by Jana Miller
Jake: Probably not. They want to do more tests.
I bit my lip, unsure if I should warn him about the brain mass. I was pretty sure it would be at least a little better coming from me than from doctors, so I decided to tell him.
Chloe: Don’t be too alarmed if they find something weird in your brain.
Jake: Ha ha.
Chloe: Actually being serious. They found a mass in my brain.
Jake: …
Chloe: But there’s been something “abnormal” going on there for seven years, and look how normal I still am! ��
I didn’t want to overwhelm him, but after that big revelation, he had a lot of questions, so I explained what I could.
* * *
Leah’s text came in the middle of fifth hour.
Leah: We’ve got to get the amulet away from my mom. Can I pick you up after school?
My eyebrows shot up.
Chloe: Did you think of somewhere else to look?
Leah: Yeah. I have a couple ideas.
I decided I didn’t want to know, so I just told her where to pick me up.
She looked apologetic when I got in her car, so I took a deep breath. “Where are we going?”
“Her office,” Leah answered with a slight wince.
My mouth opened slowly and all I could say was, “Okay…”
“I want to check her car,” she explained. That made me feel a little better; we wouldn’t actually be going into her office. “She had the amulet in a little decorative box with a lock on it. She tried not to let me see it, but I actually almost got it out of her purse in Sedona before she caught me snooping. So that’s what we’re looking for.”
We picked up Janie and took her home first so I could at least feel like a good person before becoming a criminal.
When we got to the office complex, her mom’s Lexus was parked in a prime parking spot, uncomfortably close to the door. I took a deep breath, digging deep for some sort of vindictive pleasure in searching her car rather than the sick dread I was feeling. I didn’t find it.
At least it wasn’t the same car she’d had several years ago. I didn’t think I could have gone near the car that had hit my sister without having a full-blown panic attack.
Leah went to unlock the door, but scowled at her key ring. “When did she take it off?” she asked herself, then looked up at me. “I don’t have her key on here anymore.”
My eyebrows shot up, even though I knew I shouldn’t be surprised. “She stole your key?”
She sighed. “Technically it’s her key, since it’s her car, but yeah. Sometime in the last week or so . . .” She scowled again, probably trying to figure out when her mom had done that.
I sighed to myself a little too, but more out of relief. Dangerous heist averted.
“We’ll just have to go in and get a key from her,” she said after a moment of thought.
I blanched. Dangerous heist intensified.
“Come on.”
I followed her wordlessly through the small reception area, then stood outside the actual office as Leah knocked and then opened the door a bit. “Hey Mom, I think I left my phone in your car. Can I grab your keys so I can check?”
There was a brief pause before Lillian’s cool voice floated out to me. “And when would you have left it in there?”
“Yesterday, remember?” Leah was a very calm and collected liar.
Lillian sighed loudly. “No, I do not remember.”
“When we came home from Sedona. I haven’t seen it since then.”
“You haven’t seen it since yesterday, yet you haven’t mentioned it until now?” Her mom’s voice gave me the creeps.
Leah shrugged. “I was too tired to think about it. I figured it was under a pile of my stuff somewhere with the battery dead.”
Lillian sighed again and I heard a chair roll. “Fine, I’ll come help you look.”
“Oh—no, that’s okay, I can look,” Leah offered, but Lillian didn’t answer. I heard the jingle of keys and the click of high heels, and I hurried around a corner before she could see me.
Lillian lectured Leah as they passed where I stood, and Leah turned back just long enough to point back to the office and mouth, “Go look in there.” I widened my eyes at her and started to shake my head desperately, but she’d already turned back around as they went through the reception area.
“Honestly, Leah, if you would just take care of your things, you wouldn’t have to run all over town . . .”
The front door opened and closed, and I closed my eyes as I pressed myself against the wall. You can do this, Chloe.
I didn’t give myself any more time to think—just pushed away from the wall and hurried into the office, closing the door behind me. My heart hammered in my chest as I headed for the desk and started pulling drawers open. They were all perfectly organized, so it wasn’t hard to see that the decorative box Leah had described wasn’t in any of those. One of the drawers had a list of business names and addresses, and something about the mystical-sounding names of them caught my attention. I folded it up and shoved it into my pocket, shocked at myself.
There was one drawer that was locked shut. If I’d had more time, I might have tried to pick it with a paperclip—just to tell Jake I had—but instead I just took a picture of the lock, thinking that maybe Leah could find a key for it. It seemed like the perfect place to hide something.
Behind the desk were a couple of shelves, and I looked inside everything that could possibly hold a small box or the amulet, but there was nothing. I was looking around for anything else I could look inside when my phone buzzed.
Leah: COMING BACK!
I looked around to be sure I hadn’t left anything out of place, then I eased the door open and slunk down the hall and around the corner just as the front door opened again and Lillian’s voice asked, “Did you need something else?”
“No, I’m good,” answered Leah. “Thanks for helping me find it.”
Lillian let out a noise that sounded like a scoff as she click-clacked back to her office, not even glancing in my direction.
