" Hi, Kathy! How was the journey?" cried George, giving his older sister a kiss on the cheek.
" Fine, it's chilly out there, though!" she replied, shivering as she removed her coat.
" Let me take that for you," Lorraine offered.
" Hi there, Richard. How's it at the office nowadays?"
" Not too bad, actually."
" Oh, hey, kids!"
Kathy and Richard's three children filed in. Jonathan, the eldest who was a mere year younger than Dave, waved at his Aunt Lorraine and Uncle George, as did fifteen year old Sally Anne and twelve year old Marnie. When they saw two of their cousins sitting at the bottom of the stairs, they erupted with excitement, except for Marnie who couldn't see Marty anywhere.
" We're getting a VHS for Christmas. Aren't we, Sal?" Jonathan sneered. " What are you getting? A shiny new bike?"
" No! We're getting Nintendo's Game & Watch," Dave lied. A conversation like this was not unusual. They were constantly trying to outdo one another.
" No, we're not," Linda butted in. " Mom said video games melt your brain."
Marnie heaved a sigh. She never caught up in those silly arguments; neither did Marty, which was probably the reason why they got along so well. " Hey, sorry to butt in, but where's Marty?"
" Up in his room listening to Stairway to Heaven over and over again," Linda replied, rolling her eyes.
" Why's he doing that?" Marnie asked her worriedly.
" He had this friend who was like a million years old and he died yesterday," Dave explained.
The sympathy for her cousin sliced through her heart. " Can I see him?"
Linda shrugged and Dave said, " Sure. I'm not stopping ya."
The young teenage girl, who was ultimately small in all departments for her age, bolted up the stairs, feeling the pain of Marty's grief. Sure enough, when she opened the door that had a 'Musician in Training' sign on it, she was greeted by the depressing song performed by Led Zeppelin. Marty was curled up in a foetal position at the foot of his bed, his brilliant azure eyes puffy and red from weeping and his guitar clamped to his chest as he plucked a few meaningless chords. Marnie smiled to herself, covering her empathy with something else but she didn't know what. She knelt down beside him and realising her presence, Marty looked at her.
" Hi, Marty," she whispered as he stood up to switch off his cassette player. " Uh, I heard about your friend. I'm sorry, OK?"
" Thanks," he muttered, his voice croaky from crying all night.
There was a short pause that Marnie tried to fill with a question. " What was he like?"
The young boy sighed and with almost happiness, he responded, " He was…different. He had a disability but he was so intelligent! You asked him a question and he had the correct answer within seconds. It was like he knew everything. Plus, he was into time-travel, like I am. When I first met him, he told me that one day I'm going to go back in time and that was how we became friends. But now, that's all over."
Marnie gave her friend and family member a comforting pat on the shoulder, despite the fact that she didn't believe the part when he mentioned time-travel. " He seemed like a really nice guy."
" Actually, he was rather rude. But that was because of his disability. People like him can be rude sometimes, though they don't mean it. That's just the way their brain works. But we were like best buddies or something."
The girl subtly nodded her head, not fully understanding how someone could be rude and not mean it. Her gaze fell upon the untouched box that lay on the chest of drawers. " Hey, what's that?" she cried and went to take a better look.
" That's Verne's Christmas present. Or it was supposed to be," he answered, mumbling and shuffling his feet.
" Oh," his cousin whispered. " What is it? In the box, I mean."
" Verne loved everything about time-travel and time machines. He watched shows about it, read books on it; talked about it constantly. And apparently, he had one back when he was a kid in the 1890's, though I never believed him. So I made a miniature time machine out of milk cartons. It's pretty awesome though he never got to see it."
" Well, I guess he would've loved it. I bet he would've kept it on his windowsill and daydream all day long," Marnie said cheerfully, making Marty smile.
" Yeah, I bet he would have," he agreed.
" So whaddya say we go outside and make-believe we have our own time machine?" she suggested.
The two twelve year olds, despite being too old for imaginative play, rushed out to the back garden and pretended to go back in time to meet the bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus Rex and to the future to see the wonders of the world that are yet to be discovered.
