Rift (Rift Walkers #1)

by Elana Johnson

  I’m standing in Cascade’s kitchen. Somewhere I’ve dreamed about being, mostly because it would mean I was at her house, watching a flick and maybe we’d been kissing a little on her couch and maybe later I’d get to see what color her bedspread is.

  My real life is so completely whacked out from my fantasies.

  I press my hands against my eye sockets, then reach for a glass. After filling it with water, I down it all. It’s the third drink I’ve had, but I feel just as thirsty as when I said, “I need a minute,” and scampered down here, tossing the ancient flatpanel to her as I fled.

  I look at my reflection in the window above the sink. Fear surges in my expression. I swallow it back, where it writhes in my stomach. I can’t believe I’ve been playing with time, entering the rift like it’s no big deal. I haven’t been taking it seriously enough.

  I’ve been down here for fifteen minutes and haven’t heard a single floorboard creak upstairs. Cas sure knows how to give people their space.

  I want so much to protect her—and Soda—from all the unpleasantness of her life. I can’t tell her that, because she’d just respond with one of her classic Cascade scowls and say something like “I don’t need you to protect me, Price.”

  But she does.

  Disturbing thoughts enter my mind. What if Cascade is playing me? What if she betrays me to my father? What if she’s upstairs right now, chatlining the Hoods that the Black Hat is hanging out in her kitchen?

  I shove those ugly accusations away. Cascade wouldn’t do that. Someone who hides backpacks in the past doesn’t show their best hand that easily. She’s the Dark Panther, and she’ll stick with me.

  A ding! draws my attention. A flatpanel mimics the kitchen counter a few feet to my left. I don’t have to touch it to read the chat, but I want to splinter it into a million tiny pieces when I see who’s hailing her.

  Guy Ryerson.

  I remain standing at the kitchen sink as Dad continues to chat Cascade. Apparently, I have an incredible talent for reading upside down.

  I saw that scar on your hand today. I know who you really are, and who you came here with.

  The breath I suck in is harsh. The lie Dad told me about rift-walkers bearing a mark on their hands echoes loudly in my ears. What else has he lied about? The question remains unanswered as Cascade’s flatpanel chimes again.

  Where is Eliza? She won’t present a problem, will she?

  I think of Soda, and how gentle she is. She doesn’t like contention, and I can’t imagine her being a problem for anyone. Of course, Dad doesn’t know the Soda I do.

  Whatever you’re doing, with my rifts and with my son, it won’t work.

  Keep your end of the bargain, and then we won’t have any more problems.

  If you don’t….

  I grip the edges of the sink so hard my knuckles sting. My eyes dart from my empty cup to the flashing flatpanel, waiting for him to finish the threat. I could smash that chat to smithereens. At least then I’d have some physical pain to focus on. This clawing through my chest is too hard to bear.

  “How can I choose?” I whisper to my reflection. How can I fight against my dad? How can I choose him over Cascade?

  Before I can drown in helplessness, the chat dings again.

  Too bad Cascade Kaufman has two years left on her contract.

  Another pause. I’m not sure if Dad thinks Cas is awake and will answer, or if he’s composing.

  You can’t hide anymore, and you certainly can’t run. Sure, you’ve done it before, but this time it’s different.

  My breath catches. Cascade wants to leave. Run.

  The flatpanel dings again and I exhale slowly, letting the rage flow from my chest with the air.

  This time, I officially own you, Dad chats. No matter where you go, or when you land, I will find you.

  The threat makes my muscles tense. A growl edges up through my throat.

  “Price,” Cascade calls as she comes bounding down the steps. “We’ve gotta go. The rift just opened.” She swipes the flatpanel into her backpack without looking at it, but not before I see the last chat.

  Two more years, Chloe. You’re mine for two more years.

  I meet Cascade’s bright-eyed gaze and see her real name—Chloe—imprinted over her face. She’s holding one hand toward me. “Let’s go. The rift just opened. I want to take some measurements before it closes.”

