Flutter (4 page)

My eyes were drawn, with gray-and-red rims. My skin impossibly pale, my flyaway red curls wispier than usual. My whole body seemed less solid, less opaque, less
here
.

I bent in a demi-plié, my hand on the barre. I began to stretch and feel the stress of the past few weeks dissipate from my muscles as I extended each limb. I was feeling a bit better already. This had been a calming ritual for me. A place where I always felt like myself. Ballet kept me in the moment, in the here and now.

I sat on the ground and spread my legs in a V. After stretching my glutes and my hamstrings, I sprang up quickly and did an arabesque, giving myself a confident smile in the mirror. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection.

And then it happened. The first time ever when I was completely and utterly awake.

My eyes rolled back for a millisecond; my leg muscles tightened. I fell to the floor, thunking my head hard against the barre on the way down. I saw a slow-motion version of my fall reflected in the mirrors, and the look on my face was startling. I didn’t look scared. I didn’t even look that surprised. I looked beaten. I looked—

I was gone again. Back to the other side, the loop.

The cathedral is beautiful. It has a cavernous, domed ceiling painted with a blue sky and white, fluffy clouds. The stained-glass windows on either side of the mahogany altar are floor-to-ceiling, gorgeous, impressive artistic panels, not showing any biblical scenes but rather just a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns. I sit in a pew toward the front of the church, along with many other people, and stare at the stained glass, the many shades of greens and blues, some yellows. The colors and textures play with my eyes, giving the windows a 3-D effect. I raise my hand to shield the brightness of it all and feel out of sync with my body
.

I want to see the stained glass. I’m agitated again, which is unusual in the loop. I take a deep breath and can smell the flowers from the altar. Lilacs. Just like the ones in the little boy’s yard, on his farm
.

I turn my head then to look for the boy. My eyes move slower in their sockets than I command them to, making me feel a little dizzy. I strain my neck and stand up on my tiptoes, still wearing my pointe shoes from the studio. I scan the faces around me as they sing along to a hymn I don’t know, but I don’t see the boy, not this time. And I really want to
.

A young man in a dark suit plays the piano as the churchgoers sing, and the song seems a bit familiar now but I can’t place it
.

The music fades, and I turn toward the middle-aged woman next to me. She has golden hair, a wide smile, a beauty mark just below her left eye. “Esperanza Beach,” she says. I repeat it. “Esperanza Beach?” It’s the same as what my boy said, but more. The woman nods. And I sense
, feel
the colors coming to the edges of my vision. And there they are, like a kaleidoscope themselves
.

And I am gone
.

Lucinda found me seizing in the middle of the ballet studio floor at approximately three-thirty in the afternoon.

I was rushed to the hospital, given many drugs, including a shitload of adrenaline, and that saved me, I guess, because the nurses were all talking about it. Loretta had come in to check on me with a tearstained face, her rosary still in hand.

The first thing Dad said to me when I regained consciousness was that he had been able to get a short EEG reading while I was still in the loop. He hadn’t missed any data.

God forbid we miss any data
, I thought. My face crumpled, and I felt like crying, but I turned toward the window so he couldn’t see me.

“This thing is getting too big, honey.” Dad was talking
quickly and too loudly, like he always did when he got nervous. “Your EEG has changed drastically. We have got to keep you here. It’s getting too big, Emery.”

“This new variable is troublesome,” Dr. Chen began as soon as she swept in. “Beginning from an awake state changes the entire flow of the study.” She spoke more to Dad than me.

“Sleep apnea, clairvoyance, the blood pooling in her abdomen, are just not—”

I strained to sit up. “Excuse me here!”

A third doctor who I did not know joined them then. I felt the after-loop headache swell between my eyes. The doctors continued to speak to each other, and I was ignored. I let my head flop back upon the pillow and took in a deep breath. I could still smell the lilacs from my loop.

I had to leave. I was
never
getting out of here unless I did.

I sighed. I thought about the first time I had met the little boy a few years ago. And I remembered the book light.

