by Steven Gould
My mouth dropped open.
Mom nodded. “Right.”
“He’s seeing reason because I can jump now? Because he has no choice?”
Mom shrugged. “To be fair, there’s more to it than that. Now he thinks you might have a chance out there. That he doesn’t have to be there every second to jump you away from danger. You can do that yourself.” She glanced at me. “Hopefully.”
I stuck my jaw out. “Of course I can.”
She said seriously, “Your father jumped into trouble often enough. It’s not automatic.”
“Well, so far it’s been automatic,” I muttered.
“Well, yes. About that—what happened?”
I knew what she meant. “Pardon?”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me over her glasses. I hate it when she does that. Well, I hate it when she does that and I have something to hide. I blushed furiously.
She nodded to herself. “Like that, eh? Was it really stupid?”
“It wasn’t stupid! It wasn’t my fault!” I clamped my mouth shut. I’d broken several rules by going snowboarding. Perhaps it was my—no! Stupid avalanche!
“What wasn’t your fault?” Mom asked.
“Uh. My jumping.”
“I didn’t say anything about fault, did I?”
I felt my mouth set stubbornly.
Mom left it alone. “How many times, then? How often have you jumped?”
If it had been Dad, I don’t think I would have said, but I thought Mom was on my side in this. “Twice.”
Mom nodded again. “Right. Thought it was recent. You can’t actually jump, can you?”
“What!? You saw me, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes. What I mean is, go ahead. Jump. Upstairs to your room, say.”
I tried.
“Go on,” she said mildly.
It didn’t work.
If she nods her head again …
Mom nodded.
I screamed.
She nodded again.
I couldn’t even scream. I just stood there with my mouth gaping.
“Calm down. Come with me.”
Mom led me upstairs into their bedroom and then through the door to the upper deck with the outside hot tub. It was twenty degrees outside, but we hadn’t had more snow so the deck was either clear where it had been swept or icy where the snow had packed down to a slippery crust. She went over to the railing and swung open the gate.
The gate’s there for the dead of winter, when the accumulated snow has actually buried the bottom floor of the house. It happens most years, but right now, even though there was a good six-foot deep drift against the wall below, there was still a twelve-foot drop down to the snow’s surface.
Mom pointed over the edge and said, “What do you see?” She stood aside to let me look. I stepped forward and looked down and she shoved me from behind. Hard.
I twisted, clawing for the railing but I was already out and falling, feeling the drop.
My own mother.
I didn’t reach the snow.
I was under my bed, in my room, nestled in the cushions.
I heard Mom come in from the deck and shut the door behind her. She came into the room, looked around, and then crouched down, to look me in the face.
“So that’s your safe place. Makes sense. It always was.”
“Get away from me you evil woman.”
Mom grinned. “The drift would’ve cushioned your fall.”
“I thought Dad was the ruthless one.”
“Your dad is a big softie.” She held up three fingers. “So that’s the third time.”
* * *
Mom jumped us to New York City, an alley in the West Village. She was wearing a blonde wig and enormous sunglasses. I was wearing a wig, too, which itched like the dickens, but it was my idea, more for fun. She walked us east until we hit Washington Square, and we sat on a bench in the sun. It was thirty degrees warmer here, which meant forty-five or so, but the air was still and the sky was clear, which meant sitting in the sun felt lovely.
“I always liked this park. Your Dad and I visited it for the first time the day after I met him. There were jugglers and musicians and vendors and someone even had a monkey. Summer, of course. Two people tried to sell us drugs. We came back later that week. A bunch of NYU students did A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
I looked around and didn’t see a stage.
“Where?”
“Everywhere. It ranged from the playground over there, across the dry fountain, up to the dog run. The audience had to follow them around. It was really cool.”
Mom was really big on Shakespeare.
I said, “All the park’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Mom pointed at the walkway to the west side of the park. “They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”
She can go on for hours so I butted in, “If you like it.”
“What do you smell?” she asked.
I closed my eyes then wrinkled my nose. “Cigarette smoke.”
“Yuck. You’re right—guy on the next bench just lit up. Let’s move.”
We took the diagonal pathway toward the southeast corner of the park, passing a fenced playground. The young mothers who clustered around the entrance while their kids played were not smokers.
We moved around the edge, close to the wrought iron fence but away from the entrance, to a grassy spot between two trees and a bush.
“This is better anyway,” Mom said. “Screened from most sides. Try again.”
I inhaled. “Grass. They mowed this morning. Car exhaust. Ugh. Some diesel. I hate diesel. Something tasty. One of those vendors. Grilled chicken? No. Falafel!” I opened my eyes. “Can we buy some falafel?”
Mom shrugged. “Perhaps.” She stepped closer and jumped me back to our house.
I raised my eyebrows. Mom went into her room and came back with a five-dollar bill. “Here. Go buy us some falafel.”
I blinked. My stomach rumbled. “We were already there,” I said.
Mom smiled. “So we were.”
I tried. Nothing happened. Shit! I took off the wig and threw it onto the kitchen table. “Do I gotta be starving or something?” I winced. My chances of going to school were dropping rapidly, especially if Mom told Dad I couldn’t control it.
