Tempest

by Julie Cross

  With all the attempts, I ended up in some random past date. Then I came back here. As if there’s nothing in the future. Like September 9, 2007, is THE END OF THE WORLD. Right now, I’m so exhausted I can’t even think about time travel. Maybe if I just close my eyes for a few minutes …

  “Hey, kid. Get up.”

  Someone shook my shoulders, then jabbed a finger into my chest.

  I sprang up from my spot in the grass and nearly plowed into the two police officers standing in front of me. The sun had completely set while I slept.

  “You can’t sleep here,” one of the officers said.

  “Sorry.” I snatched my black bag off the grass before shuffling toward the sidewalk. I wanted to throw the stupid bag in the Hudson. It felt symbolic of my selfishness. My stomach twisted in knots again. This was my punishment for ducking out. For leaving her there to die. I pressed the heels of my hands over my eyes and forced myself to focus. Stay sane. Curling up in a ball of grief two years in the past wouldn’t get me a step closer to saving Holly. Or figuring out what the hell was going on with my dad and that weird trip back to 2003.

  I crossed the street and walked into a diner. Every step was agonizing. Something must have happened, to drag me this far into a state of complete exhaustion. And pain. Like knives poking me all over.

  Food. I needed sustenance of some kind to keep me going, even though eating was the very last thing I wanted to do right now. This was like a bad case of the flu, the feverish, delusional state my mind was in. A mix of physical and emotional, and I didn’t know what dominated.

  “Is it just one?” the hostess asked.

  I nodded and followed her to a table near the door. I ran through the nightmare again in my mind. Not the craziness that followed leaving 2009, but the event just before. That was my nightmare and it was still crystal clear.

  Who were those men in Holly’s room? Why were they asking about my dad? About government people approaching me?

  That’s him, one of them had said. And could they have somehow known what I can do?

  “Can I get you something to drink?” the waitress asked.

  “Coffee, please. Oh, and where is your restroom?”

  She pointed to my left. I stumbled into the bathroom, leaned my back against the wall, and closed my eyes.

  Please let it work this time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Exhaust fumes filled my nostrils, horns honking all around. I opened my eyes and stared at the front bumper of a bright yellow cab.

  “What the hell!” someone shouted.

  I leaped off the road. “Sorry, I … tripped.”

  “Idiot! You coulda been killed.”

  Only in New York City could someone materialize out of thin air and get no more than the usual angry driver reactions.

  I raced to the safety of the crowded sidewalk, shielding my eyes from the blazing summer sun. Not easy to get your head around, when you’re exhausted and just came from a cool, dark evening.

  I leaned against a light post to catch my breath. I could still picture Holly’s face as the bullet ripped through her. The image I had just tried so hard to focus on. Obviously, it didn’t work. Again.

  Suck it up and try again, Jackson.

  I finally glanced around and recognized the streets of Manhattan. I knew where I was, just not when. The newsstand outside my building had no customers, so I stepped up to make a purchase, keeping my eyes on the revolving front door that my father almost always used.

  The doorman, Henry, glanced in my direction, squinting into the sun. I snatched a Mets cap from the rack and threw it on, pulling the front way down, concealing my face.

  “I’ll take this hat and The New York Times.” I handed the man a slightly damp fifty from my wallet.

  “Mets fan, huh? Well, I guess I’ll forgive you.” He boomed with laughter, and it must have drowned out the footsteps of the other person approaching.

  “Wall Street Journal, please,” a very familiar voice said beside me.

  I turned my back to my father as quickly as possible, then shifted my eyes to the newspaper clutched between my fingers.

  July 1, 2004.

  How the hell did I get so far back again?

  All I could do was keep my back to him and head in the other direction.

  “Hey, you forgot your change!”

  Luckily, Dad didn’t run after me. It was safer to take the long way around Central Park before heading to my usual spot. Time travel was kicking my ass and I had to rest. Even though I felt great now, the second I jumped back to 2007, I’d feel like hell again. Like I had the plague or swine flu.

  A flash of red hair came out from behind a tree. Long skinny legs stuck straight out. My feet moved twice as fast. It was like chasing water in the middle of the desert. Like she would disappear if I didn’t get to her quick enough.

  “Courtney?” I said, but my voice was constricted.

  She kicked off her pink-and-green tennis shoes and leaned back against the tree, a book resting in her lap.

  “Courtney!” I said again, much louder this time.

  Her head poked around the tree and she squinted into the sun, probably trying to focus on my face. Then she tossed her book onto the grass and stood up slowly. “Yeah?”

  I froze to my spot, staring at her in amazement. She was really here. Alive. But the irony of the situation was gut-wrenching.

  My girlfriend, who should be alive, was dead (or dying) in 2009, and my sister, whom I’d already lost once, was sitting in the grass here in 2004, sunbathing and catching up on the latest Harry Potter book. She wasn’t even sick yet.

  As she walked closer, this tiny voice hidden in the back of my head spoke a little louder. Adam’s voice, running through the pros and cons of me talking to this younger version of my sister. Was this something that would potentially end the world?

