Chapter Text
Naomi drops the last spoonful of cookie dough onto the baking sheet and turns to Toni. “You could’ve helped, you know,” she says.
Toni waves the weird-looking remote at her. “I am helping, remember?” she says. She hits a button and for a second it’s like all the air in the kitchen ripples. “Okay, now put it in the oven.”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “So what’s it supposed to do?”
“It speeds up the baking process,” Toni says, hopping down from her seat on the counter. “Those cookies should be done any second now.”
“They literally take fifteen minutes to cook without your creepy technology,” Naomi points out. “There’s a chance you’re making this whole thing more complicated than it needs to be.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Toni says. “All I did was alter the time-space coordinates in the kitchen to boost everything forward at an accelerated rate.”
“Uh-huh,” Naomi says, raising her eyebrows. “And all I did was stir flour, eggs and butter together. It’s not that hard .”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Okay, wait, what?” Naomi sways, feeling suddenly disorientated. “That’s weird… I thought I just did that.”
Weirder still, Toni’s not right beside her anymore but suddenly perched on the counter on the other side of the kitchen. “Yeah, I don’t know,” Toni says, staring at her cousin. “I thought you already put the cookies in the oven, too.”
“Deja vu?” Naomi suggests.
“Maybe,” Toni says, getting down from the counter. “Must be the cookie fumes getting to us.”
“Uh-huh,” Naomi says, raising her eyebrows. “Or maybe it’s your half-baked disaster gadget messing with out heads.”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Oh my God,” she says, staring at Toni, who’s sitting on the counter once again. “Okay, this ain’t deja vu. I definitely already put the cookies in the oven.”
“Yeah, you did,” Toni says, starting to look worried. She glances down at the device in her hand. “They’re supposed to be done by now, if this thing speeds up time like it’s supposed to.”
“Give me that,” Naomi says, striding across the kitchen and yanking the remote away from Toni. “Whatever you did makes me keep repeating the same action over and over again.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Toni says. “That’s not how this invention works .”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Oh, come on !”
“This is not how we do things,” Caitlin complains as Bree takes over the podium. “We have a system , we have rules . You don’t get to stand at the podium unless you’re the PTA president!”
Bree flips her hair and turns so she doesn’t have to look at Caitlin’s sour expression. “I don’t care who the president is,” she says. “But I care about my sister and my cousin. And all the other kids here. Sort of. Why should we do the same thing as every year when we could do something actually fun?”
The PTA moms nod along, interested in Bree’s ideas. “No, no,” Caitlin says, waving her hands frantically. “Sit down, Bree .”
“I say let her talk,” one of the moms says from the front row. “My kids hate the bake sale.”
“Yeah.”
“Mine too.” Across the room, people speak up in favor of Bree’s gala.
Caitlin looks about ready to blow a fuse. “Fine,” she says, glaring daggers at Bree. “Fine! Have your little gala. The bake sale is cancelled. But you should know one thing, Bree . You don’t want me as your enemy.” And she storms out of the gymnasium as dramatically as she possibly can.
Bree sighs and sags against the podium. Going back to her old high school means going back to her old high school drama, even if she’s not a student, even if she’s supposed to be mature and above all this…
Looking around at the room of PTA moms, though, Bree wonders if anyone ever really gets to be “above” any of it.
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Toni, fix this ,” she cries. “Or I’m gonna be stuck putting these cookies in the oven until we graduate!”
“I’m trying,” Toni says, fiddling with the contraption. “I don’t get it, how could this have gone so wrong? Your dad built it! I thought he was supposed to be a genius.”
“Maybe it’s not one of his,” Naomi says. “Inventing things that go wrong is kind of the family business.”
“No, it’s gotta be your dad’s,” Toni says, showing her the label on the invention. “See? It’s got a D on it. D for Davenport.”
Naomi leans forward to look at the label and groans. “That’s Leo’s handwriting,” she says. “D for Dooley . That’s why everything’s going wrong. I’m gonna kill my brother.”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “What are we gonna do?”
At that moment (that infinite, eternal, infuriatingly unending moment), Skylar walks through the front door laden with shopping bags. “Hello!” she says cheerily, setting her bags on the coffee table. “How’s it going?”
Toni spins to face her. “We appear to be trapped in some kind of looping time bubble,” she says. “We keep doing the same thing over and over and we can’t get out.”
“That’s nice,” Skylar says, not really listening. “I found some really cute boots on sale at Kohl’s.”
“Skylar!” Naomi says, trying to get to her. Apparently, the “time bubble” keeps them fixed in space, too. They can’t leave the kitchen. “Help us! It’s like Groundhog Day over here.”
