by Holly Hook
But no one’s there when I glance behind me. Not Mr. Iris. Not the boy who plunged to his death with me.
The boy who almost fell to his death with me, I remind myself. He didn't actually die with me. I kept falling. I hit bottom. I died.
I still hear him screaming my name while I duck into the bathroom, find a stall, and bolt myself in.
* * * * *
It's too late in the year to transfer my Independent Study class to another hour. That's what Mrs. Ballard in the office tells me as I grip the sides of her desk and spill a story about struggling in the class too much to ever pass it.
My heart flutters. There's no sign of Simon out in the halls. He's probably sitting next to my empty chair in Mr. Iris's class and the time police are waiting to spring in and send me back. I study the crack on the edge of the desk. It's full of pencil marks, making it look like a deep chasm. “Then can I transfer to another hour? I might do better in the class if it's not at the end of the day.”
"Independent Study is only available during sixth period," she says, tapping her keyboard. Each stroke makes a click. Her fake nails are red with gold lines painted across them. Gold, like my death. "Not to mention, we're halfway through the second semester. It's impossible to put you in a different class now."
She's right, but I hate to admit it.
I stand tall and tighten my fists. I can't return to Independent Study. My only escape from my deadly past is to skip the class from now on. It'll hurt Nancy when she finds out. Make her angry. Disappointed.
"Okay," I tell Mrs. Ballard.
It's better than plunging to my death and never seeing Nancy or Monica again.
Mrs. Ballard says something else, but it's lost on me. I turn away and head out through the open office door. I stop in the middle of the Center. The sun shines down on me from the skylight, warming my shirt. I can duck into the library again to look for that song. Look up falling deaths in the early nineteen hundreds.
Wait.
Maybe Simon’s a fellow Rogue, another person who’s running from the time police. There's a chance he wasn't sitting in Frank's seat to send me back through that window. Maybe he’s not a tool sent by Frank and Isabel to send me back.
Now that I can think without panic, he seemed nice enough.
But so did Frank.
All right. It’s not a risk I’m going to take.
The bell rings to signal the end of the day, and I hurry through the halls. My locker is at the corner of the hallway, not too far from Independent Study. I make a quick stop and head over to meet Monica in the next wing. She'll be getting out of Chemistry by now and hunting for me.
He's there.
Simon stands near the water fountain, facing me. His eyebrows seem thicker now, darker. Somehow, jeans don't look right on him. Neither does his band shirt.
He lifts his hand and waves like we’ve met before. Maybe we have. We must have. We fell through the night together.
My brain locks and I'm not sure what else to do, so I wave back. It's a small gesture, but enough for him to notice.
He smiles. One of his front teeth is a little crooked, but in a cute way.
I feel fuzzy in a way I can't describe. I check the halls. There’s no trace of Frank or Isabel. I’m not cold. The walls around me stay solid. If I go and talk to him a little while the halls are still full of people, he can't do anything to me. Can he?
I want to go talk to him. Something's pulling me closer.
"Julia. There you are."
I turn.
Monica's walking over with her Chemistry book held tight against her chest. Her dark curls bounce over her shoulders. It's as if our conversation this morning didn't happen. "What's wrong?" she asks.
“Am I failing to hide it?” I have no way I can explain this. I shake my head to get rid of whatever look I have on my face. "Someone's--" I start, pointing to the water fountain.
Simon's gone.
"Never mind," I say, hiking my backpack up on my shoulder. "I guess I'm still worried about Frank.” It's a good enough excuse for now.
She nods and narrows her eyes at me like she's not sure I'm telling the truth. "What time do you have to be at Happy Rabbit's?"
"In twenty minutes." I fight the urge to ask her to walk me to work, but it's out of the way of Nancy's by almost half a mile. I look over my shoulder at the open doors of the school. Mrs. Ballard holds the door open for people, turning her head to keep her face out of the sun. Simon is still gone. "I should get going. Peggy's going to have a lot of kids there today. Thirteen, I think. The lucky number."
