by Julie Cross
I attempted to look angry. “First you assume I want to go out with you, and now you’re assuming I want to get in your pants.”
Which I do and have.
She blushed again, just like last night. “No, that’s not what I meant…”
“If you’re so sure, then tell me five things you know about me,” I said.
“You work here, that’s one.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, what else?”
“You’ve read A Tale of Two Cities and know how to waltz, despite being a high school dropout from Jersey.”
“Someone is very judgmental. Admit you don’t know enough about me to make an accurate assumption regarding my alleged player status.”
“And what do you suppose we do about it?”
“You owe me dinner.”
“Fine, five o’clock. I’m driving and we’re eating Thai food,” she said.
“Sounds good.”
* * *
The last party was out by five o’clock, and at quarter to six Holly was waiting at the door for me, wearing a denim skirt and a blue top. Her hair hung down and the ends were curled.
“You look nice,” I said.
She shrugged. “I went home to change while you were fixing that broken showerhead in the men’s locker room.”
After turning off the lights and doing a final walk-through, I locked the doors to the gym and followed her to her car.
She had about a dozen library books stacked on the passenger seat. I moved them carefully to the back. “This car is awesome.”
“It’s a beat-up fifteen-year-old Honda and the air-conditioning never works.”
“Classics are great.”
We were both quiet the rest of the ride, but she turned to me in front of the restaurant and cut the engine. “Just so you know, I’m not allowed to date. Not that this is a date … but to my mother, it will seem that way. So I invited a few friends.”
“Chaperones?”
“Exactly.”
“Who did you invite?”
“David and Adam. You met them yesterday.” I nodded. “And Jana.”
“Great.”
Right before we walked into the restaurant, she spun around and was just inches from my face. “I decided you were right. I was way too quick to judge you.”
“Are you apologizing?”
“No, but I’m giving you an opportunity to prove me wrong. Not because I think you need to impress me, but just to protect your reputation.”
I shrugged. “Whatever.”
She smiled. “Great, then I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few questions over dinner. Like you said, I couldn’t name five things I knew about you.”
“Okay,” I said, unable to hide the growing nerves in my voice.
“And, Jackson?”
“Yes.”
“This won’t be easy.”
My heart was already pounding. Holly was a very hard girl to lie to. I would know. I did it more times than I could count.
“What do your parents do?” she asked me as soon as we sat down at our table.
“My dad works at a school in Manhattan.”
“He’s a teacher?” Jana asked from my other side.
“No, he’s a janitor.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. I turned my eyes back to Holly.
“Siblings?” she asked.
I swallowed a big gulp of water from the glass in front of me before answering. “One sister.”
“Older or younger?” Holly asked.
“We’re twins, actually, but she died a few years ago.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands and she muttered, “I’m sorry.”
Hopefully, the family questions would end there. David’s eyes darted between the two of us, taking in the uncomfortable air.
The waiter came over and took our order, and then David and Jana jumped into an in-depth analysis of how pathetic this year’s football team was. Holly was silent, stirring the small bowl of sweet-and-sour sauce in the center of the table.
“Are you done questioning me already?” I asked.
She lifted her eyes to meet mine and gave me a half smile. “Not even close. What’s your favorite book?”
“Um … Stranger in a Strange Land,” I answered.
“I haven’t read that. Is it any good?”
“Yeah, it’s great. A human’s raised on Mars and then returns to Earth.”
“Sounds interesting. Favorite song?”
“Hm. I can’t pick one. I’ll give you my top five in random order. ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ by Keane, ‘Pictures of You’ by the Cure, ‘Falling Slowly’ by Glen Hansard, ‘Mad World,’ the Gary Jules version, and ‘Beast of Burden’ by the Rolling Stones.”
I had managed to quickly rattle off not only older songs, but ones that brought up vivid memories of me and Holly.
“I don’t know if I’ve heard any of those,” she said.
“I’m sure you’d recognize some of them.”
“Favorite movie?”
I went with really old again, just to be safe. “Back to the Future.”
Adam choked on his water, spraying some on me.
Holly laughed at him. “Okay, odd choice.”
“I’m sure your favorite is some sappy eighties movie with a whiny girl for a main character.”
Something like … Sixteen Candles.
Holly rolled her eyes as the waiter set our dinners down on the table. “Not even close.”
“What’s with the twenty questions, Hol?” David asked.
She picked up her fork and twirled noodles around it. “I’m making new friends.”
“Interesting,” David said, the corners of his mouth twitching.
When the others were deep in conversation, Holly started talking again. “What was your sister’s name?”
“Courtney,” I said, lowering my voice. You’d think after all this time it would get easier to say her name, but it never did. “Now can I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“Why the early morning training sessions, since you’ve obviously retired your leotard?”
“It’s fun. No other reason, really.”
