We walked up the hill towards the cabin. Grandma was sitting on the porch reading a newspaper. She noticed us and stood up.

"Where have you been?" She called.

"Just hanging around town." Charlie replied.

"What are you wearing?"

I stopped in my tracks and in a split second I created an alibi. "We fell into the river. Some people lent us these." I wasn't about to tell her we'd found the very thing she'd been trying to shield us from.

"Yup!" Charlie nodded.

Grandma didn't argue. She just said, "well make sure you get your own clothes back."

When we were on the porch, Charlie asked, "Grandma? Are we going to have to go to school in town?"

Grandma raised her eyebrows. "Why yes; that was exactly what I was about to tell you."

I groaned.

Charlie bumped me with her shoulder and smirked. "You'll be with Meghan!"

My cheeks grew warm. "Shut up!"

"Who's Meghan?" Grandma demanded.

"Just a girl Ricky likes."

I felt like my face was on fire. "I don't like her."

"Why not? She's rich and pretty; that's just your type!"

I punched her in the shoulder.

"Now, now, let's not fight." Grandma said. "I went to the store in town earlier and bought some things to bake chocolate chip cookies!"

"Yum!" Charlie elated.

"I'm in." I added.

Grandma clapped her hands. "Fantastic! Right this way, children."

We spent the next hour and a half baking the cookies. When we were done, the three of us sat on the porch eating them. They were soft and gooey and the perfect treat for a fall afternoon.

"So you wanna go back today?" Charlie whispered in my ear when Grandma wasn't looking. "Or should we wait til tomorrow?"

"Today." I replied. "My head's stopped spinning now, and I wanna know more."

"I agree." She nodded. "Hey Grandma?" She said aloud. "We'd like to go play in the woods and maybe go into town."

"Okay." Grandma replied. "You're really enjoying it up here! Oh, and before I forget; you start with school the day after tomorrow, so we need to go shopping tomorrow."

"Okay." I said.

We were off. We dashed through the woods to the hole in the cliff face, gathered our coats, and crawled into the loop. We stopped only a minute to put on the coats. We ran all the way to the house without stopping. I noticed that there was no one in the yard and the door was locked.

"Huh." Charlie said.

We skirted around to the front of the house, which was just as enchanting as the back, and rang the brand-new-looking doorbell. Bells chimed inside, and a minute later Miss Cardinal opened the door.

"Ah, the Pickering siblings!" She said. "It is so nice to see you again! But unfortunately the children cannot come play at the moment; they have lessons all afternoon. Unless you would like to join them, you'll have to come back at dinner or tomorrow. I do apologize for not telling you earlier; my memory certainly isn't what it used to be."

I raised an eyebrow. "So you forgot they had lessons?"

"Oh no of course not!" Miss Cardinal seemed offended. "I simply forgot to relay that information."

"Alright. That's all good." Charlie spoke up. "So what time is dinner and can we have our clothes back?"

"Dinner is at 7 sharp. And your clothes are not quite dry yet, I'm afraid; they'll be dry this evening, though."

"Yes ma'am." Charlie hung her head.

"So we'll see you then?"

"Yup." I replied.

"Superb! Run along now; I must get back to teaching my wards."

We waved goodbye and trudged off through the snow.

When we returned to the present, Charlie asked what we'd both been thinking; "so what do we do now?"

"We could check out that drive-in movie place; I still have some money left over from yesterday."

"Okay, that sounds fun."

It wasn't exactly my definition of fun; turns out it was vintage night, so all that was playing was really old-ass black-and-white films that were badly made and made no sense. Still, we watched a double feature, just to kill time before dinner.

When the movies were done, it was still only 4. Charlie suggested we see another movie, but I voted strongly against it.

We went to the water park and stripped down to our underwear and played around for a while.

Time flew; before we knew it, it was 6:30.

"We should get going!" Charlie got out and started drying off.

We both made sure to dry off completely before heading back to the children's home. We crawled in and out of the hole and charged through the snow until we got to the house. I rang the doorbell.

This time, Raymond opened the door, Riley standing beside him, Janie's clothes floating next to her.

"Ricky! Charlie! You came!" Janie squealed.

"Glad you could join us." Raymond said. "Please, come in." He stepped aside so we could enter.

Just as we hung our coats on the coat rack, Miss Cardinal entered, beaming widely.

"Hey, Miss Cardinal." Charlie said.

"Hello, I am so glad you could make it!" Miss Cardinal embraced us both in a warm hug. "Come, we've just sat down."

Miss Cardinal, Raymond, Rylie, and Janie led us to a large dining room, complete with a fireplace and more pictures of strange people hanging on the walls. George and Sebasten sat at the table, along with a young girl of about nine, who had very long brown braids.

