Springback

by Jana Miller

  She shrugged uncertainly. “I guess because we figured out that that’s when you got your ability.”

  I bit my lip and looked down at it again. The date of his death had been circled. Why would it matter when exactly it had happened? I shivered a little, remembering what Leah had said about looking for me. Remembering that she’d known about Max.

  Jake came over to stand next to me, reading it as well. After a minute he put his hand around my shoulder and squeezed, and I realized a tear had fallen down my cheek. I cleared my throat. “I’m okay,” I told him, and he dropped his arm. Then he leaned forward. “Does it have the date?” he asked.

  “Yeah, right here. It’s circled.”

  “No, the date she printed it—” He stopped, turning his head sharply as the hall floor outside the room creaked. I whirled around, my heart in my throat, as a voice spoke.

  “What have you got there?”

  I leaned against the doorframe, my head spinning as the panic released. Gene, stooped over and shuffling, was looking at us shrewdly.

  My eyebrows shot up.

  “Grandpa, what are you doing up here?” Leah asked, sounding as panicked-but-relieved as I was.

  “You asked about the amulet,” he said.

  Had we asked him about the amulet when we’d gotten here? I couldn’t even remember.

  Leah’s eyes were wide. “Yeah?” she prompted. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Oh, of course I do,” he said, a knowing smile on his face. “Been safe for quite some time. Can’t have history repeating itself, you know.”

  “Did you have it?” I asked. “Did you—did you enter the Ring of Time?”

  “Why don’t we all sit down,” Gene suggested, “and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  “Yeah,” Jake breathed. “That would be amazing.”

  Gene nodded vaguely and started shuffling back down the hall, Leah holding on to his arm.

  I folded Max’s obituary and stuck it in my pocket while Jake took the file folder back and locked the door behind him.

  “Did you see the date on it?” he murmured to me as we headed for the stairs. “The date she printed it out.”

  I glanced up at him, then pulled it from my pocket. “No,” I said, unfolding it. “Why? When did she—” I found the date at the bottom of the page. It had been printed out less than three weeks ago.

  I stopped in the middle of the hall, staring at it, then looked up at Jake. “This is now,” I said. “She just printed it. That means she was looking into me, into Max, when she was trying to enter the Ring.” I looked down at it again, then gestured. “She circled the date. Was she going to . . .” But nothing I could ask made sense. Was she going to stop Max’s death? That seemed awfully kind for somebody as slimy as her.

  “That’s when you got your power,” Jake said. “She wants to stop that, right?”

  We followed Leah and Gene in silence as I tried to digest this. I’d known she wanted to stop me from getting my gift, but Leah had said she wanted to stop my whole family from rewinding—and that would require going way back, maybe a hundred years or more. But this—this would only be seven years.

  Was this Lillian’s Plan B?

  * * *

  We settled Gene into his chair and sat down, hoping his story would at least be coherent, if not outright helpful.

  It wasn’t the story we’d been expecting.

  “The year was 1923,” Gene began, and we all looked at each other. This couldn’t be the story of his own attempts to enter the Ring. “The Wright family and the Stoneman family lived next door to each other in Show Low, Arizona. Best of friends. Did everything together. They’d been brought together by their grandfathers, who discovered the amulet and opened the Ring of Time. The amulet belonged to the Stonemans, but the knowledge—the journals—belonged to the Wrights. This worked just fine for the first generation, but in the second and third generations, the families saw things differently.” I noticed Gene was staring off into space, and the way he spoke made it sound like a recitation. Maybe it was. Maybe he’d memorized the story long ago, and that was why he could tell it now.

  “The Wrights taught all of their children to pull, while the Stonemans thought it best to be more prudent. They taught only one or two children in each generation to pull time, and they had strict rules put in place. The Wrights became more and more liberal with their rewinding, until one day, Johnny and Devin Wright somehow got a hold of the amulet and took two of the Stoneman children—Wesley and Eva—into the woods to show them that they knew how to use it. Whatever they did out there caused a breach in the Ring of Time, and it killed little Eva Stoneman. Luckily, her brother pulled the strands and undid it, but the damage had been done. The ring was damaged, and though Eva was alive, she was never the same again.”

  “Wait,” Jake said. “The ring was damaged? Like it is now?”

  Gene didn’t answer.

  “Why wasn’t Eva ever the same again?” I asked. Janie had been fine after I’d rewound her death.

  “My mom never told me he rewound over her death,” Leah said. “She just said Eva died.”

  “She was never the same again,” Gene repeated.

  “Maybe it was the breach?” Jake suggested. “The ring was still messed up, so she was too?”

  But Gene continued to ignore our questions.

  “So,” I said after a long enough pause that I guessed his story was actually done, “it was the Wright kids’ fault?”

  But Gene just kept staring out the window. It was like we’d somehow put a quarter in him to play his song, and now that it was done, he was gone again.

  How could we get him back?

  Jake was staring at the floor, Leah at Gene. I swallowed.

  “What happened after that, Grandpa?” Leah asked quietly. “Where did the amulet go?”

  Gene blinked out of his daze and looked at her. “What was that, sweetheart?”

