by Julie Cross
“Jackson, why don’t you start with the head?” Dad said.
It was hard not to react when he said my name, but I kept my eyes forward.
“No, I’m doing the bottom first. This dude is going to be huge,” the younger me said.
“You never do what Daddy tells you to, Jackson. Santa isn’t going to bring you anything,” Courtney said in her know-it-all voice.
“He brought me a bunch of stuff last year.”
“Let him do the bottom, Courtney. Somebody has to.”
After a while, I shot a couple glances in their direction and saw the snowman coming to life.
“Let’s give him three eyes like an alien,” the younger me said.
“Ew! He’s supposed to have a top hat and look like a man,” Courtney said.
“Fine, I’m making my own.”
I heard Dad laughing, but he didn’t attempt to force me into working on Courtney’s version.
“Daddy, why does Santa bring small presents to poor people?” Courtney asked.
“Duh, because their houses are smaller,” the six-year-old me said.
“Who told you that, Courtney?” Dad asked.
“Silvia.”
The babysitter from Puerto Rico. She stayed with us whenever Dad was out of town.
“What did she say?”
“Well, she told me her family always got fruit for Christmas and Santa brought it because they didn’t have enough money to buy any presents,” Courtney said.
From the corner of my eye, I could see her wrapping her scarf around the snowman.
“Silvia’s from a different country. Everyone has their own customs,” Dad said.
“I’m giving her half of my presents,” Courtney announced.
“Yeah, I’m sure she wants your Barbie car,” the little me said. “Silvia’s, like, a hundred years old. She can’t drive a Power Wheels. She can have some of my stuff.”
“If you even get anything besides coal,” Courtney said.
“I wouldn’t care if I got coal. You can make diamonds with coal. Right, Dad?”
“Right … and no one has to give their presents away. We can get Silvia her own gift.”
“Can we take a picture of the snowman to show her?” the little me asked.
My voice had grown more distant and I knew what was coming. I held my breath and waited.
“What are you doing over there?” Dad called to the younger me.
“I’m getting some arms for my snowman.”
I spun around even though I was risking being seen. I had to watch. The younger me started to climb the tree, jumping to reach a twig above his head.
Dad took off running toward the tree. “Jackson! Don’t grab that branch!”
I almost shouted out to myself. The six-year-old version of me froze on a lower branch of the tree, watching the branch above his little head buckle under the immense weight of the snow on top and the tugging from a little kid who had just attempted to tear off a small piece.
Dad dove forward and grabbed the young me around the waist as he tumbled down, covering both of their heads with his arms. One of my younger self’s hands had reached out to break the fall and hit the bare, frozen ground that the giant tree had shielded from the snow. I cringed and held my breath. Even from so far away, I could hear the bone snap. Or maybe I just remembered the sound so vividly. But it wasn’t as loud as Courtney’s scream. She ran to the fallen branch and stood over the little me. Her hands covered her face. “His arm fell off!”
That’s when the younger me decided it was time to freak out and start crying.
“It’s just broken, sweetie,” Dad said to Courtney before picking me up off the ground carefully. He pulled my arm from the sleeve of my jacket and his face tightened. Courtney got one look at the bone poking through the skin and turned around and puked up the pound of cookie dough she had eaten earlier.
“I don’t want to die,” I heard myself wail. “Call Dr. Melvin, please, Dad.”
“We just need to go to the hospital. You’ll be okay, I promise,” Dad said.
From a distance, I saw him turn his head to his sleeve and heard him say, “Edwards, where the hell are you?”
Seconds later, a man ran past me.
“Excuse me, sir, do you need help?” he asked Dad.
“Yes, my son hurt his arm.”
The man picked up Courtney, who had finished vomiting and started wailing out her apologies in case I was, in fact, dying. “I didn’t mean that … about Santa, Jackson. He’s bringing you lots of stuff. I’m sooorry.”
“That’s a compound fracture. He’s going to need surgery,” the man called Edwards said.
The younger me held his deformed arm across his stomach and continued to cry, much quieter than Courtney’s ear-piercing wail. Dad carried young me through the snow, walking fast. I watched the backs of their heads get smaller and smaller.
That guy Edwards was definitely some kind of agent. I remembered the man, but thought he had just come over to help. Dad never would have let some stranger pick up my sister. I had been a little distracted at the time from the stabbing pain shooting through my arm, and was probably too young to remember those details.
I pulled up the sleeve of Adam’s jacket and ran my fingers over the scars from my Christmas Eve surgery, faded after so many years.
I took a cab to the hospital, where I knew Dad was headed. After reliving this day, I decided Dad didn’t seem like someone pretending to be a father. His concern was genuine. It’s possible he didn’t know that we had no biological connection. Or he was just one of many adoptive parents who made the decision to keep that a secret.
Or it was something entirely different.
When the cab pulled up to the hospital, I had to dig into one of the tiny pockets of my wallet to get the oldest dollar bills out. Luckily, I had been collecting old money. Just in case.
I strode through the emergency room doors, hoping to get a better glimpse of the man Dad had called Edwards. They were nowhere in sight, and from what I could remember of that night, I was only awake for a short time before they wheeled me into surgery and put screws into my arm. I just needed someone to give me access through the closed ER doors.