"What are you doing here?" Sebasten scowled at me. His New York accent made him sound like a gangster, and with that hostile look on his face, who could tell the difference?

"They're joining us for dinner!" Janie exclaimed, pulling out a seat and sitting down.

The girl with the long brown braids yawned tiredly, but still stood up, curtseyed, and mumbled in a very sleepy voice, "Phoebe Knoll; nice to meet you." Then she sat back down. She had dark circles under her eyes.

"Why are you so tired?" I asked her.

"She's nocturnal, dumbass." Sebasten answered for her. "We told you that this morning, if you'd bothered to listen."

"Mister Evergreen, we do not swear at the table." Miss Cardinal sat down, then Charlie and I sat down between Raymond and Phoebe. Riley was right in front of Raymond and next to George, who was next to Sebasten, who was next to Janie. Miss Cardinal was at the head of the table by Raymond and Riley.

"Sorry Miss Cardinal." Sebasten said, then shoveled some chopped-up carrots into his mouth.

"You are forgiven." Miss Cardinal turned to my sister and I. "I'm sure you have many questions."

We both nodded, our mouths full.

I had no idea where to start. I looked around once I'd swallowed and came up with a simple question that wouldn't break my brain. "Who are they? In the pictures. Did they live here?"

Miss Cardinal laughed and shook her head. "No, no! Well, a few did, but most of the pictures were given to me by other ymbrynes; did you see the picture in the hall of the giant boy?"

"Yeah." Charlie answered.

"He lived here for a while, but then he left; got bored, I suppose; wanted more with his life." Miss Cardinal explained.

"His name was Johnny!" Janie exclaimed. "I think he liked Phoebe."

"How could he go live a normal life if he's two stories tall?" I asked. "How could he even fit in this house?"

"The answer to your first question," Miss Cardinal explained, "is there are thousands of other peculiars out there; he probably found work with some of them. Or possibly he ended up in another loop. As for your second question, he lived on the third and fourth story; we had to remove walls and the third floor ceiling to accommodate him, along with a good portion of the exterior wall so he could get in and out. We replaced the exterior wall after he left."

"When did he leave?" Sounded like the next logical question.

"When he left, it was about 1973 in the present, but he technically left on this day: New Year's Eve, 1949." Miss Cardinal answered.

"Why?" Once again, Charlie took the words right out of my mouth.

Raymond took the liberty of answering her. "See, this loop is set decades in your past; if any of us went into the present for more than a few hours, we would age forward all at once to the age we would be if we aged normally through those years we missed."

"Yeah, we might be able to live forever, but we'll never be able to go live in the present." Sebasten added.

"Yes." Raymond continued. "However, if you can get into a loop that is near enough to not age forward before your arrival, and that loop is not set too far after the one you started in, then you can live in that one."

I nodded; all this made a strange amount of sense to me.

"So what's my peculiarity?" Charlotte asked next.

"There's really no for sure way to tell right now." Riley explained. "But I promise you you'll discover it at some point."

"So when you take others' abilities, you can't tell what ability you took?" Charlie wondered, a skeptical look on her face.

Riley just shook her head. "Unfortunately, no; I can only steal someone's peculiarity if I know what it is."

Charlie looked down at her lap. "Okay."

I pat her on the back. "There there." I turned back to the peculiars. "Y'all are sure she's peculiar, ain't ya?"

"Of course!" Janie exclaimed. "She couldn't have entered the loop if she wasn't!"

"Even if a Normal did manage to get in," Raymond explained, "the strain would be too much for them; their brains would turn to mush."

"So what I'm hearing is..." I said. "There's no way to figure out what her ability is?"

"Thats what we're saying." Sebasten stated grimly.

Miss Cardinal looked at her wristwatch. "Oh my! Look at the time! It's seven twenty-four already!"

With this, there was a buzz of excitement among the children; even Phoebe seemed wide awake and jumpy as everyone else.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Changeover!" Janie exclaimed. "You're gonna love it!"

With that, I heard glass breaking somewhere else in the house, heavy footsteps, and men shouting in a language I didn't understand.

The hairs on my neck stood on end and my stomach fell to my knees. Terrorists. I looked around at the others; Miss Cardinal was a watching her watch carefully with a disturbingly calm look on their face, the children were acting like they were about to win the lottery and get a lifetime supply of literally everything they could ever want, Charlie looked just as confused and terrified as I felt.

I jumped about a foot above my seat when the dining room door slammed open. In came a man dressed in all black pointing a huge gun straight at us. He charged at us, then everything froze; there was no movement whatsoever; the whole world looked like a painting. Then, with a white flash, everything went back to normal; the children were once again eating and chatting as if the man with the gun was just a minor disturbance that had been dealt with, and the terrorist was nowhere to be seen.

_____________________

Thank y'all so much for reading this!

Seriously; it means a lot to me

Love ya!

CC