December Lights

I have to confess: when Dad brought Charlotte Brontë and her sister home, I was actually pretty disappointed.

I mean, it was all over the news - the thing, whatever it was, the event - and even though I didn't even suspect that Dad might be bringing someone home, I was shocked it wasn't someone more...exciting. After all, there was probably some girl in Hawaii in the same situation as me, who had a parent who worked as a Public Affairs Specialist for Customs and Border Protection like me, who was having dinner with Amelia Freaking Earhart tonight.

Amelia Freaking Earhart! Found out in the Pacific Ocean today! And who do I get? Two tiny women with bad teeth? Seriously, no one - no one at all? -  more exciting showed up in New York today?

"This is my daughter, Taylor," Dad said, putting his hands on my shoulders. "And this is her friend." He hesitated. He'd never been any good at learning my friends' last names. "Er, Jessica," he said, relieved to have figured it out. "Girls, this is Miss Brontë, and her sister, Miss Anne Brontë."

I stared. Jessica stared. The ladies standing in our foyer stared back.

"Hey," I said.

"Hello," said Jessica.

"How do you do," the little women murmured, and looked at each other.

Man. Little Women. I'd read that at least. Why couldn't have Louisa May Alcott shown up? If we were going to get old writers, anyway, and not, y'know, someone cool.

Of course, to my knowledge, Louisa May Alcott had not been lost at sea.

"Tay, why don't you and Jess clear out of your room and set up the air mattress for yourselves in the basement for tonight," Dad said, and then he led the Brontës into the kitchen for tea or whatever. I wanted to argue, but whenever I argue, Dad says, "No whining!" and I didn't want Jess to witness that, so I silently went upstairs to pack my jammies and stuff into a backpack.

"Holy crap," Jess whispered on our way up the stairs. She hadn't said anything else since "Hello."

"Holy crap what?" I asked, forcing my voice low so that it wouldn't come out in the angry high pitch Dad was always so accusatory about.

"That was Jane Eyre! Right there, Jane Freaking Eyre."

"I thought that was Charlotte and whoever Brontë."

"Anne. But it was Charlotte who wrote Jane Eyre, and it was basically about her life. She was a governess, and Jane Eyre was a governess, and Charlotte was in love with her cranky, ugly teacher, and Jane was in love with her cranky, ugly employer - "

"Ohhhhh-kay.” I shrugged. In love with ugly teachers? Gross.

" - and he tries to marry her, only he's already married and his wife is locked up in the attic - "

I had my back to Jess at this point, because I was folding my underwear and I don't feel comfortable folding my underwear in front of anyone, so I thought it would be okay to roll my eyes a little. She was being really annoying. But I forgot about the mirror on my dresser right there, so Jess saw the eyeroll, and stopped talking about Charlotte Brontë.

"You know, you could read a book once in a while, Taylor," she said. I think she meant it snide, but it came out defensive.

"I read!” I pointed to my shelf. "I've read everything on that shelf.” There were almost twenty books there. Like Ramona the Pest, which I'd had forever, and the aforementioned Little Women. And Twilight, of course.

Now Jess rolled her eyes, which was totally uncalled for.

Together we stomped all the way down the stairs to the basement, all pissy with each other, and completely forgot to bring down my iPod dock and speakers and sketchbook and all kinds of stuff.

I slumped down in front of the tiny little basement TV and turned it on. Jess stood nearby for a moment, because the TV turned right on to the news story about the thing, the event. Dad watched the news when he used the treadmill, and I always had to switch to good TV when I came down here.

"All across the world today, the lost came home," the announcer on the 24-hour news channel said just before I flipped over to the Disney channel.

"Geez, Taylor," Jessica said. "The whole world is crazy right now, and you want to watch Hannah Montana.” She turned around and went upstairs.

#

I watched the whole episode with my arms crossed and my eyebrows needled together, stewing and forgetting to actually watch the episode, thinking about how annoying Jessica was. It's not like I wanted to watch Hannah Montana. It's just that it's the only thing on this time of day, and I've seen all the episodes, and they don't surprise me. I know I'm probably a little too old for them.

During the episode, the ceiling creaked from where Dad and Jessica and the Brontës were walking on our kitchen floor. I could hear muffled voices - light, almost refined voices from the Brontë people, and Dad's tenor, and occasionally, Jessica's squeeing. I knew she was a reader, but I didn't think she read that much or if she did, not y'know, old books, so her excitement was kind of weird. It was like she'd showed me a secret second head she'd been growing for the last two years, and what's more, she thought I was lame for not helping the second head pick out hairstyles.