Peggy's hair is a frizzy, dishwater blond mess when I walk through the door of Happy Rabbit's Daycare. She releases one of the youngest kids, Eric, who dashes down the hall. The TV is playing an episode of Sesame Street, which means Peggy's been struggling. It hasn't worked too well, since there's shouting coming from everywhere at once and I nearly trip on something bright green as I take my shoes off.
It's Maya rolling a toy truck across the floor. It seems Peggy's forgotten all about her in the past few minutes.
"Here," I say, picking her up and planting her in front of the television. Maya starts to kick and scream so I scoop up the truck and set it down in front of her. That works. My mind spins with ways to gain control. I face Peggy. "Do you have any crayons? If we rip some pages out of the coloring books, we can have the kids sit down and do them. We could hang them up when they're done."
Peggy turns away from the high chair and sighs in relief. "Julia, you always have such great ideas. Are you sure you don't have younger siblings? I wish I could have you here all day."
"Sure." Do I? "Maybe in the summer I can work longer hours."
We finally settle all thirteen kids in front of crayons and pictures. The ones over five are easy. They get right to work, trying to stay in the lines. The rest we put in their high chairs with juice and graham crackers. Maya screeches and points at her truck on the floor, so I grab that and stuff it back into her sticky hands. Finally, silence rules in Peggy's house except for the sound of scribbling.
Peggy and I lean against the counter, watching the kids color. Eric. Shaun. Trey's little sister, Misha. I welcome the distraction. For a couple hours, I don't have to think about the fact that I could be from another time.
But Simon screams my name again in the back of my head. The wind howls against my ears. His voice is almost real, so much so that I'm afraid Peggy's going to hear it. But she takes another sip from her mug and our charges keep making art. Eric glances out the window--at a squirrel, maybe--then returns to his picture.
"Are you having any luck remembering your life yet?” Peggy asks out of the blue.
I stiffen. She means the time before I showed up on Nancy's doorstep. Nancy told Peggy about my problem about a month after she hired me. I'm still a little angry at her about that.
"No," I say. “Not yet. But I'm working on it.”
“I think you're good at working with children. You're a natural. That's why I hired you.” Peggy faces me and smiles. “You must have little siblings. Maybe you should see if you can remember anything about that. It might be a good starting point."
I hadn't thought of that. “Maybe." My palms tingle. Me? Younger siblings? Are they there, waiting wherever Frank and Isabel tried to send me?
Eric's daydreaming out the window. Misha's almost done with her picture. I think it's a dog with an oversize head standing next to some tiny flowers. We don't have long before we need to think of something else.
Peggy seems to read my expression. "I'll go make you some coffee. Why don't you go splash some water on your face? Sometimes I think you work more than I do."
I cave and head to the bathroom. The cold water does a lot of good in clearing my head. I blink, dry off, and head back out to the kitchen.
Steam rises from a mug that's waiting for me on the counter. Peggy's in the kitchen, filling her own mug at the coffee maker. “Thanks," I say. I look around the dining room at the kids. "Now I'
ll hang up these pictures and...and Eric's wandered off again. Crap.”
His seat's empty, his picture blank.
“Awww....you said 'crap,'” Shaun says. “That's a bad word.”
“No it's not,” Misha says. “The S-word is a bad word. And the F-word is the king of bad words.”
“Where did Eric go?” I ask right when Peggy joins me. I've got a bad feeling in my gut.
“He saw something,” Misha says, pointing out the back door. An orange crayon rolls across the table and lands on the tile.
The sliding door is open a crack.
And so is the gate to the neighbor's yard, which was closed a few minutes ago. It's open enough to reveal the murky water of the pond only a few feet past it.
Eric. The pond.
"Eric!"
I leap past the kitchen table, hitting a stray chair. Pain explodes above my knee, but I can't stop. Peggy's feet pound behind me as we dart outside. Eric's gone. He's gone…
I shove the gate aside and bolt into the neighbors' yard.