  I slide my hand into hers, completely unsure if I’m doing the right thing. We hit the street running, and my feet pound out questions: Is she running right now?

  Cascade or Dad?

  Dad or Cascade?

  Is she leaving right now?

  Saige

  DINNERTIME FINDS ME KNEELING AT a filing cabinet in Mom’s office. This one hasn’t been cleaned out because the only thing in here is discolored family photos, elementary school report cards, piano certificates, and Chloe’s old art.

  I finger one of my sister’s paintings she did in seventh grade, just before she disappeared.

  Not disappeared, I tell myself. She left. Bitterness coats the back of my tongue, and I swallow in an attempt to get rid of it. I can’t even look at a painting without feeling an intense anger. I take several deep breaths and force myself to ungrip the painting.

  It depicts a flock of Canadian geese in a harvested cornfield. The rich browns melt into the lighter golds and yellows of autumn in the wilderness. The paint is cut on thick, with a knife. I remember Chloe scraping it against the canvas; the sound of it annoyed me while I tried to practice the piano.

  Suddenly as irritated now as I was then, I toss the painting aside and pick up one of Chloe’s cards she’d given Mom for Mother’s Day. Right below that is a purple Steno notebook, one of Chloe’s many diaries. Mom used to buy her expensive books, but quickly changed to steno notebooks when Chloe filled them so fast. I flip it open. Her handwriting hurts too much to look at, the drawings of the mermaids and palm trees too cheerful. My pain is too sharp. My hope too devastating. My fury all-consuming.

  I’ve tried to push away so much for so long. When I first started to see Chloe, I talked to her. I went to school with her. I screamed at anyone who tried to tell me she wasn’t there.

  Mom took me to doctors and facilities, and I let them fill me with drugs and poke me with needles.

  I stopped talking about Chloe. I allowed her to fade into the background while I went to geometry and took beauty quizzes in fashion magazines. She drifted away for a while too, but I’d see her every now and then. Always thirteen months older than me, her hair always longer than the last time I’d seen her.

  I wonder what role the rift has in keeping her here. Are those images even real? Or somehow ingrained over reality? If the rift goes away, will Chloe disappear too?

  I slam the filing cabinet drawer, locking all my childhood memories inside. Mom clearly has no use for them, and I find that I don’t either. I realize why Chloe left—there’s nothing here. I understand exactly how she feels, and if I have the chance, I’m leaving too.

  “I’m leaving too,” I say out loud to the empty office. I’ve wanted to move for years, and I suddenly have nothing tying me here, to this house, to this time.

  Long after I said I was going to bed, I sit at the top of the stairs and listen to Mom’s end of a phone conversation in the kitchen below. She never came home for dinner. I was still awake when I heard the garage door grumble open, and I quickly scampered out here to listen.

  “I am not doing that!” Mom practically yells. A pause, and when she speaks again, she’s composed herself. “The rift is mine, Mr. Ryerson. That has always been very clear, and you signed the contract.”

  I hear the sliding of a barstool as Mom bumps it. “I discovered it; I devoted most of my career to it; I’ve sacrificed more than anyone—”

  Anger slowly builds inside me. She’s been lying to me and Shep for years. And for what? Her freaking career? I think briefly of getting my brother out of bed so he can witness this conversation t
oo, but I quickly decide against that. I don’t need him lashing out and punching me when I try to wake him. I wish I could hear the other end of the conversation. I close my eyes, which allows me to hear every minute sound in the kitchen.

  “No!” Mom says in a hushed-but-furious voice. “That is not satisfactory. I gave you my daughter. I get credit for the rift, and the Phillips name deserves to be in the history books.” Mom’s voice pitches into the rafters, and she takes a shaky breath.

  I mimic her, trying to contain the frustration that’s taking root within me. I can’t believe she had me institutionalized to cover her tracks. She kept the charade up for years, checking in on me like I was mentally unstable. Really, she’s just been checking on her precious rift and keeping me under her thumb. I fist my hands until my bones ache.

