What has gone before: Bella has been reading Edward's journal. Edward hasn't been able to steal it back. Jasper is gone. Billy and Jacob have just left after a truck washing and a fish feast at the Swan's house. Jacob had commented about the 'girly smell' coming from Bella's room. Billy had talked to Charlie about the "Cullen boy gone missing ... " Bella and her dad are cleaning up in the kitchen.

As always, this is Stephenie Meyer's forest. I'm just playing.

Somewhere in Time

The yellow handprint on the floor in front of the sink is in a pretty awkward place. I have to stand a little to the side so as not to step on it as I'm washing the dishes. Dad is helping, sort of.

I'm not really paying attention, so he takes me totally by surprise. "I hear they got some kind of 'Pre-Valentine' party going on over at the Hobbes' place tonight." He pauses, then asks, "Did you want to go?"

I look up at the clock on the wall. It's almost eight.

He's followed where my eyes went. "They're probably just getting started."

"I don't really hang out with those guys, Dad."

And even if I did, they probably wouldn't invite me. Chief's daughter. I might as well have a straight arrow tattooed across my forehead.

"Oh."

The water rinses over the last plate in my hand.

"I hear Jessica Stanley's going to be there. You hang out with her, don't you?"

She's going with Mike. I would just be a third wheel. I debate whether or not to actually talk to my dad, tell him all the ins and outs of teenage socializing – or not socializing in my case. In the end I chicken out. "Are you going to send one of your guys over to check on them?"

"You know I am, Bells, that's my job."

I don't know what to say in the silence. I didn't mean to put it like I have no life because I'm his daughter. I really didn't, and really, that's not the reason. The reason is a dead boy's soul, sleeping under my mattress.

It's the safest place I could think of.

My dad sighs. "Well, maybe some other time."

"Yeah. I had fun with Jacob, today. It was a good day."

It was. It really was. But now, day is done. I dry my hands and hug my dad, just for a second. "I'm going to go upstairs and listen to music."

"Okay, kid. Sweet dreams."

"G'night, Dad."

"Night."

And I feel his eyes following me up the stairs. Creaky step and all. I'm sorry, Dad. At least I'm here, right? At least I'm here. For a while.

Getting ready for bed doesn't take very long. I'm really a bad excuse for a girl. I climb under the covers and pull the journal out from under my mattress. I feel like the princess and the pea … except that I never leave the journal under the mattress when I'm actually on the bed.

I hold it now, feeling the soft leather of its binding. It smells like Edward, still, although the scent is fading a little. I don't want it to. I love Edward's smell. I sniff in the air. Jacob couldn't have smelled Edward. Certainly not out in the hall. Maybe he just doesn't like Purple Sage bath gel and shampoo?

I put my nose against the journal again. I wonder if it smells like Edward because he has kept it near him all the time – even now, after he's all grown up. How many times has he read it through, I wonder. And did he find what he was looking for?

I play with the cedar sprig I'm using for a bookmark. I'd found it on the hood of my truck one morning, probably blown down by the hard wind and rain the night before. It seems like just the right thing to use for this journal. It's fragrant too. I'm going to leave it in the journal for Edward when I give it back to him. I know I have to give it back. I'm sure he didn't intend for me to keep it.

The cedar sprig is already almost a third of the way from the front cover to the back. I've been burning through the pages too quickly. The days of this lost Edward's life are passing too fast. But tonight I have a purpose, and so, I go back to the start.

…

December 30th 1917

Today was gloriously lazy. The sun peeked out after we'd gotten home from church, and the dining room was so cheery and bright. Josephine had made us a fine leg of lamb for lunch, with her own patented mint jelly. There is nothing finer in this entire world, I am sure. What am I to do when I marry?

Father sat in his chair afterwards with the Sunday paper while I doodled on the piano, and Mother was beside him picking through each section as he put it down. Finally curiosity got the better of both of us, and I asked Mother what she was looking for. She said she thought there might be some word of a Christmas truce, like they'd had the first year of the war.

Father called Mother "Elizabeth," and shook his head that way that he does. I felt quite badly for her, but I needn't have. My mother is as game as they come. She piped right up and said that they'd done it once before.

There had been stories in all the papers about it: how the soldiers from both sides had buried their dead together, exchanged rations and cigarettes and coat buttons, played ball games on the frozen mud in no man's land. The war was only a few months old, then. I'd been thirteen. The newspaper said the truce lasted all the way to New Year's Day.

Father reminded Mother that the generals had put a stop to it all; that one can't have that sort of thing in a war, and it certainly won't happen again.

