by Jena Leigh
“I knew I grew up on the wrong damn mountain range,” said Kenzie, smiling.
Aaron sent her a questioning look.
“Adirondacks,” she explained. “New York.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well right there’s your problem. Too far north of that Mason-Dixon line.” Aaron switched his attention back to Alex. “How about you, Miss Alex? Bay View always been home for you?”
The answer, of course, was no.
Bay View hadn’t always been her home. Once upon a time, the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina had been her home, too.
Before.
Aaron’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
“No!” she said quickly. “No, not at all. Sorry, Aaron, but I’ve really got to get to class. It was, um… nice seeing you again.”
“You too,” he said, smiling once more. “Guess I’ll see y’all later.”
“Yeah,” said Kenzie. “See ya ’round, Aaron.”
Declan had paused in the hall just ahead of them and stood rigidly in place, marking Aaron’s progress.
“You passed your classroom, Red,” he said as they approached, never taking his eyes off the senior.
Kenzie took in their surroundings and sighed. “You will be fine,” she insisted as she began walking backward down the hall. Annoyed students pushed past her as she worked against the flow. “Don’t you dare freak out on me!”
And then she was lost in the crowd and Alex found herself standing just outside the art room.
Declan had already walked in and taken a seat at their joint workstation.
A rough shove knocked her into the door frame as Jessica strode past her. “Move your fat ass, Parker,” she hissed.
“Love the skirt. Where does one find such a gem?” Marcie snickered, following Jessica into the room. “A Walmart clearance rack?”
Resigned, Alex made her way over to the cabinets to retrieve her work tray and sullenly took her seat.
Declan sat silently beside her as the rest of the class trickled in.
Alex picked over her painstakingly reassembled artwork—glued together haphazardly in an attempt to make it halfway presentable—and went over her presentation once more in her head.
“You’re not fat.”
“What?”
“You’re. Not. Fat,” Declan repeated angrily. “And I like your skirt. It’s… nice.”
“Uh.” Alex looked up from her artwork, unsure of how she ought to reply to such a statement. “Thank… you?”
Then it hit her.
Move your fat ass, Parker.
Where does one find such a gem?
Marcie and Jessica. Declan had heard what they’d said.
Alex felt her face flush with embarrassment. She was saved from having to make further conversation when Coach Roberts started the class.
“Alright, guys.” Coach Roberts dragged a low table to the front of the room. “Today’s the day. Hope you’re all prepared to make your presentations! You know the rules. Positive feedback only. This is a celebration of your work this semester, not a critique. So… Who would like to go first?”
No one raised their hands.
Bad sign.
Alex ducked her head and tried to make herself smaller.
Coach’s eyes scanned the room before coming to rest on her former swim team member. Alex cringed inwardly.
“Parker!” she chirped. “Why don’t you start us off?”
Alex let out a long breath. “Sure, Coach.”
She made her way to the front of the room, her tray of artwork cradled in her arms. Setting it on the table, she reached in and withdrew her first piece—a barely recognizable kite that had been sculpted as though it were in mid-flight.
Alex had been able to piece most of it back together, but the glue she’d used had left odd lumps around the smaller, more delicate features.
Sucking in a breath, Alex launched into her explanation behind the broken pieces—an accident, she called it—and her description of the first project: An object in motion.
A flicker in the fluorescent lights overhead and a gentle tug at the currents reminded her that she was summoning more energy than she could control. The lights went back to normal. She could sense Declan handling the excess.
Jessica and Marcie smirked as they sent each other text messages on the cell phones they had concealed in their laps.
Alex tuned them out and focused on her presentation.
Don’t rush. Eye contact. Smile. Be normal.
Be normal.
“This is… erm. Well, I mean, it was a turtle.” She held up the shell, which was still mostly intact. It was one of the few pieces that she hadn’t gotten around to gluing yet, so the poor guy was currently missing his head. Other than that, he was doing alright. “It was for project two, an animal designed with more than one texture.”
The snickering grew louder.
And then the currents shifted. The power Declan was draining away from Alex was suddenly redirected and concentrated in another area of the room—directly to Alex’s right.
Marcie and Jessica let out simultaneous yelps as their cell phones were fried to a crisp, sending a concentrated charge through their fingertips in the process.
“Girls!” Coach barked. Marcie and Jessica had both dropped their phones onto the floor the moment they’d been shocked. “No phones during class. You know the rules. Now put them away before I’m forced to take them away.”
Rubbing her right hand, Jessica sent Alex a vicious glare that promised retribution.
It wasn’t me! Alex wanted to shout.
Instead, she projected a wave of exasperation toward Declan. What the crap was that?
Declan had a self-satisfied grin plastered on his face. He shrugged.
My bad, he replied. Let the currents slip. Now take a breath, Lex, and finish your speech. You’re doing great.
“Please continue, Alex.” Coach sent her a reassuring smile. “What did you have for project three?”
Alex stuttered her way through the presentation of two more projects before being interrupted once again, this time by a fake cough from Marcie laced with the word freak.
