Springback

by Jana Miller

  Prologue

  “Oops!” I couldn’t quite catch myself as I tripped over the sand castle we’d just finished. “Aw, sorry, buddy.”

  “Dat’s otay, Toey!” Max responded, patting my leg. I smiled, at both his adorable forgiveness and the way he pronounced Chloe. I kind of hoped he’d always say it wrong. “We tan build anuddo one!” he declared.

  “How about we do something else?” I suggested hopefully. This had been our fifth sand castle.

  “No!” He grinned up at me with his chubby cheeks and round eyes. “Wet’s do a BID one.”

  “A big one?” I sighed and suppressed a smile. “All right. But this is the last one, okay?”

  It wasn’t hard to entertain a three-year-old, but I was six years older than him, and I didn’t love doing the same thing fifteen times. We built one more castle, then I asked if he was hungry.

  “Yy-yeAH!” he exclaimed, punctuating it with a jump.

  I held his hand as we walked to the houseboat and climbed up into the small main area. I couldn’t see my mom, but I heard her in the back.

  “Go find Mom,” I told Max, and when he headed in her direction, I went back out to find my sister, Janie, to see if she wanted to try jumping off a low cliff with me into the turquoise lake water.

  Fifteen minutes after I left him on the houseboat, my mom was frantically looking for Max.

  Five minutes after that, everyone was looking.

  And ten minutes after that, they found him in the water.

  That night, I started dreaming about glowing, humming, golden strands surrounding me, stretching straight ahead and behind me, their warm glow somehow comforting.

  Four days later, after Max’s funeral, I accidentally used those strands to rewind time.

  Chapter One

  I usually tried not to wonder if my rewinding made the whole world go back in time. Because if I let myself wonder, I would probably have to consider whether or not each reversal was done for a worthy cause.

  The thing is, when you're sixteen, the term worthy cause tends to get a bit hazy.

  “You’re doing it again.”

  I glanced up from my locker’s combination to Maya. “Doing what?”

  “Acting like you’re bored with what I’m saying. Like I’ve already told you.”

  Oops. “Oh—I kind of thought you had. I must have been thinking of a—different story.” I really needed to keep better track of the conversations I rewound. Because Maya had already told me about her little brother’s epic peanut butter mess, but that was yesterday, before I rewound over the end of lunch to get the geometry assignment I’d left in my locker.

  She gave me a slightly irritated look before we were interrupted by Nikki’s voice.

  "You guys. I really need your help."

  I suppressed a smile as I turned to see Nikki's dramatic expression. Her crisis stories were always entertaining. Jordyn was with her, looking almost as stressed out as Nikki.

  "You have to tell me what to do," Nikki continued.

  I glanced at Maya, raising my eyebrows a little, then turned back to Nikki. "Yeah?" I said, but then I saw her expression and realized—too late—that she wasn’t joking this time.

  I didn't even have time to erase my half-smile before Nikki had suddenly shoved me.

  I stumbled back into my locker, and all I could think as the protruding lock dug painfully into my shoulder was that this must have been a serious crisis. My eyes widened as my mind tried to form a response.

  "You're such a jerk, Chloe," she bit out. "Forget it." And with that, she turned and stalked away.

  That just happened, I thought stupidly. Did that just happen?

  Stunned, I reached around to rub the back of my shoulder as I watched her stride away with Jordyn, who gave me an indignant parting look. I blinked rapidly as I tried to process what had just happened.

  "Wow,” Maya said after a second. "That—did not go well."

  Guilt twisted my stomach. “I never know when to take her seriously. Do you think I should—?”

  She shook her head. “No, she completely overreacted. Don't worry about it."

  I bit my lip. I wanted to brush it off, but what if it was a legitimate crisis?

  I watched Nikki turning the corner at the end of the hall. Our friendship was new and tenuous already, and I didn't want to make things awkward for Maya, since she was the one who had invited Nikki and Jordyn to start eating lunch with us.

