Springback

by Jana Miller

  Susie had finally called me back after a few days and told me she was out of town, so we’d had to wait—until only four days before Lillian’s crackpot attempt—to go get the journals from Scottsdale.

  “We got them?” I asked excitedly. “What was in them? Was Melvin’s journal there?” It drove me crazy that I couldn’t remember all of this.

  “I don’t know a whole lot about it,” she answered apologetically. “I couldn’t go with you guys. I do know that Melvin’s journal was there, and Jake took the job of trying to figure it out, since it was so crazy-mystical-alchemy. But my mom was already suspicious of all the times I was gone. She’d been tracking my phone and knew I’d been at your house and Jake’s several times, so she took my phone and my car keys and pretty much wouldn’t let me leave the house.”

  “What? But you’re an adult! Aren’t you like nineteen?”

  She waved away my disgusted reaction. “It was fine; I had a friend drive me to come talk to you and Jake a couple times, and I used the time to question Grandpa more and search for the amulet. And I could still email you guys, so it was fine. Except that you guys were finding out tons of stuff about our families without me.”

  “Tons of stuff like what?”

  “Like tandem rewinding.”

  I’d never heard that phrase before, but when she said it, I felt like I had.

  And I remembered something—something that had never happened. But it was like a fully formed memory that just invaded my head. Leah, Jake and I were sitting in a booth at Mama Burger, and it seemed to be night.

  “Ready?” Leah breathed. We murmured our assent, and I felt the pull.

  It was disconcerting, to say the least, to be aware of a rewind I wasn’t controlling, but not terrifying like it had been when Jake had done it accidentally. I didn’t want to open my eyes, afraid it would break my concentration, but they opened anyway, as part of the rewind. So instead I tried to blur my vision, knowing I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything anyway, so I wouldn’t instinctively grab the cords.

  It went so fast.

  It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds later when I came to a stop and found myself sitting at Jake’s table with Jake and Leah.

  I blinked, expecting a dizziness or a headache that never came, and we all stared at one another.

  Leah looked at her phone. “Eight twenty-two am,” she said, and after another few seconds of silence, we all exploded in excitement.

  We’d just bought ourselves a little more than twelve hours without any headaches or any of us forgetting.

  “One more day!” I exclaimed. “We have at least another day!”

  “Let’s see if we can go farther!” Jake said.

  I checked the cords and discovered the drawback of tandem pulling. Even though I hadn’t been the one to pull, the cords were still and silent. None of us would be able to rewind again until sometime after seven tonight.

  I stared at Leah, who was watching me curiously. “Did we practice it?” I asked her. “Rewinding together—tandem rewinding?”

  “Yeah, twice. It didn’t work the first time, but the second time we—”

  “Bought ourselves twelve hours?”

  She stared at me. “What?”

  “I—I remember it,” I said. “I shouldn’t remember it, but I do. Why…why were we at Jake’s house at eight in the morning?”

  “You really do remember,” she breathed. “We—it was a Saturday. We spent the whole day researching, reading the journals, and we read about tandem rewinding—how to pull time together.”

  “But how can I remember that?”

  She shook her head. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Another side effect of your mom’s—” I searched for a word that wasn’t too rude.

  “Idiocy?” she supplied wryly.

  I shrugged one shoulder.

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  I concentrated on the memory for a few seconds, but nothing else came. “I don’t think so.”

  “Nothing about Scottsdale?”

  I concentrated and closed my eyes.

  “A big house?” I asked after a few seconds. “Of course it’s a big house. It’s in Scottsdale.” But I could picture it. And I could picture Susie. “Gray hair in a high ponytail, wearing yoga pants and a floral blouse?”

  “Wow,” Leah said, “you do remember. I mean, I didn’t see her, but you guys did say she was quirky.”

  I rubbed my head. “Yeah, I do remember. Not much, but yeah.” I looked at her. “And I’m pretty sure remembering something that you rewound is a bad sign.”

  It could be a very bad sign. What would happen if none of our rewinds stuck from now on? What if other people started remembering rewinds? They would be very confused. Or think they were crazy. Or get really mad.

  But I couldn’t think about that right now. We already knew we had to fix the Ring; this just made it a little more urgent, if that was possible.

  “What about the Ring?” I asked. “Do you know how to fix it?”

  “No, but I think you and Jake had found something when my mom took me to Sedona. The symbol that’s on the amulet—there was this complicated diagram of it in Melvin Wright’s journal, and I think Jake figured out something about that, but you couldn’t tell me since I was with her.”

  “Okay, I’ll see if he remembers. Wait—why Sedona?”

  Leah rolled her eyes. “You know the spiritual vortexes they have down there?”

  I lifted an eyebrow. I knew there were supposedly spots in and around Sedona where people claimed to have spiritually enlightening experiences—or something like that—but I’d never paid attention to any of that. “Yeah…?”

  “She thought the extra energy from the earth would help her harness the power of time or something. It was one of the things I read about when I snooped on her computer. There was some really weird stuff in her browser history.”