Most of the class snickered. A small minority sent her pitying looks.
And Alex’s resolve broke.
Freak.
She was a freak. More so than any of them even realized.
Who was she trying to fool with this facade of normalcy?
Her paltry attempts to look cute for this moment suddenly seemed like overkill. It didn’t matter what clothes she wore, how she styled her hair, the words she said or didn’t say… None of it would make a difference in their eyes.
They’d never see Alex for who she was, no matter how hard she tried.
Her chest tightened. Her breath hitched.
Outside the art room windows, the sun-dappled parking lot had been cast in a shadow that turned day into night. A rumble of thunder echoed through the building.
Alex fought back an urge to run from the room as fast as her legs would carry her… Or better yet, to jump, and damn the consequences.
Looking back, Alex couldn’t be certain which came first—the flash of light, or the sudden chill—but within seconds, the temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees and the room had been consumed by a brilliant red glow.
It was slow to fade and left Alex momentarily blinded.
She rubbed her eyes, blinked the classroom back into focus… and then rubbed them once more, certain that what she was seeing couldn’t be real.
The world around her had gone absolutely still. Silent.
Every person sitting in the classroom had been frozen in place.
— 16 —
Alex knelt beside Annabeth Johansen and waved her hand slowly in front of the girl’s contorted face.
Annabeth had been paralyzed pre-sneeze, the lines of her face twisted as she drew in a quick breath. Seated at the workstation beside her, Terrance Wilkins was still smirking derisi
vely, staring at the place Alex had been standing moments before the world stopped turning and everything ground to a halt.
“What… the… crap…” Alex breathed.
What had she done?
And how had she done it? It was as though she’d…
Alex bit her lower lip, suddenly panicked.
It was as though she’d frozen time.
Before, when the red lightning dragged her thirty minutes back in time and deposited Alex on the school’s roof, it had been the result of a jump. This time, no teleportation had been necessary. A single flash of red lightning in the sky outside the classroom window was all it took to halt the normal flow of time.
She eyed the clock bolted to the wall above the whiteboard and found her sinking suspicions confirmed. It had stopped. The second hand was still.
Alex got back to her feet.
“Crap,” she mumbled. “Okay, Alex. You’ve successfully frozen your jerkwad classmates. Congratulations. Now what?”
Hearing her voice echo in the unnatural stillness didn’t help. Silence had settled over the room like a blanket, albeit one that offered her little protection from the sudden drop in temperature.
The voices in her head hadn’t vanished, but lowering her defenses to listen to the thoughts of the frozen students surrounding her resulted in nothing more than a steady hum—loud and constant.
Alex walked to where Declan sat on his barstool, leaned forward with his forearms resting against the top of their workstation. His eyes were closed, as though he’d been paralyzed mid-blink. Judging from the set of his jaw and the angle of his chin, he’d been glowering at someone across the room.
Tentatively, she reached forward and touched Declan’s curled fist. His skin was still warm, a living statue, cast in flesh and sculpted without breath.
It was the first time she’d touched his bare skin and not felt a current.
Alex shivered and released his hand. The temperature in the room was still dropping.
Variants can’t time travel, Declan? Alex mused. Well, I beg to freaking differ.
She went over the variables leading up to her previous jump through time.
The only ability she’d absorbed beforehand was Declan’s, so Kenzie’s telepathy had nothing to do with it.
But if it was only the jumping ability that she needed to time travel, then why hadn’t she been able to do it before last week?
Wait a minute.
Aaron!
Just before both incidents, Aaron had touched her arms.
Being from North Carolina, he was obviously a transfer student. Was he so new that he hadn’t been in the system when Ozzie searched it?
That had to be it.
Aaron was a time traveling Variant!
Which was fascinating, of course, but it in no way helped her out of her current predicament.
Sighing, Alex returned to the front of the room, placing herself back in the exact spot she’d been standing before everything had stopped moving… and waited.
Nothing happened.
She tried waving her hands around like a magician’s flourish at the end of a trick.
Still nothing.
Alex’s heart began to race.
Okay. It’s okay. No need to panic. This can’t be permanent. There’s got to be some trick to getting things going again.
If she made it out of this, she was going to hunt that mysterious probably-not-a-senior down like the dog he was.
He had to have done this on purpose.
Whoever Aaron was, he couldn’t have been Masterson masquerading as someone else—otherwise she would have absorbed all of his powers, and not just this unusual ability to manipulate time.
And if the transfer had been intentional, then that would mean Aaron not only knew who she was, he also knew what she was.
Alex chewed on her lower lip and rubbed her arms to stave off the chill.
She’d worry about all that later—after she’d fixed this mess and jumpstarted the world again.
Now how, exactly, had she stopped time to begin with?
Alex went over what she’d been feeling at the time. How she’d wanted to run, to hide… to make it all stop.
Certain that this thought was the one that had caused the trouble, Alex considered the consequences of not restarting time. The continued silence, the dropping temperatures, the isolation…
A fear that completely eclipsed the nervous tension she’d felt during her presentation overtook her.