I always brought my physical self, my physical being exactly as it was, through to the other time. I once had one of those little book lights that clip onto your book in my hand when I fell asleep, and it came with me. But I didn’t bring it back.

He still has it, the little boy. He shows it to me sometimes, and we laugh about it. While I’m here with Dad and Dr. Chen—on my home loop, as I think of it—I realize that it would be fabulous, life-altering, and extremely pertinent
for me to do something like just bring back that damn book light, just bring it back out of the loop.

But once I get over there, it’s like I don’t really understand the importance, the urgency. I change. I’m just … happy.

Of course, I’ve tried to bring other items with me over there—to do that at least for Dad, for Dr. Chen, to bring an object with me. But I haven’t been able to. I didn’t have all the particulars figured out.

Gia nearly fell out of her chair when I told her about the book light, about my loops.

It was during the National Honor Society blood drive at Loganbridge, at the start of the school year, right before I had to give up going to school altogether.

I had dislocated my shoulder for the third time in as many months, and Gia wasn’t buying the I-did-it-dancing excuse again.

She was donating blood, lying in a big beige recliner in the school gymnasium, and I sat next to her, just keeping her company during our free period.

“Tell me, Emery,” she demanded.

“Okay, it wasn’t ballet,” I said, keeping my voice low, my eyes flashing toward the rows of students in identical recliners around us. I scooted my chair closer. Gia leaned forward, enrapt. “Okay,” I told her, taking a dramatic breath. “I’m having a rather physical affair with Mr. Lankey.”

Gia threw her head back and laughed. “You dork,” she
said, slapping me on the arm. And we both fell into another fit of laughter as Mr. Lankey, his comb-over, and his totally huge beer gut appeared down the row from us.

“Okay, Emery,” Gia said, still not letting me off the hook. “Spill it. The truth this time.”

I swallowed hard, measured what hung in the balance here. “When I’m sleeping, I sometimes … seize. Lately, the seizures are so violent, they’ve been dislocating my shoulder, and when I broke my wrist—”

“I can tell this is definitely closer to the truth,” Gia said, sitting up straight, twirling her then-curly hair around her finger. “Does this have to do with why you can’t ever do stuff at night? No sleepovers? No all-night cramming sessions? No nothing?”

“Yes,” I answered, averting my eyes.

“So if it’s just seizures, don’t you take medicine?”

“They haven’t found a seizure medication that helps me yet.”
Because they aren’t really seizures
, I added in my head.

Gia squinted at me. “Emery, you’ve got to trust me,” she pleaded. “We’ve been friends since fifth grade. I deserve to know.”

“Shhh,” I hissed. “Keep your voice down.” I adjusted the line of her IV, retaped it on her hand so it wouldn’t bother her, wouldn’t leave a bruise.

“And this,” Gia continued. “You know way too much about this stuff.” She gestured toward the IV.

“I spend my nights at the hospital, Gia. I’m sure you’ve figured that out,” I whispered, feeling the sweat break out on my brow.

“Because of your seizures.” Gia put air quotes around the word
seizures
when she spoke, and I chewed my thumbnail. She shook her head and turned away from me.

I sat there for a long time, knowing I shouldn’t tell her, knowing she would never believe me, knowing that I had to heed Dad’s warnings about telling anyone.

But something in me wanted to tell her. Something in me saw this as a chance to keep from being completely isolated. Completely alone.

And Gia knew what it meant to be alone, to be the one on the outside. I thought back to when she had moved here, when those kids in the fifth grade had designated her the odd man out, the geek, the outcast. Back before Gia had become Gia the Cool, Gia of the Cat’s-Eye Glasses, Gia of the Razor-Sharp Wit, she had been the chubby new girl with no friends.

And I had stuck up for her. I had made the difference for her then, all those years ago.

I made a decision that day of the blood drive, staring at the back of Gia’s head so obstinately turned away from me. A big decision. I decided to trust her, to let her come to my aid. To keep me from being all alone—falling too far down this hole by myself.

“I time-travel. I travel to the past, the future. That’s what
the seizures are,” I blurted out. And I immediately regretted it. But I just bit my thumbnail and watched Gia’s face as she turned toward me.

