Springback

by Jana Miller

  I groaned.

  “Didn’t you remember something helpful?” Jake asked me. Then he smirked. “Something we figured out on our date?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m pretty sure you did, actually.” I pointed to the diagram he was holding. “It was in that.”

  He scowled at me like I’d ruined his fun on purpose. “How am I supposed to get anything out of this?”

  I shrugged, opening Melvin’s journal. “I’m pretty sure that tells you how to use the amulet,” I said. “And when we find the amulet, we might want to know that.”

  * * *

  Knowing that my mom would approve of Jake—since she seemed to love him in my rewind memory—I texted her on the way home to tell her that I was feeling better and he’d picked me up to go to the park for some fresh air, and we went to his house.

  Rob was hanging around in the parking lot when we got there, so Jake grudgingly let him in, knowing that he was one of the few people who could actually help us.

  On the way home I’d found the entry corresponding to the date of Eva’s accident, and discovered that there were only three entries after it, the last stating the families’ decision to stop rewinding altogether.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Rob said when I told them about it. “Can you read that one to us?”

  I opened to it. “All it says is, ‘Resolved: discontinue pulling. Káti Square with Stonemans, possibly to be destroyed; books with Wrights. No clue to be passed down.’”

  “Káti,” Jake exclaimed. “That’s what the diagram is called. I looked it up, and it means ‘one thing’ in Greek.”

  Leah furrowed her eyebrows. “One thing?”

  “I think we’re missing the point here,” Rob said. “They resolved to discontinue pulling.”

  “So that’s when Chloe’s family stopped rewinding?” Leah asked.

  Rob came over to read the entry over my shoulder. “No,” he said. “This is when both families agreed to stop.” I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, relieved that he’d read it that way too. “If the Káti is the diagram, then the ‘Káti Square’ must be the amulet. It went with our family, and the books—these journals—stayed with Chloe’s,” he said slowly. “But neither family was supposed to keep the ability alive. The amulet was ‘possibly’ to be destroyed.”

  Leah’s eyes widened as she came over to read it as well. “No clue to be passed down,” she murmured, then she blew out a breath. “I should have known. It’s not like anything else has been true.” She bit her lip, lost in thought for a moment, before abruptly speaking. “This whole time. We were trying to—but we weren’t supposed to be doing it either.” She looked like she wanted to kick something, but instead she just sat down and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

  “Man,” Jake said.

  And that about summed it up. All these years, the Stonemans had kept the ability, not only training their children to pass it on, but teaching them that my family was not to be trusted—that we had no right to it. But they weren’t supposed to rewind anymore either. I wondered if I should be offended, but at this point, nothing really surprised me anymore.

  I turned back the page to see if anything had happened between that meeting and the actual accident, and I found that there had.

  “They planned to fix it!” I exclaimed when I skimmed the previous entry. “The breach that Gene mentioned, what happened with Eva and the other kids, with the amulet.” I looked up at them. “They planned to fix it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Between Gene’s journal, the meeting minutes, and Melvin Wright’s notes, by the time I went home that evening we’d learned that Jim Stoneman and Melvin Wright—and their wives—had learned from the copper sheets how to use the amulet to open the Ring of Time. Several years later, they’d moved their families to Arizona after the scholarly community became suspicious of their secrecy and odd behavior, just as we’d guessed from the articles Rob had shown us.

  They began teaching their children how to manipulate time, not realizing that it was also a trait they would pass down genetically—we knew from our brain scans that it altered our brains, so it made sense that it could alter our genetics enough to pass it down. When the families stopped rewinding after the accident, they’d believed that by hiding away the amulet and journals, including every mention of time manipulation, the ability would die out.

  But rather than destroying or hiding the amulet away somewhere, someone in the Stoneman family had kept it, written down everything they knew about rewinding time, and passed it down. The Stoneman “inheritors” had kept the knowledge secret, passing it down but not using it until there were no rewinders left to feel the jolts and know that somebody had kept that knowledge alive.

  That whole generation of rewinders had died at young ages—another complication we didn’t want to dwell on too much—and Gene had used the notes his father had given him to start teaching himself to rewind when he was about fifty. Wesley—the one whose sister, Eva, had never been the same after the incident all those years ago—had been Gene’s cousin, older by more than twenty years, and on his deathbed he’d ranted enough about entering the Ring of Time that Gene decided he had to figure it out.

  And, of course, though the meeting minutes discussed the fact that they planned to fix the breach back when the four kids had caused it, we were left to assume that any actual details about how they did that would have to be gleaned from the intimidating journal of Melvin Wright.

  And at the end of those two hours, my lower back was killing me, Leah and I both had headaches so bad we could no longer focus on the words in the journals, and Jake’s headache was so bad he couldn’t sit up or open his eyes anymore.

  * * *

  “Chloe.”

  My head hurt too much to open my eyes to my mom’s voice, but I turned toward it so she’d know I’d heard her.

  “Chloe, we’re taking Janie to the hospital. Her legs…”

  I felt like I should be alarmed by this, but sleep was claiming me and all I could do was mumble, “Mmkmm” as I drifted off again.

