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without thinking, I bend down to help my heels in.
    R-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-P!
    Someone is laughing. Someone else is here. My head whips up to see a guy and a girl about my age, arm in arm, standing in front of a brownstone several yards away. The guy is average height but very thin, like a marathon runner, with sandy hair and a relaxed face. The girl is miniature sized. If her driver’s license says she’s five feet tall, it’s a lie. Both avert their gaze and turn onto the next street. Something feels off.
    I grab my pants, jacket, and shirt and shove them into the knapsack, then toss the skeleton key on top. In one quick movement, I tie my navy-and-crimson Peel tie around my waist. It does nothing to hide the fact that there’s a huge tear along the side seam. My charm bracelet slides down on my wrist until it’s exposed. It’s very out of place for wherever— whenever— I am, so I fiddle with the clasp; but it sticks and it won’t budge and that couple is getting away. I don’t know why, but I need to follow them. So I tuck the bracelet under my sleeve, grab the knapsack, and run.
    The couple is almost to the end of the street, back onto Beacon Street. I chase after them, but as soon as I make it to the street, I’ve lost them. I scan left and right, but they’re nowhere to be seen. The cops are still there, one of them holding the arm of the kid who tried to rob me. He’s begging and pleading, and . . . whatever. Punk. You deserve it. I turn my head toward the Public Garden.
    Forget the couple for now. I need to figure out where I am.
    When I am.
    I draw in my breath. Can it be possible? Could I really have traveled back in time? What was that fancy term Alpha used? Something Augmentation?
    I jump back as a horse-drawn cart barrels down Charles Street, then fall in line next to a man with a thin mustache wearing a shopkeeper’s apron and cross into the Garden. Every year the swan boat drivers would talk about the history of the boats and when they first started, and I can’t remember what they said. Why hadn’t I paid better attention all those years? And the dome! In middle school we’d taken an American history class field trip to Boston and toured the state house, and I know they told us when the dome had been gilded, but I can’t remember that either.
    I close my eyes and breathe. I imagine my Practical Studies professor’s voice in my head, telling me to slow down and focus and let the answer come to me. But then I hear the clomp-clomp-clomp of another horse and the dress starts itching and I sway to the side as a high-pitched wail brought on by extreme sleep deprivation erupts in my eardrums, and I can’t do it. I can’t focus. I open my eyes.
    I hate myself in this moment. I wish I could just whip out my phone, open the browser, and look it up.
    Well, why can’t I, exactly? Maybe I’m in some sort of weird universe where I have a network connection.
    It sounds weak even as I think it, but still I dig around in the knapsack until I find the back pocket of my pants. My fingers tighten around the phone, and I pull it out, trying to be as inconspicuous as I can. I look down to unlock it and . . . nothing. The screen is dark. I hit the power button, but nothing happens. It’s fried.
    There’s laughing again. My head whips up, and the same couple I saw before, standing on the bridge. The guy bites his lip and turns his head when he sees me, but his head bobs as if he’s chuckling. But not the girl. She looks at me with eyes that spit fire before she raises a bony hand and tucks a stray white-blond hair behind her ear.
    And then I see it. Because even though that girl is dressed in a long, green-striped gown with a corseted waist and several pickups on the skirt, and even though her hair is half pinned up and tucked underneath a flat hat that matches the dress, that bitch is wearing a sparkly pink plastic running watch.
    This couple reports to Alpha, I’m sure of it.