Springback

by Jana Miller

  My heebie-jeebies multiplied and I couldn't contain my resentment anymore. “Once a year until recently,” I surmised. “Until you started coming to the library.” Her expression fell into something like remorse as she opened her mouth and then closed it again. “What would you have done if I was 'misusing' it?"

  Her eyes dropped momentarily to her hands, which were once again folded on the table, then back up at me resolutely. "I'm not sure. I was just supposed to tell my mom if anything seemed off."

  “Off?” I repeated, not even wanting to know exactly what that meant. “And have I? Have I ever seemed off?”

  She shook her head, and I blew out a disgusted breath as Jake took over, changing the subject. “So, the Wrights and the—what's your last name, Leah?”

  “Moore. My mom’s last name is Winters—that’s my dad’s last name, but I decided to go back to her maiden name after he left, to match my grandpa. Anyway, we came through the Stoneman line, the original rewinders.“

  None of those names meant anything to me, but I was too busy taking deep breaths to curb my anger enough to focus on the next thing.

  “So I’m related to the Stonemans,” Jake said, and Leah nodded. “Okay, so—” He glanced at me, uncertain where to go from here.

  “Tell us about your mom,” I said abruptly, not eager to hear about whatever weird family history had led to this. “What makes you think she broke the Ring?”

  Leah raised her eyebrows at my abrupt change of topic but didn’t seem too fazed. “Well, I think the thing that triggered my mom’s obsession with it was finding my grandpa’s journal.” She reached into her bag and pulled out an old leather book. “He has dementia, so we’ve never known how much of what he’s said was true, and there are parts of his life that he just doesn’t remember at all. So she must have been ecstatic to find this.”

  She opened the journal and set it on the table, the cursive writing upside-down from my perspective.

  “When he was in his fifties, Grandpa Gene was planning to enter the Ring of Time,” she explained. “To see if he could become —”

  “A Master of Time?” Jake interjected eagerly.

  Leah nodded.

  And now Gene’s journal had given his daughter the same idea. “So…I guess it didn’t work for him?” I asked.

  “I guess not,” she agreed. “Unless he got in and changed things that we don’t know about? Or somehow lost the ‘Master of Time’ abilities?”

  “Can he still rewind?” Jake asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think he can control it. He’s always forgetting things that just barely happened and I know that could just be dementia, but to me it feels more like”—she bit her lip in thought—“like he’s rewinding but he doesn’t remember it. Almost like the opposite of what should happen.”

  “Do you feel jolts from him?” I asked.

  “We don’t. Which is why it seems more like dementia. But I’m almost sure that he just does it so naturally that we don’t feel anything from him. There have just been too many times when he acts like…I don’t know, like somebody else rewound, and he’s the only one who doesn’t remember. It’s like he resets or something.”

  I had a hard time imagining what that would be like, but I decided not to press it. “Okay, so…your mom just found this journal recently?”

  Leah shook her head. “No. I think she’s had it for about a month. After we started feeling Jake’s springbacks, she was obsessed with figuring out who it was so we could—” she hesitated for the briefest moment “—make sure they didn’t abuse the power. It’s our responsibility to protect the ability. It can be dangerous in the wrong hands. After a few days of that, she came up with this Master of Time idea, and she totally fixated on it.”

  Her mom still sounded crazy, though I agreed that obviously it would be dangerous in the wrong hands.

  “The scary thing is,” she said, “that’s exactly when Grandpa’s journal stops—right when he was about to enter the Ring. He was planning to do it; he’d chosen a place and time, and then it just stops. Obviously he didn’t die or anything, but something must have gone wrong.”

  “Or . . .” Jake said, “something might have gone right. What if he did get it open, and he was so busy doing crazy time stuff that he didn’t have time to write? Or what if he just didn’t want to share the secret?”

