Springback

by Jana Miller

  I lifted one hand in a wave before turning my bike around and heading home.

  * * *

  When I got home, my mom showed me the website where she’d been linking our family tree to others she’d found online. I tried to be interested—both for her sake and because I knew it could be important.

  “So this is my mom here, and her mom was a Wright,” she said, pointing to the names on the screen. “She’s the one who moved here from Show Low after she got married. But if you go back farther, these ones came from New York…”

  “Can you print that out for me?” I asked. I had no interest in any of that right now—no desire to learn about the ancestors who had cursed me with this stupid gift.

  Chapter Eleven

  I went out of my way to avoid Jake at school the next day—walking a different way to history so I wouldn’t pass him, staying in the library at lunch, and getting to creative writing right before the bell rang so he couldn’t talk to me before class. He texted me several times during the day, but I ignored those. I wasn’t mad at him—at least I didn’t think I was. I was mad at Leah, a little embarrassed about my outburst the day before, and, I finally admitted to myself, a little jealous that Jake was the one Leah would call instead of me. Hadn’t I been her friend first?

  I couldn’t avoid him forever, though, and he caught up to me at the end of school.

  “Chloe, wait.”

  I glanced at him and kept walking.

  “Chloe.”

  “What?”

  It was a couple seconds before he responded, “What do you mean, what? You’ve been avoiding me all day. Are you mad at me?”

  I shook my head quickly.

  “Are you mad at Leah?”

  I started to shake my head again but then stopped. “I don’t know. Kind of.”

  He sighed. “Are you still going to help us?”

  I bristled a little at the “us” but didn’t let myself say anything about that. “Yeah, I’m still helping.”

  “Really? Because you seem a little—”

  “I’m still helping, Jake. I’m doing my part. I asked my mom about the journals.” I knew I sounded snippy, but I was having a hard time not being—well, petty. I pressed my lips together, a little embarrassed and wishing I could rewind this conversation. This whole day. Maybe the whole week . . .

  Jake hadn’t responded, so I peeked over at him. His hands were shoved in his pockets and he was watching me, nodding slowly. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Well, I’ll let you go then.” He turned to leave.

  I sighed but couldn’t think of anything to say. “See ya,” I said in a small voice before going to meet Maya.

  * * *

  “Oh good, you’re home,” Maya’s mom said from her perpetual place on the couch when we walked in the door after school the next day. “I need someone to make me cookies.” She’d been on partial bed rest for a while now, so Maya did a lot of baking, cleaning, and taking care of her brothers. Her mom tended to need a lot of cookies. I didn’t blame her.

  I laughed, glad to have a distraction from the constant stream of strangeness that my life had become. “I think we can handle that.”

  “Chloe!!” Curly-haired Bodie came barreling into the room and trapped my legs in a hug.

  “Bodie!” I answered. “Did you help your mom today?”

  “No.” He let go and started down the hall. “I show you my new truck!” He ran off.

  “Well, at least he’s honest,” his mom said drily.

  “What kind of cookies do you want?” Maya asked her as we both set our backpacks down.

  “Surprise me.”

  We went with chocolate chip since we both had the recipe memorized. Her mom kept a never-ending supply of chocolate chips, brown sugar, and flour. Bodie brought his new truck in for me to admire. It was the same “new truck” he’d shown me four times before.

  “So what did you do on Saturday?” Maya asked as we pulled out ingredients from cupboards.

  My stomach flipped at the question. I’d met Leah at the park with Jake on Saturday, then we’d gone to meet Gene. For a few seconds my mind got stuck on that and I couldn’t remember the rest of the day.

  “Oh,” I said after a pause. “We took the canoe to Lake Mary.”

  “Cool! Was it cold?”

  “It was windy, and Janie claimed it was freezing when I ‘accidentally’ tipped our canoe, but . . .” Maya laughed. “Okay, yeah, the water was pretty freezing.”

  “But it was worth it?”

  I gave an innocent smile and a shrug.

  It took us less than ten minutes to get the dough ready. “We’re such professionals,” I said.

  “We should probably have our own baking show,” she agreed.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Jake as I was putting dough on trays. I licked my fingers and pulled it out.

  Jake: Are you still ignoring me?

  Was I? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I started a couple different responses and erased them.

  I didn’t realize how lost in thought I’d become until Maya asked, “Who’s that?”

  I glanced up at her. “Oh. Uh, my mom.” I slid the phone back into my pocket and washed my hands again before scooping more cookie dough balls onto the tray to deflect any more questions. “Are these too big?” I asked.

  “Um, is there even such a thing?”

  While the cookies baked, we went to help Nico clean his room, since dirty clothes on the floor seem to be invisible to eight-year-olds if they’re left on their own.

  I liked helping with her brothers. They made me think about what Max would be like. He would have been about ten now, right between Nico and Maya’s other brother, Corbin. I liked teasing them and messing up their hair and wondering if Max’s hair would have stayed blonde like mine or gone darker like Janie’s.

  “I already cleaned up in here,” Nico complained.

  “There are still like five pairs of pants shoved under your bed,” Maya pointed out.

  I was sitting on the floor, gathering books, when I got another text.

