The After Times

By Christine Potter

Spring, 2020: High school senior Gracie Ingraham hasn’t time traveled in ages. It’s crazy enough living through the scary first months of the Covid pandemic, going to school on Zoom, and being quarantined with your best friend Zoey—and your ex-boyfriend Dylan.

But suppose you start slipping into the past again in the middle of all that? Gracie’s mom and brother might be under the power of a demonic glass artist from the late 1980’s. And Dylan’s obviously still in love with Grace.

Cue the mysterious fires, the haunted stained glass, a pair of dangerous blue jeans—and a tornado! It’ll take the whole gang from The Bean Books to figure out if time travel means breaking quarantine—and to sort out the devils from the saints!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Teen
• Release date: Aug 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780369506702

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Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2022 Christine Potter

ISBN: 978-0-3695-0670-2

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Melissa Hosack

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE AFTER TIMES

The Bean Books, 5

Christine Potter

Copyright © 2022

Chapter One

Spring, 2020

Let’s start with Zoey’s hair. It’s gray now. Not from age or anything; she just came back from Manhattan like that the day after her mom’s big goodbye party at the TV station.

She’d ditched two whole days of classes at Fredonia to go to the party, but Zoey Jacobs ditching class isn’t like anyone else ditching class. She does a pre-ditch prep and a post-ditch makeup, and probably ends up working harder than she would have if she’d actually showed up. Zoey’s also crazy glamorous, but a nerd is a nerd is a nerd. I ought to know. I’m of the same tribe: Smart girl. Good kid. Nerd.

Too bad the party was a bust. Rachel Maddow was supposed to come and play bartender. Zoey was all excited about that because she’d barely even met her, despite her mom’s job. She was even bragging about snagging one of Rachel’s famous cocktails. I can pull up her text if you want to see it, written out with the grammar and spelling right, just like all of Zoey’s texts.

Zoey: Rachel will be delightfully vague about the twenty-one thing. I just know it.

But then something even more hellacious than usual happened in DC at the very last minute. Because of course it did. Because 2020. And the year’s not even half over.

News broke and Rachel had to go fix it, dear! That’s what Zoey’s mom said. Problem was Zoey’s mom had to go fix it, too. Even if it was her last day—and even if it meant being late for her own goodbye party. Which she totally was. And Rachel never even showed. Alas, as Zoey would say. So she bailed and slept on the couch at her mom’s boyfriend’s house, down in The Village. Anyone who thinks a career in TV news would be big fun ought to chat with Zoey. Or her mom.

I can’t believe that was only a couple of months ago. The Before Times! Imagine people throwing great big parties without getting shamed all over the internet the next day! Or ending up in the hospital with the dreaded Virus.

Zoey’s gray hair happened at the salon her mom chose for their mother-and-daughter farewell date. After that, Ms. Gertrude Jacobs, mom of my best friend, flew off to Rome, her new base of operations. And now the world’s shut down because of Covid-19, it looks like she’s going to be there for … well, who knows?

Zoey’s hair’s not really gray-gray—it’s more of a silver with a little blue mixed in. It’s like mermaid hair or something. It still looks great, even though Zoey has to keep up with it in the bathroom—our bathroom because she ended up quarantining with us. Zoey arrived back at her dorm just in time for every state college in New York to shut down.

Good thing you can get decent hair color online. Zoey’s hair is halfway down her back—not in a flip anymore. Mine’s pretty long, too—and still plain old brown with a few kinda blonde highlights. I’ve been either doing a messy bun or letting it hang down straight.

We both still rock the eyeliner wings—but only when we’re in the mood for them. And I still go to Stormkill Regional High. Go to is the wrong word, though. Log in to is more like it. I’m a senior, by the way. And it is now absolutely and officially The After Times.

So. I was talking about the news before. Here’s the rest of it. Dylan and I sort of … well, we took a break. Neither one of us could tell you why, exactly. I still really like him. He still really likes me. He’s of the nerd tribe, too. We weren’t even going to break up when he went to college. I guess we split because I felt like I was losing track of who I was, and then he suddenly wasn’t around and … like I said, I don’t know.

