage came from. Perhaps that’s why as the car got smaller and smaller as it sped away, she felt a hole opening in her chest.
Then, she heard a very familiar sound. Small wheels on concrete.
She turned just in time to see two young girls, no older than ten, rounding a nearby corner. They rode on rickety wooden scooters, made from hand out of what looked like wooden crates and roller skate wheels. For how shoddy they appeared, they seemed to hold together well as the girls pumped their feet against the sidewalk to accelerate.
Just beyond them, Luz spied an approaching truck cruising down the road. Seeing the opportunity, she ran towards the girls, waving for them to stop.
“Hey! Kid, kid! Stop!” she shouted.
The girls stopped and looked at Luz, confused.
“Sorry about this,” Luz said and she took the older looking one off her scooter.
The girl shouted in protest, but Luz had to ignore her pleas if she wanted even a chance of catching up to Odalia. Luz planted one foot on the scooter, grabbed the rough wooden handles, and yanked upwards as hard as she could. With a loud crack, the steering column immediately came off, leaving only the deck once Luz tossed the column to the side.
She pivoted her foot so it was in line with the direction the deck was pointing, pushed off the ground with her other foot, and took off down the road on the makeshift skateboard. Every couple of seconds, she looked over her shoulder, watching the distant truck inch closer and closer until it was about to pass her. It was moving slowly enough that Luz was able to grab onto the edge of the truck’s bright cyan bed and pull herself up to the passenger window.
She didn’t even have to knock on the window to get the driver’s attention. He was already staring at her, dumbfounded by her boldness.
“That convertible! The Ford!” Luz yelled to the driver, pointing ahead.
The driver looked ahead, nodded, and then back at Luz.
“I’ll give you five bucks if you chase ‘em down!” she shouted.
The driver took a moment to consider, shrugged, and put the pedal to the metal. Luz let herself fall back slightly, catching herself on the truck’s tailgate and lowering herself until her head was just under the tailgate’s rim. She could feel every bump in the road beneath her feet, every small pebble which flung out from under her board’s wheels and every microadjustment the all too kind driver made with the steering wheel. Her lower center of gravity made it a bit easier to keep her balance, but she could feel it beginning to give way.
Then, the side of the convertible appeared from behind the right side of the truck. Luz rose, watching the other car slowly creep past as the truck gained more and more ground. No one in the convertible had noticed her yet, and the bully who had stolen Manny’s book was still waving it around in celebration.
Luz sprang forward, extending herself as far as she physically could to snatch the book out of the bully’s hands. As she recoiled and once again found her balance on the board, the faces of mocking celebration in the convertible were replaced with confusion, and then with anger. The three goons looked almost mindless in their rage, yelling random nonsense that Luz figured was jumbled up slang. Odalia’s face, on the other hand, was cold, calculating. If 1955 Odalia was anything like 1985 Odalia, this is where she was at her most dangerous. She was thinking.
So Luz didn’t give her time to think. As her truck pulled in front of Odalia’s convertible, Luz stuck a leg behind her and kicked out one of Odalia’s headlights. Almost instantly, the careful facade dropped from Odalia’s face, quickly replaced by red hot anger.
The convertible sped up, nipping at Luz’s heels.
“Oh shit!” Luz yelled. She banged a fist on the side of the truck to get the driver’s attention. “Right! Go right! Now, now, now!”
The truck took the first right with no regard for the stop sign in its way. The sharp turn almost threw Luz off the back, but she was just barely able to keep herself on her board. As she gently tossed the book into the truck’s bed, she glanced back to watch the convertible miss the turn, and breathed a sigh of relief.
They had entered the town square, which was bustling with early morning activity. Surely, Luz figured, Odalia wouldn’t try anything in front of so many people.