  “Okay…”

  “Oh, and she thought it had to be during a solar eclipse,” she added. “Something about the diagrams my grandpa’s journal talked about.”

  Now I was really confused. “And—was there a solar eclipse?”

  “Yeah, but it’s dumb. It will be a little over a week from now. She timed it to enter the Ring at the exact same time as the eclipse. Which makes no sense, because the eclipse was actually only visible in Asia—or will be, when it happens. We couldn’t even tell it was happening.”

  “So you went to this vortex, she got out the amulet, and—what?”

  “Well, she wanted us both to stop time, but instead, when we accessed the Ring, I rewound so she couldn’t do it.”

  “Because you already knew about tandem rewinding,” I realized.

  “Right. I didn’t want to do it, but she wouldn’t listen to me. From what Grandpa said about those kids all those years ago—and from what happened to Grandpa when he tried—I knew that what she was doing wouldn’t turn out well. I told her it would make it worse, because she didn’t have the instructions. She had no idea what she was doing.” Leah sighed. “But she didn’t care.”

  I bit my lip. “Do you know what her plan was—exactly what she was going to do, if she could become a Master of Time?”

  Leah sighed. “Just something about ‘setting things right’ and ‘protecting the ability.’ I still think she wants to go back and stop your family from rewinding.”

  I hesitated a little. “What if it wasn’t my whole family she wants to stop?” I asked. “That obituary we found in her room—she only printed it out a few weeks ago. Do you think that maybe she just wants to stop me?”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “I don’t think so. You showed me the date on the printout and we talked about it, but she’s never said anything about you specifically or about when you got your ability…I mean, she talks about your family, not just about you. You know? I really think she’s focused on the big picture. Because even if she stopped Max from dying, who’s to say something else wouldn’t hap
pen to trigger your ability later? Then she’d have to stop that too.”

  I nodded. I’d thought of that too. “But that wouldn’t be that hard,” I said. “You guys would feel my springbacks, figure out what happened, and reverse it.”

  Leah pinned me with a look and I ducked my head, not sure what she thought about this line of thinking. After a moment she said softly, “It’s okay to think about it, Chloe.” I looked up to see a reassuring sort of sympathy in her eyes. “I know you’re wondering if that might actually be for the best. And I don’t blame you. He’s your brother.”

  I swallowed and gave a tiny, jerky nod. I didn’t know what to say. We must have talked about this before the rewind. I waited, hoping she would tell me that I’d come up with the right argument to pull myself away from those tempting thoughts.

  She must have sensed my hope, because she looked at me and said, “I don’t know what the answer is, but I think that in the end, you couldn’t stomach the idea of letting my mom have that much power.”

  And just like that, my hope dropped to my stomach. Because she was right—if saving my brother meant setting Lillian loose in the Ring of Time—there was no way I could even consider it. I ducked my head again, embarrassed that I’d even let myself think about it.

  After a minute, Leah continued her story. “Anyway, we accessed the strands together but instead of stopping time with her, I tandem pulled. So it should have been fine, like when we practiced, but something about rewinding while we were connected to the amulet—I don’t know, maybe it’s actually my fault—but it’s like it ripped the Ring of Time.”

  “And now it’s ripping all of us,” I said thoughtfully.

  “It sure feels like it,” she agreed.

  “No, I mean literally. There’s something wrong with our brains because of it. Or maybe because of rewinding itself, I’m not sure. The doctors”—I swallowed down a sudden surge of emotion—“they found a mass in my brain. They don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it has to do with rewinding.”

  Leah’s hand flew to her mouth as her eyes widened. “A mass? Like a—”

  “They don’t know what it is,” I repeated. “But I guess I had ‘heightened activity’ in that part of my brain years ago and my parents didn’t tell me about it. And now it’s turned into something—more.” I gave a small shrug as Leah cast around for something to say.

  “And Jake?” she finally asked.

  I picked up my phone and looked at it, as if talking about him would have magically made him finally text me that he was awake. I just shook my head. “He’s still unconscious, but I’d bet he has the same thing.” I paused, and then added apologetically, “And you too.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Oh my gosh, you’re here!” Maya exclaimed as she rushed to hug me at school the next day. “I was so worried when you didn’t answer my texts!”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m so sorry, Maya. I—I was actually in the hospital the night before last, and I slept like all day yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I know, I came over to bring you the cookies I made without you.” She gave me a fake pout.

  “Shoot! I totally missed that!” I slumped. “I’m sorry I’m a lame friend.”

  Maya just scoffed. “You are not a lame friend. You just have—a lame brain.”

  I widened my eyes at her and she sputtered a laugh. “That’s not what I meant! I just mean you have lame migraines!”

  I wrinkled my nose at her and then smiled. “Guess we’re even,” I said. “I ditch you, you call me lame brain.”

  She lifted one corner of her mouth and shrugged one shoulder, stopping in front of her classroom. “Sounds fair.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Unfortunately, being at school that day seemed like a complete waste of time when I knew what I knew and was dealing with the problems I was.