  Jake: I need to talk to you.

  Chloe: About what?

  Jake: Leah’s mom told her to practice stopping time.

  I blew my breath out in annoyance.

  Chloe: Is she not talking to me or something?

  Jake: What do you mean?

  Chloe: Why doesn’t she just tell me? Are you the messenger now or something?

  He didn’t answer immediately, so I started to put it away, ignoring the fact that my question didn’t make sense since Leah didn’t even have my number. But then it buzzed with a call—from Jake. I rolled my eyes and declined it, then dropped the phone face-down on the floor next to me with a huff before looking up to see Maya watching me.

  “Is that still…your mom?” she asked. I panicked a little as she added, “Because if it is, this is like the biggest fight you’ve ever had with her.”

  I pressed my lips together. She was right; I didn’t fight with my mom. I didn’t sass her over text and I didn’t make faces like the ones I must have been making about Jake. “No,” I said slowly. “It’s Jake.”

  “Ooh,” Nico said. “Who’s Jake?”

  I glanced over at him. “You’re still not done putting your pants away?”

  The deflection didn’t work. “Is he your boyfriend?” he demanded, his face a mask of pure disgust.

  “No, he’s not my boyfriend.” I rolled my eyes. “He’s barely even my friend.”

  “Jake Monson?” Maya asked.

  “Yeah, from my creative writing class.”

  “You guys text?” Her face was skeptical.

  “Yeah. I mean, not a lot.” I could feel my cheeks getting warmer by the second. “This is maybe the second time.” I should be able to talk about this, but how could I explain anything about my friendship with Jake while still hiding everything about rewinding?

  “Wait, was he the one who texted you before—in the kitchen?”


  I swallowed, embarrassed that I’d lied. “Yes,” I confessed, giving her my most apologetic look.

  “About what?” she asked, obviously confused. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t want it to be all weird. Because even I think it’s weird.”

  “You’re weird!” Nico shot at me.

  “No, you are!” I answered automatically, mostly just glad to have an excuse to look away from Maya. I’d forgotten he was in the room.

  She didn’t seem to know what to say, and I wasn’t sure if she was suspicious, annoyed, or just confused. “What’s weird about it? Do you…like him?” she finally asked.

  “No,” I said quickly. “Ew, no. We’re just friends.” And I wasn’t lying. Jake was more like an annoying brother to me than anything.

  “Ew?” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think most people think of Jake as ew.”

  Nico cracked up. I was pretty sure it was a fake laugh, because it was super loud. “EW! Jake is dee-sgusting!” he announced.

  “Nico, go check the cookies,” Maya commanded.

  He jumped up and ran from the room at the mention of cookies, yelling about how Jake was ew and I was weird and Jake was my boyfriend.

  “I don’t mean he’s gross,” I told Maya, somewhere between rolling my eyes and laughing at Nico. “I just mean—” What did I mean? I shrugged. “I’ve never thought of him like that.”

  “MAYA! The cookies are burning!!” Nico yelled from the other room.

  “Oh crap, did we set a timer?” she asked, jumping up.

  Apparently we hadn’t. The cookies were a deep brown, and while they weren’t burnt to a crisp, we definitely wouldn’t enjoy eating them. After just one look at the tray, I closed my eyes and tugged on the strands of time, completely forgetting there was anything wrong with them.

  I got some uncomfortable zings as I rewound the last five minutes, and I took it as a two-for-one kind of deal that Maya and Nico wouldn’t remember the awkward conversation we’d just had. I let go of the strands as Maya was helping Nico pick up a pile of books from his floor, and to cover my vertigo I focused on picking up some little ripped-up pieces of paper.

  “Did we set a timer?” I asked when the wave had passed, and Maya’s head popped up. “Oh shoot, I’m not sure.”

  My phone buzzed while she was gone checking them, but I ignored it this time.

  * * *

  I had four texts and two missed calls from Jake when I left Maya’s house.

  I rolled my eyes as I read them.

  Jake: Are you still ignoring me?

  Jake: Looks like you are.

  Jake: I need to talk to you.

  Jake: I’m coming to your house if you don’t call me.

  He certainly knew how to get my attention. Alarmed, I called him as soon as I was in my room with the door closed.

  “Is me coming over there really such a threat?” he asked without preamble.

  I let out a small laugh. “No, and that’s not why I wasn’t answering you. I was with Maya, and it’s weird to text you around her.”

  I detected a bit of a groan from him as he commented, “I won’t even ask what’s so weird about it.”

  “So what’s so important?” I asked.

  “I called Leah today and she said her mom told her to practice stopping time.”

  “Stopping time? Why?”

  “Lillian didn’t tell her why, just said they were going to do something important.”

  “Like enter the Ring of Time,” I said. “You think Lillian wants Leah to help her?”

  “Definitely. Which means that we need to get good at it too.”

  “What? Why?”

  He scoffed a little. “So we can enter it. To fix it.”

  I couldn’t even imagine trying to enter the Ring, but it made sense. “Okay, did Leah mention how to do that?”

  He paused for a second. “You mean you don’t know how?”

  “Well, I’ve never done it successfully—”

  “So can I come over so we can practice?”