“Time travel?” she whispered.

I braced myself for her laugh, for her to squeal into giggles, but she didn’t do anything. She just looked at me for a long while, squinting behind her glasses.

“No one believes me, not Dad, not anyone. But I
know
.”

“What does your dad think it is, then?”

“Once I hit thirteen, I started having these … episodes … like crazy. And I started to have these bouts afterward when I couldn’t remember stuff—”

“Like amnesia?” Gia offered.

“No, I would forget how to do these sort of automatic things—tie my shoes, stuff like that—after an episode. And then they started getting more violent, like with my shoulder, when I broke my collarbone a couple of years ago. Dad got interested then. My EEG showed completely unorganized, uncoordinated firings of impulses in my brain while I’m in the loop—when I time-travel. When Dad looked more closely at these EEGs, he found there was a pattern, just a new, more intricate pattern of chaos. Whatever that means. He thinks that my EEG in the loop demonstrates a higher kind of intelligence, a way to harness or capture a larger percentage of the brain’s power … extrasensory power.”

Gia nodded. She just looked at me and nodded.

I had opened the door to Gia. I had let someone other
than my team in on my secret, and the world had not stopped rotating on its axis.

“So what’s it like?”

“It’s … the same, but different. Brighter. Slower. Dreamlike.”

“Couldn’t it all just be dreams?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“I just know, Gia. I’m there. Physically in the loop.”

The nurse started working her way down the line of students, and I knew she would soon be near us. I was nervous and exhilarated, but I half expected Dad to pop up from behind a curtain and steal Gia away and erase her memory like some crazy spy movie.

Gia sat up and leaned close to me. “So you can tell what’s real—in your loop—and what’s just a regular dream?”

“Yes, they are very different. The loop is as real as you and me sitting here,” I said. “It could be
here
 … just a different
time
.”

Gia eyed me. “So do you see people you know? Me?”

“No. But Dad. I know him in the future.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, he’s balder, grayer … nicer.”

“Really? Do you ever see your mom?”

“No. I wish I did.… I go forward and back, past and future. There are people, places, that I go to more often than
others, but not always. It’s all very random and crazy. I can’t control it. Yet.”

Gia sat deep in thought. I knew she would have many questions, but the nurse was coming.

“So at night, much like a superhero-vampire, you don’t have epilepsy, but you seize into another dimension?” Gia smiled, but I could tell she was teasing me, not judging.

I smiled back at her, and the nurse appeared to take out her IV. Gia got her Band-Aid, the requisite
I DONATED
sticker, and her free cookies, and we exited the cafeteria in silence.

“That’s some freaky shit,” Gia said finally on our way to physics class.

Nothing changed with Gia and me after that. Except that I trusted her with my secret and she kept it.

And I had a confidante. It was a total relief.

I rolled over in my hospital bed and shut my eyes tight against that memory, of a time when I had hopes of anything good. I kept my eyes shut against the reality of where I was, what I was doing here. Gia was probably off with emo-boy getting another tattoo. She was probably practicing her piano recital for Juilliard. She was most definitely
living
.

I reluctantly opened my eyes and saw Dr. Chen, Dad, and this new doctor planning my next steps, my next hours, my next days, the rest of my life.

“We can remove a fraction of skull and manually try
to reproduce these episodes by stimulating the temporal lobe.…”

“Her organs are aging. We could induce a coma state for thirty to ninety days in order to …”

Dad turned and looked at me for a moment. I let my stare bore into him. He turned his back to me then, whispering to Dr. Chen something that I couldn’t catch. They whispered like that for a few moments, all serious and exclusive.

“Hello? I’m right here!” I said. I was trying for sarcastic, but all it came out like was pathetic, lonely.

Dad held up a finger toward me, indicating to wait. But I had done enough waiting.

If I was going to run, if I was going to be able to get my thoughts together and really figure out what I wanted to do with whatever time I had left, then I had to make a plan.

What did I want to do?

It was such a gloriously open-ended question, one that I hadn’t let myself entertain for so long.

What did I want to do?