Authors: Julie Cross
“I knew it! You guys were gone way too long in the kitchen and then he had that stupid grin on his face. I could have punched him.”
She giggled. “Exactly why I didn’t tell you.”
My arms tightened around her. “I miss you so much.”
This was something I never would have said in 2004, but in reality it had been four years since I’d talked to my sister. Grief swept over me. I had to get away. This was too hard. Too much. Nothing would change.
I gave her one last squeeze and whispered, “Good-bye, Courtney.”
Then I jumped out of 2004, and headed back to my own version of purgatory. September 9, 2007. Again.
CHAPTER TEN
My eyes flew open and I watched three drops of blood fall into the porcelain sink. A hand reached out and stuck a paper towel right under my nose. The bloody nose was yet another piece of evidence that this exact moment in time was my new present. My new home base.
But something was different. I had been alone in the restroom when I left. If I knew Adam’s formula, I’d be able to figure out exactly how long I’d been leaning against the wall in this bathroom, looking like a vegetable.
“Here you go, son. You should pinch the nostrils,” a deep voice spoke right into my ear.
A tall, dark-skinned bald man stood beside me.
“Thank you,” I said, and for a second he looked at me like maybe he recognized me, but everything was jumbling together and he was gone before I could even think twice about it.
My nose only bled for a minute, and after washing my hands I left the restroom.
The waitress set my coffee on the table. The same waitress who had greeted me before I went into the restroom. Damn. Same place. Same time.
She smiled as I slid into the booth. “Ready to order?”
I pointed to the first item on the left side of the menu, not even caring what it was. “I’ll have that.”
“Grilled salmon with seasonal vegetables?”
I shrugged and then nodded. Just as she started to turn away, I remembered something.
“Wait! I forgot to ask … do you have a copy of today’s paper?” It was pointless, but I had to check.
“Of course, I’ll be right back with that.”
I tapped my fingers on the table, waiting for the answer I already knew. She dropped the paper in front of me and I groaned as soon as I read the top. September. 2007.
Always the same. Eighteen times now. It was eight-thirty at night. A couple of minutes had passed, but that was all. I’d been in the past for the longest stretch yet.
“Is everything okay?” the waitress asked.
“Sorry, I’m just disappointed the final performance of…”—I glanced down at the headlines—“
Annie
is canceled. Love that song, ‘It’s the Hard-Knock Life.’”
The waitress twisted a loose strand of hair around her finger and shifted her weight. “Yeah … uh … your dinner should be ready in a few minutes.”
I pulled my journal from my bag because Adam’s voice rang through my head again. This used to be fun. Like an adventure. But with each failed attempt to save Holly, Adam’s words began to take on a much deeper meaning.
“You have to document everything, down to the minute.”
“Why?”
“First of all, so you know how old you really are. Second, so you know if you changed anything. And third, in case you forget.”
I didn’t change anything. Ever. But I still recorded it all, using Adam Silverman’s genius format. I laughed out loud the first time he wrote it out, casually, like it was a packing list for summer camp. But the thing is, most of this stuff didn’t ever apply to my previous record of a two-day jump. That’s why I never took it seriously. Now I did.
TIME-TRAVEL PRIORITY CHECKLIST
STEP 1: IDENTIFY CURRENT DAY/TIME.
September 9, 2007, 8:30
P.M.
STEP 2: MINUTES PASSED IN PREVIOUS TIME
(July 1, 2004).
165 minutes
STEP 3: IDENTIFY AGE, IN THIS YEAR, OF SFF
(self, friends, and family).
Jackson Meyer (the younger me): 17 years old
Kevin Meyer: 42 years old
Adam Silverman: 16 years old
Holly Flynn: 17 years old
Courtney Meyer: deceased
STEP 4: CREATE COVER OR CURRENT IDENTITY
(change as needed).
My younger self should be in Spain until December. For now, I will assume the identity of my 17-year-old self since we don’t seem to be bumping into each other. Only if needed while interacting with someone I know.