“Oh,” Skylar says, the severity of the situation sinking in. “That happened to me once! Not fun. It’s kind of like falling down an escalator, you know, it just never ends.” She focuses. “Okay, um…” She walks toward the kitchen and tries to step across the threshold between the living room and the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It doesn’t work; it’s like there’s an invisible forcefield blocking her. She tries punching through it, but nothing happens, just a few ripples in the air. “Hmm.”
“Try using your super speed,” Toni suggests.
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Yeah,” she says. “Try going super fast.”
“RIght, right,” Skylar says, giving them an odd look. “Here goes.” She backs up and then runs at regular speed toward the time bubble. She bounces off. “No, that doesn’t work.”
“Because that wasn’t your super speed,” Toni says, looking confused. “C’mon, stop goofing around and help us!”
“Uh-huh,” Skylar says, looking kind of shifty. “Let me try again.” Again, she runs at regular speed and bounces off the barrier. “Huh.”
“That’s not super speed.”
“Wow, gosh, you’re right,” Skylar says, scratching the back of her neck and looking guilty. “Weird!”
“Skylar, what’s going on?” Naomi asks before the timeline loops around again and she has to put the cookies in the oven. “Where’s your superspeed?”
“I, um, I don’t have it,” Skylar explains, wringing her hands together. “Actually, I haven’t had it in years… I kind of sort of lost it when I had to save Bree’s life.”
“When was that?” Naomi squawks, sliding the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “And what does that mean? Why did you need to save Bree’s life?”
Skylar hesitates, looking guilty. “Look, I don’t want to get into it right now.”
“We literally have all the time in the world,” Toni says, waggling the haywire invention. “Tell us.”
Skylar sighs. “Bree tried to touch this… weird space rock,” she says. “Back in our Elite Force days. And I zapped her to get her away from it, because it was going to kill her. But she got hurt too badly, and I needed to save her. So I touched the rock and transferred its healing energy through my body to her.”
“Gayyy,” Toni heckles.
“Anyway,” Skylar continues, “it worked, it saved her, but I lost some of my superpowers in the exchange. And… Bree got superpowers.”
Naomi rolls her eyes and slides the baking sheet into the oven, careful not to touch the hot metal rack. She shuts the oven and turns around, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. And she freezes, staring at Skylar in shock. “Bree has superpowers?” she says. “How come she never uses them?”
“She uses them all the time,” Skylar says, pushing futilely at the time bubble. “Proton rings, thermal touch… She just told you guys they were bionic abilities because she didn’t want you to know the whole story.”
“Why not?” Toni says, jumping down from the counter and whirling on Skylar. “Why can’t we know about this kind of stuff? We’re practically adults now. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Maybe make that argument when we’re not literally lost in time, Tone,” Naomi suggests in a mumble.
“I probably shouldn’t have told you,” Skylar says. “Bree just… Bree didn’t want you to know because she’s kind of embarrassed. She got herself hurt trying to gain more powers. She’s embarrassed and also… Naomi, she didn’t want you to get any ideas about doing the same thing. Fiddling around with your own biology is really dangerous. And both of you are perfect just the way you are.”
“Oh,” Naomi says in a small voice. “Well… still, she could’ve told us.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe my sister has superpowers.”
“Huh?” Toni says, glancing up at both of them. “Oh, I wasn’t listening. I think I figured out the fix.”
“What is it?” Skylar asks from outside the kitchen.
“Well, it’s a bubble,” Toni says. “How do you get rid of a bubble? You pop it.”
“Yeah, but we don’t exactly have a big time needle lying around,” Naomi snarks. “So how do we pop this time bubble?”
“Like this,” Toni says, grabbing the meat tenderizer and smashing the faulty temporal accelerator to pieces. And suddenly, they can feel it. The oven clock races forward to catch up with the actual time, and Skylar’s able to get into the kitchen. Naomi sets the baking pan down on the counter and heaves a sigh of relief. “See? Fixed it.”
“I’m never baking again,” Naomi sighs, leaving the kitchen ( finally ) and flopping down on the couch. “Somebody else put those cookies in the oven. I’m not risking getting stuck doing it again.”
Skylar laughs and puts the baking sheet into the oven (once, just once) and then starts sweeping up the broken temporal accelerator while Toni goes to sit with her cousin. “I think we learned a valuable lesson today,” Toni says.
“Don’t over-complicate the task at hand?” Skylar suggests.
“Bree has superpowers?” Naomi says.
“No,” Toni suggests. “If we’re gonna use technology to make our lives easier, just make sure it’s not something made by Leo.”
Bree comes home from the PTA meeting to find Skylar, Naomi and Toni all tuckered out on the couch with a plate of fresh-baked cookies on the table in front of them. “Good news,” she announces. “The bake sale is off!”
Toni and Naomi glare at her before burrowing back into the couch.
Skylar just laughs.