“Nothing in her car?” I asked Leah as we drove off.
“No. And I even got her to open the trunk for me. I told her I might have dropped it when I got my backpack out.”
I grinned a little. “You’re a pretty smooth liar.”
“Right?” she agreed. “I didn’t even have my backpack in the trunk. Not like she was paying attention to me yesterday.” She rolled her eyes. “But she sure paid attention this time! From the way she acted, and since she took the key off my ring, I thought she must have been keeping it in there. But I seriously looked everywhere—the glove box, under the mats, stuffed down by the seatbelts…nothing there. But,” she added, holding up her phone, “I did manage to ‘find’ my phone in the trunk.” I smiled as she looked over at me. “Any luck for you?”
I shook my head. “No, but one of her desk drawers is locked.” I showed her the picture I’d taken. “If you could grab her keys, or just find a small one that might fit this lock, you could check there.”
“Or we could check there…” she answered, leaving it hanging like an invitation.
Chapter Seventeen
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” I muttered to myself as I stood waiting for Leah to pull up to my house later that night. I had just told my parents I was going to a movie with a friend so that I could actually sneak into a locked office building to hopefully steal an ancient relic from a locked desk drawer. Strangely, though, I didn’t try to talk myself out of it. I just waited, then I hopped into Leah’s car when she pulled up.
“You ready for this?”
“Um, no.”
She took a deep breath. “Me neither.”
“You really got her keys?”
“Just the office ones. I grabbed them as soon as she got home today, and I’m pretty sure one of them goes to the drawer. I just hope she doesn’t take them out of her purse on her date tonight.”
I a
lmost choked. “Date?”
“Yup.”
The poor guy. I tried not to make any faces, and I refrained from saying Ew. Because I didn’t want to insult Leah, but—seriously. Someone was actually taking her evil mother on a date. It was just wrong.
She glanced over at me. “I know,” she said.
We didn’t say much else as we drove to the office. I told myself that we had a key, so it wasn’t breaking and entering. And if someone saw us, we could tell them that her mom worked there. And then they would call her mom…I grimaced. Nope, couldn’t get caught.
I glanced around for cameras when we got there, but it was dark and I knew cameras could be small and well-hidden. Leah opened the glass front door with her mom’s keys, and just like that—we were in.
Lillian’s inner office wasn’t locked, so we let ourselves in and closed the door. “Do you think it’s okay if we turn on the light?” I whispered. “Or could someone see it from outside?”
Leah’s phone light came on. “Better not, just to be safe.”
“I feel exactly like I’m in a spy movie,” I breathed shakily. “Except I’m totally freaking out.”
“Here, hold this,” Leah said, and I took her phone while she pulled the key out of her pocket and knelt down. But as she turned it, I saw a light coming from under the door.
“Leah!” I hissed, and I smashed her light against my shirt to suppress the light.
The light from under the door had gone, but now it swept past again. “Flashlight,” Leah murmured, and I heard her swallow. From the bit of light shining onto my shirt and bouncing toward Leah, I saw her slowly extract the key and stand up, then she crept to the door and inched it open.
Light flowed through the crack for the instant it was open, then she shut it again. “There’s somebody outside,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Shining a light into the glass door.”
“Is there a back door?” I asked, my breathing shallow.
“Yeah, but if we go out into the hall, they’ll see us.”
And then we heard the front door open.
I didn’t care how much it would hurt; anything would be better than getting caught. I closed my eyes and yanked on the strands. Just like ripping off a Band-aid.
But much, much worse than ripping off a Band-aid. As soon as my mind touched the strands, I felt like my brain was on fire. But I jerked—hard—and took us back the two minutes we needed.
I let go and heard Leah gasp as I fell down in the reception area, right after going in. “Security guard coming,” I mumbled through the stabbing pain. “Rewound.”
She helped me up and out the door, and we stumbled to her car, both dizzy from the springback.
Just as we pulled away in her car, we saw the guard come around the corner as he made his rounds.
* * *
The next day was Saturday, and Janie kept looking at me weird at breakfast.
I knew I’d done plenty of weird things lately, but I didn’t know which one she might have noticed. Maybe it was because I kept anxiously checking my texts, waiting for Jake to report he was home from the hospital so Leah and I could go talk to him. We had so much to tell him that I hadn’t been able to communicate over text.
Janie didn’t say anything until my parents had left to run errands.
“You know last Saturday,” she began after several minutes of silence, “when you went somewhere?”
I shot a glance at her, thrown off by the choice of subject. Last Saturday felt like it had been weeks ago with all the rewinding and everything that had happened, even though it had been exactly a week ago. But then my nerves went on alert. I’d gone to the park with Jake on Saturday, to meet Leah. “Yeah?”
She furrowed her eyebrows. “Did that guy pick you up?”
I was surprised at the lack of teasing in her voice. “You mean Jake?”
She nodded.
“Yeah . . .”
“Did I—did I see him come? And tell you he was there?”
She had, but I’d rewound it. “Why?” I asked slowly.