  Maya tugged on my arm. "Come on. You didn't do anything wrong. She's the one who should be apologizing to you."

  I bit my lip. That may have been true, but what Maya didn't know was that I wouldn't have to actually apologize in order to fix this. And since I’d never be able to stop imagining horrible scenarios where Nikki was in serious trouble, I decided I’d better just try again.

  I closed my eyes, stilled my mind, and welcomed the glow of thousands of golden, humming strands extending infinitely in front of and behind me. I focused on them and mentally took hold of the ones nearest me—though really, when I manipulated any of them, they all responded as one entity—and steadily pulled.

  When I'd first started rewinding seven years ago, I'd used my hands to help me with the idea of pulling, slowly closing my hands around nothing and tugging gently, but I didn't need to anymore; it was second nature now.

  The movement around me came to a halt. My eyes opened, and as I continued to pull, I watched as everyone began moving in reverse, first at a normal pace and then speeding up.

  It only took a few seconds to rewind the two minutes I needed. Nikki and Jordyn backed up quickly and my head whipped back and forth between watching them and looking at Maya as our brief conversation sped along in reverse. Then I felt my body being pulled back against the locker, and then Nikki's hands were against my shoulders, her hurt and incredulity flaring briefly before she was a step away again, asking for our help. Her backwards speech and the unnatural buzz of voices rising and falling incomprehensibly around us were sensations I was used to by now, and rather than frightening me as they had when I was nine, I barely even noticed them as I recomposed myself, ready to be sympathetic when time started again.

  I backed up a little extra so I could respond better to Maya’s story, then I mentally released the time strands.

  The world snapped back into forward mode, and I put a hand on my locker to steady myself. The usual dizziness came in a wave, though not too bad since I hadn't gone back very far.

  “So when I came into the family room,” Maya was saying, “Bodie’s hands were completely covered in peanut butter. And it was on the couch, and smeared on the tile—”

  “Oh, gross!” I exclaimed, glancing at her and making a face as I spun my lock.

  “Yeah, and he’d even started rubbing my mom’s feet with it. I felt so bad.” Her mom was seven months pregnant, and Maya had been in charge of Bodie while she took a nap. “I can’t believe it didn’t wake her up!”

  “Oh, it did,” she said with a smile as I opened my locker. “Right before I came in.”

  And then Nikki's voice came from behind me, as expected.

  "You guys. I really need your help."

  Maya and I turned to see Nikki and Jordyn standing in the same spot as before, and I let Maya answer this time. "What's up?" she asked.

  "Jake hasn't been at track practice once," Nikki reported. "And it's been a full week."

  I watched her, waiting for more, wondering if I was supposed to understand why this was awful.

  "He's the whole reason I joined the team in the first place, you guys. It would have been perfect."

  "But he's not doing track this year,” I said.

  All three girls stared at me for a second.

  "How would you know that?" Jordyn asked.

 
; “I don't know,” I said, kicking myself for speaking up. "I guess I heard it somewhere."

  Maya raised one teasing eyebrow. "Since when do you keep track of sports?" she asked with a smile. "Or of Jake Monson?"

  Apparently I’d never mentioned that I had a class with him. "I just heard it somewhere,” I said with a shrug.

  “And you didn't tell me?"

  My face heated and I turned to open my locker. “I didn't know you were joining track because of him," I insisted. I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation. This was what she’d shoved me into a locker for? I made a mental note to never again care what Nikki thought of me—as if I’d be able to manage that. I closed my eyes to see if the time strands were humming again, but they weren't yet. I would have to wait.

  "Well, anyway, that's not the whole problem," Nikki continued. "Lindy heard me talking to Jordyn about it just barely—"

  "Wait, who's Lindy?" Maya interrupted as I pulled books from my locker.

  His new girlfriend. I almost said it out loud, but I’d just learned my lesson. Instead I closed my locker and told Maya I would see her later.