“Shhhh,” Mom said. She stepped behind me and placed her palms on my shoulders. “Close your eyes. Remember the smells? Mowed grass? Car and truck fumes. And…”
“Falafel,” I said. But she didn’t hear me. I was back in the park, between the bush and the trees, a five-dollar bill clutched in my hand.
My knees buckled and I dropped, ending up crouched on the ground, one hand flat to the dirt.
I don’t know why. I’ve been jumped by my parents thousands of times, but this was only the fourth time I’d jumped by myself. It was the first time I’d jumped without being upset or frightened. Or about to die.
And the other three times I’d ended up curled in the cushions under the bed. Not standing.
I bought two flatbread-wrapped falafel sandwiches with lettuce, tomatoes, and yoghurt dressing and returned to the little screened spot. I tried to think about what it smelled like in my room, or the kitchen, or even the bathroom, but all I could smell was the falafel. I held the bag behind my back and exhaled.
The one place at home that had an overwhelming distinctive smell was the springhouse. It was a thick mix of steam and sulphur and a touch of mildew from the wet corners, though Mom attacked it with a brush and chlorine bleach every month or so. When you stand in there, it’s like standing in an equatorial rain forest, like the interior of Borneo or deep in the Amazon basin. But with sulphur.
There was more powdery snow in the covered walkway and the wind cut like a knife. I walked quickly to the house. Through the glass in the kitchen door I could see Mom seated at the table, her elbows resting on the surface, her hands clenched tig
htly together. When I started stamping my feet to knock off the worst of the snow, she jerked and looked around. Her hands went flat on the table and her shoulders dropped.
I came through, still stamping my feet, and put the falafel on the table.
“They might be cold.”
And they were, a little. But delicious.
* * *
“Stop that!” Dad said, from where he was reading on the couch.
I was jumping from my room to the living room, back and forth. I froze, looking at him, surprised.
“I’m practicing.”
“Do you have to do it in here?”
“I could jump to Washington Square Park instead.”
He held up his hands. “Uh, no. Do it here. I’d rather you weren’t jumping where people could see you.”
I jumped back up to my room.
I was using smell, mostly. Sure I was picturing the places, but smell was really helping. I had a cinnamon-scented votive candle burning on my windowsill. I also had a small fire burning in the colossal living room fireplace. It was piñon wood that Dad brought all the way from the Southwest, so the smell downstairs was also distinctive.
Though my parents didn’t know it, I’d also been back to Washington Square a few times. The falafel guy was gone so that smell wasn’t there anymore, but it was still the memory of that smell that let me jump to the little nook by the playground, even when it was after dark there.
I snuffed the candle. If Dad was freaking out because I was jumping in the living room, maybe I should try someplace else. I jumped to the springhouse and back to my room a few times, but the steam-laden air began dampening my clothes and I could smell the sulphur even in my room.
I went back to jumping down to the fireplace and eventually Dad put his book aside and said, “Let’s try something else.”
“What—”
We were someplace else.
Dad’s that quick. From the couch he’d jumped, snagged me, and jumped again before I could say “one thousand.”
I blinked. It was late afternoon, wherever we were, but the sun was much higher in the sky than it was up by the Arctic Circle. It was desert, American Southwest I thought, or Northern Mexico—very rugged, not flat. There was mesquite and ocotillo and ground-hugging prickly pear cactus, too. Temperature was pleasantly warm, even on the hot side of comfortable, with a dusty wind blowing fine grit through the air.
“Where are we?”
“West Texas. We’re near the Eyrie, on the eastern side of Big Bend Ranch State Park.”
The Eyrie is Dad’s old cliff house, a place up a box canyon several hundred feet from the canyon floor. Mom and Dad used to live there, but when they decided to have me, they moved to the house in Canada. Dad still has some books there, I think. I’ve been there a couple of times, as a toddler, but Dad wasn’t comfortable with me being near the cliff’s edge.
“Okay. Why?”
“It’s pretty comfortable this time of year, especially compared to northern Canada. There are very few people out here. And, most important of all, it isn’t the living room.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “This was where I learned how to jump to places I could see, but that I hadn’t been to yet.” He turned and jumped to a spot a hundred feet away and called back, “Like this.” He jumped again, another hundred feet. Then another hundred. “See?” he yelled. I barely heard him over the gusting wind.
He jumped back again. “It was after your grandmother was killed and I was out here walking. I couldn’t stand to be around other people and I needed to be doing something, but I twisted my ankle and it hurt like the dickens to walk.”
I stared at Dad. He hardly ever talked about his mother, especially about her death.
He continued. “Most of the things I’ve discovered about jumping have been like that. From necessity.”
I nodded. “Like when you were prisoner on Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Yes. Like that. Or figuring out that I could fall big distances and jump away without carrying the accumulated momentum with me. Like we just did, actually.”
“We didn’t fall, did we? My ears didn’t pop. The altitude can’t be that different.”