The pond has a big wake in it.
He’s drowning. Eric’s drowning right in front of us, and if I don’t dive in and save him, he’s going to--
"Eric!" I yell as I dive down towards the water and the mud. The world grows brighter and slows around me. Peggy screams something. I blink--
--and a white hallway lined with doors stretches in front of me.
The paint smells new and fresh. Light bulbs shine between doors. I'm the only soul in the hallway. There's another sound, too, a roaring one, but before I can make out what it is, someone screams my name.
"Julia! Help!"
It's not Simon this time. It's a boy, a much younger boy.
Eric?
"Julia! I'm scared!"
I turn--
--just as someone takes my arm and shakes it.
I blink again as the sun glares into my eyes.
Grass. Water. Mud. I'm standing at the edge of the pond. My jeans cling to me, bogged down with pond scum. Someone's holding my arm as if I'm dangling off the edge of a cliff.
"Where--" I lurch against my captor's grip. "Eric!" My gaze darts around the yard.
There's crying. Peggy's leading Eric back through the gate and up to her house. They're both wet. Soaking. Eric coughs and cries some more. Peggy's neighbor, Mr. Crow, trails behind them both. He says something about how he swore he locked the gate. Peggy waves them both inside the house, leaving me there.
Eric's safe. Peggy pulled him out of the water in time.
I almost collapse with relief.
"Are you okay?" the person holding my arm asks.
I jump and face my captor.
Simon.
He grins. My arm tingles at his touch. Is it from my nerves or from his eyes? I've never seen such a perfect shade of brown. Now that I'm closer, they're not so much earth-tone. They're more like dark chocolate. One messy lock of hair hangs down over his temple.
I slipped away to another place for a moment. Simon pulled me out by grabbing onto my arm. He's not here to send me back to wherever I'm from after all.
"Um…" Heat rises to my cheeks. "Did you follow me all the way here from school?"
Wow. I can’t even thank him like I should. My mind’s shut down. I don’t know what to think any more.
Simon looks at the ground for a second, letting his dark hair fall in his face. It's almost black with highlights of copper in the sun. That answers my question.
“You did,” I say, trying to sound angry. But I can't.
Simon looks right at me and waves his hair out of his eyes. "Yes. I'm sorry. I was waiting to talk to you after you got out of work, but then I saw you and that woman running into the next yard, yelling for that boy. I jumped the fence to help, but your employer got him out of the water first." He licks his lips and looks side to side. "They're still tracking you. You have to be careful. There was a rift opening right over you. I had to pull you out before you went back." He's like a tense guitar string ready to snap. Just his gaze sets my heart off on a marathon again.
“Okay,” I breathe. “A rift? What the heck is that?”
“Something you want to stay out of,” he says. “Something that can send you back to our real time. You don’t want to go back. A rift can open whenever you run into something that’s like what happened in your real past, especially if it's something intense."
Now it's really time for me to gasp for breath. “Are you serious?” First time police, and now rifts?
“Very serious.”
I glare at him. Simon can't be right about that last part.
But he has to be. I really was in that other place for a few seconds.
Simon leans closer to me in a silent plea with me to believe him. My eyes cross as he blurs. “I can't have anything happen to you. I should have known they'd find you eventually. I'm sorry I can't tell you more.”
"Julia!" Peggy calls from her back door. The world snaps back into focus. The word carries so much more with it than my name. This is your fault. You should have watched him better.
Simon glances in her direction and lets go of my arm. “You'd better go. I don't think they'll try anything else today. I'll see you later, okay?”
And then he's running. Running away, not looking back.
“Julia!” Peggy's louder now, angrier.
I have no time to think about Simon's words. I run back through the gate, stomach churning. This can't be my fault. I didn't open the gate. But maybe it is. I stopped while Eric was underwater. Froze. Peggy had to go after him instead when I was closer.
I failed to do my job.