He rustled his paper quite noisily, then, and got back to his reading. But I'm sure he heard Mother, too, when she whispered, "More's the pity." I'm sure he heard, because later, much later, I saw him take her to his side and say, "This is a man's war, darling, not a child's fairy tale. It's the way of the world. Let us just be glad that Edward is still too young to be in it."

"But he won't always be," Mother said.

…

The first time I read that, I'd googled World War I. It ended in November of 1918. Edward had still been seventeen then. Too young to go. Safe. He was safe. But his parents couldn't know that until it ended.

I run my fingers over the faded ink, the words in beautiful script: telling things that make me want pictures, make me want to see. I have the library. I have Google. And now I have the little scrapbook kit that I got in town this morning. I lean off the bed and pull it out of its brown paper bag, inside my backpack.

I know I have to give Edward his journal back. But I can make a keepsake for myself from my reading. Pictures of his ancestor's time and place. No one will know what it means but me.

I search for "Christmas Truce," and find pictures in black and white. I choose at last an image of an actual newspaper front page, dated January 3rd, 1915. It's a bunch of young men in long military coats standing together in a frozen hay field. I guess the ones with spikes on their helmets are the Germans. I expected them to look very different from pictures of today. But they could almost be a bunch of soldiers in Iraq. Some of them have moustaches. I suddenly think how lucky I am that my dad came back. He could have died over there, and then where would I be now? I would have never known him. Would my mom have raised me? Or maybe Gran. She only lived until I was twelve. I would have been an orphan, then. Like Edward.

The scrapbook that I got is small, the same size as Edward's journal. I have to shrink the picture down a little when I print it so it won't take up the whole page. The faces are too small to see clearly, but it's enough that when I look at it I will remember what it meant to Edward.

…

January 1st 1918

A new year begins. The morning sky is white with snow.

I have resolved that in this journal I shall not record the trifles of my daily life, but only those things which impress themselves deeply upon my mind.

Written at 8 o'clock pm: Today being a holiday, Father stayed home from work. He joined Mother and me in making the most splendid snowman, even donated one of his old pipes to the cause, while Mother wrapped it round with a scarf, and added a jaunty cap as well. It was great fun, and yet, I imagine this must be the last year that I would do such a thing.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

...

He put away the childish thing. But I will save it for him. I find, at last, not a picture, but music. "Walking in the Air", the theme song of the movie, "The Snowman". I copy down the notes for the first page of the score, since there is a big watermark over it and I don't have money to download a clean copy to print. The melody stays unfinished on the little square of paper, but somehow that seems right. I paste it on the page, slightly overlapping the picture of the soldiers in no man's land.

…

January 17th, 1918

Two parties who shall remain unnamed have stolen the pretty, crop-haired girl in sailor's blue: right from the board in front of the Post Office! If anyone should ever read this, it was not I. On the contrary they called me a pansy for objecting to the act when they showed me their spoil. "Wasn't right putting her out there instead of Uncle Sam. We couldn't have her freezing in the snow!" They take turns hoarding their prize in their rooms, and I cannot imagine a more dangerous place. What if the maid should turn her up while cleaning? Of one, in particular, I know she is a sterner creature than either of their mothers. She would surely tan his hide and tell his parents after.

"Look at those lips, Masen. It's my patriotic duty to kiss her goodnight before bed every evening."

As if I didn't know perfectly well that he's practicing for a certain young lady.

…

I find the girl in sailor blue. I find two, actually. One has windblown blonde hair and her hands in her pockets, a blue naval officer's jacket on over the hint of a tousled skirt. Her eyes are half closed and the red writing says: I WANT YOU … for THE NAVY. The other girl has dark hair and dimples and looks impishly sideways. Only skin shows beneath the deep open V of her dark blue midshipman's shirt. She says: GEE! i wish i were A MAN … I'd JOIN The NAVY.

I close my eyes and choose one, and print it out in miniature. I hope my dad doesn't hear and wonder what I'm doing.

…

January 26th, 1918

Father and I joined the shovel brigades on the rail lines again, to clear last night's snow. The roads were in no condition for motorcars so it was a heavy trudge to get to where we were needed. I hardly know what headway we made, as flurries were still coming down throughout the day. The newspaper says that we've had more snow in Chicago this month than ever recorded before. We found our gardener there, and Josephine's husband as well, with their boys, and they all tipped their hats to Father. Little children are depending on the trains and delivery trucks for their milk, Father says, and every family for their coal. Rich and poor, we've all got to do our part. It turned out to be grand fun, with snowball fights, and hot chocolate brought between times by "the ladies' auxiliary". But it was a very long Saturday for us all, and I am grateful indeed for my nice warm bed!

