Flutter

by Linko, Gina

  “I told them I didn’t know you.”

  “You did?” I asked. “Thank God.”

  “I didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t seem right.” Daisy looked at us questioningly.

  Ash was already standing up, throwing on his coat. “Thank you, Daisy. Thank you. But we have to leave.”

  “Were they wearing suits?” I asked.

  “Yeah, blue, maybe black suits.”

  I felt the thrum behind my eyes then, the swell and push against my temples. I stood up and steadied myself. “We have to go. Thank you, Daisy. It’s fine.”

  Ash was already swinging open the door to the diner, and I was right behind him. My mind kept going. Could this really be happening?

  “Let’s go to the Wingings’ first,” Ash said, scanning the street ahead of us. Everyone was suspicion personified, the black sedan parked by the hardware store, the man attaching his jumper cables to his truck near the bus bench, the kids throwing snowballs in front of the library. My senses were heightened, too much to take in.

  I ran alongside Ash, slipping every third or fourth step on the ice, his hand gripping my mitten, pulling me along. “Please, please,” I whispered, pushing back the thrum, the pressure behind my eyes.

  When we got to the stables, we ran into Jimmy Winging coming out of the gray barn.

  I watched as Ash tried to act casual, calm himself. “Jimmy, did anyone come around this morning looking for me?”

  “No, don’t think so,” Jimmy answered, giving Ash a long stare.

  “Thanks, sir. I hate to ask this, but is there any way we could borrow your Jeep, sir?”

  “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “I can’t, Jimmy.”

  “If you tell me more, I can probably help you with more than just the Jeep, son.”

  “Sir, please, I wouldn’t ask if …”

  Jimmy took the keys from his jacket and handed them to Ash.

  We silently got into the Jeep, and Ash took off toward the cabin. “We’ll grab our stuff. Then we’ll just keep going.”

  It took us only three or four minutes to get to the cabin, but it felt like forever.

  Ash drove the truck as close as he could get to the cabin. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. No tire marks. No sign of anybody.

  We both quickly went inside. We grabbed our bags and threw them into the back of the Jeep. I heard in the distance the unmistakable sound of tires grinding on snow and ice.

  “Ash!” I cried. “Someone’s coming.”

  “I know.”

  He pulled me to him, his body tense against mine. “Take the Jeep, just go. I’ll stay and—”

  “Don’t even say that. I can’t leave you. We are not splitting up.”

  “Let me deal with them, whoever it is. Please, Emery. I’ll meet you at the Saugatuck exit on 31 south.”

  “No! I’m not leaving you!” I screamed.

  “You have to, Emery. Please!”

  The tires sounded louder now. And I had an idea.

  I could see the car coming now, closer. It was a black Mercedes. A familiar black Mercedes. My dad. I shook my head.

  He was coming after me. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

  The reality of betrayal pierced me in the gut, nearly bowled me over. But it steeled me too. I knew what I had to do.

  “It’s my father,” I whispered. “Ash, just trust me. Let me do this. Let me say what I have to say. Just go in the cabin.”

  “Emery, I don’t know—”

  “Please!” The tone in my voice was crazy, loony, desperate. So Ash turned then, reluctantly, but he went into the cabin, leaving the door open behind him.

  I waved as Dad pulled up. There were several people in the car with him. In the passenger seat sat the dark-suit guy.

  “Dad,” I said as he got out of the driver’s side.

  “Emery!” he said, and stepped forward as if he was going to hug me. I stepped back instinctively. Dad winced but accepted this and kept his distance. Then he smiled, a wide, plastic-looking smile.

  The anger pulsed in my veins. Did he really think he could do this to me so easily? Like this was some warm, happy homecoming?

  Dad looked me up and down. “It’s gotten worse,” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered. Dad looked so drawn, pale, old, behind that fake smile. And I felt my anger soften a tiny bit.

  But not much.

  “Dad, I don’t want to go,” I told him calmly.