  “Yeah…I guess that’s possible,” she mused, staring down at the journal again. “I found this in my mom’s room about a week before the big springback. She’d never told me about it, so I was suspicious, and after I read it, I got really worried.” She looked from Jake to me and back a couple times. “Whatever happened to Grandpa when he tried…it wasn’t good. I didn’t want that to happen to her. I started snooping on her computer, to see if she’d been researching any of this.” She tapped the journal. I found some crazy websites she’d been looking at.”

  “What kind of crazy?” Jake asked.

  “Like…spiritual vortexes, and symbolism, and…the metaphysical powers of metals and rocks? Weird pagan stuff.”

  Some of it sounded a little familiar—the kind of thing I’d come across when researching time manipulation, and nothing I wanted to get into—but rocks? “How do rocks have anything to do with entering the Ring?” I asked. “How do you enter the Ring?”

  “Grandpa didn’t just have one solid plan for entering the Ring. He had a few ideas, but he didn’t have a good source, just stories passed down in my family. He had to experiment. But…it’s all pretty vague.”

  I took a deep breath, pushing down my annoyance at the complete lack of answers. “Okay, so...what’s your plan?”

  “Well, after the springback, I heard my grandpa saying something from his room, so I went to check on him.”

  That surprised me. “You went to check on him? I couldn’t even open my eyes after the springback. No way would I have been able to get out of bed.”

  “Oh, it definitely wasn’t right after. It was probably a few hours later. But he was wide awake, and he seemed more lucid than he’s been in years. I asked if he was okay and just said something like, ‘I should never have done it without Melvin’s journal. And now she’s doing it too.’ Then he just went back to sleep.”

  “Melvin’s journal?” Jake repeated.

  She nodded. “Yeah. When he woke up later, he was back to normal—normal for him, anyway. I tried to ask him who Melvin is, but he was totally confused again.”

  “And ‘now she’s doing it too?’” I asked. “Meaning your mom? How would your grandpa know what she was doing?” I asked.

  She lifted her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe he understands more than we think. Or maybe he just…recognized the feeling or something. Either way, it had to have been her. There’s nobody else who could have caused that.” She looked from me to Jake. “Unless one of you did it,” she added drily.

  “How can you be so sure that somebody caused it at all?” Jake asked. “What if it’s just an aberration in the Ring? Isn’t there some other reason it could be going haywire?”

  Leah raised an eyebrow. “Right when she’s been researching solar eclipses and moon phases and metaphysical rocks?” she challenged. I was about to say that I was pretty sure those things weren’t even related to time manipulation, but then she added, “Right after she found her dad’s journal about entering the Ring of time?”

  Jake’s mouth was open for a moment before he finally conceded, “Fair point.”

  “So if we want to understand what your mom did to the Ring, maybe we need to find out what went wrong with Gene,” Jake said. “When he tried to enter the Ring.”

  “So we probably need to find out who Melvin is,” I said. “And what was so important that’s in his journal.”

  Leah nodded, looking almost sheepish. She must have known how impossible it sounded. “I’ve tried asking him about entering the Ring, but it’s hard to know how much of what he says is right. He drifts in and out, and I’m never sure when he’s actually with me.
”

  “And all he said was the thing about Melvin’s journal?” I asked.

  “That and something about a square,” she said. “Completing the square, maybe?” She lifted a hand with a bewildered shrug. “Something like that. I have no idea.”

  “Well, if this Melvin person’s journal would have helped him with the Ring, it probably has instructions or something,” Jake reasoned. “So he must be in one of our families, right?”

  “Probably,” Leah agreed.

  I nodded, thinking. “I’ll see what I can find out about the Wrights. Look for a Melvin.”

  “And maybe we can find something about the accident my mom is so obsessed with,” Leah added, and I tensed again. “It could give us a clue to…something,” she said, not looking at me.

  “Accident?” Jake asked.

  “The thing that made the Wrights stop rewinding,” Leah explained. “Almost a hundred years ago.” She hesitated just a second before adding, “My family blames a lot on that.”