  My migraine wouldn’t let me wake up as quickly as I wanted to, pounding as I tried to force myself to differentiate between dreams and memories. My mom…something about Janie.

  I startled awake. Hospital? It hadn’t feel like a dream. Another memory from the rewind? It seemed like Leah would have mentioned if my sister had gone to the hospital—if she’d known.

  I rolled over slowly, lowered my legs to the floor, and gingerly made my way down to the kitchen to find my migraine medication. There had to be some other way to deal with these headaches, but I didn’t know what that might be, other than fixing the Ring, and we were doing all we could for that.

  I took regular pain medication for my back in addition to the migraine meds. My back wasn’t any better than the night before, and now my head was hurting more on one side than the other. What was wrong with me? I was used to the migraines, but this was…different.

  I was surprised nobody else was up, and nerves clenched my stomach when I saw that it was after seven; my parents and Janie should have been getting ready to go, but the house was silent.

  I checked the bathrooms and bedrooms, then looked in the garage and saw that my mom’s car was gone but my dad’s was still here.

  It hadn’t been a rewind memory. They’d actually taken Janie to the hospital in the middle of the night. But why? Something about her legs?

  I leaned against the doorframe for a minute, trying to force my foggy thoughts to remember when her legs had started hurting.

  A vague theory started forming in my mind, and nervously I got my phone from the counter and then sank down on the couch to call my mom.

  “Hi, honey,” her weary voice answered.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked. “Is Janie okay?”

  “I don’t know—the doctor doesn’t even know.”

  I closed my eyes as I listened, the dread growing as my mom told me that the p
ain in Janie’s legs had woken her up in the night, that it had been so bad she’d felt like she could barely walk, but the x-rays showed almost nothing—just a couple spots that looked like healed fractures.

  I pressed a hand to my mouth as she continued, “But she’s never had a broken bone—not in her legs, anyway. And she says her back is hurting too, and the pain in her head is different.” My mom’s voice was tired and ragged. “But—there’s nothing they can find that’s wrong with her. We have no idea why she would be in so much pain.”

  But I knew. It was the same reason one side of my head and my lower back were hurting in a way they hadn’t before.

  For some reason, our bodies remembered the accidents—when Lillian ran into Janie three times, and me once.

  “They’re sending us home soon,” my mom was saying, “with a prescription for painkillers and a referral for a pain doctor.” She sighed, clearly unsatisfied with that solution.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said quietly. I was sorry for more than she could know.

  “Me too,” she said. “It will probably be a couple hours before we come back—you know how long they can take to discharge a patient. Are you staying home from school again today?”

  I hesitated. I definitely wasn’t going to school, but I didn’t feel like I could stay home, either. I had to do something. “Um, I’m not sure,” I hedged. “I might be okay to go. I’ll—I’ll let you know.”

  I hung up with her and rubbed the side of my head. How could this be happening?

  And if Janie’s body remembered the accidents, what would happen when it got to the part where she’d been paralyzed? Or if her body suddenly remembered that it had died? Would she actually remember it? You can’t remember being temporarily dead, can you? Any possibility my mind came up with was—unimaginable.

  I sank farther into the couch, cradling my head in my hands, as my mind replayed those accidents against my will. I couldn’t let her remember them. I couldn’t let the consequences of them come back.

  * * *

  Eventually I called Jake, who could barely mumble a “Hello.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No,” he groaned. “My head—I threw up…” he slurred. “I would cry, but…it hurts more.”

  I was trying to ask him if he had a prescription for migraines when he asked if I’d ever tried crystals.

  “Crystals?”

  “Like at that store,” he mumbled. “The healing crystals.”

  “Crystal Elements?” I asked. “The one where they made the fake amulet? Jake, that stuff is—”

  “Chloe,” he interrupted. “We’re looking for a mystical amulet that controls the Ring of Time.” He grunted a little; it must hurt to talk so much. “Don’t you think healing crystals might be a real thing?”

  I sighed, mostly because I felt bad making him talk anymore. “Fine, they might help.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I parked my dad’s car on the narrow one-way street downtown, having survived the drive in the bright sunlight, and once again entered Crystal Elements.

  The same girl who we’d talked to before greeted me, and I asked her if there were any crystals that could help with migraines.

  “I’m sure there are,” Sunshine said, and she went to get a book from behind the counter. “What kind of a headache is it?” she asked.

  “A migraine,” I repeated, trying not to sound too testy.

  “Does it start up here,” she asked, placing her hand on the top of her head while consulting the book, “or more here, in your third eye area?”

  I didn’t know what a third eye was, but she was pointing between her eyebrows, which was exactly where all my headaches started. “Yeah, there.”

  “Okay, so you’ll want a crystal for the third eye chakra,” she said, flipping to the back of the book. Then she started naming crystals, suggesting oils, and talking about chakras and emotions and intuition. I couldn’t keep track of any of it, but I used my dad’s credit card and bought just about everything she pointed out. If it worked, it would be worth it.