  * * *

  I shook my head in frustration as I made my way to geometry. Useless rewinding. At least I hadn’t rewound more than a few minutes and given myself a headache. I really couldn’t have a headache for geometry, since it tended to make head to pound all on its own. Today wasn’t bad though, so I had actually relaxed a little by the time I got to my last class, creative writing.

  Until I remembered that we were reading our stories out loud today. In groups. To be critiqued.

  I groaned and sat down, not at all eager to read my story out loud. So far we’d done this with our dystopian stories, poems, historical fiction, and fairy tales, but it still hadn’t gotten any easier. And this particular assignment was especially nerve-wracking for me.

  “Come on, guys, let’s get started,” Mrs. Barton called out before the late bell even rang. “I’ve listed your groups on the board, so find each other and arrange your desks.”

  Chaos ensued, and five minutes later I was seated in a circle with a junior, a senior, and two other sophomores I barely knew. The junior was the only other girl, and the senior was none other than the infamous Jake Monson. I’d only known that little tidbit about him because he’d complained loudly a week or two ago about some injury or illness that was keeping him from running track this year. Now, with Nikki in mind, I studiously ignored him and anything he might be saying to the other people in the group.

  “Okay!” Mrs. Barton said when we were all somewhat arranged. “Superpower stories. Don’t forget to fill out the peer critique form for each person in your group. And go!” She set us loose and the hum of voices filled the classroom. In my group, Evan volunteered to go first, and I put all my effort into listening to his story to avoid stressing about mine.

  The assignment had been to write a story about any superpower. You’d think it would have been easy for me—I can, after all, rewind time—but when I saw it on the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, it had taken me a whole week just to decide it would be okay to write a story about it, and I’d spent the next few weeks agonizing over how to describe it. Would it sound dumb to say “golden strands of time”? Would that even come close to describing the world of brightness my mind entered when I concentrated, the hum and the glow that surrounded me, the tingly sensation of being enveloped by cords extending into space that I could pull just by intending to pull? And what story would I actually tell?

  In the end, I’d made something up. Not about the ability, but the situation. It was something I’d tried to do a few years ago but failed: rescuing a bird as it fell from its nest. I had been at Maya’s house when her brother Nico showed us the bird that had fallen and died, and I’d realized that maybe I could stop it from happening. Unfortunately, I’d only rewound an hour and it had already been dead. I’d had to repeat that hour before I could try again, since I can’t rewind during a repeat.

  After asking Nico if the bird had been alive the day before, I rewound the whole day even though I knew it would give me a migraine. I think I wanted to prove to myself that rewinding could be a good thing, that I could make a real difference instead of just covering up my stupid mistakes. I made up an excuse to detour to Maya’s house on the way to school that morning, and a very awkward excuse for going to her backyard. My relief at seeing the bird sitting in its nest was short-lived. The bird was going to fall during school. If I really wanted to save it, I would have to stay here, sitting under the nest, and wait for it to fall. It could be hours.

  And that just wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t a ditcher of school—or a breaker of rules in general. So I’d gone to school with a migraine, knowing that adorable little bird was going to die and that I couldn’t save it even though I could rewind time. I’d ended up annoyed at myself and my ability, enveloped in the memories of Max that always came with that feeling of helplessness.

  But in my story, the main character saw the bird fall, rewound, and caught it on its way down. Simple. I’d hoped that instead of seeming like a lame use of the superpower, it would be poignant and understated. But now, listening to Evan read his story about stopping a plane hijacking by reading minds, I realized my audience might not appreciate subtlety.

  I tried to focus on his story so I would have something helpful to say, and when it reached its manly and melodramatic conclusion, I tried to channel my inner comic book aficionado before realizing I didn’t have one.

  Jake grinned. “Sweet, man,” he said with a nod. “That was epic.” Dylan, the other sophomore, had similarly effusive things to say, and I tried to decide how honest I should be.