  At this point, I had lost the ability to think rationally and all I wanted was to grab on to something real and familiar. So I did, probably, the most idiotic thing possible.

  With a few long strides, I closed the gap between us and pulled her into a tight hug, squeezing her around the arms, making sure she was actual solid matter. I was absorbed in my special moment when her loud, piercing scream went right into my ear. Then she lifted her leg and kneed me in the balls, before wiggling out of my grip and backing up slowly.

  “Calm down, Courtney,” I gasped, putting my hands up in the air. I could tell by the way her eyes darted around, she was about to run. “Please … don’t go. Give me a minute.”

  Her green eyes were huge orbs. “Just leave me alone. My … my dad’s coming … any second.” She pointed behind me. “Look, there he is!”

  Stupid me fell for her trick and I looked over my shoulder. She started to run past me, but I grabbed her around the waist. I needed to tell someone. To make them believe me.

  “I promise I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, right into her ear. Then I pulled out my wallet and stuck it in front of her face. “Take this. Look through it. I’ll let go of you and sit by the tree. Deal?”

  Her whole body stiffened, but she didn’t fight me. Then I remembered the man called Agent Freeman following us to school in 2003. Was he watching her now? Maybe he was slacking on the job. “I know you have every penny of your allowance from the last three years under your mattress despite the fact that I’ve told you it’ll all burn up in a fire and Dad will never let you buy a motorcycle when you’re sixteen, even if you pay for it yourself.”

  Her breathing hitched for a second, but she didn’t say anything. I tried something else, pointing at a nearby tree. “You watched me fall out of that tree and break my arm eight years ago.”

  I released her and walked slowly backward a few steps before sitting down in the grass by the tree. She spun around to face me. “Jackson?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then I tossed the wallet over to her and watched as she riffled through it, pulling out picture IDs, credit cards, photos.

  Her eyes
dropped down to the grass to meet mine again. “Oh, my God, you’re … big … and…”

  “I can … time-travel,” I managed to sputter out, knowing the reaction it would bring.

  To my pleasant surprise, her feet stayed planted even as I lifted myself off the ground. I spent the next thirty minutes explaining exactly how I got here, but I left out some details. Like what happened to Holly and that part about Dad and the mysterious CIA agent. Courtney just stood there, wide-eyed and listening, until I finally stopped talking.

  “I fell asleep, didn’t I?” she asked.

  I smiled for the first time in what seemed like forever. “No, I promise this is real.”

  She took a step closer, her nose wrinkling as she scrutinized my face. “You … look like my brother. Just … older.”

  I laughed. “I thought you would have taken off running by now.”

  “I haven’t ruled it out,” Courtney muttered.

  She touched my cheek and patted it gently. “Damn, it is you. It has to be.”

  “When’s the last time you saw me? The younger one.”

  “Four days ago. You’re supposed to be at baseball camp in Colorado.” She reached up to touch the top of my hat and pulled off a tag.

  “Dad was at the newspaper stand right next to me. I had to hide my face a little.”

  “So you can really time-travel?”

  I nodded.

  We both stared at each other for a minute longer until she finally spoke again. “Aren’t you going to explain a little better, like the science part? This is really freaky, you know.”

  “Right, okay. I’ll try my best.” Both of us sat down by the tree across from each other. Courtney folded her legs underneath her, looking much calmer than I would have expected. “So, 2009 is my present year, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Courtney said.

  “For some reason, I can’t go back there. Like the universe shifted two years into the past. I’ve been bouncing back to 2007 for two days now.”

  Her eyes were huge. “Why? And how did it work before the universe moved or whatever?”

  I kept my eyes on the grass and plucked out little pieces. “I don’t know why. But before, I would only jump an hour or two, sometimes a couple days. Then I would just end up back in the same place, like I never left.”

  “How do you even know what time is yours?” she asked.

  “Basically, I have a home base. And the jumping part is like a boomerang. I’m thrown out somewhere and then I just circle back. When I’m in those other years, like this one, I feel like a shadow of myself. And nothing I do during a jump changes anything in my home base.”

  “Nothing?”

  I shook my head. “Not so far.”

  She glanced sideways at a man riding by on a bike. “So, if you had a gun and murdered that guy, he would still be alive three years in the future?”

  “I think so, but I’m not gonna try.”

  “Like Groundhog Day,” Courtney said, staring over my shoulder.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, the movie where Bill Murray keeps repeating the same day over and over. He tries to kill himself by dropping a toaster in the bathtub, then wakes up on the same day again.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that, but yeah, that’s a good comparison.”

  “Can you go from here to another year, like 1991 or something?”

  “No, I have to tag up.”

  “Tag up?”

  “Like when the other team catches a fly ball and you have to tag up before running to the next base. If I tried to go back five years right now, I’d open my eyes and be right back in that diner bathroom in 2007.”

  She let out a breath and shook her head. “So weird.”

  “Definitely.” My mind sank deeper into analytical mode. Adam’s influence. “You know what’s really weird?”