  * * *

  I dumped my purchases on Jake’s bed, informing him he owed me a hundred and fifty dollars.

  “A hundred and fifty?” Leah repeated from behind me. I’d asked her to give me a ride to Jake’s house, knowing I couldn’t keep my dad’s car forever, and telling my parents, who were still at the hospital, that I’d walked to school.

  “Oils are crazy expensive,” I said. “But I think they work. I put the peppermint on my forehead and neck, and I feel like I can actually think now. I mean, it still hurts like crazy, but . . .”

  We all took turns with the oils and then I handed them each their own little set of three crystals. Jake managed to get out of bed, and we went to the living room, not even caring how weird it was that we were all about to meditate on the floor and couch with healing crystals.

  It was surprisingly soothing to lie there, one crystal on my forehead and two in my left hand. I didn’t really think it had anything to do with the crystals so much as the fact that I was completely still and purposely breathing deeply, but I was actually starting to drift off when Jake blurted out, “The square!”

  I jerked, my amethyst falling onto my closed eye, and heard Leah mutter, “The what?”

  “Thanks, bro,” I grumbled. “My head was actually starting to calm down a little—”

  “Completing the square,” Jake repeated, ignoring me. “Isn’t that what Gene said, Leah? Something like that?”

  “I…think so,” she said slowly.

  “Wait.” He stood up and shuffled to his bedroom. Leah and I both sat up slowly, blinking slowly, as we heard him rummaging. “Look,” he said, coming out of his room and over to the coffee table, where he set down the Káti diagram we’d found in Melvin’s journal.

  Jake pointed to the middle of the diagram, a more complicated version of the amulet shape.

  “In alchemy, the number four represents time,” he explained. “The fourth dimension. Some of the notes in the journal mentioned four people, and I realized—the four corners of the square represent four people, and the lines that make the square and the X must represent connections between all of them. That’s why there were four kids trying to open it the first time. And the circle,” he said, actually grinning a little—

  “—is the Ring of Time,” Leah finished for him, her voice awed.

  I stared. I couldn’t believe he’d figured it out, and yet I almost couldn’t believe we hadn’t realized it before. It made so much sense; it just felt right.

  “And I think these notes describe how to enter the Ring,” Jake continued, almost buzzing with excitement.

  “That must be what you figured out before,” I realized. “That memory I had.”

  He nodded. “It looks like it’s kind of like tandem pulling with four people, where we all have to connect, but I don’t think we pull. Maybe we stop time, like Lillian thought, or maybe we just all access the strands. I’m not sure.”

  “That’s perfect!” I said. “The four of us can do it as soon as we find the amulet! Us three and Rob!”

  Jake’s jaw seemed to clench before he nodded stiffly, staring at the diagram, and I thought his eyes dimmed a little.

  “Jake?” He looked up at me quickly. “Are you okay to do this with your dad?”

  “What? No, it’s not that. I mean, I don’t love the idea, but I just—I mean…“ He trailed off before confessing, “I can’t actually—access the strands. Still.”

  What? I stared at him. How could we do anything without four people?

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “You might have to kind of—push through the sparking. I mean, I can’t hold them for long, and when I first see them, it doesn’t feel like I’ll be able to access them at all, but I still—”

  “I’m working on it,” he assured us. “I’m sure I’ll get it back.”

  Leah and I were quiet, but we all knew what we were thinking. I tried to nod and agree that he would figure it
out. But I wasn’t so sure. He was still so new to rewinding; maybe he had a lower tolerance for all of this than Leah and I did.

  “Hey,” Jake said after a minute, “I think those crystals work. I totally just figured it out. What was it—my intuition?” he asked, checking the papers I’d brought about the crystals. “I’m thinking more clearly, definitely more calm—oh, this one helps overcome helplessness. It definitely worked, you guys.” When we didn’t answer, he cleared his throat. “Well…my mom will be home soon, and I don’t think you guys want to be here when she does. Might be kind of hard to explain…”

  “Yeah, definitely not,” I agreed. “Here, I’ll leave the oils here for you since yours is the worst—”

  “No, there are three,” he said. “Each of you take one too, so you have something to use with your crystals.” He got a smug look and added, “Which completely worked,” obviously just to taunt me. I rolled my eyes.

  “Can you take me to school?” I asked Leah. “That’s where my parents think I am, so…I should probably go there…”

  “Sure.”

  I found my jacket on top of the box of my family’s things in Jake’s room and stuck it in my backpack as I headed for the front door.

  “So now we just need to find the amulet, right?” Jake said, his optimism back in full force.

  “Yeah,” Leah said as I held back a sarcastic comment about how simple that would be. “Do you think any of the journals will say anything about…where it is?” she asked.

  “They’re too old,” I reminded her, shaking my head. “Gene wasn’t even born, and he was the last one who—”

  “No, I mean, like maybe it would say where they used to keep it, and that would give us a clue. Did they keep it in a safe deposit box, or under a mattress…”

  “Good call,” Jake said. “I’ll see if there’s anything in there. Do you each want to take a book to search?”