  When I didn’t pass Jake in the hall between second and third period, I wondered how many days he had missed this year because of rewinding, and with that thought came a memory of a conversation we must have had during Leah’s rewind.

  “Have you ever used rewinding to skip school?” Jake asked.

  “No,” I said emphatically. “Haven’t I told you I’m a rule follower?”

  He just shrugged.

  “Have you?” I asked, knowing the answer would be yes.

  “Well, not the whole day, since I can’t reverse that far, but one class here and there.”

  I hoped he wasn’t considering asking me to skip school. “What did you do?”

  “The first time, I took Lindy to get donuts during first hour, since neither of us had eaten breakfast.”

  I could see several things wrong with that idea, and I was about to point them out when he said, “Yeah, I know. Once I rewound over it, we still hadn’t actually eaten. So we were both still hungry, she didn’t remember it, and I had a headache. And yes”—he made a face—“that eating backwards thing.”

  I resolutely did not laugh at him. I had once rewound after eating a massive bowl of ice cream with my friends—the kind you get for free if you can eat the whole thing—because I’d felt so sick. “And the second time?” I prompted.

  “I just went to Circle K with a couple guys and got a soda.” He shrugged. “We walked around, tried out some skateboard tricks.” I nodded. That one didn’t seem bad. “But they didn’t remember it after I rewound it, so…I don’t know, it kind of didn’t seem worth it.”

  “I’ve done it on Saturdays,” I finally told him. “Like to extend the day. I was about to use it once when I wanted to go to a birthday party but my parents thought I should go visit my grandparents with them, because, you know, two places at once pretty much, right?”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “But I realized right before I did it that whichever one I did first and rewound…the other people wouldn’t remember I was there. So I would be letting them down anyway.”

  Jake’s shoulders slumped just a little. “Man, that’s true.” He thought for a second. “That’s totally dumb!” I held back a laugh. “Well, but at least you could go to the party and enjoy it, right? Then still go with your parents, and just tell the friend they didn’t let you go?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I could have, but…I don’t know, birthday parties aren’t really for the kids who go, are they? It seemed too weird, knowing that I would go and remember it, but nobody would remember me being there…so when they talked about it at school, I would know what they were talking about but would have to pretend I hadn’t been there.”

  He shook his head a little. “Chloe, you seriously think too much.” He glanced at me. “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “When I was twelve, I would have just been like, ‘Yeah, free cake! Party!’ and gone.”

  I knew I was an overthinker, but I had to defend myself. “Yeah, but then all those things I said would have happened,” I insisted.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he answered. “But I would have had fun.”

  “By yourself, essentially,” I argued. “Like you just said, when the other people forgot about what you did, it wasn’t as cool.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Maybe you do still have fun, but I don’t think it’s worth the headache.” Literally.

  “Okay,” he answered, “then what about…repeating things that are really cool? Just to experience them again?”

  That was different. “Yeah, I’ve done that before. Like…a really good scene in a movie at the theater, or the look on someone’s face when we haven’t seen each other for a long time, or…”

  “What about, like, bungee jumping?” he suggested. “Or a really good kiss?”

  My cheeks burned. “Bungee jumping might be cool to redo, especially doing it backwards…if I ever wanted to go bungee jumping.”

  He grinned. “But the kiss?”

  “Some things are…only good the first time,” I said, avoiding mentioning the fact that I had no i
dea because I’d never been kissed.

  I’d never seen him roll his eyes, but this look came very close. “I seriously doubt that.”

  Was there some way to find memories that would actually be helpful? Maybe trigger them, like with regular memories?

  I thought again about the brief memory I’d had of Susie in Scottsdale and tried to make it extend. And it did a little, but in flashes. I remembered seeing the box and looking through it, and I caught a glimpse of an old leather journal that I was sure must have been Melvin’s, because the memory had a feeling of significance attached to it.

  But I couldn’t force any more than that. Why wasn’t I remembering what I needed to? And would Jake remember any of this?

  * * *

  As if summoned by my thoughts of him, I finally heard from Jake during third hour. My phone vibrated in my pocket and I took it out to glance at it.

  Jake: I’m awake.

  Relief made my shoulders sag, and for a few seconds I put my head down on my desk to stop any tears that may have threatened to escape.

  He was okay. He was awake. He was alive.

  I grabbed a bathroom pass from the front of the room and hurried to the bathroom so I could respond without worrying about having my phone out in class.

  Chloe: Are you okay?

  Jake: Yeah. Just tired.

  I was trying to think of what to ask first when he texted again.

  Jake: Can’t access cords.

  My eyebrows went together.

  Chloe: Can’t access them, or can’t see them at all?

  Jake: Access. I can see them. They look awful.

  Chloe: I know. I think they’re broken. Maybe infecting us. But you can’t access them at all? Not even to stop time?

  Jake: Nope.

  I rubbed at my face. It just kept getting worse.

  Chloe: So are you coming home today?