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Time seemed always to be against them, thought Lea,
which was ironic. They had less than three hours to
go home, eat, and then get back to school in time for
the start of the concert.
Her poem, finally chosen, had gone down well in rehearsal
and word had begun to spread about Michael's monologue.
He still refused to comment but he seemed delighted
to be talked about. She knew him well enough to understand
that he had expected much less.
"Come on," she said again. The bus was approaching
the end of Pea Street and she calculated that they had
just enough time to confront Hector and find out the
truth.
"This'll take longer than you think," Michael
warned but he followed her off the bus anyway, willing
to take the risk and the consequences. He would have
to call his father right away. Going AWOL at any time
was forbidden, but going AWOL on a night when Fred and
Wilma had hired a substitute chef for the evening so
they could go to the school concert carried consequences
too dire to contemplate.
The door was unlocked so they let themselves in and
found the Professor in the laboratory. His blackboard
was covered with calculus the like of which they had
never seen. They still secretly wondered whether he
was faking it, but it was beginning to look as if he
wasn't.
The Professor looked over his shoulder when they arrived.
"Good," he said. "I'm glad you came.
We have made progress today. Major progress. If I can
just solve this," he pointed towards the blackboard,
"I think we'll be ready for our first full test.
Have some pizza."
He waved his chalk towards the workbench behind them,
upon which lay three large pizzas.
"You figured out how to order!" Lea shrieked.
Impulsively she rushed to him and gave him a hug. The
Professor blushed a pale shade of pink.
"How did you make so much progress?" the
Michael asked.
"Hector," the Professor cried. "Look
what he gave me!"
He looked wildly around the laboratory and found what
he wanted next to the computer. He rushed to it, snatched
it up and waved it. "A book from the future. A
book about us." He opened it to the copyright page.
"Look," he cried again, and pointed to the
date.
At first Lea cursed herself for her own foolish haste.
Evidently Hector had brought two copies. Seeing that
the first was gone he had pre-empted them, not only
uncovering the second but also revealing it to the Professor.
There was nothing she or Michael could do now except
admit to theft. Hector's strategy was brilliant.
Reverentially she took the book from the Professor
and studied it. She flicked through the pages, pretended
to look at the copyright date, and finally turned the
book over to read the words on the back cover. It was
then that she understood. The top corner of the cover
had a familiar jagged crease. This was not a second
copy of the book. It was the copy she had stolen.
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