Rewind

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  “Come on, KJ, wake up. We have to go.” Not even a moan. I shove my arms under his torso, trying to drag his six-foot frame upright with arms no stronger than blades of grass. Something wet slides out from under the bandage around my head. I don’t have to touch it to know I’m bleeding.

  Tears of frustration spill onto my cheeks. I climb up onto KJ’s bed and wrap myself around him. Exhaustion pulls at me like a second layer of gravity. I know I can’t hold time much longer. Failure taunts me from every corner. I’ve tried so hard, risked so much, just to end up here, helpless and alone in a frozen world. Time pulls at me, straining my control.

  A keening whine leaks from my between my lips, punctuated by gasping sobs. Tears and blood drip onto KJ’s white sheets. I lay my head on his chest.

  “I need you, KJ. I can’t do this by myself.”

  The words make me cry harder. Last night KJ promised me that he would be there to help me. Except he isn’t. He’s dying and I’m too weak to save him. I twine myself more closely around his limp body. The abandoned IV line dangles a foot from my face, the snaking tube inviting me to stab it into my own arm, drink in the poison, and let the two of us die together, our fake suicide made real. I am so very, very tired.

  A soft beat pulses in my ear. It’s weak, but it’s also the loudest thing there is in the silent freeze. I stop crying. The beat has an echo. KJ’s heart and my own, both captured by my ear pressing against his chest. Hope lives in that beat. Life lives there, too. However hard they’re trying, the Center hasn’t killed us yet.

  I lie still. It’s as if the sound is talking to me, sending me a message of hope and strength. I listen until I understand what it is I have to do.

  Dragging myself from KJ’s bed is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I release time for a second and let KJ go. I’ll need all my energy to get through the next half hour, and keeping KJ unfrozen will only drain my meager stores. I set off through the familiar hallways, searching for the two people I’m going to need.

  I find Jack first.

  He’s not my favorite person, but he is strong, and, as he himself pointed out, he’s spent more time than most of us in the outside world. He’s also likely to believe me without too much explanation and, given his age, doesn’t have much to lose.

  Jack is in the gym, curled in the tight crouch of a half-finished sit-up. Aidan floats just above the ground on the treadmill to his right. I kneel at Jack’s side and touch his arm. Melt time. Freeze time.

  “What the … ?”

  Jack is on his feet so fast I rock back on my heels.

  “Hey, Jack.”

  “Where did you come from?” He squints at me. “And what happened to you?”

  I glance at my reflection in the mirror over his shoulder. Blood drips from the bandage around my head and clusters in dried flakes along my eyebrow. There’s an abrasion from the seat belt on my neck and collarbone.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I don’t have a lot of time, so listen carefully. The Sick doesn’t give us Aclisote to stabilize us, they do it to suppress our power. If we were left alone we’d be able to change things in frozen time. And it’s not time that makes us sick. It’s the Aclisote. Dr. Barnard is killing us.”

  Jack backs away from me. “Is this a joke?”

  “You just saw me appear out of nowhere.”

  He considers me a moment. “How do you know all this?” he asks.

  “Trust me, Jack.” I try to keep the impatience out of my voice. “We have to leave the Sick. I can get us out, but I need your help.”

  Jack’s eyes narrow. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Help me with KJ. I can’t carry him by myself.”

  “And if I go with you, you’ll show me how to change stuff in frozen time?”

  A twinge of unease makes me hesitate. I push it aside.

  “It’s not a question of teaching. As soon as the Aclisote is out of your system, you’ll be able to do it, too.”

  Jack nods slowly. “And if I don’t help you …”

  “Then I’ll melt time and find someone else.” Fatigue makes me sharp. “I can’t hold time much longer, and we still need to find Shannon.”

  “Shannon? Why her?”

  “She’s got the skills to take care of KJ. Plus, we need someone to cut out our trackers.”

  Jack touches the back of his neck. “You’re serious.”