“Can I help you?” a woman at the desk in front of the emergency room doors asked.
“Um … yeah, I’m here to see my … brother, Jackson Meyer … he just came in with my dad. Hurt his arm.”
“Name, please,” she said, glancing up from the stack of papers in front of her, probably because I was staring at her like she had just spoken Japanese. “Your name, not his,” she added.
Oops, hadn’t thought about that little issue. “Uh … Peter … Peter Meyer.”
She typed away at her computer. It was a thick monitor with one of those black and green screens. Something I hadn’t seen for many years. Even the hairstyles of all the nurses I had walked past were so unusual. I would’ve laughed if the situation were different.
“Can I see some ID?” she asked.
Uh-oh, time to go.
“Yeah, I … uh … left it in the cab. I just called and the driver’s on his way back. In fact, I should go down and meet him now. I’ll be right back.” I spun around and nearly ran into a man in a blue suit. He was well over six feet, with a shaved head and dark skin. He looked familiar. Very familiar.
“I think I can help you,” he said in this deep, booming voice. It had just a hint of a Southern drawl.
“Really?”
He nodded. “Why don’t you come with me.”
It wasn’t a question. I followed behind him, feeling totally freaked, but also dying to figure out how all of these people and events connected. Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have a way out of there.
I struggled to keep up with the man’s long strides. He held the door open for the elevator and I stepped in. He swiped a card in a hole and a small door slid open big enough for his hand. I craned my neck, trying to get a good view. It was some kind of fingerprint scanner.
Was this normal security for hospitals? Especially in 1996? And why were we straying so far from the ER?
He kept his eyes straight ahead but answered my unspoken question. “The government wing of this hospital is only available to those with security clearance, but I’m sure you knew that already.”
“Uh … no,” I said.
My voice came out like a scared child’s and yet this man was cool and calm. Like he brought people to his secret fingerprint scanner place all the time.
I could feel the elevator moving down, but the numbers that usually lit up to tell you the floor you were on stayed dark. When the doors finally opened, I sucked in a breath. Four men with guns stood right outside the elevator. They all raised their weapons and pointed them at us. I froze in my spot, debating whether or not to push another button.
“You can’t go back up without clearance,” the mystery man said.
It was at that moment that I tried to focus and get out of there, back to Adam in 2007. Of course, like that time when I was in my dad’s office with his hands around my throat, I was too freaked to do it. One of the armed men grabbed me and started feeling my pants all the way up to my shirt.
“He’s clean. No weapons.”
“Thank you. Follow me.”
I managed to put one foot in front of the other and took in my surroundings. It was some kind of underground tunnel. The man opened a door and pushed me inside a room. Another man forced me into a chair, like the kind at the dentist. He tied my arms with straps. I thought about fighting back but decided there was no point if these dudes had guns.
“I’m Chief Marshall,” the man who had led me down here said. “Who are you? We both know Jackson Meyer doesn’t have a brother.”
I didn’t answer and Chief Marshall nodded toward the other man. “Test his blood.”
Okay, totally creepy. I closed my eyes and tried to let the room dissolve. To get the hell out of there. To avoid the one experiment Adam and I couldn’t perform.
Yes, the dives into the past were like Groundhog Day. And the light feeling that I always had while in a jump (except that one time on October 30, 2009) kept pain at a minimum. In other words, if I hurt myself in a jump, when I came back to the present, I’d have a bump on my head or whatever, but never a bad one.
But still, what if they killed me in this year? One that wasn’t my home base? I had no idea what would happen. If I would really be dead.
I barely felt the needle prick my arm, and seconds later I heard feet shuffling away.
“You can’t leave from here, just so you know,” Chief Marshall said.
My eyes flew open again. “You already told me that.”
“I mean you can’t leave by any method. New security device Dr. Melvin invented. An electromagnetic pulse.”
Um. What the hell was he talking about? And he knew Dr. Melvin. Maybe Courtney was right about the connection. Was Dr. Melvin trying to zap me, or whoever else they brought in this room, with electromagnets? Except Chief Marshall was in here, and the other dude, too.
“Come on, tell me your name,” Chief Marshall said in his deep Southern voice as he sat in a chair across from me, arms folded over his chest. “How do you know Jackson Meyer?”
I stayed silent, staring over his shoulder, trying to calm myself.
“He’s not an Enemy,” the other man spoke up.
“Are you positive?” Chief Marshall asked.
“Yes.” He walked over and stared closely at my face, then yanked off the stocking cap.
“An Enemy?” I finally said.
“Don’t act dumb,” Chief Marshall said. “You see the resemblance?” he asked the man with the needle. “To the others.”
Others?
The man put his face so close to mine I could smell the garlic he must have eaten for lunch. “Yeah. I see it. But it can’t be … right?”
For the first time, Chief Marshall’s face lost its calm, collected expression. He hit a button on the wall and shouted, “Edwards, get in here!”
Seconds later, the man who had raced past me out on the baseball field came charging in. “What’s going on, Chief?”