I slumped down in my bean bag, feeling lonely. But even though I thought that maybe Jane Eyre sounded like it might be a little bit interesting, I didn't want to go upstairs and give Jess - or my dad - the satisfaction.

So I flipped back to the news, just for a moment. Maybe I should get more informed about what was going on with the event. Even if I wasn't going upstairs.

A segment on Amelia Earhart was already running. They were playing her first known transmission in 75 years, which was apparently identical to her last one back in 1937. "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait.” It was creepy. They played it over still shots of her airplane sitting on this flat little island of grass and sand. I wondered why she'd ever wanted to go to that island, anyway.

Some random fishing boat heard the message, and also heard her next messages, after she and Fred Noonan landed on Howland Island and found the place deserted. The random fishing boat picked them up and gave them to the U.S. Navy, who in turn, gave them to Hawaii, and that's pretty much how Amelia Earhart came back to the world, not aged a day. Crowds in Honolulu cheered, and Amelia Earhart got a parade.

"The worldwide event," the newscaster said, "has been greeted with shock and amazement. People literally cannot believe this is happening. In France, bandleader Glenn Miller finally arrived in Paris; and Antoine de Saint Exupéry - " she stumbled a little over his name " - author of The Little Prince, receives a hero's welcome. Both Miller and Saint Exupéry's planes were believed to have been shot down during World War II.”

The Little Prince. Another writer. I looked up at the ceiling. The creaking had stopped. I heard taps running - in my bathroom, in the half bath downstairs. I turned back to the TV.

" - and out of the Bermuda Triangle, where Christopher Columbus himself noted odd compass bearings and 'strange dancing lights on the horizon,' dozens of ships, boats and aircraft have finally reached their destinations - "

My stomach growled. I crossed my arms tighter, trying to quell it.

" - and in New York, The White Bird completed the longest transatlantic flight, taking 85 years, 227 days and sixteen hours. They set out from Paris on May 8, 1927, attempting be the first plane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. The crew of the French biplane, Charles Nungesser and François Coli, are now the youngest surviving World War I veterans."

I was just about to suck it up, go upstairs, and ask Dad about dinner, when the doorbell rang. I ran up to peer into the foyer through the catflap, and it was Kelly, one of Dad's coworkers, holding a bunch of take-out bags with logos of eight different restaurants on them. Dad was just letting her in, taking a few of the bags from her, and giving her a kiss. But not on the cheek.

On the lips.

What?

I scuttled back down the stairs and pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and dialed Mom.

"Taylor?”

"Mom!" I hissed. "Mom, I think Dad is finally dating someone!"

"Get out of town!"

"Yeah!"

"Who?"

"Kelly, uhm, I forget her last name, the one who works with Dad. She just came over with a bunch of take-out, and I thought maybe it was a work thing because of the Brontë sisters, but I think it's not!"

Silence. I wondered if Mom - in spite of being happily remarried for two years now - wasn't taking the news very well. Then, "Taylor, did your Dad get to meet the Brontë sisters?"

"Yeah. They're staying here."

"Taylor!" Mom squeaked. "Taylor, why are you talking to me? Go talk to them! Ask them about Emily. Oh my god, Wuthering Heights!"

"Ma-ahm," I started.

"No whining, Taylor!"

"Dad kicked me out of my room for them!"

"Charlotte and Anne Brontë are going to sleep in your room?” She sounded way too excited about this. "Taylor, do you have any idea how lucky you are? Hang up the phone right now, miss, and soak in this cultural moment. I love you, and I will talk to you later!” And beep, she was gone.

"Taylor?" Dad's voice called down the stairs. "Dinner's ready."

#

Dinner was in the formal dining room, using the china that Mom and Dad got for their wedding. Mom gave it to Dad when they divorced because Dad's grandparents had given him the china cabinet, and she would have felt bad about taking it. We'd never used it except for the Christmas when Grandma flew in from Phoenix.

Kelly and Dad had set out the eight different kinds of take-out in serving bowls so it didn't really look like take-out. There were thick-cut French fries and baked potatoes and mashed potatoes, each from three different restaurants. There was also steak, chicken marsala, manicotti, roast beef, Cornish game hens, and fried fish... Some of the food was from the organic grocery store, some from the Authentic English Pub down the street, some from fancy places that I'd only heard of. I stared across the bounty on the table at Jessica, who was folding napkins. Cloth napkins. I didn't know Dad owned cloth napkins.