“Pure love of the sport. That’s inspiring,” I said.
She laughed and tossed her napkin across the table at me. “Go ahead and make fun of me. Jump on the trampoline for five minutes sometime and see if you don’t get addicted.”
“Any other addictions I should know about before I take another ride in your car?”
“Just caffeine,” she admitted.
“Me, too.”
“So, you really don’t mind hanging with kids that are still in school?”
“There you go again, being all judgmental. We can’t all be AP students like you. Besides, I passed a high school equivalency exam. So, technically, I’m a high school graduate.”
“Is it a hard test?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I paid someone to take it for me.”
Adam almost choked again, this time on a piece of chicken. I slapped him on the back while he coughed.
“Funny. Okay, what about … your favorite spot in New York?” She pushed the pad thai around her plate, waiting patiently for my answer.
“Central Park.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well, we have that in common.”
“Does that mean you’ll give me your number?”
For some reason, the other conversations at the table seemed to stop a split second before I said that. Really bad timing. Everyone paused for a second and then jumped back into eating. Holly kept her eyes on mine and I waited while she took a long drink of water. “I’ll give you my email.”
“Fair enough.”
“When are we going to be done with the bargaining thing?”
I shrugged. “Personally, I think it’s fun.”
A smile lit up her whole face. “Me, too.”
Of course, I already had her number, but I wanted Holly to give it to me.
* * *
I told Holly to drive back to her house and I’d walk to the train station from there, and to my surprise, she didn’t object. But we pulled up to her house just as her mother parked in the driveway. The blond woman walked over to us as we got out.
“Hey, Holly. Who’s your friend?”
She wasn’t exactly smiling at me, but I stuck my hand out anyway to shake hers. “I’m Jackson.”
Future Katherine didn’t really like me too much, so I wasn’t expecting a grand welcoming.
“He works at the gym with me.” Holly stepped around her mother and yanked the front of my shirt, dragging me behind.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Flynn,” I said.
“Suck-up,” Holly muttered.
I laughed and followed her through the front door. “I’ll write down my email and you can send me one first, okay?” I asked.
She handed me a piece of paper and a pen from the kitchen table and I jotted it down. “See you Monday?”
She nodded and I grabbed my bag and left before Katherine could ask any more questions.
When I got home, Holly had already sent me an email, but it was only one sentence long. An invitation for a little online chatting.
Do you want to hear a funny story?
I pulled up the instant messenger and typed my reply there since she was already online.
ME: Does it involve me breaking things in the gym or falling off ladders?
HOLLY: You fell off a ladder?
ME: Not yet.
HOLLY: Okay, here it is: my mom just spent twenty minutes drilling me with questions about you. She’s sort of a freak when it comes to guys even talking to me. I think it’s her Lifetime movie obsession.
ME: So she suspects I may be a bank robber/murderer/con artist?
HOLLY: Don’t forget kidnapper and Internet porn addict.
ME: Lol! I admit nothing.
HOLLY: All I ever hear is shit like, “Holly, you remember what happened in that one movie when that woman was talking to the nice guy online and decided to meet him in Aruba only to be kidnapped and held for ransom by Caribbean Mafia.”
ME: I’ve heard the Caribbean Mafia hangs out in Jersey ALL the time.
HOLLY: I know. Totally. Do they even have Mafia gangs in Aruba?
My new cell phone rang and I saw that it was Adam calling. “What’s up?”
“Your dad’s not your dad,” he spat out through the phone.
I leaned too far back in my chair and nearly fell off, knocking the laptop off my desk in the process. “What?!”
“I stole some hair samples and there’s no match. Unless another man is sleeping in your dad’s bed.”
“How would you know? I mean…?”
“I have connections at a private DNA lab,” he mumbled quietly. “But that’s just between you and me.”
My heart was pounding. “There must be inaccuracies with those tests sometimes.”
“You can get a false positive with paternity tests, but a negative is a negative.”
I was silent for so long I’m sure Adam started to get worried. “Do you feel like conducting an experiment?”
My hand shook so much I could barely hold the phone. “Definitely. And I think maybe … my sister was right. I need to find out more about my mom.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. But wait for me. I have to see this for myself. I mean … I know I already have, but … not really … uh … because—”
“I get it, Adam, I’ll wait.” I slammed the phone shut and threw it onto the desk.
After a few minutes of pacing, then sitting in stunned silence, I remembered that I’d left Holly hanging. I picked up the computer from the floor and pulled myself together before responding.
ME: Sorry, Internet problems. I would have called, but …
HOLLY: Real smooth, Jackson. I’ll tell you what, give me your number and then if I don’t hear from you and I’m worried that you might be choking on a peanut or something, I can call you and verify that you’re alive.
ME: And what if I’m worried you’re choking …
HOLLY: Fine! You can have my number.