Bring them back, she thought desperately. Bring it all back!
A crash echoed in Alex’s ears, louder than a gunshot, shaking the entire building as the world jolted back to life.
Annabeth sneezed.
“Shit,” said Terrance. He turned his head to watch the winds from the storm now raging outside the windows. “That must have been a close one.”
Alex’s laugh sounded hysterical even to her own ears.
It worked!
“Watch your language, Mr. Wilkins,” Coach Roberts chided, although she, too, was now eyeing the storm outside warily. “Please continue, Alex. What else do you have to show us?”
Alex, what’s going on? Declan’s worried voice echoed in her head. It feels like a walk-in freezer in here. And there is nothing normal about that storm outside.
“Um.” Alex chose to ignore Declan. “Just the last two projects…”
She was two sentences into describing the first of them when Kenzie’s mental shout resounded inside Alex’s head.
What the CRAP just happened, Alex? Everyone’s minds just skipped like a broken record. What did you do?
“I…” Alex stuttered, her train of thought suddenly derailed.
Declan stared at her with narrowed eyes.
“Freak,” Marcie coughed again.
“I…” Alex repeated.
Alex set down the brightly painted mug in her hand and picked up the ceramic mask instead, painted a uniform black after her intricate details had been lost beneath a sea of glaze.
“My last project was this Venetian mask,” she said hurriedly. “I plan to give it as a gift to my Aunt Cil. It was my final project. I’m sorry, but may I please be excused?”
Not waiting for a reply, Alex placed the mask back onto the pile with the others, picked up her work tray and walked as quickly as she could back to her workstation, dropping it onto the polished wood.
“Look out, guys,” said Marcie with a laugh. “I think little Lexie’s about to spew.”
Ignoring their muffled laughter and studiously refusing to meet Declan’s eye, Alex snagged the strap of her messenger bag and fled from the room.
* * *
Connor.
“Yeah?” Connor turned in his seat to face Zoe Tompkins in the desk behind him.
Zoe looked up from her hastily scribbled in-class writing assignment, puzzled. “What?”
The classroom around them buzzed with the conversations of students who’d already finished their essays.
“Did you call my—”
Connor! Over here, said the voice again. By the door.
Across the aisle, Jeff Adler had taken notice of his friend’s confusion and followed Connor’s gaze toward the classroom door.
Jeff snorted derisively. “Nice.”
“Shut up, Jeff,” said Connor preemptively.
His friend didn’t take the hint.
“Whatever, man,” said Jeff, shaking his head. “But that’s one piece of tail that just ain’t worth it. The psycho thing totally outweighs the hot in that equation.”
“I said shut the hell up, dick,” said Connor, still staring at Alex through the rectangular window in the classroom door.
Alex gestured for him to join her in the hallway.
Something was wrong.
Something was way wrong, if she’d sought ought Connor instead of that asshole bodyguard of hers.
He eyed his English teacher where he sat at his desk, typing industriously on a laptop.
Connor stoo
d, moving silently toward the door.
Even if Mr. Pierce—the football team’s head coach—noticed Connor’s trajectory, he probably wouldn’t say anything. There were more than a few perks that went along with being Bay View High’s MVP, even after football season ended.
Slipping quietly into the hallway, Connor shut the door behind him.
“What happened?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
Alex winced, but didn’t answer.
“Just a heads up,” she whispered. “This is really going to suck—and I’m sorry.”
Before Connor could ask what she meant by that, Alex reached out and took hold of his upper-arms.
The month since his last jump hadn’t changed anything. As a mode of transportation, teleportation still sucked ass.
They reappeared in a poorly lit—and rarely used—section of Bay View High’s library. He knew it was rarely used, because he and Lexie had disappeared to this exact corner of the stacks on more than one occasion, back when they’d still been dating.
Connor sucked in a breath, then began to cough.
“You ok?” Alex released his arms and stepped back to give him some room. She looked him over nervously in the dim light, as though worried he’d be angry about his sudden abduction.
Connor shook his head to clear it, then stepped closer to Alex, reached down, and took her face in his hands.
“Are you okay, Lexie?” he countered.
The contact of his palms against her bare skin elicited a jolt of surprise from Alex. As if on cue, she immediately began to pull away—and then stopped.
She stared back at him, her eyes wide, and reached a shaking hand up to cover his where it cupped her cheek.
Something in Alex’s pale gray eyes seemed to shatter. She closed them quickly, obviously hoping the action would mask the turmoil raging inside her thoughts.
It didn’t.
“Hey,” he said softly. “C’mere. It’s alright.”
Connor pulled Alex closer, gripping her tightly against him. For once, she didn’t resist
For a few moments they simply stood there, Alex’s face buried in his shoulder as Connor whispered soothing words and she allowed herself to be embraced.
She didn’t cry, didn’t speak, just kept very still as he held her close.
Whatever was bothering her, she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. At least, not with him.