  “You know you have to come back with me.” His eyes were hard, forceful, not pleading. And the tip of his nose was red, like it always was in the cold weather.

  Despite everything, there was some small part of me inside that was glad to see him. I had missed my father. And I had the smallest, tiniest bit of remorse concerning what I was about to do to him, especially when I thought about him in ten years, twenty years. My future dad.

  But seeing him here, seeing Dad show up here in my town, my haven, with his thugs and his happy facade, I knew that I would never go back to him, to his rules, to his prison, to his cold and calculating lab. I couldn’t wait for my future dad any longer.

  I put my head in my hands then, for a long moment. Just for show. I couldn’t give in too easily.

  “Is there any other way? Any other option?” I feigned.

  “You know there isn’t.”

  “I don’t want to go back to that life,” I told him, looking up again.

  Dad took a step closer to me then, leveled his eyes to mine. “That life,” Dad scoffed. “Well, have you thought about death, Emery? Have you spent time thinking about what that might be like?” He took a step back then, as if he had been too forceful. As if he knew he had scared me back into submission.

  He was wrong. But I was going to play along.

  I covered my face with my hands for a moment. “Just let me go in, get my stuff. Give me two minutes?”

  “Of course.” Dad looked a bit stunned that I had given in so quickly.

  I walked slowly toward Dala Cabin, pushing back the thrum, the buzz, the swell behind my eyes, trying desperately to make my gait look like someone who had just submitted, given up her free will, her life … not someone running for, reaching for, straining toward that last scrap of freedom.

  I closed the door to the cabin behind me. “Listen to me, Ash. Go open the window. Leave it open, like I climbed through it.”

  Ash looked at me incredulously. “What?”

  “Just do it!” I hissed, tearing off my gloves, my coat. I didn’t know why I felt like our chances were better if I could feel him under my skin, but I just did.

  Ash opened the window. “Take off your coat,” I said. He did as I said, took off his coat, his hat, gloves. I pulled him toward the hearth then. “You listen to me, now.” I grabbed his hand. “Hold on to me. And I’ll hold on to you.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, bewildered. “You’re not going back with him?”

  “I’ll never go back,” I told him.

  I turned his face toward me. I spoke directly in his face. My eyelids fluttered. “I’m taking you with me. The loop. I won’t let go. You don’t let go. We have to try.”

  “What?” Ash asked. But even as he said it, he was wrapping his arms around me.

  I heard a car door slam. I was certain they were getting ready to knock the door down. “Don’t let go,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  Ash took in a big breath, and then he nodded slowly.

  “Emery—”

  “Shhh,” I told him. “Hold on to me.” I let the feeling come then. I wrapped my arms around Ash like the world depended on it, because mine did. And I let the feeling come. I willed it. My eyelids fluttered. My eyes rolled back, my body stiffened, and before I was gone, before I left, before I looped, I thought I felt his body stiffen against mine.

  With Me

  The whoosh fills my ears, my eyes, and I’m there standing on the bank of the stream. The boy is there t
oo, and he jumps up and down, clapping.

  He points up at Ash and smiles. He drops his picnic basket, which opens, and Dala jumps out, spies a yellow butterfly, and takes off toward it.

  Ash is standing next to me, and he tries desperately to shield his eyes, yet he can hardly move.

  I, on the other hand, feel just fine and lean over toward Ash, grabbing his hand in mine, intertwining our fingers. “We’re here,” I say.

  The boy leads us up Next Hill, near the stream. I help Ash, pull him along, as he’s very clumsy, moving like he’s made of stone.

  We walk slowly, plodding up the hill. His face holds a grimace, his eyes squinting against the bright sunshine.

  “Look at the key,” the boy says. And he points toward the stream. Ash shakes his head. He can’t do it. He holds his head in his hands, like it hurts.

  I walk down to the stream and bend over, gliding the tips of my fingers across the surface of the water, feeling its cool, calming motion. I wait there for a long time. Calmly. Yet I know I’m waiting for something.