Jessica finished folding and came over to me with a little smile. "I'm glad you came up," she whispered. "Don't be mad."

I sighed. Jessica had been my best friend all year. We'd made it through seventh grade together. I couldn't really be mad. I wasn't really mad. Just annoyed. And already over it.

"What's with all the food?" I whispered.

"Kelly says she doesn't know what they would like. They haven't had much to eat since they got here...I guess regular food is really gross to them."

Dad came in with Charlotte Brontë holding onto his arm. They looked kind of funny, for she was very tiny but had big poofy skirts, and seemed like a doll next to my dad, who used to play college football. Anne and Kelly came in together after that. There was a to-do while Dad seated everyone - me next to Charlotte, Jessica next to Anne, Kelly and Dad at the head and the foot of the table.

Then, something even weirder than eating dinner in the dining room happened - Dad said grace. I stared at my folded hands, and waited for it to be over. Heavenly Fathers? Thankful for this bounty? Where had he learned that stuff?

When we all said "Amen" and looked up, Charlotte Brontë was watching me. She had clear hazel eyes, and she was looking at me. Had she seen I had my eyes open during the prayer? If so, why weren't hers closed?

I concentrated on passing around the three kinds of potatoes, making sure to snag at least two kinds for myself.

"So, Miss Brontë," I said. "My mom says I should ask you about Emily and Wuthering Heights."

There was a moment of dead silence, and then Kelly dropped one of the serving spoons onto the floor. Jessica and Kelly both looked horrified. At least Dad didn't look like he cared what I'd asked. In fact, he looked a little confused at everyone else's reaction.

The prettier Brontë said, "She was our sister, and we loved her very much. She, and our brother, and our father, all passed away this year."

Charlotte said, "Not this year, dearest."

I blushed. I couldn't believe Mom had told me to ask about their dead sister. Of course, if you thought about it, even if their sister had been alive when they disappeared, they would be dealing with everyone they knew being dead right now. Which actually made Mom's suggestion even worse, didn't it?

"Sorry," I mumbled, and filled my mouth with fried potatoes.

The conversation was actually very difficult. Neither of the women wanted to talk that much, and it seemed like Dad and Kelly were working very hard not to scare them too much. Anne occasionally asked what had gone on in the world between 1849 - the year they disappeared - and now, and Dad skipped over a whole bunch of wars and stuff. Kelly went on a while about women's rights - suffrage, and liberation, and equal work for equal pay, and at one point, she mentioned the birth control pill, and Jessica and I started squirming. I didn't know Kelly very well, but I kept shooting her mental messages: Don't talk about tampons! And she didn't, so maybe my mental messages worked.

Charlotte and Anne were excited about voting, it turns out, though maybe excited makes it sounds like they jumped out of their chairs and started singing that song about suffragettes from Mary Poppins. But instead they just smiled a little wider, showing their bad teeth, and sat up a little straighter.

Anyway, women's liberation, all the way down to Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, got us through the meal.

After dinner, Dad put me on dish duty - which took forever, because like I'd said, we used almost all the china, which couldn't be put in the dishwasher, and because all of the food had to be boxed back up and stowed in the fridge. In the meantime, Dad assigned Jessica to entertaining the Brontës, because I guess he felt she could be trusted, while Kelly went off to get all the movies that had been made of the Brontë books.

Dad came in to help me finish up with the dishes. "Sorry, Dad," I said.

"What for, kiddo?" he asked, which meant his mind wasn't on me at all, because he only called me kiddo when he forgot how much I hated it.

"Sorry about the Emily thing, and being such a poop about you bringing home the Brontës."

"I know you don't want to share your room - "

"Dad! That's not it. I just - well, they aren't exactly Amelia Earhart."

Dad just looked at me for a moment like I was crazy. Then he said, "I could have brought home someone from their ship that you never even heard of. How would you feel then?"

"That I've never even heard of - ?"

"There were a hundred and thirty-six people on their steamer traveling to America - and none of them wrote any books your best friend likes, or that got made into movies."

Oh. He was saying, he could've brought home completely random people from 1849. "I see your point," I said.

"Maybe you'd have had lower expectations from that, and you'd have learned more," Dad said.

