Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

I blink hard, dizzy. Kit offers to hang up my coat and points to a row of hooks. I set my camera on the table and take off my coat. Kit spots it and gets excited, asking if I like taking photos. Before I answer, she says she does and wants to be a reporter when she grows up. She reaches for the camera.

I shout no and snatch it back before Kit can touch it. I have no idea what would happen if she clicked it and got transported away, so I tell her never to touch it. Kit steps back, hands up, and apologizes.

I’m sorry, too, but I can’t explain that the camera seems to be a time-travel machine without sounding like a nutcase, and I don’t even understand it myself. For all I know, Kit would end up stuck in my time while I’m stuck here in 1933 with no way home, and who knows what would happen to Buddy.

Kit says she understands: cameras are fragile and expensive. Grateful, I loop the strap over my head like a necklace and decide never to take it off.

Kit leads me into a noisy dining room as full of life as Izza’s house. Everyone sits around a big table like it’s Thanksgiving, eating oatmeal and eggs and butter and toast and jelly and coffee, all at once. Mom and I don’t eat that much for dinner.

Buddy darts to a sleeping basset hound named Grace, who sniffs him once and dozes back off. He bounces from person to person demanding pets, just as appealing as Isabel’s bunny Pippa, and everyone falls for him instantly.

Kit introduces me to everyone as her cousin Lucille, who likes to be called Lulu, and Buddy as my dog. A sporty-looking man introduces himself as Mr. Kittredge, then his wife, then their son Charlie, home on leave from the CCC.

I feel awkward, especially since Kit’s brother is as handsome as a movie star. Kit’s mother is pretty, too, in an old-fashioned way, wearing a bias-cut dress I think would look great on Mom. Her face looks tired and worried until she smiles, and the tiredness falls away. She looks like Kit, grown up, without the freckles.

Mrs. Kittredge gestures around the table and says these are their boarders, people who live here and pay rent. She introduces fluttery Mrs. Howard and her son Stirling, and two more boarders, Miss Hart and Miss Finney, dressed in old-fashioned nurses’ uniforms. She doesn’t give me the grown-ups’ first names; I’m clearly expected to use Mr., Mrs., and Miss.

Mrs. Kittredge explains I’m the great-niece of her Uncle Hendrick, who thought I’d be better off staying with the Kittredges for a while, then asks where my suitcase is. I stammer, but Kit covers for me, guessing I probably wasn’t sure I’d want to stay with them instead of Uncle Hendrick, so I likely had it sent to his house from the train station instead. Mr. Kittredge starts to say I could stay, and before he finishes I cut in and say I would love to. He says Kit and I can take the trolley to Uncle Hendrick’s later for my suitcase.

Why don’t the Kittredges have a car, and who is this Uncle Hendrick everyone goes quiet about? I glance at Kit, but her face gives nothing away.

Mrs. Kittredge asks if I’ve had breakfast and offers oatmeal, the stuff Mother uses to exfoliate during a facial. I politely decline, and everyone looks at me like I’m crazy, but Mrs. Kittredge just excuses herself to prepare my room.

Everyone in the room has fallen for Buddy except Mrs. Howard, who seems a little uptight, which is exactly why he picks her as his special friend. When she leaves, he follows.

I trail Mrs. Kittredge and Mrs. Howard upstairs, grabbing Buddy before he can tag along, and overhear Mrs. Howard saying the Kittredges shouldn’t give up their room for me. She and Stirling could move instead, and they shouldn’t be inconvenienced by a spoiled child who turned up her nose at oatmeal.

Spoiled. Mrs. Howard must mean me. I hug Buddy for comfort. I’m clearly not wanted here, and this time-travel business has gone on long enough.