Springback

by Jana Miller

  Besides, I was proud of myself for making new friends, and—even more surprising—I wanted them to remember me.

  * * *

  My grounding didn’t prohibit my library volunteering, so I made a point of emphasizing to Jake how lucky and convenient it was that I volunteered at the library as he gave me a ride there after school; otherwise I’d be stuck at home with no phone and no way to talk to him. He rolled his eyes, obviously still not convinced it was a good use of my time.

  I had to sit at the information desk in the kids’ section for the first hour, so Jake went off to research whatever crazy stuff he wanted to, hoping to get some information about the amulet. I seriously doubted he’d find anything.

  I was surprised when Leah approached the desk where I was without Jake.

  My chest tightened. It had been several days since I’d seen her, and I was still stinging from her obvious preference of Jake over me.

  “Hey,” she quietly. “How’s it going?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “Fine. Jake’s over there, trying to find something about the amulet.”

  She glanced in his direction. “Yeah, I know. He told me you were over here.”

  I shuffled some papers then clicked randomly on the computer in front of me as I waited for her to say something. When I peeked up at her, she was just watching me, her face a mixture of concern and something else I couldn’t read. “Chloe, are you mad at me?”

  I could feel my cheeks go pink. “What? No. Why?”

  Her head tilted just a little. “Are you sure?” she asked, narrowing her eyes a little—not suspicious really, still just concerned.

  I worked my jaw a little. “Yeah, fine,” I answered.

  “Because I haven’t seen you since Saturday, and you never called or texted even though I gave you my number, and Jake said you were…bugged about something.”

  Jake. That traitor.

  I finally sighed and blurted, “Why did you tell Jake about the amulet and not me?”

  Leah’s mouth opened a little and she pulled back slightly.

  “You just met him,” I continued, “but it’s like you trust him more than me just because he’s family.”

  “What?” Leah asked, incredulous. “Because he’s family? You think I care about that at all? Chloe, I am not my mom. Who cares who’s related to who?” My own lips parted as my mind worked to process her reaction. “I just—you seemed so eager to get away from me after we talked on Saturday,” she explained. “Actually, the whole past week—ever since I told you any of this—you’ve been acting like you don’t even know me at all. I figured I might as well talk to Jake about it—”

  “Because he believes you and I don’t?”

  “I—kind of, I guess. But mostly because it seemed like it was all really stressing you out, and I didn’t want to add to your anxiety. Jake is all stoked about it, like it’s the funnest thing ever, but you act like it’s painful to even think about.”

  I didn’t even know what to say. All of it was a little painful for me—for a variety of reasons—but suddenly I felt really dumb.

  Leah lowered her chin a little and pinned me with a serious look. “It has nothing to do with family,” she said emphatically. She glanced over her shoulder in Jake’s direction. “Jake is fun, but he’s all over the place. I came to you for help, not him. It’s nice to have another person trying to figure everything out, but it’s not like he’s replacing you or something.” I bit my lip and nodded, and she continued. “You’ve been doing this for a long time—even longer than me, actually—and you get it. You’re careful, and you know how serious it is. How important it is to fix it—to fix it the right way.”

  Wow. I took a deep breath. Leah actually understood me. “Okay,” I said meekly.

  “So…are we okay?” she asked when I still didn’t say anything.

  I nodded again. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.” I sighed. “Sorry I assumed…”

  Leah shook her head. “No, it’s not your fault. This all sucks, and it totally makes sense that you would have a hard time trusting me now. But I really do want to be your friend, Chloe.”

  The words filled me with sunshine as I relished the idea of a girlfriend I could be completely honest with. “That would be amazing,”I finally said with a relieved smile.

  “Good.” She smiled too and leaned in. “So speaking of friends,” she said, “how’s it going at school? With your best friend’s new friends?”

  The sunshine grew; she remembered what we’d talked about before all of this happened.

  I shook my head. “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know,” I said. “It’s so dumb, but I can’t really even think about it with all of this going on.” I gestured with my hands, indicating Jake and her and just everything.

  “Seriously,” she said. “I’ve probably been totally ignoring my friends, but there’s just no part of my brain available to worry about that.”

  Jake appeared at that moment, looking positively giddy. “Secrets of the universe, anybody?” he asked, and I just raised an eyebrow at him. “This is awesome, you guys.” He leaned over the counter to share his findings. “There’s this thing called the Emerald Tablet, also called the Smaragdine Tablet, from ancient Greece or Egypt.”

  “Smorgasbord tablet?” I asked blandly.

  “But it was translated into Arabic too, by some guy called Apollonius.”

  “Apple-what?”

  “Apollonius. Like Apollo. It’s Greek. He said he found the tablet in a tomb.”

  Leah gave him a look of utter bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

  “Here,” he said, tugging on her arm. “Just come see.”

  Leah gave me a look that said this should be interesting and I smiled, raising my eyebrows back at her as a good luck while he dragged her away.

  When I joined them later, the first thing Jake said was, “Alchemy of time, Chloe!” I just looked at him, confused, so he rushed to explain, “It’s an alchemy thing! Greek gods, Egyptian gods…Isaac Newton…the Philosopher’s Stone…it’s all connected!”

