Time Sniffers (A Sample)

The uncertainty principle plagues my life

I don't care what anybody says, I know my mother isn't dead.

Dad still tries to console me. He tells me my belief is a form of denial. "You need to grieve, Bria," he keeps saying. As if he would take his own advice.

As I reach for the pitcher of orange juice, I catch him staring at me through the space between the cereal boxes. That look. I swear it breaks my heart. "You need to grieve." I feel like hitting him. And then the guilt wells up.

Dylan just stares at us, like he's watching a sit-com, waiting for the punch line, or for the commercial to interrupt the program. His spoonful of corn flakes hangs in the air, dripping milk onto the table. I reach over to wipe up the mess with my napkin, never taking my eyes off Dad. Until, out of the corner of my eye, I see that pattern the milk made on the table. That's when it hits me, jarring my mind with the memory of Mrs. Randolph's hand slipping on the dry erase board last week while writing a line from a Shakespeare sonnet, leaving a mark that made my stomach twist from its familiarity. Where have I seen that before?

I've listened with my ear up against the bathroom door when my dad has been in there too long with the sink water running. I can only guess this is where he cries, not wanting to do it in front of me and Dylan. He stumbles around the house in shock, misplacing socks in the growing mounds of unwashed laundry and leaving his briefcase by the door when he heads out to work.

Just how can he work, anyway? He tells me it helps him busy his mind, hunching over his drafting table and designing miniscule parts that have to be constructed using high-powered magnification. For the Mars Rover-the new latest 2055 model that will have twice as many tiny parts as the last one. He figures the redesign will keep him busy for the next six months.

"We've been over this a hundred times, Bri. You just have to let her go . . ."

Calm, resolute. An objective scientist to the bitter end.

Dad leaves for work and I listen to his car drive away. A knot of anger lodges in my stomach. It's been four weeks, and the front page of the Greenfield Tribune still rehashes speculations about the laboratory accident-mostly because of the destruction of all that expensive equipment. Like they don't even care that sixteen people vanished without a trace. But millions of dollars of laser equipment, highly sensitive optics, and painstakingly grown laboratory crystals? The replacement costs are staggering, if not preclusive.