“We can figure it out together then, because I’m not entirely sure myself.” I pulled the diary out of my backpack. “I’m really hoping this will help.”
Mom wasn’t the slightest bit surprised that we wolfed down pizza, then grabbed sodas and headed back up to my room. That’s what we always do when Charlayne stays over. She also wouldn’t have been too surprised to see us hunched over books, since we often do homework together. She might, however, have been a bit confused if she had peeked in and seen us side by side, holding a lit match to a single page of what appeared to be a very old diary.
I blew out the match. “Okay. You can’t burn it either.”
“But the fire does make it smell kind of funny,” Charlayne noted. “And the cover—you can burn the cover, write on it, whatever. That’s weird. Why wouldn’t they make the cover at least as strong as the pages inside? The cover is supposed to protect the book.”
“True.” I thought for a moment. “But… have you ever slipped a different book jacket around something that you wanted to read in order to make your mom or your teacher think it was something you were supposed to be reading?”
“Well, yes. But…”
“Maybe the writer was trying to make other people believe this was just a plain diary. Look at the date inside the cover: 1890. This doesn’t look to me like something that should have been around in 1890.”
“Doesn’t look to me like something that should be around today,” Charlayne said. “Can’t you just call your grandmother and ask?”
“I could. But she did say that this would probably give me more questions than answers. I get the feeling she wants me to dig around a bit and see if I can figure it out on my own.”
Charlayne reached over and scratched at a small nub that was sticking out of the fabric on the spine. “What is this? There’s something stuck in the cover.” She had to tug a bit but eventually pulled out a small bright yellow stick, about twice the thickness of a toothpick, with a pointed black tip. “It’s a tiny pencil.”
I took the stick to look at it more closely. “It looks like a pencil, yeah, but—look, I can’t scratch anything off the pencil lead. I think it’s a stylus. Like the one on my mom’s old PDA. You’ve seen them. You just tap the screen, like this…”
I took the book and tapped the tip against the first page. The lines of handwritten text started scrolling slowly upward. “Aha. It’s not a book. It’s some sort of portable computer.”
Charlayne looked puzzled. “But why?” she asked. “Why not just carry a laptop, or iPad? This doesn’t make much sense.”
“Unless it’s 1890 and you don’t want to attract attention.” I closed the cover and it once again looked like an old diary. “Unless you don’t want people to know that you aren’t one of them.”
“Weird. I’ve never seen anything like this technology. How would your grandmother have something like this? You said she’s a historian—like your mom, right?”
I flipped open the diary again and ran my finger across the name printed on the inside of the cover:
Katherine Shaw
Chicago, 1890
“It could be a coincidence that my grandmother’s name is Katherine, but I don’t think so. And yes, she’s a historian, but I’m beginning to suspect that being a historian means something very different to her than it means to my mom.” I turned to a random page and tapped the top edge with the stylus thingy and watched as the text scrolled downward, stopping at the beginning of the entry.
May 15, 1893
Chicago, Illinois
We arrived around sunrise and merged with a crowd coming from the train station. The calculations were correct, although the area was not as isolated as we might have hoped. The city is packed and we landed near the entrance to the most popular attraction, so another entry point might be advised in the future.
People from all over the world have flocked to Chicago to see the new wonder—an enormous wheel surrounded by closed carriages that will carry passengers high into the sky as it spins. It will not open for another month, but a large crowd is always present to view the giant wheel, created by Mr. George Ferris. The hope is that it will be magnificent enough to outdo the marvel of the previous Exposition in Paris—the fabulous tower of Monsieur Eiffel.
I presented my letter of introduction to the Board of Lady Managers this morning and it was accepted without question. Background request on “the Infanta.” Several of the women were discussing her upcoming visit to the Expo.