  “What?” Courtney asked.

  “When I jumped out of 2009, it felt different. Like I was light as air. Normally it feels like I’m splitting in two. And every attempt to jump forward in time since I got stuck in 2007 has felt like I’m splitting apart.”

  “So it was just that one time that it felt different and now your universe shifted.” Her forehead wrinkled and I could guess she was playing with theories. Finally, she shook her head and smiled. “It’s just so crazy. Do you have some kind of evidence from the future?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What, like lottery numbers? Do we really need more money? Besides, you already saw my wallet. Everything in there is from the future.”

  “Right, I forgot about that.” She picked up my wallet that had been tossed into the grass and started sifting through it again.

  I watched every movement she made, studying it, memorizing it. Waiting for her to disappear. “You’re taking this really well.”

  “Maybe I’m just in shock,” she said, picking up my license and pulling it close to her face. “Wow, so we’re, like, nineteen? How do I look? Please say my boobs get a little bigger.”

  I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. Don’t tell her. Better yet, don’t think about it. She’s here now. Focus on that. My hands were shaking, but I kept my face and voice as calm as possible.

  She looked up after my long silence. “What is it? I’m fat, aren’t I?”

  I forced a tight smile and looked away from her face. “You look beautiful and not in the least bit fat.”

  “You’re family, you have to say that.”

  “Maybe, but it’s still true.”

  “Tell me something about the future, something really cool.” Her face was eager, like a gossip columnist digging for dirt.

  I knew exactly what she’d want to hear. “I have a girlfriend.”

  As predicted, her face lit up with interest. “What’s her name?”

  “Holly,” I said, leaning my head back against the tree. It felt like the wind got knocked out of me, saying her name out loud for the first time since I’d left her. But I knew it would distract Courtney from asking about herself. I had to play the part, even if it hurt.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Blond and gorgeous. Blue eyes.”

  “Yeah, I could see you with a blond model type. Probably working in Paris, building her career.”

  I laughed. “She’s from Jersey and she’s a little too short to model and almost never wears makeup.”

  Courtney grinned. “I like her already.”

  “Me, too.” I put my arms around her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. She didn’t protest this time.

  “Jackson?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have to tell you a secret.” She turned her face so it pressed into my shirt. “I kissed Stewart Collins at Peyton’s birthday party last week.”

  “I knew it! You guys were gone way too long in the kitchen and then he had that stupid grin on his face. I could have punched him.”

  She giggled. “Exactly why I didn’t tell you.”

  My arms tightened around her. “I miss you so much.”

  This was something I never would have said in 2004, but in reality it had been four years since I’d talked to my sister. Grief swept over me. I had to get away. This was too hard. Too much. Nothing would change.

  I gave her one last squeeze and whispered, “Good-bye, Courtney.”

  Then I jumped out of 2004, and headed back to my own version of purgatory. September 9, 2007. Again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  My eyes flew open and I watched three drops of blood fall into the porcelain sink. A hand reached out and stuck a paper towel right under my nose. The bloody nose was yet another piece of evidence that this exact moment in time was my new present. My new home base.

  But something was different. I had been alone in the restroom when I left. If I knew Adam’s formula, I’d be able to figure out exactly how long I’d been leaning against the wall in this bathroom, looking like a vegetable.

  “Here you go, son. You should pinch the nostrils,” a deep voice spoke right into my ear.r />
  A tall, dark-skinned bald man stood beside me.

  “Thank you,” I said, and for a second he looked at me like maybe he recognized me, but everything was jumbling together and he was gone before I could even think twice about it.

  My nose only bled for a minute, and after washing my hands I left the restroom.

  The waitress set my coffee on the table. The same waitress who had greeted me before I went into the restroom. Damn. Same place. Same time.

  She smiled as I slid into the booth. “Ready to order?”

  I pointed to the first item on the left side of the menu, not even caring what it was. “I’ll have that.”

  “Grilled salmon with seasonal vegetables?”

  I shrugged and then nodded. Just as she started to turn away, I remembered something.

  “Wait! I forgot to ask … do you have a copy of today’s paper?” It was pointless, but I had to check.

  “Of course, I’ll be right back with that.”

  I tapped my fingers on the table, waiting for the answer I already knew. She dropped the paper in front of me and I groaned as soon as I read the top. September. 2007.

  Always the same. Eighteen times now. It was eight-thirty at night. A couple of minutes had passed, but that was all. I’d been in the past for the longest stretch yet.

  “Is everything okay?” the waitress asked.

  “Sorry, I’m just disappointed the final performance of…”—I glanced down at the headlines—“Annie is canceled. Love that song, ‘It’s the Hard-Knock Life.’”

  The waitress twisted a loose strand of hair around her finger and shifted her weight. “Yeah … uh … your dinner should be ready in a few minutes.”

  I pulled my journal from my bag because Adam’s voice rang through my head again. This used to be fun. Like an adventure. But with each failed attempt to save Holly, Adam’s words began to take on a much deeper meaning.