Springback

by Jana Miller

  Leah took the ledger full of family meeting notes, and I took the diary that had once belonged to Diana Wright. I didn’t know how I would possibly find anything relevant, but we had nothing else to go on, so I stuck it in my backpack too.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I looked for Maya at school, but I got there after lunch and we didn’t have any classes together in the afternoon. I didn’t know what I would say to her if I saw her, but I wanted to be sure we were okay, even if I was a crappy friend. It felt like a week had passed since she’d been so frustrated with me yesterday.

  But I didn’t see her, even after school. I wondered if she was avoiding me.

  Janie was asleep in her room when I got home, much to my relief. At least she was home. I wanted to talk to her, but I figured she was drugged anyway. I went in my own room to see what was in the diary, but it wasn’t long before my eyes were trying to close again.

  I didn’t know how long I had been asleep when I heard Janie come in. “Hey!” I said groggily, shoving the diary behind me and under my pillow as she came in slowly. “How are you?”

  She looked exhausted and a little bit out of it—and scared. “I hurt,” she said. “Everywhere.” She sat next to me on my bed. “And they can’t figure out why.”

  I bit my lip. I knew why she was hurting, but I wasn’t about to tell her what happened to her. “I’m so sorry, Janie. Does it really hurt everywhere everywhere?”

  She shrugged, staring down at my floor. “Just about. The weird thing is…they said it looked like both of my legs had been broken. A long time ago. But how could I forget that?” She looked at me and I gave her a sympathetic look, my shoulders shrugging a lie.

  “It feels like I got beat up,” she continued. “Or like I was hit by a car or something.”

  I stiffened, sure she would remember something—or realize that I knew why she was hurting—but she wasn’t looking at me. “Is that how you feel, when you get your rewinding migraines?”

  I was about to answer when she furrowed her eyebrows, focusing on something on the floor. “What’s that?”

  I looked down at my backpack, its contents strewn around it, including my jacket, books, and—the old floral apron from the box. I didn’t know how it had gotten in my backpack. “Uh…I don’t know,” I answered lamely, completely unable to come up with a lie on the spot. Yes, she knew about rewinding, but if I l filled her in on anything we’d been discovering, it would open up subjects I wasn’t ready to discuss with her.

  Janie knelt down to pick it up. “It’s an apron,” she said. “Where did you get this? It’s so old and cute.” Something fell to the floor as she shook out the apron, and she bent down to pick up several sheets of yellowed paper folded in quarters.

  I jumped up to grab the pages before she could read anything, but she opened them up to reveal that they were journal pages—pages that looked exactly like the ones in the diary I’d just been reading—covered in cursive. “What…Where did you say you got this?” she asked.

  I gingerly took them from her and saw the year 1926 written on the top one. The ink was fading and some of the cursive was difficult to make out, but I could tell they were pages from the housekeeping diary kept by Diana Wright.

  August 23, 1926

  We held an emergency family meeting tonight to discuss what to do about Eva and the amulet. I have been dying inside, thinking that my sons had anything to do with it. I cannot imagine that I will ever be able to forgive myself, Edward, or the children for this. I don’t see how the rift between our families will ever heal, and I fear that they are right to blame us. Wesley isn’t quite right either, but nothing compared to Eva.

  We decided to stop pulling altogether—all of us. It has simply become too dangerous. It will not make a big difference for me, but the children will need to be monitored somehow. We can only hope that sending the amulet far away will lessen their tie to it and that their abilities might diminish. Truthfully I don’t know if I put much stock in the amulet anymore, considering what happened. How Johnny and Devin got a hold of it I will never know. I assume they had Wesley’s help, since he was in line to hold it next, though he won’t admit anything like that.

  I suppose it does not matter in the end, though. The Eva we knew is gone, and her absence will likely prove enough of a reminder for us all to allow time to go on as it was meant to.

  I stared at the page.

  “Who wrote this?” Janie asked, startling me. I hadn’t realized she’d sat down next to me again as I’d been reading—and that she’d read the whole thing. “Where did you get this? Is this about rewinding? About the Ring of Time?”

  I nodded absently. “Yeah, there were two families who used to rewind. Our family and Jake’s family. Wesley and Eva were from Jake’s family; Johnny and Devin were from ours. They went into the woods one day with the amulet that controls the Ring of Time—”

  “Chloe! Amulet? Two families? Why didn’t you tell me any of this stuff?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s just too much. And I didn’t know anything about most of this until recently. It doesn’t matter for actual rewinding, just for fixing the Ring.” I knew she wanted to ask more; I’d demanded all sorts of answers when I’d first found out. But I kept going so she couldn’t ask. “Anyway, something went really bad, and Eva actually died before her brother rewound it.” I pinned her with a look. “That’s why I told you it can be dangerous.” She nodded. “Gene said—”

  “Wait, who’s Gene?”

  “Leah’s grandpa. Jake’s great-uncle or something.”

  “Who’s Leah?”

  I blinked. “My friend. She’s come over a couple times . . .” or maybe she hadn’t in this time path; I wasn’t actually sure. “Her mom is the one who messed up the Ring of Time by trying to enter it. But the important thing is that we’re trying to figure out exactly what happened with these kids a hundred years ago, because it might tell us where the amulet ended up. We need it to fix the Ring.”

