Springback

by Jana Miller

  The heat and the sting of the sparking cords was finally too much for me. I was afraid I would black out, so I yanked hard.

  The strands stopped suddenly, and then we were speeding back the other way—speeding forward through time.

  It was like we’d pulled a rubber band back too tight, and now we’d lost control and it was going to fling us back to where we’d started from.

  There was too much heat, too much pressure. Too many sparks and too many days passing by in a blur. All of the sensations overwhelmed me, and before we’d even made it back to my backyard, I’d lost consciousness.

  * * *

  Angry voices were the first thing I registered. Angry voices followed by an apologetic voice. Then an angry one, then a defensive one.

  I cracked one eye open, and once the spinning stopped I realized I was lying on my living room couch and that the angry voices were my parents. I didn’t really hear them angry all that often, so I was confused.

  Until I heard Jake’s voice. Tired and wandering from resigned to frustrated to defensive to apologetic. I followed the sound of his voice with my eye and saw him sitting on the other couch, slumped over with his head in his hands as he tried to answer my parents’ unanswerable questions.

  “It’s just a dumb game,” he was saying. “I know we shouldn’t have—“

  “Just a dumb game?” my mom screeched. “She’s been passed out for over fifteen minutes! I’d say that’s more than a dumb game.”

  “I’m calling 911,” my dad said.

  “No!” Jake blurted, and my dad dove in again.

  “I want to know what you were really doing back there. Obviously you’re not doing so great either. Are you both drunk? Did you give her something?”

  “No!” Jake insisted, sounding almost offended. “I told you, we—”

  “No,” I slurred. “He didn’t—give me—“ I tried to sit up, but my head was too heavy and my nausea protested as well.

  “Chloe!” Mom exclaimed, rushing over to me. “What happened? What were you thinking? What did you do?”

  I shook my head slowly. “Nothing, we—“

  “I told you,” Jake interrupted. “We were playing a game.”

  I closed my eyes and my mom prompted, “Chloe?”

  “Yeah, it was a game,” I said, racking my brain for a clue as to what Jake had told them.

  “You were playing a game where you make each other pass out?” my mom asked dubiously.

  I vaguely remembered hearing about kids doing that. It had to be the stupidest game in the world, but I didn’t have a better explanation to offer. “Yeah.”

  “Chloe, do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” Dad asked. “And why did you have a boy over in the middle of the night?” That was an exaggeration. It wasn’t even nine. Maybe a little later, depending on how long I’d been out. “We’re going to be calling your mother,” Dad told Jake.

  I tried to sit up as Jake’s head shot up. “You can’t. She’s at work.”

  I was almost positive that Jake’s mom didn’t work at night, but I kept my mouth shut and managed to maneuver into the same head-in-hands position as Jake.

  “Chloe, I asked you a question.” My dad’s voice sounded and felt like thunder pounding in my skull.

  “You did…?” I muttered.

  “Honey,” my mom interjected, “what were you doing with this boy in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s not—” I began, but Jake cleared his throat.

  “I needed some help,” he claimed. “Some advice. My mom—things at home—have been hard.” It sounded pretty lame to me, but my parents paused.

  “And it couldn’t wait until morning? My dad finally asked. “You had to come over at one in the morning . . .”

  I missed the rest of what he said as my head snapped toward the clock. I blinked a couple times and squinted at it. It was one twenty in the morning. What the—?

  My parents continued grilling Jake about how a family crisis turned into a dangerous passing-out game and I just had to trust that Jake’s lying skills would continue to keep him out of major trouble as I tried to process what had happened. Had we fast-forwarded past the rewind start point?

  I nodded mutely when my dad informed me I was grounded.

  My parents had said I’d been passed out for the last fifteen minutes. Had Jake passed out too? Had they come outside and found us?

  Jake was ushered unceremoniously out the front door after my parents demanded his mom’s phone number and informed him they’d be calling the next day, and then I was being lectured again, this time by my mom.