  “After Eva Stoneman,” she said. “After Johnny and Jimmy or whoever it was—”

  “Johnny and Devin Wright somehow got a hold of the amulet,” Gene recited, “and took two of the Stoneman children—”

  “Wesley and Eva,” Leah said. “You told us. But what happened after that?”

  “Whatever they did out there caused a breach in the Ring of Time—”

  “Grandpa,” Leah interrupted, trying to bring him back, “you told us that. But what happened then? Did the Wrights stop pulling time? Where is the amulet now?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Gene responded serenely. “The amulet is safe.”

  “No,” Leah said, alarmed. “No, it’s not. My mom has it, Grandpa. Lillian has the amulet.”

  Gene actually chuckled a little. “Oh, no, ma’am. That girl never did know where to find gems like that. She sure doesn’t have it.”

  “Gene,” Jake said, “Leah needs the amulet. Lillian did something and broke the Ring. Maybe she did what Johnny and Derek—”

  “Johnny and Devin Wright somehow got a hold of the amulet—”

  “Did you pass it down to Lillian?” Jake tried. “Is it hers now?”

  “—and took two of the Stoneman children—”

  I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face. “Lillian messed up the Ring,” I said. “She caused a—a breach. How did they fix it back then? When Wesley and Devin and Johnny and Eva messed it up? They must have found a way to fix it, right? It didn’t stay broken for the last hundred years…”

  He blinked again. “Oh, now, I’m sure you don’t need to worry about that.”

  But no matter how we asked the questions, we couldn’t get anything else out of Gene.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That night I woke up in a cold sweat, but my vision was so blurred I wasn’t sure if it was actually still night or if there was light coming from somewhere.

  Or maybe I wasn’t opening my eyes at all. I couldn’t tell through the pain.

  It was like the jolt that Lillian had caused, only much, much w
orse.

  I wanted to sit up but I couldn’t. I thought I might throw up, but the shocking, blinding pain in my head wouldn’t let the rest of me move enough to do anything like that.

  Eventually I started to roll over, but I was so close to the edge of the bed that instead, I fell off. The shock and the pain of it was too much for my body, and everything went black.

  * * *

  Beeping…voices…blackness.

  More beeping…more voices. “…brain scan…never seen anything…”

  “…when she was ten…” That was my mom’s voice, and it woke me up.

  “She did?” came a man’s voice.

  I tried to flutter my eyes open, but it was too bright in the room.

  I wiggled my fingers—just to make sure I could—and then moved my arms. I was in a bed, but there were tubes. Then the beeping sound registered and I realized I was in the hospital, probably the emergency room.

  I actually relaxed a little. I’d done this before. I’d be able to go home soon.

  My ears tuned back in to my mom’s voice, presumably talking to a doctor. “It showed the same thing as what you’re saying, in the same spot, but they said it was probably nothing. They’d never seen anything like it before. But you’re saying it looks—dangerous?”

  There was a pause. “Not necessarily. I’m sorry I don’t have a more concrete answer for you, but it does look like a mass.”

  Now my dad’s voice jumped in. “A mass? It wasn’t a mass before. They just said ‘heightened activity.’”

  “Perhaps the prolonged heightened activity is causing what we’re seeing—whether it’s a mass or not, I can’t be sure at this point. Hopefully we’ll have some answers for you soon.”

  The doctor must have left then, because I felt and heard my parents come back to my bed.

  “They said it was nothing.” My mom sounded heartbroken as she whispered the words.

  “They didn’t know for sure,” my dad answered heavily.

  I heard my heart rate monitor speed up before I realized my breathing had quickened. I tried to calm it down, needing to know what they were talking about.

  “If we had kept an eye on it—” she began.

  “We didn’t know,” my dad insisted. “They didn’t know. It’s nobody’s fault.”

  What was nobody’s fault? What were they talking about? Did I have a mass in my brain?

  My panicking sped up my heart rate more, and I could no longer breathe normally.

  “Chloe? Honey? Are you okay?” my mom asked.

  I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t okay. And apparently I hadn’t been okay before—whenever it was that my parents had found out I had an abnormal brain, and kept it from me.

  * * *

  “Mom?” I muttered as I woke up a while later, groggy and hungry but with only a normal headache.

  “Chloe!” My eyes fluttered open to see her and my dad rush to my side, their faces somehow full of both fear and relief.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I croaked, and my mom held a cup with a straw to my lips so I could sip water.

  I’d never asked this before. I’d always known what was wrong with me: rewinding.

  But now there was more to it. I knew there was, because I’d heard them.

  “We don’t know yet, honey,” my dad admitted. I was a little surprised he hadn’t insisted that nothing at all was wrong, but when I looked at my mom, she was looking at him like that’s exactly what she had planned to say.

  “Something in my brain?” I asked weakly.

  My mom pressed her lips together but nodded. “But we don’t know what yet,” she said.

  I wanted to ask more, to demand why they’d never told me that the doctors had seen something on my brain scans before—when I was ten?—but I didn’t have it in me.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “Can I eat something?”

  My parents looked utterly relieved at this request.

  * * *

  Leah: We need to talk.