  “It was exciting,” I ended up offering. “I liked the suspense. But maybe you could—I don’t know, back off the macho words a little? Like don’t make the mind-reading guy so—” I searched for the right word but at the looks on everyone’s faces instead just ended with, “macho?” Wasn’t there another word for macho?

  “No way,” Dylan said. “That’s what makes it awesome!”

  I made myself explain rather than retreat into my shell. “I just think maybe it would be cool to have a guy who’s smart and unassuming save the day. Since his ability is reading minds, he could outsmart them instead of turning into a kung fu ninja.”

  Evan looked dubious, and when I looked over to Annie for some backup, she was texting under her desk. I decided to back off. “It’s fine if you like it how it is. I just—it was just a thought I had.”

  Evan just shrugged. I might have rewound at this point, but the last couple of months I’d been getting headaches and waves of vertigo more often. I’d always had slight waves of dizziness at random times, but the frequency and intensity had increased so suddenly that I was getting a little concerned there might be something wrong with the strands—or with me. No reason to ask for more headaches. Too bad I’d wasted a rewind on Nikki, putting me right on the verge of a headache.

  Annie read her story about a girl with the ability to change into any animal and got great feedback on it from all of us, and then I took a deep breath and started reading mine. My heart started pounding when I got to the part about the strands of time. I glanced up to see some slightly interested faces, which I took as a good sign, but when I described pulling on them, I sensed movement and noticed Jake sitting up straighter in his chair. As I read my description of time reversing, I glanced up again to see that his gaze on me was so intent that I thought maybe I had said something horribly wrong and embarrassing. I tried to concentrate on the words on the page but couldn’t help checking his expression again. His eyebrows were scrunched in confusion, but his eyes were huge. I forced myself to ignore him, stumbling through the rest of my story.

  The feedback I got was no better or worse than anyone else’s, though after his bizarre reaction, I’d expected Jake to say something more meaningful than his stiff “Good job. It was…cool.”

  Still, he was obviously distrac
ted, fidgeting in his seat as Dylan started reading. I barely even heard Dylan’s story as I attempted to ignore the feeling of Jake’s eyes on me. I clasped my hands in front of me so I wouldn’t smooth down my hair or check my face for zits, sure that I couldn’t possibly feel any more self-conscious. I’d barely ever talked to Jake. He was a senior, and as far as I knew, pretty popular. And here he was…looking at me. A lot. Like he was trying to figure something out—or tell me something. Had my story given something away?

  Then it was quiet and everyone was staring at me, and I realized it was my turn to give Dylan feedback. I had no idea what his story had been about. “Good job,” I forced out. “I liked the—writing. It was a cool idea.” I looked down at the critique form I was supposed to fill out, feeling guilty for having absolutely nothing coherent to say.

  I blamed crazy-eyed Jake. Every time I looked back at him, he’d look away—except this time, when I looked up at him to hear his story. He caught my eye then looked down at his story pointedly and back up at me, eyebrows raised. If I was supposed to catch some meaning there, it was completely lost on me. I tried not to squirm, wondering if the rest of the group was noticing his behavior.

  His story was about a high school football player who tackled someone so hard he caused a major injury. After describing the incident, he started with the furtive glances again, and I leaned forward, ready to strangle him. What!? I wanted to yell. What is this secret you're trying to communicate? I almost wished I had that mind-reading ability Evan had written about.

  But then he read his next few sentences and I almost forgot to breathe.

  "Watching the paramedics take him away, I couldn’t stand knowing that it was my fault. I closed my eyes to block it all out, and suddenly I was standing in a golden, glowing river. It looked like it went forever, and it felt alive.” He glanced up at me again and I stilled. “In a way it was alive, because it was the River of Time.” Another look at me, then at the others in the group.

  I had to remind myself to breathe.

  “I knelt down in the glowing river and lowered my hands into it and took hold of the strands that made it up. Even though it looked like water, those strands were actually time itself. The river slowed down, stopped, and reversed.”