Healing and IN THE NICK OF TIME

So many people have commented on the healing quality of IN THE NICK OF TIME. While my intent was to tell a terrific time travel novel with rich characters who exhibit various emotional responses to the surroundings and events that occur to them, there seems to be, unconsciously, a thin veil of healing in the pages. Forgiveness is a common theme I feel drawn to as well; again, it seems to reveal itself in unplanned ways!

The adventures of Andy Mackpeace (and his friends Roger and Miranda) are not easily handled. Choices are made at times that are not always for the best. I like the idea of characters, especially Andy, transforming from his mistakes.

In IN THE NICK OF TIME, the maturing process happens to all three characters, their own sense of empowerment is strengthened, and as a result, their sense of community and belonging is deepened.

That's the powerful alchemic response called 'healing'.

Grandma Geri would have been proud. :)

Chapter 2 of THE TIME OF HIS LIFE

Again, due to the pleadings of some people, (thank you!) I have posted Chapter 2 of the sequel to IN THE NICK OF TIME currently titled THE TIME OF HIS LIFE. I'm enjoying the process of editing this book, watching Andy, Miranda and Roger and Grandma Geri become more evolved as a new adventure awaits. Enjoy.

Chapter 2

Mr. Flanders gestured to the teacher outside. “Whenever your class is ready, that is fine!”
Andy Mackpeace was sitting on the steps of the Historical Society with his friend Miranda Roberts. They were eating lunches and the late September sun was shining on their faces making life feel warm and toasty. The rest of his Social Studies class were sitting there too, eating and talking.
“Have you spoken to Roger this week?” Miranda asked. Roger was Andy’s best friend who had moved away to Montana three weeks ago.
“We email each other almost every day, but since he’s tried out for football, I usually don’t hear from him until late at night.” Andy stuffed the remains of his plastic wraps and brownie crumbs into his paper bag and walked over to throw it away. “Other than that, he’s doing great. Montana is a whole new world for him.”
Mr. Hahn, the teacher, grouped the class together. “Ok, you have your worksheets: the photos you are about to see will help you answer the questions.” Andy and Miranda were in 8th grade, and Social Studies for that year meant learning about their home state: a complete New Hampshire History. Andy thought the whole idea was insane, and sounded boring, but Mr. Hahn was one of those teachers who brought it all to life, making the little struggles and triumphs of New Hampshire sound like a day at the UN.
Their field trip was a great introduction to New Hampshire: a study of the boys’ camps that flourished in the state and continued to do so even today. Andy had never gone to one; Miranda had been to a girls’ Field Hockey training camp, but since they both lived in Silver Lake, a small town, it was sort of pointless. The camps were for the rich kids from Boston and New York who wanted to get out of the city. “Now, I don’t have to remind you to stay quiet in there,”
Mr. Hahn said as the group went filing into the doors. “You’ll have about 45 minutes to do your research.”
The troupe marched up the wide marble stairs swooping up to the second floor. At the top, on the left, was the entrance to a large room with a banner that read:
BOYS’ CAMPS, CULTURE, AND THE NEW HAMPSHIRE EXPERIENCE: 1898-2008.
“These stupid camps have been around this long!” Miranda said, passing under the banner. “Oh, and of course, the girls’ camps aren’t even represented here!”
The room was a series of make shift walls which contained photographs, printed materials and camp flyers arranged chronologically. She and Andy strolled through the turn of the 20th century camps, names like Camp Pasquaney, Camp Asquam, and Chocorua, looking at the old style clothes and haircuts.
“Check out what the counselors are wearing!” Miranda whispered. She gestured to a photo of college aged men sitting on the grass wearing jackets and ties and long pants and shoes.
“That had to have been for the photographer,” Andy said. “That’d be ridiculous to wear that all day in the sun!” He was right. Other photos showed the counselors in shorts, hiking boots, loose shirts and old hats.
“Question 1: List several differences in the style of clothing throughout the span of the century”.
Andy and Miranda began writing the answers to their questions.
As Andy rounded the corner of one wall and entered the area marked 1920-1940, he came into a group of photos showing a camp called Camp Forest Hills. The display started with a hand-drawn cartoon map of the camp. Camp Forest Hills had been situated at the base of a small mountain, with a lake at the top of it. The base contained the playing fields and some shacks, with a road winding up the hill, through the pine trees to the lake. Along the road were buildings, presumably camp sites, cabins, and bathrooms, which ended at a small lake shaped like a pair of glasses. “Spectacle Pond”, the map read. According to the map, the lake had a long dock built on it stretching from the beach out into the water.
