Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series)

by Jay J. Falconer

  When Will the Next Book Be Released?

  Book 4 is scheduled to be released Summer 2016. To receive priority notification when the author’s next book is released, click the FOLLOW button on the author’s Amazon.com page which can be viewed here.

  Or you may join the author’s VIP Reader Notification List by clicking here and receive priority advanced notice and special discounts.

  Glassford Girl: Part 4

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  “Here. Me,” a meek voice said, echoing inside Emily Heart’s subconscious after her latest, most powerful jump from inside the bathroom stall of the public library.

  “Here. Me,” the soft, child-like voice said again, failing to register as either male or female. The sound penetrated the dark recesses of Emily’s thoughts and tunneled its way past her dreams and experience. When the words finally landed on her mental core, they connected with her memories, sending a chain reaction of neural activity coursing through her mind to trigger her awake.

  She tried to open her eyes, but discovered they’d been caked shut. She wanted to try again, but couldn’t focus her thoughts enough to send the command because of a sudden, rapid increase in her pulse. The thumps of her heartbeat continued to rise in frequency and intensity, pounding at her temples with the force of a bass drum.

  A moment later, the pressure behind the beats shot across her skull and targeted the area between her eyes, bringing with it a wave of dizziness mixed with nausea. The vomit sensation raged in her stomach, as the pressure mounted across her forehead.

  Somehow, she managed to suppress the urge to puke, letting her post-jump instincts take over. Her mind pushed through the pain, sending a series of commands to her muscles, screaming at them to get her body up. She waited for something to happen, but her arms and legs didn’t respond. She tried to move them again, but like before, her body wasn’t responding. It was almost as if someone had disconnected her brain from her naked body.

  “Here. Me,” the tiny voice said again, this time sounding like Derek, but feeling like her mother.

  She didn’t understand what was happening, not only the mysterious voice, but what was happening with her body. Nothing felt normal, not even the expected post-jump pain and nausea. Everything was a bit off, almost foreign in some unexplainable way.

  All she knew for sure was that she was lying on her side, naked and alone, after a time jump from the smelly bathroom at the library. She didn’t know where she was or how far she’d traveled into the future. Or who was speaking to her with a child’s voice.

  Usually by now, her muscles would be coming alive to whisk her off to the nearest bastion of safety. She’d had plenty of experience with time jumping the past two years of her life, which she called Emily Time. Those two years covered almost thirty years of normal people time, allowing her to move through history while appearing to age very little.

  Each jump brought pain, nausea, and disorientation—that much she expected, and that much she was ready for. But what was happening now was entirely new.

  “Where? You?” the voice asked, louder than before.

  Emily tried to open her lips to respond, but like her eyes, they weren’t working. She wondered if her body’s failure to react to commands was some kind of paralysis. Then she corrected herself: she could wiggle her fingers and her toes, so she wasn’t paralyzed. But not much else was working.

  She took a moment to let her senses run a cursory check of the rest of her body. As soon as that task was complete, her lips started working. So did her tongue and jaw, taking in the bland taste of dirt. She spat it out as more facts made their way into her thoughts. Her right side was against a mostly flat surface, bringing with it a cold dampness. She was on her side, that much was clear, probably with her cheek pressing into the ground, based on the gritty residue in her mouth.

  When a cool draft washed over her naked skin, the tiny hairs across her neck, legs, and arms stood up and came alive with tingles. The waft of fresh air and the sting of small pebbles pushing against her forearm and thigh told her she was outside, lying in the dirt somewhere. The lack of Arizona sunshine caressing her skin meant it was nighttime too, which would explain the cold dampness.

  “Hello? You?” the voice asked, returning from the darkness.

  The voice was closer than before, helping her realize the words weren’t finding their way through her ears. They were coming from inside her mind, just like the thoughts she’d heard from the abductors the night of The Taking. The same night she started jumping through time, after her mother was tortured and killed.

  She began to respond to the voice, but stopped when the pain in her forehead intensified to an unbearable level. Her mouth sucked in a gasp of air and groaned, as tears welled in her eyes.

  “Alone? Me?” the voice said, this time sounding anxious and afraid.

  She wanted to answer, but the pain kept her lips silent. All she could do was send a response with her mind, hoping it would somehow find its way to the voice.

  I’m here, she said with her thoughts.

  “Here. Me,” came an instant reply, sounding excited and no longer scared.

  An overwhelming feeling of tenderness and warmth came out of nowhere, numbing the pain in Emily’s forehead. Then the blissful sensation faded away, turning into only a speck of awareness that she knew was floating deep inside her consciousness. It was a strange sensation, reminding her of the beauty and wonder of a distant star traveling alone in the vast emptiness of space. She grabbed for it out of desperation, wanting to pull the heavenly feeling closer to her heart, but couldn’t reach it.

  What the hell was that? she asked herself quietly, wondering where the bliss had come from. A moment later, the intense pain returned and so did all of Emily’s memories, pouring into her synapses without any resistance.