  “You coming?”

  “Shannon’s in the common room.”

  Shannon is harder to convince than Jack. She doesn’t believe me when I say Barnard is killing us and she nearly faints when I drag her out of the common room during frozen time to prove to her that changes stick. Finally, Jack steps in and tells her this is the only way to save KJ’s life. He says he knows a place outside that can heal KJ, that we need her help to take him there, and that we can all come back when it’s over. I don’t like bringing Shannon along under so many lies, but I don’t have the energy to argue about it.

  Back in the clinic, Shannon unwraps a sterile scalpel and sets to work slicing out the trackers. It hurts less than I expected. Maybe all my nerves are so shocked they don’t have anything left to respond with. Shannon takes out KJ’s tracker while he’s still frozen. I take all four of them and flush them down the toilet. Let Barnard track that.

  Jack unfolds the wheelchair Julio left in the corner while Shannon rummages in a cupboard to fill a bag with medical supplies. We all work together to lift KJ’s slack body into the chair. Getting down the stairs is harder. My shoeless foot slips on the slick tiles and Jack keeps letting the front end of the chair bounce against the steps. KJ flops around dangerously and I’m grateful to Shannon when she demands that Jack be more careful.

  Charlie is standing almost exactly where I left him in the lobby. He’s staring up toward the stairs with his mouth half open, probably wondering where I went. I put on my shoe and push open the Center’s door. Time pulls at my mind, the whisper now grown into a full roar. Shannon eases KJ’s wheelchair down the accessible ramp. I take the stairs, holding the banister like a crutch.

  Jack bounds ahead, whooping as he hurtles down to the sidewalk. He stands there a moment, feet planted, hands on hips. I see him raise one hand to touch the bandage Shannon stuck on the back of his neck. The wet banister slips under my hand. Jack is unmonitored. I’ve set him free, and now he’s going to abandon us. Shannon and KJ reach the street. Time licks at my temples.

  Jack spins on his heel.

  “Come on,” he says. “I thought we were in a hurry.”

  The smile I give him is watery.

  “I’m going to need some help,” I say, making my way to the bottom of the stairs. “I’m starting to lose my grip on time.”

  Jack reaches out and clasps my hand. His time skills surge to meet mine, bolstering my control of the invisible force. I hold his fingers tightly.

  “Do you have a plan?” Jack asks as Shannon joins us. I slip my other hand over hers where it rests on the back of the wheelchair. More energy mingles with my fading strength. I shake the hair from my eyes.

  “Is it true you can drive a car?” I ask Jack.

  He grins. “Well enough.”

  “Then let’s go get one. If we can find someone who is just about to get in or out of their car, we can take their keys and …”

  “I have a better idea,” Jack says. “There’s one of those parking garages over on Fourth Ave. The ones where you leave your keys with the attendant. We can take one of those.”

  “We’re going to steal a car?” Shannon asks, horrified.

  “Not steal,” Jack says. “Borrow. It’s the only way to transport KJ where we need to go.”

  I study the two faces flanking me. Shannon has her lips pursed, as if she’s about to swallow something nasty that she knows is good for her. Jack beams like it’s Christmas morning. I squeeze both their hands.

  “You should know,” I tell them, “I don’t have a plan after this.”

  Jack shrugs. “We’ll figu
re it out.”

  We start walking. It’s awkward to stay connected like this—three people on foot and KJ in the wheelchair, bumping down a city street littered with unmoving obstacles. Awkward—yet oddly comforting. It’s true what I’d said to the others. I don’t know what to do next. I know that, even without trackers, the Center will try to find us. We are four kids, alone and unequipped to survive on our own. It will take days for me to heal completely, longer for KJ, and I don’t know how long it will take for the others to be able to freeze time like I can. Until then, we’ll all be vulnerable.

  But right now, I don’t care. Right now, holding on to these two people who have given up everything to come with me, what I feel is hope. At least now we have a chance. And as Ross once told me, a chance is all you ever get. After that, life is what you make of it.