...

I try to imagine the snowy scene, teams of men and boys shoveling together. I see it all in sepia, like the ink on the unlined page.

I Google "1918 Chicago snow," and learn that snow fell on 22 of the 31 days that month for a total of almost four feet. I can't find any pictures of the city in that month, but there are a few photographs of soldiers in nearby Fort Grant, shoveling and having a snow fight, with old-fashioned jalopies in the background. It makes a nice collage – the young men and old cars on the snowy street, the Navy girl, and the snowfall chart for the month of January 1918.

… grateful indeed for my nice warm bed!

I close my eyes. Did he write this diary lying on his stomach on his bed? Or did he sit at a desk, with proper posture for penmanship? What kind of lamp did he have at his desk? Or bedside? Did he sleep under blankets? Or under a pile of rich quilts? I imagine him in soft flannel pajamas, his face hidden from me, because he is turned away.

The handwriting on the page is so much like the Edward's writing that I know. I do see Edward's writing sometimes, as I'm passing the whole stack of lab reports to the teacher. Sometimes Edward's ends up on top.

I pull out the medicine recipe. It's getting a little bit worn at the creases. I shouldn't keep opening and folding it. But here I am spreading it out next to the journal page. The loops and lines all neat and smooth. Practically identical. If I didn't know it was impossible, I would think they were written by the same person.

Stopping a van with one hand is impossible, too.

My heart flutters.

Edward and I being alive right now is impossible. And yet, we are. Unharmed.

I gaze at the writings, side by side. Perfect match. Like twins. Or a time traveler.

Or a person who lives outside of time completely.

The thought forms in my mind. What if Edward and his family really are … different? What if they've been … touched? Changed. Like Tuck Everlasting …

It can't be. But what if it is? What if the boy who wrote this (At a desk? On his bed?), in a room with lots of dark brown wood and old-fashioned lamps (And quilts? Or blankets?), what if he is the same one who sits behind me in Biology this year, scowling angrily whenever my eyes fall across him?

I don't really believe that. The world doesn't work that way.

But the idea is like a seed that has already found its place in the soil.

I imagine a holy ash tree, deep in a forest where nobody goes, and a little spring flowing up from its roots. I imagine Edward and his family, drinking from that spring.

If they offered me a flask of that water, would I drink it, too?

I find that I'm lying on my side, with all my scrapping stuff messy on the bed next to me, and the journal in my arms held tight to my chest. I feel sad, and confused, and scared; and I have no idea why.

Maybe it's from too much imagining.

I bring myself back to real life: mine, and the real life of this boy who lived a century ago. He is real. His life was real. And it's not lost. He is remembered. And cared about. By Edward. And by me. Even if there's no one left living who knew him in person.

I open the journal again, and the sadness is sharp, like a knife. But I'm going to fight back by making a really good memento in pictures for him.

…

February 1, 1918

Josephine's husband got his hand mangled in the meat grinder at the packing plant yesterday. Josephine was in tears with Mother in the kitchen after dinner tonight. It seems the doctors are talking about infection and gangrene and amputation, and the poor woman is beside herself. I can't imagine such a terrible wound. I asked Father, aren't there safety laws to prevent this sort of thing? He said, precious few. Later, Mother drew Father into the sitting room. I was sent upstairs to read for school, but I heard a bit of what they were saying. Something about reparations and hospital bills. The plant owner is Father's client, so he can hardly represent a worker against him in court, but I heard him say that he would speak to him privately.

I think I shall never look at our tinned meats quite the same way again.

…

February 11, 1918

It being Monday, I was up very early again to help Mother with our family's laundry before I went to school. Josephine's husband is still battling blood fevers from his injury, so she's had to stay at his side. Though we do have an electric washing machine, the crank on the wringer is a very stiff turn, and I didn't want Mother to do that herself. This week I was late leaving, and missed the trolley. When I had to explain my tardiness at school, everyone laughed at me, even Tommy Borden. How could he forget the pact we'd made when we were neighbors, when I was seven and he was eight, and he'd had to stay back one year because the measles had turned to rheumatic fever, and kept him out of school for half a year? That I'd let no one have the last word on him for staying back, and he'd let no one beat me up for being scrawny. But now, of all people, he was the one that said, "Still tied to your mother's apron strings, Masen?"