Andy examined every inch of the map. He turned his head to stare at the several photos regarding daily life at Camp Forest Hills. The first showed a row of boys and counselors standing on that long wooden dock, and they looked about ready to dive off. The caption read: ‘Diving and Swimming are an intricate part of learning survival techniques at Camp Forest Hills. Boys are taught to swim, dive, and compete in healthy, active games.’
Andy laughed to himself. ‘Learning survival techniques?’
His eyes moved to the next photo: a group shot of the counselors and the boys. The caption read: ‘Camp Forest Hills, Groton, New Hampshire. Boys and Counselors, Summer of 1925.’ Andy looked at the faces of those non-grinning people from 82 years ago. He started with the top row of, clearly, the counselors. There was an older man there too who looked like a doctor or perhaps the owner of the camp.
‘Who were these people?’ Andy thought. ‘Did they like it there? Were they happy? What were they thinking?’ Andy peered closer as he moved toward the second row.
He began at the left and guessed the ages of the camp kids were about his own: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. One boy had two ears sticking straight out while his mouth pouted in some sort of “Jeez, do we have to be here doing this!” frown. Andy laughed out loud.
He roamed through the row, scanning the short kid peering out between two heads, the bright blond haired kid, past the taller guy with a shock of hair combed straight back, all of them glaring at the camera. ‘These were the rich kids,’ he thought. He moved toward the right, studying, looking for signs of what it had been like to have lived back then, when his eyes came upon Jake Hollis.
“Who killed me?” Jake said. “I died here. I was murdered.”
The words vibrated through time, through 82 years and landed on the first person who was able to hear them. Andy spun around to see if anyone else noticed this. No one was paying him any attention, and even Miranda had raced ahead to look for any sign of a girl’s camp. Did the picture really talk? No, that’s impossible, Andy thought. But there was energy. Energy zinging at him from the photograph. Something was being said to him.
Andy stared at the boy: he was the last kid on the right in the second row: he was kneeling on his right knee, his arms folded across his chest and he was looking straight into the camera. He had dark, dark hair that wasn’t parted or pasted back on his skull. It was a full head of straight hair with bangs that completely covered his forehead. His shoulders were broad for a boy his age, and his eyebrows were dark too, giving his eyes a callous, obstinate look. He appeared to be about 5’7” or 5’8”; since he was kneeling, it was hard for Andy to tell. The boy was average in weight. He was wearing shorts and this short sleeved camp shirt, just like many of the others, and his face had a feigned hardness that was rehearsed. Despite the coldness in the eye, Andy felt he looked like the type of guy whom you could depend on, you could trust.
“Who killed me?” Jake’s voice said again. “Who killed me?”
Like the ripples a lake makes when you throw a rock into it, the words pulsated out from the picture and into the room. Goose bumps slithered across Andy’s arms, and a shiver went up his back. He looked behind him and saw one of his classmates peering over his shoulder. Andy was about to say, “Hey, did you hear that?” when the classmate wandered off, bored.
Andy turned to the picture again. The vibrations got stronger.
“I was murdered here.”
The energy came from that boy: that boy who was the last boy on the right in the second row. It filled Andy’s ears and his head and he turned away. He looked at the windows and the September sun beaming in, making the museum gathering stuffy, almost sleep inducing. He wondered if that was what made him imagine the voice. He turned and read his assignment sheet. But, the temptation was too strong. He raised his head again toward that innocent photograph, and every time he put his eyes back on the boy, the dark words came through. Stronger. Insistent.
“Who killed me?
I was murdered here.
Who killed-”
“Stop it!” Andy yelled as he keeled over toward the display. He grabbed for the wall, missed, hit a menu board instead and knocked over a table of brochures. The racket was like a cannon shot, and Andy bolted, his stomach turned to mush. The young boy ran as fast as he could out of the exhibit, out of the stuffy air and those god-awful vibrating pulses.
He flew down the stairs, dropping his notebook and his pen. He saw the Men’s room at the bottom and pushed the door. It crashed into the wall with a BANG! echoing across the lobby and up the stairs into the photo exhibit. The door stayed open. Andy headed for a toilet, but his brain knew he’d never make it. He reached a garbage can instead and hurled up his lunch. His retching reverberated through the building, and everyone, from the research librarian in the back room, to the entire Social Studies class on the second floor, heard every chunk of his sandwich and brownie hitting the bottom of the empty can.