  “We made an agreement five years ago, and you got all the research my daughter stole from me,” Mom continues, her voice louder now. “I don’t care if she’s breeching her contract in the future; that has nothing to do with me.”

  She grinds her teeth while the person on the other end of the line speaks.

  “Of course I haven’t seen her. The idea is ridiculous. I don’t care what she has or hasn’t done. I expect you to uphold your end of our bargain.” The finality in her tone means this conversation is almost over. Sure enough, I hear a slap as Mom slams her phone onto the kitchen counter.

  My first inclination is to scramble into my bedroom as her footsteps approach. But I’m done running. I stand to face her as she nears the top of the stairs. Surprise flitters across my mother’s face when she sees me. “Are you okay? Bad dream?”

  “I know about the rift,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. “I just heard your conversation.”

  Mom joins me at the top of the stairs, only an inch taller than me but towering nonetheless.

  “You know Chloe went through that rift. You forced her through! She stayed there to get away from you. If it weren’t for you she’d still be here!”

  The muscle near her left eye twitches, and she presses her lips together so tight they disappear. Still, she won’t speak, not to even to deny what I’ve said.

  “I read your emails.” My voice creeps louder, sliding along the walls and down the stairs. My tirade is cut short by a bright silver light spilling into the hall, emanating from my bedroom. I turn and see the rift dancing merrily. When I look at Mom again, her face holds a mixture of panic and determination. She catches me looking at her, and quickly wipes the emotions away.

  She steps toward me and presses her palm to my forehead. “I think—”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I snap, flinching away from her. “Don’t touch me.” I stride into my bedroom and close the door. Mom’s footsteps race downstairs. She’s probably going for her phone. I lean against the door, my eyes closed, wishing I could pry a confession from my mother. I hold my breath before taking a deep drag of oxygen and opening my eyes. I’m not the weakling Saige anymore, the one who cowers under blankets and ignores the ghosts in her house. Chloe used to exist only in my mind, but now I know she can live in my reality. I will not endure another Sunday check-in. I will not allow my mother to dictate everything I do, not anymore.

  I dart across the room to my closet. I yank out a backpack and throw a set of clothes inside. I have no idea what else I’ll need in the future, but it doesn’t matter. This rift might not be open much longer. I shift the pack onto my back and turn toward the rift. It’s huge, extending through my room and into the front yard.

  Staring into the rift does something I didn’t think possible. It makes me curious. With my heart thumping, I walk right up to the rift, close enough to touch and smell. I gaze into the dazzling lights, wondering how it would feel to put my arm through.

  Now that I know Chloe came and went through it, the rift doesn’t hold the same anxiety. It’s beautiful, almost a living, vibrant entity in my hulking house filled with secrets, hushed arguments, and unforgiveness.

  I reach my hand toward the light, holding my breath as my fingers draw closer.

  “Saige, stop!” Mom yells from the doorway. I glance back at her. Her eyes are wild, desperate. She’s holding something that looks like a laser pointer. “Don’t touch it! I haven’t figured out how to contain the energy flux! It’s dangerous!”

  I turn away from her. I step into the rift.

  Into nothing,

  into time.

  Price

  THE SKY IS BRIGHTLY LIT, dancing with blue and silver light. I remember the way the rift pulsed pink and then purple when it was about to explode on that vid.

  “What’s in the backpack?” I ask, forcing myself to keep moving toward the unsafe blue light by asking a question that feels safe.

  “My life,” she says. “You should pack one too. You never know when you’re going to need it.”

  I stop running and pull her hand to get her to stop too. “Are you running away?”

  “No,” she says, looking toward my house. Around that corner rages the rift, probably her only way to complete freedom.

  “Then what are we doing?” I ask. “I know you don’t need measurements on the rift, Cascade.”

  She glares at me, and I can practically hear her mental arguments. She exhales and looks away. “The technology of time rifts is fascinating,” she says. “Did you know that without my mother’s discoveries, your great-grandparents would’ve never started Hyperion Labs? Your grandpa would’ve never made the connection between humans and satellites.” She has a wistful look in her eyes when she faces me. “Sometimes I miss working in the lab with my mom.”