I was still fuming when I returned home, and went straight to my room. Father spoke to me after dinner. He said that Mother thought I was angry with her. I suppose I was, a little bit. Couldn't we have hired someone else if Josephine must tend her husband for weeks on end?

"Your mother hired Josephine at a good wage so that their youngest children wouldn't have to go to the mills. Now her husband may never work again. Would you have us fire her as well?" Father asked. How shameful and selfish I felt!

He asked if I felt ashamed of helping my own mother. Of course not. Every good son should do so. But it is women's work. I told him what Tommy had said.

"Women have a harder lot than we men do," Father said. "It's our duty to spare them what we can. What man worth his salt would leave the back-breaking work to his wife or his mother?" Father said he was proud of me for helping, and that Mother is grateful, too. "It's no different from stepping forward to join the shovel brigades, or even going to the Front. A man puts his shoulder to the difficult tasks." I felt better after he'd said this. And now that I think upon it, though Mother has had to manage the kitchen all by herself these past two weeks, she has made my very favorite cherry cobbler for our Monday night desserts. With real ice cream, too.

If Borden ribs me again, I'll set him straight, but otherwise, I'm not going to harbor it up like a girl.

…

This Edward loves music. He gets all excited over going to a concert with his parents and the families they are friends with – a real concert, where he has to get dressed up in coat and tails, starched shirt, and a set of his father's cufflinks. I look for a picture of formal eveningwear in the 1910s. I find some – drawings by an artist named Leyendecker – but I don't think Edward looked like that. All of the pictures are men in their twenties, or even older. I imagine the boy that I know, with his hair combed smooth, and dressed in the old fashioned clothes. They would look so handsome on him, with his slender waist and pure face.

…

March 10th, 1918

Josephine is back with us again. She has been singing the praises of the young surgeon who set and stitched her husband's hand. After the fevers passed and the swelling went down, it seems he will recover almost full use of it. She says it's a miracle. I do believe she would kiss that doctor's feet if he'd let her. As it is she is offering devotions at church every Sunday from now until Easter.

…

…

I've stayed up too late and my eyes are gritty. I've already gone past where I had read to before. I decide to stop here, at the entry for April 23rd.

What we learned in Botany class today.

Underneath is a diagram of a flower. It's all intricate and careful, fountain-pen lines and no color, with each part labeled in what looks like Latin again. I find a piece of tracing paper in the scrapbook kit and trace the picture as well as I can. Everything is thin and faded, but I manage it, even the names of each part, tracing his beautiful script.

"Find me."

Before first light, I wake up. The rain has returned. It patters gently in the dark outside my window. There is not another sound in the whole house.

I have dreamed again.

I am searching for a stone child. My eyes are ignorant, and only my hands know the shape. I find it, just a stone, but wrapped in a rainbow cloth. I am supposed to hold this hard thing against my body, until it can grow warm.

I'm walking, and the stone is heavy, so I use the long cloth to wrap it to my front. I am in a place, like a forest, that is neither daylit nor night, walking with the stone, and the cloth of many colors, bright as the dew. A spotted owl flies above me and I walk in its shadow, here between the trees.

A/N: Most heartfelt thanks to averysubtlegift for being the best and most patient beta I could ever wish for. This chapter went through NINE revisions, mostly because I am OCD and insecure. Deep thank you also to geo3 for the right question at the right time. I would still be obsessing instead of posting right now, if not for her. Last and most far from least, thank you to every one of you who reads, alerts, favorites, or reviews. You make the writing not a lonely process. Thank you.

I almost forgot: here are some of the pictures that Bella found to put in her scrap-book:

The Christmas Truce:

movehimintothesun . files . wordpress 2011/01/trucemirror2 . jpg

(Here is another touching picture, with the story. To think that they started shooting at each other after that always breaks my heart. anniemayhem wordpress/?p=1262 )

The pretty crop-haired girls:

www . history . /photos/images/h81000/h81543k . jpg

www . clarkegalleries posters/images/gee_i_wish_i_were_a_man_lg . jpg

The shovel brigades:

www . hellorockford images/people/4222005rockford_n069735 . jpg

An old style clothes wringer:

www . handsontauranga . /Pics/1487,4,1,6,4,0/Clothes-Wringer-HC111 . jpeg

(The clamps at the bottom attach it to the washing tub)

Men's formal wear of Edward's time:

: / / www . periodpaper media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/O/D/OD1_120_1 . JPG

: / / www . flickr photos/charmainezoe/5357368515/lightbox/