ME: I swear I’ll only use it in life-or-death situations.
HOLLY: Deal.
I had to end our conversation because Adam called again and decided I needed to come to his house just in case the CIA had installed listening devices in my place. Not only did I agree with him, I made a promise to myself not to roll my eyes or dismiss what I used to call Adam’s paranoia ever again.
* * *
Adam flung the door open seconds after I knocked. I followed him through the dark living room, where it looked like his parents were cozy on the couch watching TV.
After he closed his bedroom door, I started in with the questions.
“So, can I ask what made you even think to do a paternity test?”
He was pulling items from his desk drawer. “It was after those caffeine pills I took to stay awake. I pretty much thought of everything. Mostly I wanted to see if there were similarities in your DNA.”
“Why would that matter?”
“It answers some of the questions you’ve asked in your journal entries. If he does work for the CIA, wouldn’t a time-traveling agent be a benefit to them? I can think of a million ways the government could make use of that.”
“You thought maybe he can do it, too?” This was another theory we hadn’t come up with before, but then again, Adam read all the notes about his future self. Now he was taking the next logical step in his insane thought process.
He shrugged. “Don’t know. But it explains how he does the whole CEO and CIA thing. No reason to look further if there’s no match. Do you know what date you’re going to use?”
“Well, you and me had this plan … in the future, to steal my medical records. I still think we could do this, but what about my mother’s records? Maybe she’s the reason I’m this way … do they even keep records for people who are already dead?”
Adam’s face took on a look of deep concentration and I could tell I’d just sparked something. “If you could go back far enough … stuff like that was much less secure.”
“Like I could just walk into the hospital and talk a nurse into leaving her station and hijack her computer?” I was half joking, but of course Adam took it as a serious plan.
He sank down onto the bed and glanced up at me. “Okay … so, you and your sister were born at NYU Medical Center, which means your biological mother died there, right?”
“Right,” I said slowly, absorbing the weight of that conclusion. I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. All those times I’d been in that hospital … never once had I thought about the fact that my mother and Courtney both died in that building. Over half of my family. Maybe all of my family, since my dad and I weren’t biologically connected.
“Jackson?” Adam said, waving a hand in front of my face. “What we need is a date that you were there … in the past … preferably far in the past.”
“I visited Courtney a bunch of times,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, sometime when you were a patient. Or there for a sick visit or checkup with Dr. Melvin. If you go far enough back, like when they used to cart around medical records in file folders rather than a computer … you could take a peek.”
It must have been the shock of finding out my dad wasn’t my dad, but the most perfect plan formed in my head. I knew of one date very far in the past that would work. And there was something I needed to see. “December twenty-fourth, 1996,” I said to Adam.
“Great, and I think you should take a stab at getting a look at your mother’s file if you can figure out how. At least give it a try while you’re there.” He handed me a stopwatch and a small notebook. “It still seems so strange that you can take stuff with you, but not bring anything back. Like there’s some kind of force field around you when you jump. Assuming your notes are accurate.”
“Well, you’re about to get your own evidence to
record.” I clicked the stopwatch on and off several times like the older Adam had always done. “Do you think it would work if I was touching a person?”
“Not sure. But I don’t want to be your lab rat for that one.”
“Good point, it’s too dangerous.”
“We need to make sure the time you’re actually gone is accurate. Tie the watch to your belt loop. As soon as you take in your surroundings, start it.” He opened his closet and pulled out a black ski jacket and then pulled a blue stocking hat over my head.
I knew almost nothing about my mother. The name on my birth certificate said Eileen Meyer. But I didn’t know what color hair or eyes she had. I’d never even seen a picture and suddenly I wanted to know. I closed my eyes and focused on a date much further than I’d ever traveled to.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1996
The first thing I noticed … after waking up in a pile of snow and hitting the start button on the stopwatch … was the Twin Towers, standing tall in the distance. Like some giant up in the sky had just set them right back in place. I suppressed a shudder at the sight of them and stood up.
I zipped up Adam’s coat and waded across the sidewalk. I remembered this Christmas Eve so well. At least six inches of snow had fallen and Courtney and I were home with Dad, watching it come down as we wrapped presents for the party our neighbors hosted at midnight. It was the most excited I’d been in my six years of life. All the money in the world couldn’t buy a perfect snowfall on Christmas Eve. Adam would probably call me careless later, but I had to see this again. Relive it. And then I could return to the plan of hunting down medical records. In fact, this event would lead me right to the source.
Everything glowed white. It was almost blinding. I made my way across the park to one of the baseball fields. I only had to wait about fifteen minutes before I saw the two little kids, dressed like punk rock marshmallows, dragging their dad by the hands. I leaned against the backstop of the baseball field so I’d have my back to them, and then I pulled the stocking cap farther over my ears and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. There were a few other people around, so I didn’t stand out too much.