We only hated each other’s guts for like five minutes. Too bad he’s got such gorgeous curly red hair. And green eyes. And he’s an amazing artist, too. That’s what he went to school for.

But Dylan ended up back here in Stormkill, too, when his school—Bodichon College, the place I’m supposed to go to in the fall—locked down. And PS, he’s still in total awe of my sort-of, kind-of dad, Amp, aka Father Higbee. They’re both obscure vinyl records fans, absolutely and completely obsessed. Now that he’s home, Dylan’s back to helping out at St. Cecilia’s Episcopal, where Amp’s the (surprisingly cool, I have to admit) priest. So yeah, the current arrangement is locked-down, quarantined, masked-up … and complicated.

Most of my personal Cast of Characters sleeps under the same roof with me: Amp, Claire—my sort-of, kind-of mom—and Zoey. We live in The Rectory, a pretty old stone house next to the church. Dylan’s staying with his parents, but he’s in our pandemic pod. Being in a pandemic pod means you don’t hang with anyone else, unless you count the guy ringing up your groceries or the Amazon delivery person.

I read online that you’re supposed to have a quarantine hobby, like baking bread or knitting or something. I have decided that mine is trying to be mature about everything. Including Dylan.

He’s here several times a week between helping Amp record church for the online services and playing records with Amp and listening to Amp’s stories about the 70’s and … argh. I guess it’s because Dylan doesn’t get along with his own dad. He even eats dinner with us sometimes. Nobody pressured me about him being in the pod or anything. I could have said no way.

But that’s another thing about me. I’m a Good Kid. I never say no way to my sorta-kinda parents. So, it’s just—confusing. Dylan and I loved each other once. And I don’t think love ever goes all the way away.

I guess you’ll want to know about the time travel next. Until really recently it had stopped. Bean says that’s normal for Travelers, especially young ones. It was that way for her, too. She’s my favorite time traveling Guide. She went to college with Amp. Amp’s a Guide, too—he’s the one who scooped me up when I arrived in 2018 two years ago—but Bean knows more about it. Lots more.

Bean and her partner Zak are not in our pod. She works in public radio. They live in Manhattan, and it’s a horror show down there now—an ambulance a minute. Lots and lots of people are sick. The hospitals are even more jammed than they are here. Bean knows a whole family who died of the Virus. All of them, even a daughter like three years older than me! I hear tons of sirens over the phone when we FaceTime. There’s a giant red light on top of the Empire State Building. It’s supposed to salute the overwhelmed emergency workers, but I hate it. To me, it looks like the end of the world.

The end of the world!

Thing is, I have some experience with the end of the world. I live in 2020 because my real parents wanted me to escape a 1962 nuclear war that never happened. I was supposed to go hang out in the eighteen hundreds, but I almost ended up walking into a serious trap. Amp and Bean made sure I ended up here instead.

My real parents were Travelers, too. Time traveling runs in families. By the time I was finally used to smart phones and streaming TV, the stupid virus closed down everything except the internet. The internet didn’t even exist where I come from. In the early sixties, phones plugged into the wall and you had to watch all the commercials when you turned on TV.

Anyway, Amp’s church just had Easter with only three people: the organist, Dylan doing his altar boy act with the incense, and Amp in his fancy priest robes—streamed live on YouTube and Facebook. No choir, nobody in the pews. Amp’s been brutally cheerful about it all, but I know it’s getting him down.

This afternoon, he was putting up a big plastic banner outside St. Cecilia’s Episcopal that said, The church is not empty. The church is deployed. Zoey and I were sitting on a blanket on the lawn next to him. It was classic nearly-May-on-the-Hudson-River weather: not too hot, not too cold, a little breeze, light green leaves in the trees. The ground was chilly underneath the blanket, but the sun felt good on my face. I closed my eyes and leaned into it.