  “Chloe, don’t you think you should tell me a little more about this? Maybe I can help.”

  I sighed, knowing she was right, and finally told her everything I could think of.

  * * *

  “Chloe, you have to teach me now.”

  “No. Not a chance.”

  I’d told her everything. Well, almost everything. I’d told her about Jake and Leah and Lillian, and about the real amulet—the Káti Square—and the fake amulet and Leah’s ten-day rewind. She’d taken it all surprisingly well.

  I hadn’t told her about my brain mass. Or about Lillian hitting her with her car. I hoped I could get away with these omissions—that they would never matter to her once the Ring was fixed.

  “I’m not going to teach you until the Ring is safe to access again.”

  “Then why tell me any of this? It’s in my blood too. I’ve been dreaming about the strands for months. Why can’t I help you?”

  “Janie, haven’t you been listening to me? We can’t rewind now anyway. It’s too painful, and every time we do, the Ring gets even worse. We have to fix it, but we need the amulet for it.”

  “Do you even know how to fix it?” she asked, folding her arms.

  “We’re—working on that,” I hedged.

  “Okay, so how do you do it?”

  I bit my lip. “Well, we’re pretty sure that once we have the amulet, all we need to do is have four people in a square all access the Ring at the same time. Lillian thought we would need to stop time, but it didn’t say anything about that in Melvin’s journal.”

  “Who’s the fourth person?”

  “What?”

  “The fourth person. You have you, Jake, and Leah; who else will help you?”

  “Jake’s dad, Rob. He showed up a few days ago.”

  She slumped a little. “Oh.”

  I hesitated. “But Jake—I don’t know if Jake will be able to do it,” I finally mumbled.

  She sat up again. “Why not?”

&nb
sp; I shrugged. “After Leah’s big rewind last week, he couldn’t access the cords anymore. Probably because he’s so new at rewinding and hasn’t…calloused his brain enough or something.”

  “Calloused his brain?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. You aren’t going to be doing it anyway—at least not until the Ring is fixed. I’m fine teaching you to rewind after that, but no way am I letting you access the Ring when you’re already having a headache and your car accident injuries are—” I broke off suddenly, casting about for some way to quickly change the subject.

  “My what?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shuffling the journal pages. “Look, there are more journal entries—”

  “Chloe. What car accident?” I wouldn’t look at her, so she brought her face down close to the pages I was staring at. “Was I in a car accident? Is that why my legs and back and—my whole body hurts?”

  I pressed my lips together—but nodded.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Was it bad?”

  I nodded again.

  “Like—really bad?”

  I swallowed. “Can we not talk about it?”

  She pulled back a little. “So it was really bad. Wow,” she said, more to herself than to me. “How long ago?”

  “A few years. Can we please not talk about it? It was really bad, and I don’t want you to have to think about it, and I really”—my voice cracked a little—“really don’t want to talk about it.”

  She watched me for a few moments, then finally let out a breath and nodded slowly.

  “So…what’s in the next entry?”

  I took a shuddering breath and held it up for us both to read.

  It had been written the very next day, but the handwriting looked a little different from the day before—maybe rushed.

  August 24, 1926

  I don’t even know what to think. I am so furious. How could he do this? It’s all my own husband’s fault. Edward had an amulet, and that’s what Johnny found. But it wasn’t even the real Káti Square; he made his own, and that’s why it all went wrong. We thought it was because Eva had no rewinding abilities, but Wesley confessed that he had taught her to pull time in the last year. So it was purely because Edward had a fake. He found someone to make a new amulet. A replica, hoping he’d be able to break away from the Stonemans—so we wouldn’t have to depend on them, since they’re the ones who own the square, though we own the journal that explains how it all works.

  My mouth once again went dry as I glanced at Janie, who clearly hadn’t caught the significance yet, then continued reading.

  How could he be so foolish? How could he think it would work? How could he keep this from me? To be so careless as to even talk to a craftsman about the amulet…it is absolutely unthinkable. And now he has inadvertently caused Eva’s condition. She will never be able to live a normal life, thanks to him. Martha seems to think it would have been better if Wesley hadn’t rewound, if she had died after all, rather than having to live such a tortured life.

  My heart was pounding. A replica amulet had been the cause of the accident?

  Apparently, Johnny found the replica and was showing it off to the Stoneman kids, and Wesley decided to prove to him that it wouldn’t work. Johnny thought it was the real thing, but Wesley could tell that it wasn’t. He has seen and handled the real thing, being the next in line to own it. So they tried to enter the Ring using the amulet, but rather than the non-event Wesley was predicting, the Ring backfired horribly, rejecting and harming them. The fact that my own boys are fine doesn’t help matters, as it seems to imply guilt even more. Johnny and Devin are fine while Wesley and Eva are suffering. I can only guess that because we allow our children to experiment more with their abilities, they have a higher tolerance for whatever it was that happened.

  What was Edward thinking? If just anybody could create a functional amulet, they would have done so by now. He should have known that. I don’t know how I can even talk to my husband. How could he have been so selfish? So thoughtless? It is beyond me.