I thought about the calm, sad way Anne explained how Emily was dead. I said, "Dad, they're real people, not educational exhibits!"

Dad looked annoyed, in that way that means I'm right about something he doesn't want me to be right about. But he just finished putting everything away and started dishing out bowls full of rocky road ice cream, and told me to take them to the Brontë sisters.

When Kelly came back, we decided to watch the shortest DVD she brought, which was a version of Jane Eyre. Charlotte and Anne were very agitated about the movie, even though we explained to them pretty thoroughly about moving pictures and film and stuff - I mean, they understood it wasn't magic or anything, and that there weren't tiny people in the box. There were photographs in the world when the Brontës disappeared - not a lot of them, but they existed. Or so they assured us. Plus, their brother had been a portrait painter. It wasn't that hard to understand a machine that could capture images.

In any case, no, it wasn't the moving pictures that freaked the women out; it wasn't even Charlotte's words being spoken on the screen that freaked them out (though she kept muttering about the filmmakers "taking liberties"). It was the kissing!

They begged us to turn it off, and then Kelly had to explain the other parts of women's liberation to them: namely, how it wasn't always married women who wanted to have birth control just to limit family sizes and not always be chained to motherhood or whatever it was that Charlotte said.

And that's when Dad shooed me and Jess off to the basement. Grown up talk, he said. Like Jess and I hadn't been taking health classes since the fifth grade.

#

In the morning, Dad had to drive the Brontës back to the city, in part to let them hang out with the other people from 1849 to better process their culture shock, and in part because there were Important People who wanted to meet them. Like, the President's wife.

Jess and I got up and ate scrambled eggs and toast with everyone, and then when they were gone, we watched the rest of Jane Eyre, and then a much longer DVD, a miniseries from one of Anne's book, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. By then it was way past noon, and Jess's mom was texting her nonstop with "Aren't you ready to come home already, especially if the Brontës are gone?"

While we waited for Jessica's mom to come get her, I flipped through the channels, looking for more news on the event, but since no one could explain why it had happened, they were still focused on what had happened. Two hundred ships and seventy planes - no! Three-hundred-and-fifty ships, and two hundred planes! No one knew how many lost ships and planes! But some number had come home, and basically, more than half the major, mysterious disappearances in the world were solved. Even some lost balloonists had come home. And some Aleut kayakers lost a thousand years ago. And a Viking longboat. People that no one even realized were missing, or that no one remembered were missing, anyway, were showing up all around the world.

Geez. Dad could have brought home a Viking! That probably would have been even more educational than the Brontës.

The doorbell rang, and Jess and I thundered into the foyer. Jess's mom was standing outside, her eyes practically glowing. "Well?" she asked us. "What were they like?"

"Kinda confused," Jess said. "But really nice."

Jess's mom hugged herself a little. She taught English at Emerald Center Community College. "If only Jane Austen had been lost at sea," she said dreamily. "Then, maybe…  well, anyway. Charlotte and Anne Brontë will certainly do! I can't wait to see what they write. If they write."

"Why wouldn't they write?" I asked. I remembered that the guy who'd written The Little Prince had shown up. I'd liked the cartoon when I was a kid. Maybe he'd write more books, and they'd make more cartoons.

Jess's mom looked confused. "Don't you think you might be a little…  well, don't you think you might not want to do what you used to do, if you came a hundred and fifty-some years into the future, quite suddenly one day?"

"A hundred and fifty years from now, we'll probably have cell phones implanted in our heads," I said. "And text by typing on our teeth with our tongues.” I darted my tongue over my incisors thoughtfully. It seemed awkward, yet…  "I kind of like the idea!"

"Yes, but," Jess's mom said, "even if you got the cell phone put into your head, and learned how to type with your tongue, who would you text?"

"I'd have to make new friends," I said, trying to figure out if a QWERTY keyboard could work in your mouth. Twenty-six letters and thirty-some teeth. Wait. How many teeth did I have? I started counting them with my tongue.

"And when you tried to explain to your new friends that you missed, oh, let's say, eating meat? And they thought you were a barbarian, because in the future, everyone's a vegetarian?"

"I see your point," I said, though I'd lost what she was talking about. I had twenty-eight teeth. Twenty-six for letters, and one tooth for a shift key, and one for a function key to get you over to punctuation or numbers or whatever.