“Wash up,” Peggy orders when I enter the house. The kids all stare at me, quiet and confused. Mr. Crow hangs near the doorway like he wants to escape. Peggy glares at me from the side as she dries Eric off with the bathroom towel. “Why were you just standing there with that boy when I needed you in here?”
My throat tightens as I push my way to the bathroom. Questions from the other kids assault me from every angle. A sink runs in the kitchen as Peggy shushes Eric, who's started crying again.
I hold back tears while I dry my pants off. My stomach heaves. I’m such a failure. I let Eric almost drown. I should have been the one to go in that pond after him.
Why am I being so hard on myself? Of course this wasn’t my fault. I was splashing water on my face when Eric got out the door. I was the first to notice him missing. There’s no reason I should be beating myself up about this.
But I am.
Mr. Crow apologizes over and over and finally leaves. I dry off the best I can and head back out into the living room. Peggy's calmed down by now, at least. She looks up at me with bags under her eyes. Her wet hair has left the shoulders of her shirt dark and soggy.
"I'm sorry I was short with you," Peggy says to me as she puts down her cell phone on the arm of the couch from an attempt to reach Eric's mother.
“That’s okay.” I sit on the couch. Eric rests between us, swaddled in towels from the neck down like a baby. He stares at the television, which plays another children's show in mute. I don't know the name of it, but it has a man in a purple dinosaur suit. Maya and Shaun are immersed in a set of cars on the floor. Mr. Crow checks in every fifteen minutes, knocking on the sliding door to make sure Eric hasn't gone into shock. Parents come to pick up their children as the light outside grows long and tired.
The ache in my stomach comes and goes now. The rumbles of thunder inside grow more and more distant as the minute hand on Peggy's teddy bear clock crawl along. Peggy hasn't said a word about me stopping feet from the water. Maybe she doesn't remember it. Monica says that people in intense situations like this end up not getting the details right later, so they end up pointing out the wrong suspect in a lineup or something.
I have to talk to Simon again.
He knows what’s going on. He knows where I’m from. He’s got the key to my real past. I need him to help me remember.
Peggy stands, letting Eric s
lump into the couch and crawl out of his towels. "I need to go to the bathroom," she says. Her words sound stretched. Exhausted. She's got an angry parent to contend with in a few minutes.
She leaves and the room goes silent except for Maya, Shaun, and the high whine of the TV. The dinosaur jumps up and down in a classroom.
I have to find out who opened the gate and how Eric wound up in the water. He couldn’t have worked the lock himself. He’s not tall enough and I know Mr. Crow didn’t let him in. Now's the time to ask while Peggy isn't smothering him.
"Eric," I say.
He looks at me. His cheeks are pink and his eyes shine. The blond mess on his head is starting to dry. It's as if he's retreated somewhere deep inside himself, to a safe place where there aren’t any monsters.
"Why did you go outside?" I ask. "What did you see?"
For a moment he looks away, showing a fading red mark on the back of his neck like someone grabbed him there with force. The toilet flushes down the hall and Peggy opens the door to come back. A loud knock sounds at the door. A parent's here. There's only a few seconds left.
But Eric looks at me again and speaks, and the words he says send the sickness washing through me all over again.
"A bad man. His eyes were gold."
Chapter Five
Frank.
When I find him, I'm going to murder him.
Who else could have come back, unlocked the gate, and shoved Eric into the water? Frank must have done it because something like that happened back in my real past and it would cause me to get sent back. If Simon wanted to send me back, he wouldn’t have grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the rift or whatever.
Frank almost killed a five-year-old.
A little kid. All to get to me.
Why didn’t he meet me face to face? What a coward.
I ball my hands into fists over and over again at the dinner table. Monica knows something's wrong. So does Nancy. It's obvious from the way they both look up from their plates at me. I can't hide this. It's worse than not remembering most of my life.
I try to relax my face but it's too late.
"How did your day go?" Nancy asks in a tone that says that she already has an idea.