  I put one foot in front of the other and concentrate on holding the freeze. It won’t be for much longer. When time starts again, our lives as fugitives will begin. Shannon and Jack’s hands wrap me with warmth. The pulse of their power urges me forward.

  This is the life I choose—the life we choose. A life with a future. Somehow, together, we’ll find a way to survive.

  Acknowledgments

  Whenever I think about acknowledgements, I imagine the Oscars with their interminable speeches about people I’ve never heard of. The beauty of literary acknowledgements is that I can say whatever I want without fear of boring my audience, since nobody is required to read them. (The downside being, of course, that I don’t get to wear one of those fancy dresses.)

  There are many people I want to thank, primarily those who read all or parts of this novel along the way and encouraged me to keep going. Many of these chapters were critiqued by my fellow students and the wonderful faculty members at the Attic Institute, Portland’s premier haven for writers. My entire book group dedicated one month’s selection to this novel—the first time I’d allowed anyone outside my family to read the manuscript in its entirety—which means cheers to Laurie Stabenow, Randi Wexler, Suzanne Lacampagne, Deb Walker, and especially Ella Howard, honorary member, who provided not only detailed line edits but invaluable teen insights. Jasmine Pittenger shared much advice and many cups of tea. Sonja Thomas offered detailed beta feedback, as did Diana and Sylvia Tesh. Without their careful critiques and, even more, their enthusiastic support, this novel would not be what it is today.

  This book would not exist at all if it weren’t for the two years I spent as an MFA student at Stonecoast. Being part of that community gave me the confidence to call myself a writer and the skills I needed to actually create an entire novel. Thanks to my four fabulous mentors: David Anthony Durham, Michael Kimball, Elizabeth Searle, and James Patrick Kelly, as well as every single person who attended a residency between January 2009 and January 2011. It was all of you, together, that made the place so very special, and if I could, I would still go back twice a year to spend time with you all.

  Writing can be a solitary endeavor, so I also want to thank all my local writing friends who share with me the joys and frustrations of creating fiction. Vannessa McClelland, Mark McCarron-Fraser, Sonja Thomas, Joe Morreale, and Paul McKlendin have edited more of my words than I can count. David Biespiel, Merridawn Duckler, and G. Xavier Robillard were part of my Hawthorne Fellows family, along with Emily Gillespie, Ryan Meranger, and Rich Perin. Thanks to all of you for understanding the fascination in talking about plot holes and narrative tension and characters who just won’t cooperate with the story.

  My agent, Alison McDonald, rescued this book from her slush pile, for which I will be eternally grateful. She and her staff provided excellent editing suggestions, and Ali made me more happy than I can express when she found Rewind a publishing home. Mary Colgan and all the people at Boyds Mills Press have been a dream to work with, and I am delighted with the final version we’ve created.

  Finally, thanks to my husband, Dan O’Doherty, without whom I would be missing everything in my life that I love the most.

  A Conversation with Carolyn O’Doherty

  Q: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

  A: Yes, and no. I’ve always loved books and have been an avid—and eclectic—fiction reader my whole life. My first foray into writing a novel was at the age of fifteen, when I decided that whipping out a Harlequin Romance would be both easy and fun. It was neither. I quickly realized that to write a novel you have to love the story and characters you are creating, because you’re going to be inhabiting that world for many, many hours. When it came down to it, I had neither the dedication nor the true desire to write the book I had started and I abandoned the effort some thirty pages in.

  In high school and college, I took creative writing classes which I thoroughly enjoyed but, deciding writing was not a practical major, I ended up studying psychology and, later, City Planning. For many years, the only nonprofessional writing I did was in journals and that was really more about working through current life challenges than creative output. I still liked the idea of writing, but at that point it wasn’t really one of my ambitions.