  The facts behind her most recent jump bubbled to the surface, lining up like a string of dominos ready to tumble: Derek. Sex. The bathroom at Burton Barr Library. The medical test. The white pee stick . . .

  Then it hit her.

  Oh my God. I’m pregnant!

  Right then she remembered what triggered the time jump from the women’s bathroom—the blue plus sign. At the time, her head was prepared to witness the results. But her heart wasn’t, and it freaked her out. It’s not every day you realize you’re a time-jumping homeless girl who’s pregnant.

  * * *

  Derek woke up with a terrible crick in his neck. He’d fallen asleep—again—with his face in a textbook. It had already happened twice before that same night, both times while sitting at the study table in the kitchen of his new group home in Glassford Park.

  He was still getting used to the place after moving away from the initial group home he’d been assigned to after his release. The minute his first year of probation was over, he’d gone in search of a new home—one that would keep him closer to Emily’s last known location. His days in Juvenile Detention were a distant speck in the rearview mirror, but he knew it would take only a single hiccup to send him back to the shit. And that was something he promised Emily would never happen again.

  The new crib wasn’t anything like the first, which was exactly why he’d picked it. Gone were the early curfews, bed checks, and strict rules about visitors and video games. His new residence was much more palatable than the last, which is what he needed to succeed.

  During that first year after early release, he’d jumped through every hoop the State of Arizona had put in front of him. It wasn’t easy, but he’d earned his freedom. Freedom that would last as long as he attended school, kept his grades up, and showed up on time for the monthly meetings with his probation supervisor.

  Derek’s task from here on out was simple, at least on paper: complete high school in two and half months and his juvenile record would be sealed permanently. If he kept his ass out of trouble for seventy-four more days and a wake-up, he’d be rewarded with a fresh start.

  It was all he thought about. Well, that and the amazin
g night he spent in bed with Emily. He hadn’t seen her since he’d taken her virginity, but was hopeful she’d pop back into his life—and soon. Otherwise, he wasn’t sure how he was going to stop the ache in his heart from spreading.

  He used both hands to peel the pages of the book from his cheek as he lifted his head and sat back in the chair. His eyes moved in search of the clock and found it: 2:07 a.m.

  “Damn,” he muttered. Another late night. He shut the book and stared at the title embossed in gold thread on its antique style hardback cover: The Importance of Being Earnest.

  Who would’ve believed it? He was about to finish high school at ASU Preparatory Academy, and do so willingly. To be honest, it hadn’t been easy or fun, especially his senior A.P. lit class. The subject material and his teacher were kicking his ass at the moment, but he planned to see it through. Both for himself and for Emily. He’d given her his word and he intended to keep it.

  It was important to him not to let his girlfriend down, even though he hadn’t seen her in what seemed like ages. He didn’t know where she was, but his heart could sense she was alive and thinking about him—somewhere. They had a strange bond that seemed to transcend the laws of physics, connecting the two of them across the reaches of time and space.

  Who would have believed that a flawed, shallow-minded street thug would have ever found peace? The kind of peace that centers a young man and keeps him from straying back into the darkness surrounding temptation.

  Emily was a special girl and unlike any other he’d been with. The night they consummated their love, he tried to tell her about all the other girls. But in true Emily Heart spirit, she rose above the desperate need to know and refused to let him explain. He wasn’t sure how or why, but she accepted him unconditionally. Even with his endless faults and mounds of baggage, she could push past it all and look into his soul.

  Derek slid the book to the corner of the desk. He stared at the cover for a few seconds, tracing the contours of each letter with his eyes.

  “The importance of being earnest,” he mumbled, wondering about the timing of the assignment. Was the subject matter simply a coincidence, or was the teacher trying to tell him something?

  He wanted to be earnest in everything he did, but without Emily at his side, he wasn’t sure if he could. Regardless, he’d be glad when his eyes scanned the last sentence on the last page. It would mark the final paper he’d have to trudge through before graduation.

  Even though he didn’t like much of the read thus far, it was still far better than the strange Narrows of Time book he’d been forced to read in his cell of the Durango Juvenile Detention Center.

  Derek leaned back, closed his eyes, and let the beautiful face of his favorite girl come back to him, soaking into his heart with the float of a feather. He knew it might be months or even years before he saw her again, but he was okay with it. As long as she eventually came back to him, he’d be a happy man.

  Just then, a poignant phrase from the odd time travel book he’d read in juvy sprang to life in his head: Time finds a way. He sighed, not knowing what the author meant by that phrase. Not that it mattered—just more meaningless drivel from a long-winded hack in the northern mountains of Arizona.

  He stood up from the table and made his way through the darkened house to the bedroom he shared with just one other person—another perk of jumping through the State’s hoops: a group home with fewer roommates. He undressed and hopped into bed, sliding under the freshly washed sheet feet first. His head hit the pillow, then his eyes closed with the vision of Emily’s piercing blue eyes and her comforting smile fresh in his mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  A pregnancy—that was the clue Emily needed to solve the mystery of who’d been speaking to her. Right then, she knew—the voice in her mind was coming from the fetus growing inside her womb. Somehow, the energy of the time jump process had awakened and amplified her baby’s consciousness. And now it was communicating with her.