  “…woken up in the middle of the night by some boy pounding on the back door, saying you won’t wake up? Do you have any idea? We thought you were in bed! What would have happened if…”

  I tuned her out and tried to fit the pieces together, tried to figure out what it could mean. We had messed up trying to simultaneously stop time, that much was clear. But why had Jake pulled, and why had I been a part of his rewind? I wondered how long Jake had waited for me to wake up before pounding on our door. He must have been terrified if he had been willing to risk the wrath of my parents. I wondered why he hadn’t rewound over the whole thing. He must have been too groggy. Maybe I could rewind over it tomorrow; for now, I couldn’t even focus enough to visualize the cords.

  My parents’ rant ended and I trudged up the stairs, holding on to the railing for support, wondering what had happened.

  Chapter Twelve

  I received no headache sympathy from my mom the next morning as she practically shoved my prescription bottle into my hands.

  Janie stared at me wide-eyed as my mom stalked out of the kitchen. “Whoa, what’s with her?”

  I sighed as I got down a glass. “She’s ticked because Jake came over last night.”

  “What?”

  I rolled my eyes as I filled the glass with water. “He just needed to talk to me about something,” I said.

  “And?”

  I lifted one shoulder and avoided the question by taking my meds. But she refused to let it drop, just watching me with a look that told me she knew there was way more to the story. I finally sighed. “I’ll tell you about it after school if you convince mom to give us a ride,” I said. Normally she wouldn’t make me walk to school with a migraine, but…

  “Wow, she must be really mad.”

  I nodded.

  She did drive us to school, but she made it very clear that it was only because Janie needed to be early.

  Thank you, I mouthed to Janie when she got out of the car, and she gave me a pointed look to remind me that I owed her an explanation.

  I’d have to come up with one before school ended.

  I caught up to Jake between second and third hour. “What happened last night?”

  Jake shook his head. “I have no idea. I guess I accidentally pulled, but then I couldn’t stop, and I could feel you pulling, and it was like I had no control.”

  “Me? I wasn’t pulling. It was like you were dragging me along with you, and I really had no control. So did you pass out too?”

  He nodded. “I woke up around twelve thirty and waited for you to wake up—”

  “We were seriously out for three hours?”

  “Yeah,” he said heavily. “I was afraid you would go into a coma or something, so I finally knocked on the back door and got your parents’ attention. They were pissed.” Yeah, I had noticed that. “I made up a story about playing that dumb passing-out game. I don’t think they believed me.”

  “Yeah, neither do I,” I agreed, then shook my head.

  “How far do you think we rewound?” he asked me.

  “I have no idea,” I answered, “but it was way farther than I’ve ever gone. I couldn’t keep track, but there were a lot of nights. It must have been over a week, maybe even two. I finally yanked as hard as I could and somehow took control.”

  I could see his mind working even before he asked. “How far do you think we could go ba
ck if we tried that again?”

  I just stared at him. He wanted to repeat that? But then I realized: it was a good question—and an important one. How far back could we go? Far enough to fix the Ring without actually fixing it? “Do you think—could we stop Lillian that way?” I asked. “Rewind past where she messed it up?”

  He was slowing down, so I assumed we were nearing his classroom. “We might need to go farther than that, because won’t she just try it again? We would have to stop her from…I don’t know, from even thinking of it,” he said.

  “Like before she found Gene’s journal?”

  His eyes lit up, but I shook my head. “She’s had it for at least a month, remember? That would be a really long rewind, even doing it simultaneously.”

  “Yeah, but who knows how far we could go?” he asked. “Come find me at lunch and we’ll talk about it.”

  * * *

  Maya had to talk to one of her teachers at the beginning of lunch, so I was standing at the edge of the lunch room, looking at my table where Jordyn was sitting, and dreading going over.

  “Hey,” Jake said, coming up to me.

  “Hey.”