  “Will you ever go back?” I ask. “Or go somewhere else?” I want her to assure me that she’ll at least say good-bye before she steps through the rift and abandons me the way she left her family.

  “No,” she says, that muscle in her jaw twitching like she knows my thoughts and doesn’t appreciate them. “Sometimes I dream of it, but my brother needs me. I can’t leave him here alone.”

  “What about after he’s gone?” I press. “Then you’ll go? You’d leave, just like that. You’d leave—” I stop because if I keep talking, my voice will crack and everything will break open. When Cas turns and looks at me, everything is laid out between us anyway.

  “I do need to take some measurements,” she says. “The rift at your house has been acting strangely.” When I still don’t move, she takes my hand again. “Please, Price.”

  My throat is so dry. The rift acting strangely doesn’t sound good. I think of the black notebook filled with equations and diagrams. Cascade knows a lot about rifts and the technology and mathematics behind them. If she thinks it’s started acting strangely, it definitely has.

  “Let me email my friend,” I say. “He can take some measurements too.”

  “Okay,” Cascade says, her voice casually cool, but I know she’s dying to know who else I know that can take measurements on a time rift at four-ten in the morning. She pulls her flatpanel from her pack and frowns as she reads my dad’s messages.

  I don’t need to step away to chat, but somehow it feels more private if I do. As if she’ll know who Newt is and how I know him from a simple chatline. Still, I don’t want him getting in trouble because of me.

  The chat is short and sent in just a few seconds. “Done,” I say, rejoining Cascade at the corner.

  Her flatpanel dings, the message coming on-screen. She has fast fingers, but I have quicker eyes.

  I see my message flash on her flatpanel.

  My message to Newt.

  My eyes flick from the now-blank screen to Cascade’s face. We lock eyes, all noise in the world reduced to silence. Even the rift can’t make me look away from her. I see only guilt.

  I spin and stride back toward her house, thinking only I have to get out of here.

  I’ve gone ten yards when Cascade says, “I wanted to tell you.”

  “Take your stupid measurements,” is my only response. The edge of my vision pulses with anger and d
isbelief. All this time. All this fantastic time I’ve been chatting with Newt—

  Newt, Newt, Newt spirals through my mind.

  My worlds have truly collided. Too bad the sky doesn’t fall. I think it would’ve hurt less.

  “Price!” The desperation in Cascade’s voice cuts through my anger.

  Instantly, I’m sprinting back toward the corner. I flinch away from the onslaught of energy. The rift is magnificent, a thick, jagged tear in the space-time continuum. I breathe deeply, admiring it and hating it in the same moment.

  As Cas and I inch closer, a line of helmeted figures separate from the street shadows and make a barricade in front of the rift. The light catches the metal of the rain gutter—and the jackets of ten more men standing on my porch.

  As if drawn by my realization, Dad steps out of the shadows. He makes a motion with two fingers, a sort of Go get ‘im, boys gesture.

  I don’t wait for the Hoods to launch themselves off my porch. I reach for Cascade, and together we turn and run.

  Price

  I WANT THIS STUPID RIFT to close—permanently—and leave me to live my life with the girl I’m just starting to get to know. The absence of the rift would solve a lot of problems with my dad too.

  I also want to live to see the sun rise in a couple hours, but the presence of a whole squadron of Hoods on my porch doesn’t support that wish. I push myself to run faster, despite the exhaustion spreading through my muscles.

  “This way,” Cas wheezes, and we duck into the space between her house and the neighbor’s and jump the fence. She leads me through the back gate, turning only slightly to ask, “Where can we go?”

  “Heath’s,” I whisper back, my senses on high alert as we creep through gardens and dash across streets. The Hoods will likely come to Heath’s too, but right now it’s my only option.

  Time shouldn’t be messed with. I’ve been telling myself that for a few days now, yet I’m still messing with everything.