  I busy myself trying to snap my fingers, but I can’t. I’m getting better here. My fingers meet more easily than the last time I tried in the loop, but I can’t make them snap, can’t make my movements fine enough.

  A water strider catches my eye as it comes flitting by on the surface of the water. I watch the stream then, the calm plane of the water resettling after the wake of the bug disappears. After a while, I see the familiar shadow shapes moving on the surface of the water, just out of reach at the edges of my vision. I’m not surprised.

  The inky shadows move and form, then unform, in and out. I want to look away. I could shift my eyes just a bit, a centimeter, and the images would be gone. I don’t like the way these shadows feel near me.

  They feel unnatural to me, yet I can’t look away. I know I must keep looking.

  The goose bumps rise on my arms again, and I focus on the water as hard as I can. I see swirling grays and blacks. I feel a slippery, snaky sensation in my stomach.

  It’s then I see a collision in the surface of the water, two vehicles crashing together. Then the shadows converge, swirl. It is gone.

  I hear my boy behind me. “Tell him to go home,” he says.

  A sadness catches in my throat, and I feel my eyelids flutter. I take one quick glance at Ash, and he is staring, transfixed at the boy version of himself, all the color drained from his face.

  I feel my body stiffen, and I know I need to get to Ash. I move myself forward, walking as quickly as possible, and I throw my arms around him.

  My eyelids flutter. The thrum. The colors and then …

  Nothing.

  Blackness.

  Twenty-Five

  I felt a hard surface beneath my head, beneath my body.

  I realized that I was lying down. I slowly regained consciousness, bit by bit, and then … I need air. I’m drowning, choking, suffocating.

  I heard Ash’s voice from far away. “One, two,” he said. I felt weight on my chest. I felt a slight rise in my lungs. “Three!” he screamed.

  My eyes flashed open. My hands flew to my throat. I sat up and gasped, coughed, gulped for air.

  “Thank God! Thank God,” Ash screamed. He put his arms around me and yelled, “Thank God! Oh, Em,” he said, placing his ear next to my chest, listening to my heartbeat, listening for my breaths.

  My throat was ragged, rough, my vision blurry and disorienting.

  “Oh, Em,” he said again. “Thank you, God.”

  “You saved me,” I whispered, my voice gravelly. “You saved me.”

  “You saved me, Emery. How did you take me with you?”

  “It’s evolving.” I shrugged.

  “And you’re getting more control.”

  “Yes.”

  “Emery, I had to perform CPR. My God, Emery, I had to do CPR for at least five minutes.”

  I nodded.

  “I can’t believe you’re okay. I can’t believe you’re back. You are okay? You’re okay?” He took my pulse again, pulled me to him.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered, but I was weak, barely conscious.

  “Emery, I don’t quite know how to tell you this.”

  “What is it, Ash? Do we need to leave now? Are they here?” I tried to stand up, and my legs buckled. Ash caught me.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re gone. Look outside. It’s a lot later. We’ll leave soon, though. In a minute.” The door was open, the windows too, and the sky much darker. The cabin itself was a wreck. Had Dad done this? But Ash didn’t seem to care about any of it. He watched me, only me, half carrying me to the love seat.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You … you’re not time-traveling.”

  “I’m not? How can you say that, Ash? After you came with me. You saw it. You experienced it!” I was flustered. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed.

  “It’s not a different time you’re going to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That little boy. It’s not me, Emery.”

  I looked at him for a long moment. It was almost as if I could feel the ideas and concepts and theories sliding and switching around in my brain, accommodating, assimilating.

  He took a deep breath. “It’s my brother.”

  “But he died with your mom in the accident.”

  He nodded, staring at me, waiting for it to sink in. My eyes widened. “Really? You’re sure it’s him?”

  “Positive.”

  “It’s not time-traveling,” I said, mulling this over. “You think it’s—”

  And he said it. “I think it’s heaven.”

  Twenty-Six

  We went outside and quickly discovered the Jeep tires were slashed. I tried to picture Dad tossing the cabin, taking a knife to the tires. And it was surprisingly easy. That plastic smile on his face.