  Janie and I sat in silence for a long moment once we’d both finished reading it. I had to tell Jake and Leah. Much as I wouldn’t mind seeing Lillian use her fake amulet and get what was coming to her, it wouldn’t be only her who suffered the consequences.

  “So this girl died because they had a fake amulet,” Janie finally said.

  I looked up at her. “Yeah.”

  “And Lillian has a fake amulet.”

  “Yeah,” I forced myself to reply.

  “So shouldn’t we show her this?”

  I sighed. “Probably.”

  She nodded. “And then you can teach me.”

  “Janie—“

  “Who else is going to help you?” she challenged. “The grandpa who can’t remember anything? You said it would probably be easy for me since I can see the strands in my dreams.” Her face turned calculating. “Actually, I can probably just teach myself,” she mused.

  “No.”

  “Then teach me!”

  I sighed. She was right: what choice did we have? My mom? I’d been holding out hope that Jake would be able to help again, but he still couldn’t access the Ring. I couldn’t imagine how he could see it but not access it, but he’d obviously been trying—a lot. And nothing worked.

  “Okay, I’ll see what Jake and Leah think about it. If he still can’t do it when we get the amulet, maybe we’ll try it.”

  Janie bounced a little next to me, then put her fists up against her mouth, trying to contain her excitement.

  “But,” I said, my tone as serious as I could make it, “you have to do it exactly how I say. I’ll teach you to access the strands, but you absolutely can not try to pull them yet.”

  “But maybe I—”

  “No, Janie. Didn’t you read these?” I waved the journal pages in her face. “Eva died. And even after they rewound, there was still something wrong with her. Your brain can’t handle—”

  “Is this about the car accident thing again?”

  “No. Aren’t you listening to me? It’s about the Ring of Time being broken. If you start messing with it, you’ll be connected to it, and I don’t think you’ll be able to handle it. Jake has had it harder than me, and I think it’s because he hasn’t been rewinding as long. I have no idea how bad it could be for you to just jump into that. So please, just—”

  “Okay, fine.” She held up her hands in surrender. “I’ll be a good girl. I’ll do it your way.”

  I let out a breath. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  I texted Jake and Leah, and we all agreed: we had to tell Lillian what the fake amulet could do. A secret, vindictive part of me wanted to let her do whatever she was planning to do with it and suffer the consequences, but I knew that it would make the Ring far worse than it was.

  And also I shouldn’t be wishing death on people.

  “Oh. I didn’t know you were bringing guests over, Leah.” Lillian was just as snakey-smooth as she had been the first time I’d met her—the confrontation that had been rewound. She obviously didn’t know that I remembered it, since she had the same creepily polite smile plastered on her face when she came into the sitting room.

  “Yup, and we need to talk to you,” Leah answered briskly.

  “Well, let me get some—”

  “Sit down, Mom.”

  Lillian’s eyes went wide. “Is that any way to—”

  “Just sit down,” Jake said. “And cut the polite crap. We know what you did, and we know you’re probably going to do it again. And we know that it won’t work.”

  “And that it will be way worse than you think,” I added in a shaky voice.

  Lillian raised one eyebrow at me, then looked to Leah for an explanation. “We broke the Ring of Time, Mom. Remember when I told you that, like, every day this week?”

  Lillian sat us straighter and pressed her lips together. “And do you remember,” she said icily, “that I have warned you about using that tone with
me?”

  I couldn’t believe she was acting this way—like she was a normal mom with a normal daughter and her friends, reprimanding a snotty attitude.

  “We just wanted to tell you that you’ll probably die if you use your fake amulet to try to enter the Ring again,” I told her with as much sass as I was capable of. “That’s it. K, thanks, bye.” I stood abruptly and headed out of the sitting room as Lillian—and Leah and Jake—stared after me.

  “Excuse me?” I heard Lillian say from behind me, but I just kept going, out into the front entrance to wait for them. It was just around the corner from the sitting room though, so I heard the rest of their conversation.

  “Well, that about sums it up,” I heard Jake say after a moment.

  “Mom, we know you had someone make a replica of the amulet. But we found some journals, information from the generation who had it first. Some kids used a fake amulet to try to enter the Ring and—”

  “Oh, please, Leah. You expect me to believe that? You certainly are getting desperate, aren’t you? First you completely ruin my attempt, and now you insist on making up lies to keep me from it. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want this for—”

  “Mom,” Leah interrupted forcefully. “You cannot do this. It won’t work with a fake one. A little girl died when they tried it. I’m not making this up.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Lillian asked. “My father told me that story plenty of times.”

  “You know what?” Jake said. “Maybe we should just let her try. She doesn’t have four people anyway, so she’ll probably just end up like Gene—he didn’t complete the square either. Good luck with that.” And Jake strode out to where I was. I kind of wanted to high five him.

  I waited for Leah with my hand on the front door. There was silence in the other room for a few moments before Leah said in a quiet voice, “You’re still my mom, and I still love you, but if you do this, you’ll deserve anything that happens to you.”

  Once we were in the car, I realized our mistake.

  “Jake…maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned that she needs four people.”