  “You mean on them,” I interjected. “On my family.”

  “What do you know about it?” Jake asked, ignoring both my tension and Leah’s discomfort.

  “Only what my mom has said, and…I don’t know how much of it is true. We should see if we can find some actual information on it.”

  I refrained from saying something snarky about her mom, reminding myself that my bratty attitude wasn’t helping things.

  “Can we meet Grandpa Gene?” Jake suddenly asked.

  Leah shrugged. “Sure. You want to go now? I don’t think my mom is home.”

  * * *

  Grandpa Gene was sitting in a recliner, his head back and his eyes closed, when we found him in the…parlor? I didn’t know what to call all the rooms in this massive house. It wasn’t really a den or a living room, but maybe a sitting room. His hair was white, and I was surprised at how old he looked compared to my grandparents. I wondered if he was much older than them.

  “Grandpa,” Leah said softly. “I have some friends I want you to meet.”

  Gene’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled at her. “There’s my sweet girl,” he said, his voice tired but delighted. “There’s my sweet girl.”

  Leah smiled. “This is Chloe and Jake,” she said.

  “Oh, great,” he said slowly. “Have I met them before?”

  “Nope,” Leah responded, tapping his propped-up, slippered foot and then sitting on a couch and motioning for us to do the same. “First time.”

  “Hi,” I offered.

  “Chloe is descended from the Wrights. Do you know anything about that family?”

  “The Wrights,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, sure. The Wrights were great family friends with my grandparents. Did everything together.”

  “Like pulling time?” Leah prompted.

  “Ohhh, yes,” he responded, leaning his head back again and closing his eyes. “I did a lot of that. Still do, I think.” His lips curved up in a satisfied smile. “I almost . . .” His eyes came open again and he looked at us. “Well, hello there,” he greeted us. “I’m Gene.”

  Jake and I looked at each other and then back at him.

  “Nice to meet you, Gene,” Jake said. “I’m Jake.”

  “These are my friends,” Leah told her grandpa again. “We were wondering about Melvin’s journal.”

  Gene’s forehead furrowed momentarily. “Journal?” he repeated. His eyes drifted closed. “Well now, I believe I used to keep a journal, but I’m not sure where that ended up.”

  Leah seemed shocked that he remembered anything about his own journal. “No, Grandpa,” he said, “Melvin’s journal. Do you know who Melvin was?”

  But Gene’s breathing was deep now, like he’d already fallen asleep again.

  Leah blew out a frustrated sigh. “This is what it’s like,” she said, gesturing to him. “He’s either confused or asleep.”

  The faint rumbling of a garage door sounded and Leah’s head snapped in its direction.

  From what Leah had said, I did not want to meet Lillian. And from the look on Leah’s face, I knew she was wondering how she would explain our presence in her house.

  Instinctively, I reached for the strands to rewind, momentarily forgetting about the strobing.

  But it was more than strobing now. The strands seemed to be sparking. Crackling and shooting out sparks, like they wanted to catch fire. I flinched out of the strands, and even though I knew—or was pretty sure—that the Ring of Time couldn’t actually catch fire, there was no telling what it actually would do as it got worse.

  Jake was watching me curiously.

  “We’ve got to go,” I told him in a low voice, then I turned to Gene, whose eyes had opened again at the sound of the garage door. “It was nice to meet you,” I told him. “Maybe we can visit you again sometime.”

  “Oh, well now, I’m sure that would be just fine,” he replied, his eyes closing again.

  Leah had a pained look on her face. “Sorry,” she whispered, following us toward the front door. “I don’t know why she’s back already—”

  I wanted to tell her the strands were worse, but we heard the garage door close, and then the kitchen door opened right as Jake and I left the house.

  Chapter Ten

  I was sort of lost in my own world as I thought about all I’d learned that day, so I may have been interrupting my mom’s argument with Janie at dinner when I asked, “Mom, do you know of any old family journals or pictures from your side of the family?”

