Mira's Diary by Marissa Moss

nineteenth-century Parisian. I had to remind myself I was here for a reason. Mom was counting on me.
    â€œYou only hope? You do not know?” Claude looked anxious again.
    â€œIt’s my aunt. She called me away suddenly and I had to go, and I meant to write but things got complicated, and I don’t know what will happen next.” I offered the same lame excuse I’d given Mary.
    â€œLeave her be, Claude. She is a free woman, and can come and go as she pleases.”
    â€œThen how long are you here for?” Claude pressed.
    â€œI don’t know. I’m not sure yet. It depends.” I’d run out of explanations and desperately needed to change the subject. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we? What do you think of the Dreyfus case?”
    â€œA wretched man to betray his country like that, hardly an earthshaking story,” Degas said, not at all fazed by my question.
    He tossed me a newspaper, a different one than Mary’s. “You can read about the horrid man here. If you excuse me, I must wash the chalks from my hands and change into more presentable clothes.”
    Now that I was alone with Claude, the room didn’t seem sunny and warm, but tense and edgy. He sat in the chair next to me, arranging Degas’s simple lunch while keeping his eyes glued to me as if he was afraid I’d disappear right in front of him. I scanned the newspaper with one eye while I tried to look like I was paying complete attention to him. It was a technique I’d perfected in school when a teacher was particularly boring and I didn’t want her to know I was engrossed in a book on my lap instead of listening to her drone.
    This article was just as ugly in how it described the evil Dreyfus, but this time the writer wrote about the coming punishment, how the traitor would be shackled to a cot in solitary confinement in a small prison built especially for him on Devil’s Island, an old leper colony off the coast of South America that the French used for convicts. I couldn’t imagine anything that Degas could possibly say, even if he wanted to, that would convince the public that Dreyfus was innocent. How could Mom have thought that would work? What was I really supposed to do here? How could I make people outraged at an injustice when they saw Dreyfus as the demon Jew who deserved the most severe punishment possible?

    â€œI thought you were angry at me,” Claude interrupted my thoughts. “The way you left without a word. I thought maybe I had pushed you to show me something you did not want to reveal. So now you have forgiven me?”
    â€œI was never angry at you!” I didn’t for a minute regret letting Claude see my sketchbook. He had encouraged me, and in return, I’d hurt him. I wished I could tell him the truth. Instead I lied, as usual.
    â€œIt was my aunt, like I said.” What a lame excuse! I wouldn’t blame him if he hated me.
    I tried to meet Claude’s eyes, to let him know how truly sorry I was, but his face was turned away, his jaw tight. There was a distance between us, not just because so many years had passed for him but because obviously I was still so young and he was a grown-up. No more chance of kisses. I wondered if we could even still be friends.

Mary invited me to join her and a group of artists at the Nouvelles Athènes, a nearby café. Degas was there, as was Claude. He nodded when he saw me, but the old warmth was gone. I’d ruined that friendship. Not that I’d meant to. Maybe if I was better at time travel, I could have done things differently.
    Morton never did explain how I could control this “gift.” And Mom hadn’t either. I wondered if I’d ever get it right. Was time travel like drawing, something you had to do over and over to do well? That was a scary thought! I’ve been drawing since I could hold a crayon, and I’m still nowhere near as good as I want to