"Still, I hope they write something more. Charlotte could finish Shirley at least. Anyway. Tell your father thank you for having Jessica over last night. Was it the experience of a lifetime, Jess?"

"Sure, Mom," Jessica said. She turned to me. "Thanks, Tay. See you Monday."

I bummed around the house alone for half an hour, thought about sketching, didn't, texted Mom, texted Dad. Dad said he'd be home by three, and then we had to go to the hospital.

Wat 4? I texted back.

We need TB tests, he texted back, and I spent some time looking that up on the internet. Deadly infectious disease - ? That caught the eye. I read about tuberculosis for a bit, then searched the Brontës, and there it was: it was believed that Emily Brontë and her father died of tuberculosis. It was also believed that because everyone in their family died in 1848, the remaining Brontë sisters had felt free to take up their publisher's offer to go on a tour of America. Without their dad, who had free housing from his job, they didn't have any place to live, a tour paid for by their publishers seemed just the ticket. And then of course, their boat never arrived in New York, and people were calling the family the Cursed Brontës, and people went crazy for their books, like people do when a lot of geniuses die at once, or at a young age.

Then Dad texted he'd be back more like six o'clock, and the TB test could wait tomorrow. Only because I'd done the research was I not worried that my lungs might implode overnight. Not…entirely worried, anyway.

I decided to ride my bike down to the library. I wiped out the whole Brontë section: Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, The Professor, Wuthering Heights, and two different versions of Shirley (each one started by Charlotte and finished by a different author I'd never heard of).

I biked back home and started reading Jane Eyre, trying not to cough. The tickle in my lungs - that had to be in my head, right? You couldn't catch tuberculosis and then start dying of it in one day.

I was hooked on Jane Eyre right away. Maybe seeing the movie first helped. Maybe learning how to skim the boring parts when I was forced to read Oliver Twist in Language Arts helped more. I don't know. But pretty soon, Mr. Rochester's bed was on fire, and Jane was rescuing him in the middle of the night.

I thought about Charlotte Brontë being totally super-horrified when we got to this part in the movie, where Jane and Rochester stand really close together and tremble and Jane is in her night-gown. I still wasn't sure why this freaked Charlotte out - I mean, she knew what she was writing when she wrote it, didn't she? But still. Maybe it's different, for writers, to see something in their heads and then to see it pulled out and put on a screen.

Also, the version of the book I'd checked out had this crazy long introduction that I skimmed over, but the person who wrote it talked about how people thought the book was really crude and stuff when it first came out, and thought Charlotte Brontë was basically a slut or something. Which was so ridiculous, if you ever met her.

I heard the front door open and rocketed into the foyer to ask my dad why I needed a TB test, and hadn't he thought about that before he brought people from 1849 home - ? But it wasn't just Dad, it was Dad and Kelly and Charlotte and Anne. They all looked exhausted, and I knew better than to start whining right then and there, even though I was going to have to sleep on the air mattress in the basement again.

I helped Dad nuke the leftovers from the night before, and we all had dinner again - much more subdued than the night before, and the night before hadn't exactly been a party.

Kelly kept the conversation going for a while, talking about the advances in medicine since the Brontës left the world, even though Anne nodded like she already understood most of this, until I said, "Miss Brontë, ma'am, Miss Charlotte I mean, not Miss Anne, will you finish Shirley?"

Charlotte took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "It's already finished," she said. "I finished it on the ship, and have it in my bag. It's probably the only way we'll make enough money to live, with our copyrights expired."

"I know at least one person who'll buy it," I said, meaning to sound encouraging. I was thinking of Jess's mom.

Charlotte smiled at me. Slowly, she began to talk about finishing the book, and drawing Anne out to talk about the book she was working on as well; and that's when they revealed that they had not been known in their time as the Brontës at all. "We had male pseudonyms," Charlotte explained. "I was Currer Bell, and Anne was Acton Bell. But those names are long abandoned, I have discerned."

"It was an open secret by the time we departed Haworth," Anne said. She was looking out the dining room window, at the streetlamps shining through the trees. "I only wish," she said, "that Emily might have come with us on the Richmond. That she could have come through the storm, to the other side of the ocean with us, and been healed of her illness, as I will be.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. She was talking about tuberculosis. I breathed deep, checking if my lungs were already shredding into bloody pulp. I guessed they weren't.