"Basking, are we?" I could hear the chuckle in Amp’s voice, but I didn’t feel jokey. I decided not to open my eyes. I nodded instead.

"Maybe she’s meditating, Amp. I heard Zoey close her laptop. It’s beautiful today. Especially considering how freaking messed-up everything is. I’ve never seen the sky this clear, ever … but I think it’s total bull the shutdown will help climate change. Too little, too late. Alas."

Alas, indeed, said Amp. Alas and alack!

I opened my eyes and everything seemed too bright. Amp’s shaggy reddish blonde and grey hair had slid over his glasses again, and he was wearing black sweat pants and a bright blue, long-sleeved Robyn Hitchcock t-shirt. Robyn Hitchcock is a singer-songwriter who sounds like Syd Barrett from this old-school band called Pink Floyd. Early Pink Floyd, if you have a clue what that means. Amp’s a nerd, too. An old nerd. They exist. It’s nerd central station around here, and now we’re all locked in together.

Dylan’s faculty adviser at college just loves Robyn Hitchcock, so now Dylan and Amp do, too. I politely ignored Dylan and Amp doing a deep dive into all the Robyn Hitchcock the other night: weird, weird songs about insects and fish and abandoned brains. At full volume. On vinyl, of course! We play a wide variety of highly random music in this house.

But oh, Dylan…

Zoey was right about the sky. Blue like a crayon, not a cloud in miles. I thought about a picture I had seen online. The canals in Venice…

Zoey shook her mermaid hair. Please don’t tell me you believed that dumb Photoshopped thing with the dolphins…

"I knew that was fake, Z. But I did see pictures of the canals looking like swimming pools. Other pictures. I mean."

Yeah. Mom says the canal water used to be gross. It would be so great to visit her now. Start in Rome and do a grand tour of the whole country! Except for one highly contagious, teeny-tiny detail…

I sighed. I’ve seen some of the pictures Zoey’s mom has been sending from Rome: gorgeous, ancient-looking buildings—but with nearly empty streets, singers belting out opera arias from their balconies, all alone. What an amazing city! But if we’re locked-down here in New York, Italy is triple quadruple locked down.

There are a few good things about being in quarantine. It’s super-quiet: hardly any traffic on Route 8E. No planes were flying overhead on the first warmish night we put on sweaters and took dinner out to the front porch. It’s also nice not having to wake up crazy early, or go to bed at a specific time. You can log into your classes in your PJ’s, and most kids do. Gym is basically non-existent. Of course, my class’s graduation stuff will be basically non-existent, too. There is that.

But hey. You don’t even have to turn on your camera for the Zoom sessions. I actually like school, especially English. I’m in AP this year. And it’s nice going at my own speed. My sorta-kinda mom Claire and I have had tons of time to finish our up-cycled vintage clothing projects—and no place to wear any of them when we do. Claire’s mostly mass-producing face masks for the local hospital anyway. And for us. In case we ever—you know, see other people again.

Zoey says online college has been pretty relaxed. She’s getting close to being done for the year now. She has a couple of school friends she DM’s with sometimes. Some days we both like being hermits. And some days we get crazy lonely.

She got up and stretched. A tiny sliver of her tummy peeked out over the top of her jeans. She was wearing a faded green Bodichon College sweatshirt she must have grabbed from Claire’s pile of clothes-to-be-up-cycled. (Amp and Claire both went to Bodichon, back in the day. They go to reunions.) Zoey had cropped the sweatshirt short, and cut a v-neck into it that made her look like a dance student, which she isn’t.

She’d been all about science—especially meteorology—in high school, but at the end of her senior year at Stormkill Regional, she got in with the theatre kids. Everyone else is all about the STEM fields for jobs, now, but Zoey follows her heart. She says she’s going to major in Theatre. If anyone could pull off an acting career, it’s her. She doesn’t give up.

Hey, she said. Let’s walk. She ran up the steps of the front porch, opened the front door, and slid her laptop inside.