  “What is?”

  “It’s an alchemy thing, Chloe! The guy that translated the Emerald Tablet was this mysterious alchemy guy! And there’s a thing called the alchemy of time!”

  I looked at Leah for clarification. “Isn’t alchemy the thing where you change stuff into gold?”

  She shrugged, but Jake didn’t let her answer. “Partly, but these websites talk about other stuff like transcendence and the universe and—”

  “He thinks that’s where the amulet came from,” Leah said, interrupting him. “I told him I’d found something about the Emerald Tablet when I researched the ‘powers’ of emerald and copper, since that’s what the amulet is made of and I think my mom was looking into that stuff.” She shrugged. “I mean, the amulet had to come from somewhere, and if we know where it came from, maybe we’ll get some idea of…I don’t know, what might be wrong with it or how to use it if we ever find it.”

  I bit my lip. “Doesn’t your mom have it?”

  “Well, I assumed she did, and that that’s how she messed things up. But she says she doesn’t have it, and I can’t find it anywhere. So maybe she doesn’t.”

  “Is there anywhere else it could be?” Jake asked.

  “I’m sure there are tons of places it could be. But I have no idea, because she won’t tell me, and Grandpa can’t. I don’t know if he still has it or if he gave it to her.”

  As Jake showed me the websites he’d found, I eventually admitted that maybe they might possibly be relevant. I checked my email before going back to work and found a forward from my mom.

  Hi Mary,

  Yes, I do remember that discussion! The box ended up with Susie in Scottsdale. Here’s her contact info. I’m sure she’d let you look through it if you’re ever down that way. Good luck!

  An email address and phone number followed for Susie—who was apparently related to my mom—and the email was signed by someone named Karen.

 
“Journals, you guys!” I whispered, pointing to my screen and trying not to wave my hands around too much like a giddy girl as Jake leaned over and read the email.

  “Yes!”

  “What?” Leah asked.

  “I have some relative in Scottsdale with a box of journals and stuff from the Wright line!”

  Her eyes lit up. “And you think Melvin’s journal might be in there?”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  “Well, even if it isn’t, if it’s from farther back than the twenties, it could have something useful in it. Almost all the Wrights could rewind before the accident.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. What would that have been like, to have my whole family able to do the same thing? At first it sounded cool, but the more I thought about it, the more it just sounded confusing. There were only four of us rewinding now, and that was weird enough.

  “But wouldn’t someone have realized what was in the journals?” Jake asked. “If there really is information about rewinding?”

  “You’d think,” I answered. “But who reads old family journals? It seems like nobody really cares about that stuff. I don’t think my family even knows what’s in the box.”

  “Okay,” Leah said. “So when should we go?”

  “Let’s just go now!” Jake said.

  I shook my head. “I have an email address and a phone number,” I said. “I haven’t even talked to the lady who has them.”

  Jake groaned.

  “I’ll call Susie tonight,” I promised them as Jake slumped.

  * * *

  “Come on, Chloe, it’s not like we have anything else to go on.”

  Jake was giving me a ride home from the library. At least he was supposed to be driving me home; instead he’d turned toward the east side of town. After everything he’d found about the Emerald Tablet, he was absolutely fixated on it, convinced that talking to Gene about it would reveal something.

  “Can’t we just go tomorrow? I’m still grounded, Jake. I need to get home and do homework.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “How can you even care about homework right now? Anyway, if it’s that important, just rewind the visit to get more time.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that rewinding was far more difficult than it used to be. Or that if I rewound the conversation, he wouldn’t remember it.

  “It will only take like five minutes,” he insisted.

  “Fine,” I sighed.

  He grinned triumphantly.

  When we drove up to Leah’s house ten minutes later, I was again shocked at the sheer size of it. “What does Lillian do for a living?” I asked, mostly talking to myself.

  “I think Leah said she’s a stockbroker,” Jake answered as he turned off the car. Then he raised his eyebrows at me meaningfully. “Ever thought about how much money you could make in certain careers if you knew what was going to happen in the next day or two?”

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Of course she would use her ability for that.

  “You told Leah we’re coming, right?” I asked as we climbed the steps to the door.

  “Uh, no. I was driving.”

  “What? Jake! What if Lillian is here?” I grabbed at his arm to stop him from knocking, but he did anyway.

  “I’m related to them,” he said. “And you’re Leah’s friend. We can visit.”

  “Jake!” I said, backing up to try to hide behind him just in case. “She knows who I am.” I didn’t know if she’d ever come with Leah to talk to me over the years, but it seemed likely. She must have at least known what I looked like.

  “It’s not like she knows what we’re trying to—”

  Jake was cut off as the door opened.

  My eyes locked on the tall, dark-haired woman who stood in the open doorway, and everything slowed down.

  I recognized this woman. I had seen her face before.

  Behind the wheel of a car as it headed straight for my sister.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t even close my eyes. I just yanked.