“I don’t know, it’s just weird.” Her eyes were narrowed like she was concentrating, trying to remember. “I thought I was watching some video on the computer you showed me when you left. But this morning I remembered seeing his car pull up and yelling to you that your boyfriend was here to pick you up.”
I gave her my best that’s weird face. “What do you mean you remembered it?”
“When I was waking up this morning. It was like…I don’t know, maybe I was thinking about it, but I just saw it. Like it had happened but I didn’t remember it until now.”
I knew exactly what she meant; she’d described exactly what had been happening to me.
But I shrugged casually, despite my thumping heart. “Maybe it was a dream you were having when you woke up.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “So…it didn’t happen?”
I shook my head as I got up to rinse my cereal bowl and escape this conversation, grateful that she didn’t seem completely certain.
Because I was completely certain. Janie had just remembered something I’d rewound.
This could be very, very bad.
Jake had told me the day before that he’d had some weird new memories, both in his sleep and when he was awake, and I’d told him they were from the rewind. The one consolation I’d had about those memories was that Jake and I were the only ones who were having them. It made a weird kind of sense for us to be aware of Leah’s rewind now that the cords were unstable.
But Janie wasn’t a rewinder. I was sure. She had never reacted to any of my rewinds. She never had problems with vertigo or migraines like I did.
So there was no way she should be able to remember anything that had ever been rewound, but she did.
I wanted to ask her if she’d remembered anything else, but I didn’t want her to be suspicious.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I escaped to my room, focusing on my breathing to avoid a panic attack.
The strands were a wreck. Lillian would probably try to do something again soon. And we had to sit around waiting to hear from Susie so we could go get the journals. I’d ignored Jake’s suggestions that we just break in and steal them—not only because it would be completely wrong, but because in a neighborhood like hers, there was bound to be some pretty good security. I didn’t admit to Jake that the thought had slightly crossed my mind, knowing that we would have permission to get them in a couple days.
Jake hadn’t remembered anything about what was in the journal, so I called and asked Leah to tell me more about going to Scottsdale, hoping to trigger a memory.
She told me that Jake had told us on the way there how he’d gotten his ability, that Susie was funny and friendly, and that there had actually been two boxes—one with journals only, the second containing a few notebooks along with some kids’ drawings and an old apron.
For some reason, my mind caught on the mention of Jake telling us how he’d gotten his ability, and it did trigger the memory.
“So how did you get your ability, Jake?” Leah asked once we’d been on the road for a while and the conversation slowed. “I know about Chloe, but what happened to you?”
“What makes you think something happened?” he asked, looking out his window in the back seat.
“Well,” Leah responded thoughtfully, “nobody taught you, so you and Chloe both must have inherited the ability. And Chloe’s was triggered by something traumatic, so…”
I followed Jake’s example and stared out the window at her semi-casual mention of my brother’s death.
After a couple minutes of silence—just when I’d decided he just wasn’t going to answer—Jake cleared his throat. “I started seeing the strands after our last cross country meet. A few months ago.”
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
He took a deep breath. “I cheated,” he said on the exhale, then gave a derisive laugh. “As a prank. To beat Gage. He’s always ta
lking trash about how he beats me every time. It’s always Drew, then Gage, then me. I can pass them in practice, but never in the races.” He paused and I looked back at him. “There was this part of the race where the path looped back around, just through some trees. Cutting off like a quarter of a mile. I was alone—no racers or anyone around—and I saw the shortcut. I don’t know why there weren’t any race officials or even tape or anything to keep us from cutting across. But there weren’t. It was like the Bermuda Triangle or something, all these weird things coming together to let me cut across. I didn’t think about winning or cheating, just about how funny it would be to beat Gage. And I did, by over thirty seconds.” He stopped again, lost in memories, and I saw Leah glance at him in the rearview mirror.
“But I also beat Drew,” he continued. “And—Drew’s dad was there. He’d never been to a meet before.” Jake’s voice had gotten tight. “Drew had been asking him all season to come and watch, telling him how great he was doing, but his dad didn’t believe him—said he was a liar.” I looked at him, incredulous, and he grimaced. “He’s—not a nice guy.” Leah and I glanced at each other, both starting to grasp the gravity of the situation. “I made him look slower than he is. I made him look like a liar. And his dad”—the expression on his face was both pained and furious—“he just lit into him. Right there in front of everybody. Screaming and cussing and—” He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “But I couldn’t tell anyone,” he finally said. “I’m up for a scholarship, and I would have been kicked off the team.” He finally looked at me, eyes pleading. “I wouldn’t have been able to go to college if I’d told them what I’d done. So I just…stood there.”
I wanted to reach back to comfort him, but I knew that wasn’t what he was looking for. So I just waited—Leah and I both just waited.
“After that,” Jake continued quietly, now looking out his window, “Drew stopped hanging out with us. He got kind of—distant. And I just had this feeling. I don’t even know why, but I had this feeling that—” his voice cracked a little and he cleared his throat forcefully—“that his dad did more than just yell at him when they got home that day.”