  Janie glared at me, though with a trace of confusion. Yup, I had interrupted.

  “Uh, I’m not sure, honey,” my mom answered. “Any family in particular?”

  I cleared my throat a little; I hadn’t really prepared a cover story. “Well, I don’t really know much about the Wrights . . .”

  She scrunched her forehead, thinking. “Well, I’ve never seen any, but it seems like there was some discussion with my cousins a few years ago about what to do with a box of old family stuff…I don’t even remember what.”

  “Really? Do you remember who has it?”

  “Actually, I think they were talking about giving them to a family history repository or something in Show Low or Snowflake. I didn’t know you could do that, but I guess they’ll keep them for you. Maybe even digitize them.”

  My shoulders fell. Snowflake or Show Low would be at least a two-hour drive. “Why would they take them there?”

  “That’s where the Wrights came from. They were one of the first families in Snowflake.”

  Well, that was something. If they had been among the settlers there, maybe they were well-known enough that there would be information about them somewhere. I didn’t know anything about repositories, but digitized records would probably be much easier to find than actual journals. It would at least be organized.

  “Do you think you could find out what happened to them?”

  “Yeah, I can try,” she answered, then smiled. “This will be fun, like a little treasure hunt! I really should know more about my family history, so this will be perfect. We can do it together. We could even get on one of those family history sites and figure out our family tree.”

  A moment of panic gripped me. She couldn’t read the journals.

  If they existed. And if they said anything about time manipulation.

  I mentally sighed. What were the chances that anything like that could have gone unnoticed for so long? It had been almost a hundred years, if Leah was right.

  “I’ll email some cousins after dinner,” Mom said.

  * * *

  This was getting ridiculous.

  I needed be able to talk to Jake at school.

  Jake and I were friends, but I’d continued to “sneak around” him, as he put it.

  I knew I shouldn’t be nervous about it, but of course I was as I gathered up my things at the end of class. He smiled at me but passed my desk without saying anything—following the rules I’d insisted on—and I took a deep breath as I stood up
to follow him.

  “Hey,” I said to his back as we left creative writing.

  He did a double take and pulled his head back a little. “Hey,” he said.

  “Can I—get a ride home?”

  He raised his eyebrows, then leaned in a little. “Like—from here? I don’t have to pick you up somewhere else?”

  I bit back a smile. “Yes, from here. But we’ll have to pick up Janie.”

  “Awesome. I’ve been wanting to meet her.”

  I looked at him dubiously. “Yeah, right.”

  And just like that, I had school-friended Jake.

  I kept an eye out for judgy looks as we walked out to his car together—people wondering why someone like me was walking with someone like Jake—but other than a couple of his friends saying bye to him, nobody seemed to notice us.

  When we neared the junior high, I pointed out the corner where I always met Janie, and I actually enjoyed her shocked expression when Jake pulled over and I rolled down the window.

  “Hey, get in.”

  Her forehead wrinkled and she glanced around for a moment before opening the back door and getting in.

  “Janie, this is Jake,” I told her over my shoulder. “He’s in my creative writing class.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Jake.”

  “Hey,” he answered, pulling back onto the road.

  Then Janie’s voice changed, as if she’d figured something out. “O-o-ohh. Hi-i-i, Jake.” I glared at the insinuation in her voice. I stubbornly decided not to address her immaturity.

  But Jake did. He glanced at her, eyebrows raised, and mimicked her up-and-down tone with a smile. “Hi-i-i, Janie.”

  I laughed to myself as we turned the corner toward our neighborhood and Janie didn’t respond.

  * * *

  Five minutes after Jake dropped me off, he called me.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said without preamble.

  My brow furrowed. What could have happened in the last five minutes? “Okay…what’s up?”

  “Can you come back outside?”

  Startled, I peeked out the front window and saw his car parked there. “Have you been outside my house this whole time?”