  “So, I think we should try it,” he said without preamble. “Even if we can’t stop her from getting the journal, don’t you think that even a few weeks would help? Hopefully it would fix the Ring since it will erase whatever she did, and it will give us more time to figure out what else we can do to stop her.”

  But what if it didn’t fix the Ring? What if it made it worse? I stopped myself from saying it, though, not wanting to take away from Jake’s excitement.

  “Maybe once we’re back that far, we could go back again, even farther,” he suggested.

  I furrowed my forehead. “I think we would be stuck in the repeat,” I told him. “Like the whole—two or three weeks or whatever.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not,” he said. “Or maybe Leah could do something to reset the strands if she rewinds. So, you gonna eat with us?”

  His invitation caught me off guard. “Um…” Strangely enough, I actually really wanted to, especially since Maya wasn’t there. But would that be weird? “I don’t know, I’m not sure if Maya will show up or not.”

  “Well if she does, she can come too,” he answered. “Or…how about if you come eat with us, and we rewind the whole thing?” he suggested, a bit of a sly smile pulling one side of his mouth up. “Come on, just come sit with us. It will be like a break. Then you can eat with your friends.”

  “You want to rewind that far?” I asked, skeptical. “Your headache must not be as bad as mine.”

  He just shrugged, so I shrugged too. “Okay.”

  Jake led me to his table and introduced me to his friends who were already there, Gage and Blake, who didn’t seem fazed at all that Jake had brought a random girl to eat with them. They started talking about a video game they were all trying to master until a couple of girls came and sat down too.

  Jake smiled up at the redhead, who I recognized as his girlfriend, Lindy. She sat down next to him, and for some reason I was surprised when she smiled at me. “Hi,” she said, ignoring the guys’ conversation.

  I smiled back and realized I should take out my lunch. “Hi.”

  “I’m Lindy.”

  “I’m Chloe. I—”

  “Oh, yeah. Jake’s friend. You have a class together, right?”

  He’d told her about me, and she didn’t mind. Suddenly it felt okay that I was here. I nodded. “Yeah, creative writing.”

  The other girl introduced herself as Tessa and asked if we’d written anything interesting in creative writing lately as a couple more people joined the group.

  “We just got done with superpower stories, and now we’ve started on suspense.”

  Tessa raised her eyebrows. “Suspense? Like horror stories?”

  “No, just like…suspenseful. I mean—” I laughed a little. “It’s supposed to have some mystery to it, but mostly you just have to know the main character is in danger the whole time.”

  “So what are you going to write about?” asked Lindy as Jake reached over and grabbed a few of her grapes. She turned and glared as he grinned at her, his eyes daring her to stop him as he slowly put them in his mouth.

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “I’ve started a couple things, but they all sound dumb. The superpower story was so much easier because—”

  “Because Chloe has a superpower,” Jake interrupted conspiratorially.

  My eyes widened and I laughed awkwardly. “Because there aren’t all that many powers to choose from,” I finished.

  Jake continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “Actually, we both do,” he said nonchalantly. “And of course, we both wrote about them.”

  My mouth was open.

  “Wow, the same power?” Lindy asked casually, taking a drink of the soda she’d stolen from Jake. “What are the odds? What’s your power?”

  He grabbed his soda back, along with her whole lunch.

  “Hey!” she protested, but Jake just looked at me.

  “Tell ’em, Chloe,” he said with a grin as Lindy reached for her lunch.

  I just swallowed, the words sticking in my throat even though I knew we were going to rewind it—Jake had even told me he’d done it before. When I didn’t say anything, he finally told them, “We can rewind time.”

  I felt like I was under a heated spotlight, my mind and heart racing, until Gage commented, “That’s pretty cool. I’d probably say I could read minds.”

  Of course he thought Jake was joking. Why would anybody actually believe it? I took a slow, deep breath as everyone decided what superpower they would choose. Lindy dove across Jake to where he held her lunch just out of her reach, but he just nudged her away with his shoulder and continued the conversation as if unaware of her attempts. “Isn’t that kind of boring?” He was saying to Blake. “All the superheroes can fly.”