  In 2007, with two kids and two decades of working in the field of affordable housing, the writing itch started pricking me again. I took a couple of classes online, then started writing around the edges of a story that had been running through my head for many years. I worked on that book, an epic fantasy, for about five years, including two years of an MFA program. The book is unlikely ever to live on the printed page, but through writing it I learned a ton about plotting and character development and all the frustrations and pleasures of corralling words into a narrative. When I finally finished it, I moved on to the book which eventually became Rewind.

  Q: How did you come up with the idea of freezing time?

  A: I first imagined freezing time when I was a kid. At the time, I didn’t picture any downsides or personal costs, I just thought about how cool it would be to stop time. I was a shy kid and so I figured freezing time would allow me a pause to become un-tongue-tied, or let a flaming blush fade from my cheeks, or whisk away some pending embarrassment before it could be discovered. I also thought of all the ways I could save myself or others—catching someone before they hit the ground, preventing someone from drowning, walking away from an assailant. In my childhood version, I had the power to decide during the freeze if things would go back to the way they were prior to freezing or if the things I changed remained that way afterward. I had a special incantation (let my actions be as done) that determined the fate of the freeze.

  Q: What was the hardest part about writing Rewind?

  A: Definitely plotting. I had this concept I loved but no story to go along with it. Eventually I drafted a general outline, but then I’d write a few chapters and, as I fleshed out the story, I’d discover some flaw with my original idea and have to go back and work out ways for it to make sense again. I keep a scratch file where I work through problems, sometimes with long-winded internal arguments and sometimes with bullet points listing potential plot twists and where those might lead.

  My original main character was a boy named Jakob, and the opening scene was in the common room where, during frozen time, another character kills Jakob. Chapter 2 then starts exactly the same way as Chapter 1, except Jakob is alive again and events unroll in a different way. The whole book was much darker. This original version also included a too-complicated plot thread about a mob boss (a woman who is eventually unmasked as the Crime Investigation Center director) and shows Jakob committing multiple crimes with his agent.

  A lot of the plot changes came when I figured out what the story was I wanted to tell. I realized the crime angle bored me, and that what interested me was thinking about how people—both spinners and Norms—would react to someone having this kind of power. I knew I needed some outside threats to move the story along, but the focus to me was always on the characters themselves: their relationships, their reactions, and their choices.

  Q: Rewind takes place in Portland. Is that where you’r
e from?

  A: Portland is definitely my home, but it’s not where I’m from. I’m not “from” anywhere. I was born in New Orleans, then moved to Panama at two, Honolulu at seven, and New Haven at fourteen. (And no, my parents were not in the military. They’re both academics.) The summer after college, I drove to San Francisco, and for the next eight years I lived in various cities around the Bay Area. In 1995, my husband and I moved to Portland. After so many homes, I sometimes can’t believe I’ve lived in one place—and mostly all in the same house!—for this many consecutive years.

  When I was writing Rewind, I thought a lot about whether to use a real city or to keep the location vague enough so that the story could be happening in Anytown, USA. I ended up using Portland because playing with that specificity was fun. As I’m writing, I picture events happening in particular places—or some melded version of a couple of actual places. Having real places in mind makes the situation seem that much more real. If you visit my website (www.carolynodoherty.com), you can see photographs of some places that inspired me!

  Q: What’s next for the spinners? Will there be a sequel?

  A: Absolutely! The sequel is already written and being edited for release next year. I have a third spinner book I’d like to write, too—plus, I’m working on some other, completely different projects. Now that I’ve finally seen my writing dream turn into reality, I’m excited to keep the momentum alive!

  CAROLYN O’DOHERTY received her MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. When, as a kid, she dreamed up the idea of freezing time, she only considered the benefits: always having the perfect snappy comeback, the right answer on the test, untraceable revenge. It was only when she turned the idea into a novel that she recognized the dark side of this potential blessing. Carolyn lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two teenage sons. This is her first novel.

  boydsmillspress.com

  Stay Connected with Highlights!