  We grabbed our stuff from the back of the Jeep and left Dala Cabin quickly and quietly. We barely spoke. We slipped silently on foot into the forest, the wind ripping, roaring around us, through the evergreens. A severe, frighteningly heavy snowfall had begun while we were in the loop. And although I could feel the cold in my bones, I was so glad for this storm, so glad for its cover, for its slim-to-no visibility, because we had no idea how close Dad was, where his thugs were.

  Ash grabbed my hand and pulled me off the path, into the thick of the pines. I followed him wordlessly.

  I imagined at every turn that we would run smack into Dad or one of his dark-suited accomplices, but I just kept my head down against the wind and put one foot in front of the other, trusting in Ash, trying desperately to keep up. I was worn, exhausted from the loop, but I concentrated on my breathing, my footsteps.

  We emerged from the woods near Winging Stables. I held my arm up against the onslaught of heavy, slushy snow falling now. It was really coming down out here, beyond the shelter of the trees. Ash led us toward Jimmy’s truck, and we slipped inside.

  Ash checked under the floor mats, and there were no keys. Ash flipped a panel off the dashboard, and he was in the process of hot-wiring the truck when Jimmy’s stocking-hatted head appeared out of the swirling snow at the driver’s-side window. I gasped, and Ash threw his arm around me in protection.

  Jimmy’s face registered with us, and Ash unrolled the window.

  Jimmy pushed his hand through the window and handed Ash the keys.

  Ash looked at him solemnly and took them.

  “They came here looking,” Jimmy said. “I sent them on a goose chase to the bus station. I didn’t know anything … I hoped. I wanted to buy you some time.”

  “I will repay you, sir, somehow,” Ash said. “The Jeep, they slashed the tires and—”

  “Don’t you worry about that. Just go. I hope I bought you a few hours. I’m here for you, son. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’m here for you. And, Ash, do you know your father called yesterday? Left a message with Jeannette.”

  Ash’s jaw clenched. He nodded. “Thank you,” he told
him. “We have to leave.”

  We took off, driving slowly, carefully, holding our breath with each passing car.

  “Jeannette told me about that phone call. I didn’t quite hear her. I should’ve told you. Who do you think really called you?” I asked Ash.

  “Probably the cops,” he answered flatly.

  We drove through town, the snow hurling down from above, big heavy flakes now, but with the wind, it looked like it was coming from above, from below, from the east, the west. It was everywhere.

  We were on the outskirts of town when we saw three police cars with their flashing lights on driving quickly in the direction of the cabin.

  Ash and I exchanged a dark look. Neither of us spoke.

  After we reached the highway, Ash broke the silence. “They must be searching the town, the forest. They probably thought that we doubled back on them, that you crawled out the window and into the forest.”

  “Who knows what they think?” I said.

  I dared to breathe easy only after we had crossed the Mackinac Bridge and left the UP far behind.

  I was shaken by the depth of the search that would be going on for us. Dad. I tilted my head on the headrest and tried to keep my breathing even, slow.

  We drove for a long time, hours. We put mile after snow-covered mile between us and what had just happened. Between us and our hideaway, our cabin, our safe place.

  The afternoon turned to evening, and we were in Illinois, the highway slushy and gray from the beaten and battered snow. We stopped only for gas and coffee.

  I had told Ash what Frankie said—to go home. Ash had heard him too. So that was what we were doing, hoping that Dad would not know enough about Ash to follow us there, hoping that the police would not expect Ash to show up there. But Frankie wanted us to go home. We had to.

  “It’s not every day that you get orders from heaven, Emery,” Ash had said.

  I agreed with Ash. I did, in that we had to do what Frankie said, no matter where Frankie was. But heaven? No way. No fucking way. I leaned my forehead against the car window and went over everything in my mind, every last loop I could remember, each person I had encountered there. Could it really be something other than time travel? Could I really have been so impossibly wrong for so long?