Sequel to IN THE NICK OF TIME

The sequel to my novel IN THE NICK OF TIME is finished. Currently titled THE TIME OF HIS LIFE, I thought I would share the first chapter. Without revealing the ending to IN THE NICK OF TIME, this new novel involves Andy, Miranda and Roger again and of course the sage-like influence of Grandma Geri. More time travel and those impetuous incense sticks. For the fans: here is Chapter One of THE TIME OF HIS LIFE:


CHAPTER 1

Jake Hollis has been dead for eighty-five years. He was fifteen years old when he died, and he was solemnly buried in the now deserted and forgotten Quaker cemetery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. His funeral, on August 27, 1925, was a relieved cool morning after a five day heat wave. His father and mother, ashen faced, shocked, mute, stood at his grave. His mother held the hand of Jake’s eight-year-old sister while his brother, thirteen, stood alone willing himself to be strong. When Jake’s coffin was lowered into the soil, his brother broke down. A forgiving breeze stirred the trees but would not dry their tears. Jake’s only aunt would stay with the family another two months to help manage the household.

In a box full of photographs and crinkly memorabilia of a long defunct boys’ camp called Camp Forest Hills, there is a picture or two of Jake Hollis. This box is one of a collection of five boxes located in a modest mansion in Concord, New Hampshire. How the photographs ended up there, no one seems to know, but in Mrs. Abigail Bishop’s spacious and organized attic the photos of Jake have rested for thirty-seven years. When she died, her family donated the five boxes, as well as two trunks and a sled, to the New Hampshire Historical Society.

After looking through the contents, David Flanders, the curator at the Society, decided to mount an exhibit. The boxes contained a wealth of fascinating information on the history of the boys’ camps that flourished in the state from 1900 to the present. Not just Camp Forest Hills, but wild sounding camp names like Camp Pasquaney, Camp Asquam, and Camp Mowglis. The boxes were filled with old letters from camp children, menus, daily schedules of the camps, tax receipts and even old yearbooks. There were sixty-four sepia colored and black and white photographs: boys playing sports, boys swimming, hiking, sitting in their tents. Boys staring into the camera, engaged in rifle practice or working on projects in the woodshop, posed for eternity.

Mr. Flanders thought it was the perfect exhibit for the summer and even into the fall, as the Society was overrun with tourist visitors during that time of year. Jake, the boy who died, was in two of the sixty-four pictures. The first was a group photograph of the campers at Camp Forest Hills of 1925. Jake is in the second row, the last boy on the right: bent down on his right knee, arms crossed, as were all the others and he stares at the camera intently. While the boys are wedged together, shoulder to shoulder, he is slightly, just slightly, apart. His dark hair falls across his forehead. He’s not heavy or stocky; 1925 was a different time when there were no Doritos, no McDonalds, no quick and easy greasy chicken. The boys look healthy, well fed, but muscular. Jake weighs 135 pounds; he is 5 feet 8 inches tall. Had he lived he would have grown taller. He would have gained more weight. There is no smile on his face: but there are no smiles on anyone’s face. The boys were told to do that: showing the seriousness of these summer camps, these camps that taught young kids how to survive, how to be mature men for the future. But Jake didn’t survive. He died. During that summer, his first time at the camp, he died.

The second picture of Jake is the camp’s baseball team. He is standing, again a little away from the other campers, on the left. He’s gripping a baseball bat, but the bat is touching the ground, as if Jake is about to raise it for a swing. He’s leaning against a cabin and his left arm is looped over the railing. He grins. Perhaps he and the team are about to start a game. He’s wearing a baseball uniform. The other guys don’t have uniforms; they’re dressed in shorts and old shirts. Jake’s uniform was a gift from his dad, something for the camp adventure he was about to embark on.

For thirty-seven years, through summers and winters, these two simple, quiet pictures of Jake Hollis stayed in that box in Mrs. Bishop’s attic. Today, carefully, respectfully, Mr. Flanders removes all the photos, separates the materials and creates the Historical Society’s new exhibit. The two photos of Jake will go up on the wall. The exhibit is on the second floor of the New Hampshire Historical Society. The building, which opened in 1906, is found across the street from the State House in Concord. It will take a visit by a very special, sensitive boy named Andy Mackpeace to look at these photos, and Jake will finally, finally, after eighty-five years of being silent, speak to the living.