Charlotte grasped her sister's hand, but said nothing to her. She only smiled at me, and Dad, and Kelly. "There have been many shocks in coming here," she said. "Certainly, some have been happy. The shock of learning that Anne will likely live for many years yet - ! For both of us - the shock of how much love and appreciation for our works has lasted through the decades…  That has been difficult to comprehend, but joyous to experience. But that very love makes us keenly feel the loss of our sister, as well."

After dinner, while Dad and I were cleaning up the kitchen again, I gave him a big hug. He hugged me back tight, and asked, "What's going on, kiddo? You aren't worried about the TB test, are you? It's just routine, when you've been around someone infected. You'll be fine. I'll be fine."

"I know that. I looked it up on the internet.” I neglected to tell him about my breathing tests at dinner.

"And I promise, you'll get your bed back tomorrow night. The Brontës were supposed to go to a nice hotel in the city, but they asked to come back with me. They…well, I couldn't very well refuse, could I?"

I shrugged. I didn't mind the Brontës, not really. I figured, when I was older, I was really going to appreciate what Dad had done, even if I couldn't figure out how to appreciate it now. Maybe. But I did have a question about -  "So, are you dating Kelly?" I asked.

Dad stammered out some words: "colleagues" and "respect" and "timing.” I took that to mean he was dating her, but it was supposed to be a secret or something. I gave up trying to get a straight answer out of him and went into the living room, where Kelly was loading Pride and Prejudice into the DVD player. I was confused. I didn't think either Anne or Charlotte had written Pride and Prejudice - but I didn't say anything.

Fortunately, Dad came in and asked the dumb question for me. "I didn't think either of you wrote this book," he said, when the title flashed on the screen over the swelling violin music.

"Neither of us did," Anne said. "It was written by Miss Austen. I found the book very agreeable - "

"When did you read any of Miss Austen's works?" Charlotte interrupted, her forehead puckered with confusion.

"At Thorpe Green. Three of Austen's books were in the library there. I read them all. They're delightful."

Charlotte crossed her arms and sniffed. "I heard the books are crude."

Anne, facing away from her sister slightly, actually rolled her eyes. I bit back a giggle.

We watched the movie, and when the kissing parts came on, neither of the sisters freaked out, which I thought was progress. After the movie was over, Dad sent me upstairs to brush my teeth and wash my face. The sisters murmured quietly to themselves for a time downstairs, before bidding Dad and Kelly good night and coming up to my bedroom.

I stopped in the door of my room on the way down to the basement. "Thanks for staying with us," I said awkwardly. "It's really been educational."

Charlotte blinked like she could barely see me, from where she fluffed my pillows at the head of the bed, and said nothing.

Anne smiled prettily at me. "It has been an education for us as well. It will be strange, living in this world, but…” She blinked rapidly, and I realized that there were tears in her eyes. "Living is in every way superior to the alternative."

I nodded solemnly.

Charlotte pulled back my flowered curtains and stared out the window. I had turned to go, when she spoke my name. "Taylor," she said, then laughed a little. "Taylor was the surname of a dear friend of ours who emigrated to New Zealand. Taylor, thank you for sharing your room. I think, in the coming weeks, we may come to miss this pleasant place very much. It helps, a little, to have traveled some, before all of this; but even Brussels is as nothing to your big city - or even this small suburb - now.” She overpronounced "suburb" like it was a new word. "It has helped, to have someone share their home."

I smiled crookedly at her. "No problem, Miss Brontë."

"If we write to you, Taylor, will you write us back?"

"Absolutely," I said. "Here, I'll write down my email address.” This devolved into a discussion of email, the internet, and a whole host of topics that they were probably not actually ready to learn about.

I said good night, and was on my way out the door when I remembered my sketchbook. I paused, wondering if I should bother them to get it, or - nah. I didn't need to sketch. I probably wouldn't if I got it anyway. I often wanted  to sketch more often than I actually did sketch.

Charlotte noticed my hesitation, however. "What is it, Taylor?"

"Oh - nothing - " but my eye was on the spiral bound sketchbook on my desk.

"Oh, do you draw, Taylor?"

It would be hard to deny, with the words SKETCH UNIVERSAL and a photograph of a pencil drawing on the cover. "A little," I said.

"Me, too," Charlotte said.

"Oh!" I said. "Just like Jane Eyre?"

I could see that set her teeth on edge just a little, but Anne rescued the situation. "There is a little bit of us in our characters, just as there is a little bit of the artist in all her drawings; however, you would never confuse the drawing with the artist, would you, Taylor?"