  “What? Now? No,” I said, flustered.

  “Why not? Who knows when she’s planning to do this? We need to get a jump on her somehow.”

  I groaned. “Fine,” I said, “but give me a couple hours. And text me when you get here and I’ll let you in the side gate. My parents would be really weird about you being here.”

  He was kind enough to not ask why they would be weird. I didn’t want to mention how no boys ever came to hang out with me.

  When I went downstairs for dinner, my mom handed me a couple pages of our family tree. “Did you forget about these?” she asked.

  “Oh!” I said as I scanned it. “Yeah, I did.” I’d never even taken them out of the printer. “Thanks.” I looked up at her. “Have you heard anything about that box of journals and stuff?”

  “No, but it’s only been a couple days…”

  But if she said anything else, I didn’t hear her, because my eyes caught on the name Melvin Wright.

  * * *

  Jake texted at eight thirty to say he was on his way, and I went out to wait for him.

  My stomach was in knots by the time I let him through the side gate into the back yard, my whole body shivering from nerves and cold. I shoved the family tree at him. “Melvin Wright,” I said, pointing. “Born in New York in 1811.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “No way! Do you think that’s him?”

  I shrugged. “That’s a long way back,” I said. “How would Leah’s grandpa know anything about a journal from two hundred years ago?”

  He scoffed. “How do they know any of this stuff?” he asked. “They’re just weird.”

  His flippancy actually relaxed me a little. “I’ll let you know if I hear back about the journals,” I said. “And we can look up Melvin Wright in the mean time.”

  “Sweet,” he said, handing the pages back to me. “And tonight, we get to practice stopping time. And then figure out how to stop it at the same time.”

  I looked at him askance. “At the same time? Why? How is that even possible? Or necessary?”

  “I don’t know.” He waved his hands as if to shoo me away. “Quit asking me so many questions. I’m just telling you what she said.”

  I changed my question to a statement. “It’s just weird that she gave you such vague instructions.” What good would it do to stop it simultaneously? “If it’s stopped, it’s stopped, right?”

  “I think she was in a hurry,” he said with a shrug. “She was kind of whispering, so maybe she was afraid her mom would hear her. Let’s just try it, okay?”

  I hoped it would be less uncomfortable than rewinding with the strobing strands.

  We sat in our plastic patio chairs and closed our eyes. “Let me know if you have any luck,” I said as I visualized the strands, trying to still my body and my mind as much as possible. Then I grasped them and tried to hold them still.

  Then I tried again.

  As did Jake.

  “This is stupid,” I said. “Time wants to move. We can’t just hold it still. I can’t make my mind still enough.”

  Jake rubbed at his eyes and forehead. “Maybe we don’t need to actually hold it,” he suggested. “Maybe we just—”

  And then he opened his eyes and blinked at me. “Did you feel that?”

  I blinked back. “Feel what?”

  “I did it!”

  I just raised questioning eyebrows at him.

  “I stopped time, for just a second. I made it pause.”

  “What? How?”

  “You just—imagine it stopped, I guess. You don’t grab the cords.”

  It couldn’t possibly be that easy.

  “Try it,” he challenged when I looked at him skeptically.

  “Okay . . .” I closed my eyes.

  “Keep your eyes open, so you can see it stop.”

  “Okay,” I said again, and I looked at him. I imagined him pausing, imagined the sounds and the breeze hold
ing still.

  It didn’t work. Jake watched me expectantly.

  “Any other instructions?” I asked. “It’s not working.”

  “I don’t know. You just…decide they should stop.”

  “Decide.”

  “Yeah. See the cords and decide.”

  I hadn’t visualized the cords, because he’d said not to close my eyes and not to grab them. I opened up that part of my mind to the humming and the sparking, imagined it all stopped, and then—

  It did. The strands stopped. And I brought myself back to the moment and saw that Jake’s face was frozen. I was so startled that I lost my concentration and time started back up.

  “That’s crazy!” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe it’s so easy!”

  “Right?” Jake agreed. “I don’t even see why we would need to practice.”

  But we did, because it was fun. The silence during a time pause was calming but a little bit eerie, and seeing somebody’s face and body absolutely frozen was odd, to say the least. We both had several more successful time pauses before we decided to try it simultaneously.

  “So what should we do, just count to three?” Jake asked.

  “I guess.” I didn’t have a better idea.

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s both access the cords first, and then I’ll count, okay?”

  He nodded and I took a deep breath and visualized the cords.

  And then I felt Jake’s presence in them as well.

  “Whoa,” Jake said. It was a weird feeling.

  “Okay,” I said. “One, two—”

  But then there was a yanking sensation from Jake and we were rewinding. Not me—I couldn’t control or stop it—and not only Jake, because I was in it and aware of it. It was both of us. We were rewinding together.

  We were already into yesterday and gaining speed. Everything started going by in such a blur that I could barely see anything. A few days passed as I realized what was happening, and heat started building behind my eyes.

  I tried to make it stop, afraid we’d lose control or pass out, but I wasn’t the one in control. Why wasn’t Jake stopping it? Did he want to go back days or weeks? Because we were going fast enough to do just that.