Unfortunately, it seemed Odalia only gained her modicum of self control after thirty years of aging, as the convertible sped out of a side road and into the square, nearly hitting another car in the process. In a panic, Luz bailed on the loyal truck, grabbing hold of a much older truck as it pulled past Luz and turned the corner onto 2nd Street, heading towards the courthouse.
The convertible literally cut corners, barrelling through the bushes and grass of the square’s park and nearly hitting several pedestrians just to circumvent a single stoplight. Soon, the convertible was upon her once again, nudging just slightly into her leg.
Luz pulled herself to the side of the truck, trying to squat as low as possible both to lower her center of gravity and to avoid the full cans of soda and glass bottles Odalia’s posse started throwing at her. The new truck didn’t allow her as solid of a hold as the first, causing Luz to waver much more. Her gaze lowered to the ground as she attempted to position her feet in a more precise manner, but a click sound made her eyes shoot up.
Someone parked on the side of the road had opened their door and it was right in front of her and it was approaching fast. Luz shrieked in surprise, pushing herself off the truck and onto the sidewalk. Yet another sharp turn finally did her in, as she collided with the first step of the courthouse and flew off her board, crashing into some poor busybody carrying his weight’s worth in paperwork. Time slowed as Luz’s body did a full front flip over the unfortunate bystander before she landed flat on her back. For the brief second she was down, she stared at the bright blue sky, keenly aware of the numbing feeling that was spreading throughout her body.
The numbness was almost immediately replaced with a sharp, stabbing pain when she heard Odalia skidding around the corner. Realizing she couldn’t spare any more time, she hoisted herself up, grabbed her board, threw it in front of her, and jumped on, yelling back a timid “Sorry!” to the bystander as she sped away.
Before she could turn again to face forward, Odalia had already closed the gap between them, thrusting the front of her right into Luz’s stomach. If Luz had been a millisecond slower to put her arms out in front of her to catch the car, she surely would have pancaked across the car’s hood.
Yet another sharp right turn threatened Luz’s stability, only made worse by the posse’s constant pelting of whatever loose object they could find. They had long run out of soda bottles and were resorting to balled up scraps of paper.
Luz risked a glance behind her to ensure she wasn’t about to be rammed into a wall when she spied her possible ticket out of this mess -- and, inversely, Odalia’s ticket into an even bigger one. Just up the street was a group of men dressed head to toe in tan outfits, wielding shovels, hoes, and other gardening tools.
Landscapers.
Next to them, and directly in the path of the speeding bullet of a car, was their truck. One of the landscapers was in the process of removing the tarp from its large wooden trailer, revealing a large pile of excavated earth.
A plan was forming.
Luz had to hide her smile as she turned back to the car’s occupants. Just as she suspected, all eyes were on her. After dodging one last crumpled up paper, Luz leaped from her skateboard and hoisted herself onto the hood of the car as the board went under it. Before the occupants could even react, Luz had already jumped over the windshield, into the front seat, and clambered through the small sea of bullies.
Odalia kept her hands on the wheel but never took her eyes off Luz. The girl in the passenger seat threw her hands over her head as a shield. One of the backseaters retreated to the far edge of the seat and pushed herself against the door. The other one tried to grab Luz by the ankle, but by the time her hand closed into a fist, Luz was already sliding down the truck.
Through either magnificent timing or sheer luck (Luz chose to believe the former), the skateboard appeared out from under the car the second before her feet touched the ground, catching her in her descent. She felt her weight quake in the moment after her feet connected with the board and let its momentum carry her away.
Once again she looked back, and once again she was met with the hateful gaze of a car full of the personifications of spite. The girl in the passenger seat was the only one smart enough to turn her eyes back to the road.
“Odalia!” she cried!
Odalia whipped her head around. Luz couldn’t see her face, but imagined the wide-eyed expression of fear that accompanied the loud “SHIIIIT!” that rang throughout the town square. Odalia tried to turn, but could only prevent her car from hitting the landscapers’ truck head-on. Instead, her car swung ninety degrees to the left, slamming the doors right into the back of the truck.