I blinked. "Of course not."

Anne turned to Charlotte. "See?" she said, and started coughing.

I backed away a bit because I really was just that worried about tuberculosis, but Charlotte just said, "Oh, yes, time for your medicine," and went over to my desk, where she opened a small bag and took out a number of prescription pill bottles and a bottle of syrup. She fumbled with the child-proof caps, and I had to help her with them.

"'Child-proof,'" she said in disgust.

I kind of laughed, and showed her how to use the other side of the cap so it wasn't child-proof.

I gathered up my sketchbook while Charlotte gave Anne some pills and helped her with a nebulizer, and was trying to sneak politely out the door to give them some privacy when Charlotte stopped me.

"It's nice to see that all of this - " she pointed around at my ceiling fan, my computer, and my television, " - doesn't mean the death of that.” She pointed at the sketchbook I tucked under my arm.

"Why - why would it?" I asked, a little bit surprised. Everyone knew that my time was better than her time. "I mean, we have more time to be creative now than we did in 1849. I don't have to, um, feed chickens or whatever.” Even though I couldn't think of the last time I had actually opened my sketchbook, instead of just carrying it around with the best of intentions.

Charlotte looked confused. Anne laughed into her nebulizer. "We had servants to feed the chickens," Charlotte said.

"Well, sure. But. I mean…  Well, I guess I don't know what I mean."

"I understand you, I think," Charlotte said. "You go much faster. I have ridden in your private automobiles, which are far more convenient than either carriages or trains. Tonight, when your father reheated food, in the microwave! Your email you mentioned. These things give you more time in some manner, but perhaps it is only the illusion of time? Making things happen faster doesn't give anyone more time."

"I, uh.” I stared around the room, not sure of how to answer any of this, and noticed the large pills Anne was going to have to take. "Let me get you a glass of water.” I scurried into my bathroom, filled a paper cup with water, and brought it back.

Charlotte still wanted to talk - she spoke as though she hadn't really quit, and almost as if she were addressing herself. "And, both of these evenings we have spent with you, with the television - they flew by because the television was so busy showing things that other people had imagined, and I scarcely had a moment to imagine anything for myself."

 Anne was nodding, and accepted her pills and water.

"Well, good night," I said, and bobbed a weird little curtsy - doubly weird because I think I only ever curtsied for pretend when we used to play princesses at recess.

In the basement, on the news channels, they had stopped talking about the event and were talking about something a senator had done.

I switched over to some other station, where they were talking about the event, with more in-depth analysis, I guess. They showed Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot guy, waving and smiling and looking shocked at an airport in Los Angeles. They showed the Viking people, who I guess weren't Viking raiders but rather a bunch of families that had been on the way to Iceland from Greenland, so actually, having Vikings for a visit might have been boring - plus, they didn't exactly speak English. And then I saw Dad! Guiding Charlotte and Anne into a room where they shook hands with the First Lady! I bounced on my couch a little bit, then ran upstairs, intending to shout, "Dad, I saw you on TV!"

Only, when I bounced into the living room, Dad and Kelly were making out on the couch. They didn't even notice me there, so I turned around as quickly as possible and went back to the basement.

A couple years ago, I probably would have sat there and stewed about the ew-gross-ickiness of the whole thing, but that was before I had to deal with Mom getting married, so I knew resignation was the best policy. And it was good for Dad to have a girlfriend. It showed he was moving on.

I turned off the TV about the event. I glanced at Jane Eyre, lying face down on the air mattress beside me, but I'd just seen the movie, so I knew what happened next. You really wouldn't expect a book so big and so full of drama to come out of a stiff little lady like Charlotte. Or maybe you would. Mom always says, "You have to watch the quiet ones. Because you can't hear them coming."

I opened my sketchbook instead. When was the last time I'd really drawn something, instead of just thinking I should draw something? The most time I'd spent drawing this month had been doodling horses in the margins of my Algebra notebook.

I thought about the weird paintings Jane Eyre described that she'd made, the ones Rochester hadn't believed she'd made without help. I wondered… I pulled over my copy of the book, and read about a painting of a stormy sea, a sinking ship, and a dead woman's hand emerging from the water.

Even better, a bird had plucked the bracelet from her wrist and carried it in its beak while it watched the ship sink.

Totally creepy.

I couldn't wait to draw it.

I set my pencil tip on the paper and began.

-END-

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