Walking’s what we’ve got these days for fun. Absolutely nothing’s open in town—no movies, no coffee shops, no stores at all except the grocery and the CVS. I bunched up my blanket and tossed it onto the front porch.

Amp’s glasses slipped down his nose and the sun glistened on their transparent plastic frames. He shoved them back up and gave us the funny little salute he does sometimes. Toodle-oo. You two got masks?

Zoey rolled her eyes, and I felt in the pocket of my denim jacket. Of course we had masks. Our pockets are usually full of them. I don’t hate wearing them. I just don’t love being reminded I have to. Besides, we were outside, and there was no one around but us.

We headed for the cemetery. It’s right next to our house. I’ve lived here for the past couple of years, so it actually seems more like a plain old back yard to me. Except, of course, for the fact that it’s enormous—and my real dad is buried in there, along with plenty of other folks. I don’t know where my real mom is. She’d be in her nineties if she’s even alive. And if I hadn’t time-traveled and skipped a bunch of decades, I’d be well past grandma age myself.

As it is, I’m seventeen.

Seventeen and a time traveler, and in the middle of a pandemic with my used-to-be boyfriend in my pod.

Zoey and I walked past the tombstones the weather has washed almost blank of their spidery engravings—and the tragic children’s graves from a hundred years ago with baby lamb statues on top of them. 1918 was the last big pandemic. Plenty of the little lambs came from then.

Zoe’s phone pinged and she smiled—but then she sighed. "Spam. Never anything interesting. Or anyone interesting. I sign too many online petitions."

I nodded, and bent down to examine one of the little lambs. 1918 all right. And a 1919 one from the same family right was next to it. At least little kids don’t seem to get too sick with this plague. Most of them, anyway.

Zoey flicked at her phone. Yeah.

The air smelled delicious, like a garden getting ready to happen. I took a deep breath of it. But I saw something online about some kids on Long Island who got this weird complication. Some of them almost died.

"I saw that too. Doom scrolling. We’ve got to cut it out. This crap is scary enough without bathing in it all the time." Zoey put her phone back in her jeans.

What else is there to do? You can doom scroll … or take a lovely walk in the cheery, uplifting graveyard.

We’d arrived at the first of the big, fancy gravesites: nineteenth century family plots, with tall, marble obelisks and statues of weeping angels. Some of them have creepy stone and marble mausoleums. Mausoleums are tombs the size of tiny houses with windows and even gates and front porches sometimes. You could go inside one if someone unlocked the door.

Some kids had obviously partied out by the mausoleums the night before. They’d left a White Claw can one at of the sad angels’ feet. A few more cans were tossed on the ground and on the stone stairs to one of the bigger tombs. There were beer cans, too.

Zoey shook her head. "Some people are still getting out at night."

They could have at least recycled!

Alas!

See, Zoey, Dylan, and me… We’re the kind teachers and parents don’t worry about. We always recycle. We don’t break quarantine. We wouldn’t have gone to a midnight graveyard party before quarantine … well … not without seriously good reason.

Not that Zoey wouldn’t snag a White Claw. And I did sneak out on one serious midnight date when Dylan and I were first together. But I also had to zap a demon that evening. Which was the last time anything interesting happened to me… Up until the very next minute, that is.

‘Cause then it wasn’t a pretty April day anymore. It was very cold and very dark. Zoey and I were still in the cemetery, but we weren’t by ourselves anymore.

****

Oh, shit, Gracie. Zoey’s voice was a whisper. Shit, shit, shit. We just Traveled, didn’t we? She grabbed my arm.

I nodded. Zoey was right. We were somewhere in the past. That’s how Traveling happens, by the way. It just creeps up on you. Then you get to figure out where you landed and why you’re there. Always interesting, sometimes terrifying. And, yeah—Zoey can Travel, too. She never did before she met me, but I bet she had it in her all along.

I could hear nervous laughter not too far from us. We both knew