  Before I had even decided to rewind time so Lillian wouldn’t have time to recognize me and do who-knows-what, I had pulled the strands harder than I had ever dared before, and now I was speeding through time.

  I was numb to the now-painful sensations of time reversal, almost welcoming the onslaught of stinging shocks as my mind folded in on itself, jumbled up in reliving those horrible accidents and wrapping my head around the fact that Leah’s mom had been the one to hit Janie. Momentarily numb to what it could possibly mean.

  Someone else who could rewind time—who could have fixed it, who could have made sure that she had never done something so terrible as injuring a nine-year-old girl—had done the exact opposite. And she had done it more than once.

  She had done it on purpose. There was no other explanation.

  She had tried to kill my sister. No—she had killed my sister, but I’d undone it, so she didn’t remember that.

  Why? Why?

  Leah had given me the impression that her mom was…unpredictable. And determined. But I knew better. Without quite understanding how the pieces fit together, I knew that Lillian Winters was more than that. She was ruthless.

  I barely registered what I was rewinding through as I continued to desperately pull. I had made it to lunch with Jake before I realized I should probably pay attention.

  But I kept seeing Lillian’s face—her face in the doorway just now, and her face when she was driving a car towards my sister.

  She could manipulate time. She could have rewound it, but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d done it again and again until…until what? If she had meant to kill Janie, why had she stopped after only maiming her?

  But if she hadn’t meant to kill her, what was the point? To kill me?

  No, that didn’t make sense. If she had wanted to hit me, she could have, some other time. But she’d targeted my sister. She knew I would try to stop it. She let me stop it. At least, she let me try.

  Until I gave in and didn’t try anymore.

  Until I was convinced that I couldn’t change big things—

  Was that it?

  I could change big things. And I had, by stopping the accident. But Lillian had come again. She had come a second day in a row to hit my sister with a car. She had attacked until her message was received. And I had spent the last four years thinking the universe didn’t want me messing with it. But it was just Lillian. Lillian didn’t want me making big changes. That’s what Leah had said. She kept an eye on me to make sure I wasn’t breaking her mom’s rules. I must have done something to make them think I was getting brave with my ability, and Lillian had “taken care of it.”

  But Leah had said I’d never done anything with my ability that seemed “off.” She’d said she didn’t know what her mom would have done if I had. Did that mean that Lillian had rewound over anything Leah knew about it? Or was Leah just that cold, that calculating, that good of a liar? And why did I have to keep questioning her? Why did this have to be so complicated?

  I realized I was rewinding through sleep. I was going too far. I needed to let go and let real life start again.

  But I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to keep rewinding and rewinding and never go back to my real life, never have to face Leah or my rewinding or the empty bedroom in my house where a little brother should sleep or my sister who I had seen die and then not die. I didn’t want to be responsible for deciding what to erase and fix, what I did or didn’t let people see.

  I wanted to quit. I wanted the strands to disappear. Maybe if I held on tight enough and pulled hard enough, I could break them the rest of the way. Or break myself away from them.

  I had wished this so many times before. I had wanted to get rid of the time strands when they taunted me with their limitations—their complete uselessness when it came to the one thing I had ever really wanted to change. Regret had brought this gift to me—regret and shame. And it was useless. Useless in avoid
ing tragedies, useless in even helping other people, because how could I help them or tell them without getting put in an asylum?

  Still rewinding, I found myself in Jake’s car, and I wasn’t even sure what day it was or where we were going, but I finally let go. Because for some reason, Jake felt safe.

  The backwards-reliving of the rewind had kept my body from reacting to my emotional upheaval, but the moment I let go, my heart raced and my chest constricted. Nausea gripped my stomach and I couldn’t see straight.

  Jake’s confused voice floated to me through my ragged breaths as my vision went fuzzy and I began hyperventilating, and then hyperventilating turned into sobbing. I vaguely registered him pulling over, asking me questions I didn’t quite hear, as I let myself break apart. I bent over my knees and clenched my hands into the top of my hair. The pounding pressure in my head matched the squeezing pressure in my chest. I thought I might throw up.

  “Chloe!” Jake’s panicked voice didn’t pierce the suffocating cocoon of emotion. I let it suffocate me. I let myself mourn Max and Janie. I shook my mental fists at the universe, at the Ring of Time, for cursing me with the most selfish gift possible. A gift that kept on taking. Kept on taunting.

  “Chloe! Look at me!”

  I hadn’t taken care of my brother, and this gift had always made sure I would never forget that. This gift to go back, to reach and reach and never make it. To constantly be looking backwards and never arrive.

  “Chloe!”

  One word finally ripped from my throat. “Why?”

  I felt his hand on my back. “Why what?” Confusion and panic battled in his voice. “Chloe, breathe!”

  “Why do we have to have this stupid ability?” I sucked in a breath through the tightness in my chest. “Why can we control time but never do anything good with it?”

  “Never do anything good?” Jake repeated, sounding lost. “Chloe—what’s wrong? What are you talking about?”

  I shook my head. “I never help. I make it worse.”

  “Chloe,” Jake said emphatically. “What happened?”