“Get Agent Meyer down here right away,” Chief Marshall said.
Oh, man. Too freaky!
“Sorry, sir, he’s with the boy.”
“Fine. Melvin, then.”
“Also with the kid in the OR,” Edwards said.
Chief Marshall turned slowly to face Edwards before saying, “And so am I.”
Edwards opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Do you mean he can … I mean, not yet, but eventually—”
I didn’t get to hear the rest. The idea of my father coming down there and seeing me, older, after what had happened in his office in 2003, was enough to give me the ability to focus on my escape. The last thing I saw was Chief Marshall’s face up close as he examined mine. I don’t know what freaked me out more … the look in his eyes or the greedy smile that was snaking onto his face as I jumped out of 1996.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2007, 12:30 A.M.
“Jackson!” Adam shouted into my ear.
I was lying on his bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling. “What year is it?”
“2007,” he said slowly.
The room spun and when I sat up and stared at Adam’s giant DNA model on the desk, the blue and red balls swirled around like the birds that fly over a cartoon character’s head. I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. “I have to call my dad. Like … now.”
“Okay.” He lifted me up and I slumped over onto him.
“I can’t feel my legs,” I mumbled before collapsing onto Adam’s bed. I lifted my hand in front of my face, turning it over, expecting it to fade away or turn transparent.
Then the spinning blue and red turned black, along with everything else.
* * *
The first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning was the lump next to me, sound asleep. I rolled over and stood, happy that feeling had returned to my legs. But they were weak and my head throbbed, like a bad hangover.
Adam’s eyes opened slowly. “You’re standing.”
“Barely.” I clutched my sides, putting pressure against the stabbing pain running up and down my ribs.
Adam pulled a shirt over his head and opened the bedroom door. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
Food was the last thing on my mind, but my lack of appetite in the last week had already caused me to lose at least five pounds. Pretty soon I really would disappear.
“Morning, Mom,” Adam said to the woman in the kitchen flipping pancakes.
“You’re up early. I didn’t know you had a friend over.” Mrs. Silverman turned her back on the griddle and smiled at me.
I tried not to laugh, because Adam’s parents were a big joke for me in 2009. I named them “Paul and Judy” because they made me think of the Dick and Jane books I read in preschool. The ones from the 1950s. They were completely clueless about what their son was up to or capable of. It was all pancakes and sunshine.
“I’m Jackson,” I said.
Adam and I sat at the table and he slid my journal in front of me. “Write down what you remember.”
“What was the time on my stopwatch?” I asked.
“A little over two hours.”
“And your stopwatch?”
“Four minutes,” he answered.
Even though I’d done this so many times with the older Adam, it was still weird to be gone that long and then come back and find only minutes had passed. But usually it was seconds.
“What did I look like?”
“Just like the other times you recorded with m … with the other guy. You were staring into space, completely unresponsive.” He tapped the page again with his finger. “Write.”
The memory was choppy and jumbled, but once I started forming a list and Adam drilled me with questions, most of it seemed to come back.
“Wow, it sounds like you picked
the right date. So, now we know, he’s definitely an agent of some kind,” Adam said.
Mrs. Silverman slid a giant plate of pancakes in front of each of us. “Who’s an agent, honey?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s just this TV show.”
She smiled at him. “Orange juice, anyone?”
“Sure,” Adam said.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Okay, so, you resemble these mysterious other people … or was he talking about you looking like your younger self? No surprise if that’s the case.”
“He just said, ‘You see the resemblance?’ Then he said something about looking like the others … or maybe he said ‘other’ … like the other me,” I said.
Feeling nauseous from my wild adventure last night, I pushed the plate away from me, but Adam slid it back. “Eat.”
I could only force down a few bites before running to the bathroom and puking it back up. While I was brushing my teeth, I heard Adam talking to his mom. “Probably bad sushi.”
“I’ve got Maalox,” I heard Adam’s mom call through the bathroom door.
Adam was waiting for me outside the bathroom, holding a bottle of Maalox, when I came out. I chugged it straight from the bottle as we walked back to his room, where I promptly fell onto his bed. He shut the door behind him, balancing his plate of pancakes. “It’s the time travel that’s making you sick. Based on your journal notes and your latest binge and purge, it’s obvious.”
“Are you sure it’s not psychosomatic? Guilt manifesting itself into illness? It never happened until Holly was shot.” I pulled the covers up to my neck, rolling myself into a shivering ball.
“Someone’s taken Psych 101.” Adam sat in his desk chair and continued stuffing his face. “I think it’s all relative. Before you went back to 2007, the furthest you’d gone was a couple of days. It’s a formula based on the number of years you travel backwards, along with the length of time you stay in the past. You knew that part already because the formulas were in your journal.”
I nodded. “But why don’t I feel constantly sick in this year? Technically, it’s the past for me.”
He shrugged. “I think it’s because this is your home base now. Every other year is the one you shouldn’t be in, so bad things are going to happen to you when you travel to those non-home-base time periods. And the longer you stay away from home base, the worse the symptoms are. It’s like your body’s actually being pulled apart and maybe you can only stretch so far.”