STEP 5: RECALL BASICS
(current events, technology…).
Widespread panic may occur upon mentioning John and Kate will split up, thus ending the show John & Kate Plus 8. Keep cell phone hidden at all times.
I ran through everything that had happened once more to get my facts straight. After I jumped out of 2009, I landed in September 9, 2007, around six in the morning. Now it was getting close to nine
P.M.
, but all my attempts to go forward added up to nearly three days. Very little time passes in home base while I’m in a time jump. But the feeling like I’m dying from the flu or something was completely new. And I only felt shitty in this year. Probably because I hated being stuck here. Karma. Or maybe all the time jumps were making me feel like this. Frying my brain or some shit like that.
“Jackson Meyer! Is that really you?” a voice rang through my ears, pulling me out of my hazy depression.
I glanced up to see my favorite high school Spanish teacher. “Miss Ramsey, how are you?”
“Great, but I thought you were in Spain for a semester?”
This was the part where I had to remind myself who I was.
CURRENT IDENTITY: seventeen-year-old student who should be spending a semester studying in Spain, but is sitting in a Manhattan restaurant, alone, on a school night.
“I came back early.”
She slid into the booth across from me. “I can’t believe how much older you look after one summer.”
I laughed nervously. “It’s all that San Miguel. Puts hair on your chest.”
She cracked up and her thick glasses slid down her nose. “I hope you sampled all the great Spanish wine.”
“Of course, I drank a bottle a day.”
She laughed again. “That can’t be true. So … will I see you roaming the halls soon?”
I forced back the disgusted look I knew was about to take form on my face.
No way was I going back to high school.
“Probably not. I’m thinking of taking my GED, just tired of the whole high school scene.” The waitress dropped off my dinner and I picked up the fork and stabbed a spear of asparagus. “Actually, I gave my dad an ultimatum, public school or GED. He’s leaning toward the GED.”
“Public school isn’t that bad. I went to one, and look how I turned out,” she said.
“That’s what I told him.” My eyes dropped to the plate in front of me.
“You look a little glum. Is everything okay?”
I nodded. “Just jet lag. I got back a few hours ago and it’s still two in the morning for me.”
This wasn’t far from the truth. In terms of actual time, I hadn’t slept much in two days. Of course, only hours had passed in this year.
This stupid freakin’ year.
“Sorry to hear that. Well … I better get back to my date.” She nodded her head in the direction of a man sitting alone at a table using a spoon to examine his teeth. She leaned closer to whisper, “This is the last time I use an Internet dating website.”
“You can always fake a stomachache … or food poisoning.”
She smiled before turning around. “Take care, Jackson.”
I grinned until she had her back to me, then dropped my eyes to the journal lying on the table. I plugged away at writing the details of my latest excursion and was so engrossed in other years, I didn’t even notice the waitress standing in front of me, tapping her toe against the floor.
“Sorry, did you say something?”
“Is everything okay with your meal?”
I looked down at the now-cold salmon. The fishy smell was revolting. “Yeah, it’s fine. Could I have my check now?”
She placed it in front of me. “Do you want me to box that up for you?”
“Um … no, thanks.”
The plate disappeared, along with the waitress. The idea of bringing leftovers with me had taken on a new meaning with all the time-travel theories spinning through my head. This was the stupid shit Adam and I would have tossed around while playing Guitar Hero and drinking shots of Crown Royal. I’d start it and Adam would take it twenty steps further than my brain could ever comprehend.
Questions like, if I did get back to 2009, carting my doggie bag, would the salmon be two years old? Or if I went into the past again, would the fish still be in the box? Technically, it wouldn’t have been born yet. Can a living thing travel to a time before it’s born?
Then, if we could, we’d test it out.
Trying to make plans without Holly or my father catching on was difficult. Holly always knew when I wasn’t telling her the whole truth or when I was feeding her a complete load of crap. Right now I’d give anything to go back. Even if it meant listening to her shout at me again or being locked out of her room for hours.