  However, the voice wasn’t flowing into her the same way her gift of second sight did. Her second sight involved sensing the inner feelings of other people when they were emotionally charged and looking directly at her. Sometimes her second sight would allow her to read their thoughts, too, but only when those thoughts were being supercharged by emotion. The stronger the emotion, the better she could sense what they were thinking. She wasn’t exactly sure how it all worked, just that it did, but only when the other person was focused solely on her.

  However, the voice inside was arriving differently and didn’t involve emotions—at least not directly. The voice came to her as words in her mind—actual words, not thoughts and certainly not as emotions.

  But how?

  How could a fetus have words?

  Even if it had a consciousness, how could it form words in her mind? It was only a couple of days old.

  It didn’t make sense unless the baby inside was gestating faster than a normal human fetus. Maybe the genetic experiments aboard the ship had something to do with it. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, not after everything else that had happened to her.

  She knew normal rules didn’t apply to her or her body. Not after the night of The Taking. Then by extension, it seemed logical to assume normal rules didn’t apply to her new baby either. If that was true, then anything was possible, including a baby who was growing and developing at a rapid pace.

  If she was right, then the baby must’ve been connecting to her telepathically, through a direct neural link, much like what she’d experienced with the ugly heads who’d abducted her and her mother on their way to church. That same night her time jumping ability began after they performed painful genetic experiments on her body.

  An unborn baby knowing words wasn’t all that different from the heinous creatures on the ship knowing English. Somehow their thoughts came to her in a way she could understand—in English.

  Maybe her communications with the fetus were happening in the same way—as telepathic thoughts directed solely at her. Thoughts that were being interpreted and translated by her mind as words. If true, then the baby was speaking directly to her and doing so in her thoughts, almost as if it knew she was its mother.

  “Wait, not IT. HE!” she muttered, correcting herself after suddenly being able to sense the baby. The fetus was a boy—a son—Derek’s son. A beautiful, innocent soul growing inside her. A microscopic person who was just starting his precious life.

  Holy crap! That meant she was going to be a mother to someone—a homeless, time-jumping mother who couldn’t keep her own life straight. She gulped, forcing the bulge down her throat.

  A heartbeat later, she could sense even more of her son than before, almost as if his consciousness had just doubled in size. It was clear the psychic connection was growing in strength, much like the fetus inside. If the baby was developing faster than a normal child, then she figured the strength and clarity of the connection would grow quickly as well.

  She exhaled, realizing it was all a little too much to handle at once. She was still exhausted from her latest jump and her body hadn’t started working properly yet. And now this—the revelation of a telepathic baby boy—a son who was growing at an accelerated rate.

  Emily couldn’t stop the tears when they came, and truth be told, she didn’t want to. She needed a release. Crying was something she hadn’t done much, at least not on purpose, since she’d started jumping through time.

  So, with her eyes caked shut, she lay there, naked and curled in a ball, and let it happen. First, tears of joy came and they felt wonderful. Confirming. Liberating. Exactly what she needed.

  Unfortunately, the heavenly moment didn’t last long. The tears of contentment soon changed into tears of sadness when the reality of her predicament took hold in her mind. Her heart sank in her chest, which felt like a ten-ton truck had just parked on it.

  How could she be pregnant?

  How did she let this happen?

  All she did was let her guard do
wn one time and have sex with Derek—the pretty boy with a smile that melted her heart.

  And now this?

  Maybe if she stopped thinking about it, the blissful feelings would return? She tried, but couldn’t stop thinking about her growing list of problems and how she’d gotten to this mess.

  It all started to go sideways when she’d broken two of her most important Rules for Survival— Rule Number Seven: never get involved; nothing good ever comes of it, and Rule Number Ten: no boys.

  She’d developed her rules to cope with her time jumping problem and her life on the deadly streets around Glassford Park. They existed to keep her safe and keep her focused. She knew better, but she willingly let her heart and her hormones convince her to break free from her rules.

  And now look at her: she was lost, homeless, and pregnant. A soon-to-be teenage mother with no future and nobody to help her. A time-jumping mother who had no idea where she was, or when she was.

  “Sad? You?” the baby asked her, grabbing her focus.

  “Yes. Mommy’s sad and angry.”

  “With me?”

  “No! No! No, sweetheart. Not with you. I’m sad and angry with Mommy,” she told her child, realizing everything she was thinking and feeling was affecting her baby. If she wasn’t careful, she’d harm her baby emotionally.

  Right then, she decided to end the poor Emily pity party and focus on her son—the tiny speck of life relying on her for everything.

  Questions about her baby wanted to spill into her mind—a thousand questions she’d have to answer, eventually. But she chose to push them away for now, because she knew that before she could take care of her child, she had to take care of herself. And to do that, she needed to follow her post-jump to-do list. Now more than ever, with two lives depending on her.