  The text was waiting for me when I checked my phone after eating a small breakfast.

  Chloe: Are you okay?

  I waited for a few minutes, but she didn’t respond.

  I was surprised that Jake hadn’t texted me too.

  Wait—of course he hadn’t. He was bound to be as bad as I was, maybe even worse. He’d only been rewinding a couple of months.

  Or maybe he was better, since he hadn’t had years to develop a mass in his brain.

  The truth of it hit me hard this time, and tears squeezed out as I willed them to stop. I knew that mass is what they call something that might be a tumor. I had something wrong with my brain, something that had already started by the time I was ten, and it was getting worse.

  I was more than a little bit sure that it was because of rewinding. Would it keep getting worse no matter what I did? Would rewinding more speed it up?

  Was my brain infected because the Ring was broken?

  My mind snagged on that thought. Were we all infected because of what Lillian had done? And how much worse was it now, after last night’s ripping springback? And was the Ring even worse now?

  Slowly, cautiously, I opened my mind to the Ring of Time to assess the damage.

  My stomach sank. Not only were they flickering on and off—staying off for longer than they stayed on—but they were constantly sparking whenever they were on. The glow was essentially gone, and the hum had turned into a jolting buzz.

  I had to get out of here. I needed to talk to Jake and Leah. I needed answers, and we absolutely had to figure out how to fix the Ring.

  * * *

  I fought tooth and nail to be able to go home that day. I knew what the problem was, even though the doctors and my parents didn’t, and I knew it wasn’t going to be solved in a hospital. Leah had let me know that she was fine, but Jake hadn’t responded to my texts or Leah’s calls, and I was afraid he might be at home and unconscious still—but wouldn’t his mom have found him? Shouldn’t he be here, where I was?

  And then finally I remembered the doctor saying something about another kid, while I was waking up. When a nurse came in and my parents were down in the cafeteria, I took a stab at it.

  “How’s Jake doing?” I asked.

  She glanced up at me. “Jake?”

  “Yeah, my friend Jake Monson. He’s here too.” I hoped that if I acted like I already knew, she would be able to tell me at least something. “His mom brought him in, and I was just wondering if he’s awake yet.

  She pressed her lips together, maybe deciding if she should tell me or not, then shook her head. “Sorry, sweetie. He’s still unconscious.”

  My stomach fell. I had been awake for several hours. When he accidentally rewound us the other night, he’d woken up first. But maybe that was because he’d been the one to pull?

  I steadied my breathing. “Is there any way to tell . . .” I began, but I didn’t know what to ask.

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “He’s stable and his mom is with him. We just have to wait.”

  I wasn’t especially consoled, but I gave her a small smile. “Thanks,” I said.

  When my parents came back, they reported that I had won the battle. I could go home. The doctors weren’t seeing any changes in me; I was acting perfectly fine, and there was nothing they could do here other than recommend a neurologist.

  * * *

  Leah came over that night after I got home, and the first thing she said after my mom left us alone in my room was, “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop her. We all tried. But I didn’t have enough information from the journals, and I couldn’t get a hold of you because she took my phone, and I didn’t even know until the last minute—”

  “Whoa,” I said, blinking. “Hold on. Did you rewind something?”

  She stared at me for a second. “Yeah, that’s why you ended up in the hospital.” She winced. “I rewound ten days.”

  “Ten days?”

  She nod
ded. “My mom made me go to Sedona with her to enter the Ring, so when we accessed it, instead of just stopping time like I was supposed to, I pulled. And it went so fast.”

  “You really did it?” I exclaimed, excited but terrified. “You tried to enter the Ring? So your mom does have the amulet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Yes. And I tried to take it, but she wasn’t about to let that happen. And when we tried to use the it, it felt…wrong.”

  “Wrong? Like how?”

  “I don’t know, it just—it didn’t feel like I thought it should feel. You know the comfortable feeling of the strands—at least how they usually feel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The amulet didn’t feel anything like that.”

  “But the Ring is so messed up—”

  She shook her head. “It was a feeling coming directly from the amulet, not the Ring.”

  “Maybe the broken ring ruined the amulet…?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, but she obviously wasn’t satisfied by that explanation.

  “Okay,” I said after a minute. “So what about the rest of the ten days before you rewound? What happened?”

  “A lot.”

  I thought about the last week or two and knew that if it had been anything like that, it must have been intense. “I don’t think I even mind that I missed out on it,” I told her wryly. “As long as you’ll catch me up on what happened.”

  So she did.

  She told me that the first six days, the three of us had tried to figure out where the amulet might be if Lillian didn’t have it. We practiced stopping time together—even though we couldn’t figure out why—and we were very careful not to pull. We learned more about Apollonius of Tyana, a Greek philosopher known for sorcery—or miracles, depending on who had reported it—who was known to leave talismans in various cities throughout his life, in addition to traveling to far more locations than most people feasibly could have in that time period. We’d learned that he was widely credited with the translation of the Emerald Tablet, which supposedly inspired 3,500 years of alchemy and mystic truths. And even I had admitted that he had most likely been the one to either create the amulet through alchemy or to use it to open the Ring of Time.