The waitress was on her way back, so I pulled out my wallet and stuck a credit card on the edge of the table. I flipped through the pages of my journal, looking for something to help me form a plan. Any plan. My fingers froze on the page with
January 13, 2003,
across the top.
The credit card was removed from the table and the waitress stomped away while I continued to stare at the words I had written.
I THINK MY DAD WORKS FOR THE CIA!
Just thinking about my dad’s hands around my throat, the anger hardening his eyes, put life back into my muscles in the form of a major adrenaline rush. He never said he was CIA. But he sure acted like it, in that moment. Not that I knew any more about the Central Intelligence Agency than what Hollywood had presented me with. Still, I knew something. A CIA agent (or former agent) would be following me and my sister on the morning of January 13, 2003. I don’t know why this was my current point of focus, but the idea that I could see the face to go with the voice coming through the phone seemed like a good reason. Honestly, most of my actions over the last couple days had been driven by anything but logic, just a lot of fumbling through time (literally), searching for something concrete to grasp on to. Something real. Facts. Answers. I closed my eyes and focused on the date four years in the past.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2003, 7:35
A.M.
The sun blazed in my eyes again, but this time an icy breeze swept over me, stinging the ends of my ears. I stood outside a coffee shop a few blocks from my building. The door opened and an inviting gust of warm air rushed out. I ducked inside and grabbed the morning paper off an empty table.
I confirmed the date and felt a small amount of satisfaction. It was nice to know
when
I was for a change.
My legs felt so light, they were like rubber. I sank into a chair and rested my head on the table. A few deep breaths later, I lifted my eyes and looked around.
The only problem was … I didn’t know what I was looking for. Why would it matter if my father worked for the CIA? Although … come to think of it … it might explain the angry dudes with guns storming into Holly’s dorm room. The idea that my dad had a hand in what happened to Holly made me sick to my stomach. As much as I wished the blame didn’t rest on me, I hated the idea of it being my dad’s fault. Still, if I put on my logical (sane) hat for a minute, there were only a few scenarios that could explain everything. I forced myself to sit down and go through these in my head before I made any crazy, impulsive moves … although it didn’t really matter, since I wasn’t in home base. I shook that thought from my head and set it aside … for now. I grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen to jot these theories down, even though I couldn’t take something back with me. Not in this kind of jump. But seeing the words on paper right now would help.
1. My dad, the CEO, is secretly well trained in the art of killer self-defense and paranoid about the safety of his children to the point where he hires, I don’t know, maybe an injured ex-CIA agent to follow his kids everywhere. But that doesn’t explain Dad’s ability to follow us without me or Courtney noticing!
2. My dad DOES work for the CIA and his day job is a cover, but he’s totally the good guy and it’s not his fault that a couple dudes with guns decided to threaten his one living family member because he refused to hand over a secret government password that, if it fell into the wrong hands, would potentially set off nuclear weapons across the world. He just forgot to tell me to watch out for these dudes. Or maybe they got to him first … in 2009 … I mean, how would I know without going back?
3. My dad does work for the CIA as a spy and found out about me being a time traveler in 2009 and decided that me and anyone I’m associated with are a threat to national (or world) security and must be locked up (or killed) to keep the world from being destroyed.
4. Again, he’s an agent for real, and knew that his own son was a freak and had to be studied with brain scans a few times a year and eventually used by the government as a lab rat. Or sold to Russian spies.
Okay, so maybe these theories sounded a little too much like summer box office hits, but seriously … some CIA agent (or maybe he’s an injured, one-legged ex-CIA agent) was following my twelve-year-old self and the twelve-year-old version of my twin sister. So, yeah, my theories have a
lot
to live up to. And even if options two through four had less than a one percent chance of being possible, it ruled out the solution of just asking my dad, in 2007, what he really did for a living. Although I kind of ruled out confronting him before this list, right after the strangling incident.
I trudged up to the counter to buy some coffee and come up with a plan to spy on the guy Dad had spying on the younger me and Courtney. “Large regular coffee.”