“In Canada we’re closer to the pole—to the earth’s axis of rotation—so our rotational velocity was less than it is here. I don’t know what it is exactly, but south of the house, at sixty degrees latitude, it’s 233 meters per second. Here, we’re below thirty degrees latitude where the rotation is 349 meters per second. If we’d retained that speed when we jumped, we would have arrived here with the ground speeding eastward under us at over 116 meters per second.”
I did a rough conversion in my head. “That’s over four hundred kilometers per hour.”
“And if you jumped to the equator the difference would be twice that. Good thing we’re not carrying the velocity difference. It would probably rip our limbs off.”
I shuddered.
“Enough of that,” Dad said. “I’m pretty sure you can jump home now. Do what you need to do to acquire a jump site here.”
I closed my eyes and sniffed. The dust was overlaid with something that smelled like old railway ties or telephone poles. “What smells like roofing tar?” I asked.
Dad pointed to a low-lying shrub with small green leaves and yellow flowers, off to my right. “Creosote bush.”
I jumped back to my room, then jumped right back again, the slight tarry smell locking it in easily.
Dad nodded, satisfied. “So, experiment. You see any people, stay away from them. They’re probably just visiting the park but they could be drug traffickers or coyotes.”
He opened his mouth to explain but I said, “People smugglers, I know.”
“Yeah. But the regular folk are dangerous, too. They see you out here, they’ll want to try and rescue you.” He shook his head. “Don’t let them see you jump, either. It’s not just you I’m concerned about. Those who watch for us like to squeeze every drop of information out of witnesses. And when the lemon is squeezed, it’s hard on the lemon.” He waited until I nodded. “Right. Sunscreen and a hat and probably boots. I’ve been stabbed through athletic shoes by this damn prickly pear. Hell, the lechuguilla will get you through a leather boot.”
He vanished.
I went and did as he said—sunscreen, hat, boots. He didn’t mention the damn rattlesnakes.
I was just walking around. It was good to be out of the house and to feel the wind and sun on my skin. The gusty wind was shaking the brush and there were some tumbleweeds caught in the creosote that made a rattling sound, which is why I didn’t hear the snake’s rattle until I’d almost stepped on it.
It struck and I flinched away, to my room, and it landed on the carpet. In my room.
“Oh, shit!” I said and hopped up the rungs and onto my bed.
It was a little guy, with only a few rattles, but it had the triangular head. It was limestone gray with darker bands that had almost been invisible in the desert, but it stood out in stark contrast to my green carpet. It coiled up again and looked around. The room was colder than the southern hillside it had been on. It moved across the floor with that figure-S sideways motion, past one of my snowboarding boots and then went into the other boot, at the foot of the bed. I jumped down and stepped on the top of the boot, pinching it shut. There was a bumping, thrashing vibration which I could feel even through my hiking boot, but I kept my weight on it.
I bent down and kept the boot top closed with my hand while I took my foot off, then clamped it shut with both hands. My heart was still thudding but my breathing was slowing now. I was really glad it hadn’t crawled into the cushions under my bed.
Back in the desert I tossed the boot away from me, about fifteen feet. It fell over and the snake spilled out rather agitated, shaking its rattle and moving its head around, looking for something to bite. I held my breath, ready to jump away if it came my direction, but it took off into the brush and I recovered my boot, putting it back in my room.<
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After that I saved the sightseeing for when I was standing still. While I moved, I kept my eyes on the ground.
I got pretty good at seeing a spot and jumping to it, even though I’d never been there. Three days later I could do it with binoculars, moving up to half a mile if I had good light. On the fourth day I found the pit.
I remembered splashing in the cold water there as a kid. I jumped back to the cabin and asked Mom if my memory was right, or was I imagining things. She said, “Jump there, to the rim above. I’ll do the same.”
When I arrived, Mom was there, a quarter of the way around the rim from me. I jumped to where she stood.
“Yes, this is the place.” She scuffed the rock she stood on, right at the edge. “Your father used to drop terrorists off this point into the water. Well, about ten feet out, that is.” She pointed down to the riot of green that covered the sandy island in the middle of the dark water. “Even when they couldn’t swim they’d splash over to the island, but if you’re not set right, dropping fifty feet into the water is rough.”
“Have you ever done it?” I asked.
“No, when I took people here I just put them on the island.” She looked at the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I meant have you ever jumped into the water from up here?”
Mom laughed. “Oops. Uh, no. I tried several times but I always jumped away before I hit the surface. Scaredy cat, I guess. I tried breaking it down to smaller increments but I never managed higher than twenty feet.”
I stepped up beside her to peek over the edge, then took an involuntary step backward and made a squeaking noise.
Mom looked concerned. “Huh. I didn’t think you were scared of heights, Cent.”
I glared at her. “I quite like heights. But I have this brand-new fear of being pushed.”
“Huh? Oh—” She started laughing, then tried to stop, but couldn’t. I glared harder and she laughed more. I held up my finger and she covered her mouth, trying to stifle the laughter but it wasn’t working.
She turned away to try and get control of her expression and I pushed her off the edge.
FIVE
Davy: Realty
Millie chose the town, doing her research from a Minneapolis Public Library computer. Davy activated their cover.