The force of the car was enough to cause the dirt pile to collapse like a landslide. It poured out of the truck and slid directly into Odalia’s car, filling it like water in a pool. The occupants of the car had all ducked and covered, allowing the dirt to almost completely engulf them.
She made a sharp u-turn, beelining for where she spied Manny and Camila arriving on the scene and pushing through the crowd of onlookers for a better view. The closer Luz got to Odalia’s shallow grave, the more she felt the urge to pluck off her nose and throw it away as the foulest stench emanated through the air. She turned to look at the scene, skipping over Odalia and her posse trying to dig themselves out, and read the sign on the side of the landscaping truck.
R. MacFarlane Manure Hauling
Luz had to stifle a laugh.
As she rolled down the street, the cyan truck pulled up alongside her and matched her speed. The driver rolled down his window and waved to get her attention. He held out his hand, expecting that payment she promised him earlier.
“Oh, right, right,” Luz said as she dug through her pockets, eventually scarfing up four one dollar bills and four dimes.
“Thanks, missy. Hang onto those wheels,” the driver said, pointing down to Luz’s makeshift skateboard before driving off.
As the truck passed her, Luz quickly reached into the truck’s bed and nabbed Manny’s copy of Azura that she stored there earlier. She let out a relieved sigh as she looked it over to find it hadn’t been so much as scratched in all of the commotion. Just before she could regain her composure, she had rolled right up to Manny and Camila.
“Hey guys!” Luz huffed, nearly out of breath but trying her best to hide it. “Book! Got it!”
She held the Azura book in the air triumphantly. The expression that Manny gave her could only be described as pure, unfiltered joy as he plucked the book from her hand and held it to his chest.
“Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!” Manny exclaimed, emphasizing each “thank you” with a small jump. “You have no idea how much this means to me!”
Manny pulled Luz into a tight hug, nearly lifting her off the ground with the sheer force he put into squeezing her. Luz was stunned frozen. Like everything about the younger visage of her father, the hug felt warm, familiar. But somewhere deep down, Luz knew it was wrong. She hadn’t broken the timeline yet, but how much further could she stretch it before everything caved in?
But in that moment, Luz didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, she just saved the future with a book and a skateboard. Though after spying the barely hidden anger in Camila’s scrunched up face, Luz pulled herself away from Manny’s grasp with an awkward grin.
“Really it’s no problem,” Luz said, in an attempt to placate her mother.
“Miss! Miss!”
They turned to see a child -- the same girl whose homemade scooter Luz stole and broke -- running towards them.
“Oh! Right, uh…” Luz looked at the broken board and extended it towards the girl. “Sorry, kid.”
“Why’re you sorry? You made it real nifty, miss!”
The girl’s friend ran up beside her as the girl attempted to get on the board and skate away smoothly as Luz did just a few minutes ago. “I want a turn! I want a turn!” her friend pleaded as they both ran off.
“Such a grand feat for someone so sick,” Camila said, side-eying Luz.
Feeling her time was up, Luz took the sly comment as her out. “Oh yeah, I-” she interrupted herself with as real a cough as she could muster. “Man that really took it out of me. I should head back to my aunt’s!”
Camila raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were a foreign exchange student.”
Luz tried to ignore what was probably a very obvious eye twitch. “Yep! I exchange places with my uh… cousin. Okay goodbye see you soon!”
Without another word, Luz bounded off back to Eda’s.
The second Luz was out of earshot, Manny spoke up. “Isn’t she neat? I’ve never met anyone who likes Azura as much as I do!”
“She seems like trouble,” Camila said dismissively.
“Well, so did you.”
Camila scoffed playfully and rolled her eyes. “You’re the worst.”
“Ha! I knew that would get you to crack!”
“Oh, hush. Let’s split before we’re late. Again.”
“We had a good excuse that time.”
She lightly hit his shoulder with an open palm. “I said hush!”