  I watched in amusement as Lindy finally started pinching him, and he raised his eyebrows at her. “Do you mind?” He asked, eyes playful. “The adults are talking.”

  “No,” she answered, her face a mask of innocence as she continued poking and pinching. “I don’t mind at all.” He finally broke his poker face and flinched. “Oh, a little ticklish, are we?” she said with a sly grin. “Well then—”

  But he immediately pinned her against him in a tight side-hug to prevent any further tickling attempts. “Don’t make me rewind you,” he warned as she squirmed her hand out and pinched his arm again.

  She laughed. “What good would that do? Wait—actually, go ahead. Then I can have my lunch back.”

  “Is that how rewinding works?” Tessa asked, unfazed by the Jake and Lindy Show. “Or is it more like time travel?”

  Jake finally let Lindy grab her lunch back, then he looked at me expectantly until I realized he wanted me to answer Tessa’s question. “Oh,” I said, trying to enjoy the freedom of talking about it. “Yeah, it’s not time travel. We actually rewind it. Like make everybody go backwards.” Tessa raised her eyebrows. “Everybody rewinds at once,” I explained. “The whole world. The clocks even go backwards.”

  “Whoa,” Gage said seriously. “That would be trippy.”

  “Yeah.” Jake looked at him. “You don’t even know.”

  One of the other guys laughed and asked what kind of things we did with our powers.

  So we told them. It went against every instinct I had, but we told them about the cool stuff like watching people’s expressions or avoiding breaking dishes, and the crappy stuff, like eating backwards and getting headaches. They all played along and laughed and pretended to sympathize, and soon we were hearing what each person would do if they had that ability.

  I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt so…relaxed. I knew they didn’t believe us, and I knew we were going to rewind it anyway.

  I turned to Tessa. “You’re in orchestra?” I asked, gesturing to the instrument case she’d stuck under her chair.

  “Yup, viol
in.”

  “Do you know Maya Garcia?”

  Her face lit up. “Yes! She is so sweet and adorable!”

  I grinned. “She’s my best friend.”

  “No way! Well, where is she? You should have her come sit with us too.”

  I glanced around. “I’m not sure. Maybe in the library.”

  “I know what you use your rewinding for,” Blake said loudly to Jake, his face serious. “You can finally become a ballerina like you’ve always wanted to, without anybody knowing.”

  Lindy snorted then nudged Jake’s shoulder with hers. “Hey, I thought I was special when you confided that in me,” she said accusingly. “You told Blake, too?”

  “Sorry, babe,” he answered, trying to keep a straight face. “But me and Blake, we go way back. He’s always known about that.”

  I was still laughing as I glanced around and saw Maya coming into the commons.

  The others had moved on to a new topic, so I leaned over to Jake. “Hey, thanks for the break,” I said. “I better go eat with Maya.”

  He stood up when I did, raising his eyebrows for a moment as we moved away from the table. “You gonna rewind this?” he asked quietly.

  I’d actually forgotten about that. “Oh yeah,” I said, shocked that I’d let my guard down that much. “Yeah, I probably should.” I closed my eyes to access the strands—but as soon as I felt them, I jolted. “The strands,” I stammered, opening my eyes. “Oh, crap. We killed them, Jake.”

  “What do you mean?” He closed his eyes too and grimaced when he discovered what I was talking about. The ring was much worse; it felt tangled and seemed to be sparking without us even trying to rewind.

  I clenched my jaw to keep from freaking out in the middle of the commons. “It must be because of what happened last night.”

  “You could probably still . . .” Jake started.

  I bit my lip as I thought about it. “You know what?” I said, looking over at his friends. “Maybe I don’t really need to.” They hadn’t believed us about rewinding, and I had plenty of time to go sit at my own table. I took a deep breath.

  Jake raised his eyebrows at me and I smiled a little. “I think it’ll be okay,” I said.