Jumper

by Alexes Razevich

  She shook her head. Geeze, she was losing it. There had always been two moons—one silvery white, the other a pale version of her jumper’s peacock blue.

  *

  In the morning Maddie did something she’d never done before—she called in sick though she felt fine. More than fine, actually. She felt full of joy and life, too fireworks happy to serve cappuccinos or chocolate muffins to anyone or worry that Nico would come in unexpectedly and chew her out if she happened to be just standing for a moment in a slow period. Not that she’d likely be standing at all. Today, if Nico walked in during a slow time, he’d find her dancing.

  Her lovely peacock blue jumper no longer existed to keep her warm. She shrugged on the genuine 1940s trench coat she’d found at an estate sale over jeans and a rose-print long sleeved shirt, tugged on her new hat, slung her houndstooth bag over her shoulder and headed out into the street. It was, to Maddie’s mind, a perfect October day—the air cool but not cold, as crisp as a dill pickle, the sky bright blue with streaks of white Mare’s Tails clouds.

  Her arms swung freely at her sides as she hurried toward her destination—a small parkette at the end of her street. She glanced at the sign by the gate: Homer Homeswell Parkette, and laughed. She’d read that sign a hundred times and every time it struck her funny. Not the Homer Homeswell part—whomever he was or had been—but the word parkette. Such a stupid word. As if this barely one-block long strip of grass and five or six trees was in any way related to, much less a younger sibling to, say, Yellowstone Park, or even Central Park in New York, of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Those were Parks, with a capital P. Homer Homeswell Parkette was just a sad little play on words. Still, she appreciated the green respite among all the houses, apartment buildings, and strip malls, and spent time here when she could.

  She stepped through the iron gate and stopped cold. Why had she just been thinking of the park as something small and cramped? It was hardly that—stretching out for blocks and blocks, then dropping down a small hill. And the sign for the public pool. How had she forgotten that people could swim here? Hadn’t she swum here herself this summer? She and Trish? Of course they had. She’d worn her new yellow polka dot swimsuit. Not a bikini, like in the old song, but a one-piece with crisscrossed straps in the back that made getting in and out of the suit a struggle, but worth it.

  Maddie sighed, shaking off her discontent at how screwy her memories seemed to be lately. At least her favorite bench under her favorite tree was still where she thought it was. She settled herself on it beneath the wide spreading branches of a big magnolia and took out her knitting. She cast-on and started working a pattern she’d made so many times she knew it by heart.

  “Maddie!” someone called out. “Hey, Maddie.”

  She looked up. A group of people where coming her way, waving like they knew her. She felt suddenly queasy. Who were these people? Why were they making fun this way, acting like they were her friends and all? She hated to admit it, but she really only had one friend and that was Trish.

  “Sorry we’re late,” a nice looking woman about her own age called out. The woman hiked her thumb over her shoulder at one of the men with her. “Jonny’s cat got loose and we had to chase it down. It was hiding under the porch of a house three doors down.”

  The one Maddie thought must be Jonny turned a slight shade of red in the cheeks, clearly unhappy with being named as the cause of their lateness.

  Was she meeting them here? Evidently. They seemed to be friends of hers. She struggled to remember their names, but couldn’t. She finished off the row she was working on as they came toward her. With each stitch, she remembered more of their names. Elaine. Amber. Jonny, of course. Reuben. She’d known them forever. They were friends since middle school. She looked up and saw another man running toward them, one with longish copper penny hair and a grin on his face. Was he one of her old friends, too? Why couldn’t she remember him when he so obviously knew her from the way his gaze locked on her face?

  When he reached them, he bent over and kissed her cheek, then straightened up.

  “What’re you making now?” He waved his hand toward the ball of yarn. “Nice color.”

  Maddie cleared her throat nervously. Why couldn’t she remember him? “A cowl. Like a scarf but the ends are stitched together instead of hanging free.”

  Copper Penny smiled and nodded, but she could see his interest in her work was already flagging. Maybe he’d hoped it was something for him. Why would she be making him something?

  She picked up her needles and made a few stitches—an activity to calm her nerves. It came to her then who he was. Copper Penny was Oliver—her boyfriend of over a year. She was completely losing it if she couldn’t remember her own boyfriend.

  “I could make you a scarf, if you wanted,” she said.

  He waved his hand loosely. “I have the one you gave me for my birthday. And the one from Christmas. And the one from our anniversary with the beanie.”

  “Oh,” she said, and looked down.

  Her hands went to work on the next row while she wondered why she didn’t remember making those. When she looked up again, all her friends had gone, except Oliver. It was still him, she knew, but now his hair was brown and cut short. He had a full beard and his moustache was waxed at the ends and turned up.

  Her hands were still moving, but she knew she’d dropped a stitch.

  “Are you all right?” Oliver said. “You look a little peaked.”

  “I. . . I’m not feeling too well. I think I should go home.”

  “Okay. Did you drive or take the bus?”

  What kind of question was that? Maddie wondered. She couldn’t afford a car.

  “I walked,” she said, her eyes cast down again, undoing the mistake she’d made with her needles. She half waited for Oliver to say something more, but he didn’t. She sighed, and put her yarn and the part-worked cowl back into her bag, and stood up.

  Oliver had gone. He hadn’t said good-bye and she hadn’t heard him leave, but he was as gone as if he’d never been there. Tears welled in her eyes. He was her first boyfriend, her only boyfriend, and he’d just walked off and left her.

  Well, let him, she though and wiped off her tears with the back of her hand. She had the place practically to herself now they’d all gone. She wasn’t going to let that go to waste. She sat back down.

  Needles in hand, yarn in lap, all’s right with the world.

  Maddie’s needles clicked and she thought all she needed was a cat curled beside her on the bench and the scene would be perfect. No cat appeared, but a squirrel skittered down a tree, sat back and chattered at her a moment, then ran off.

  Of course no cat. Because all isn’t right with the world.

  She’d never seen those people who claimed to be her friends before. She had one friend—Trish. She didn’t know why they’d showed up claiming to know her or why she’d thought she knew their names and remembered shared histories. Or why Copper Penny had kissed her cheek and how on earth he’d changed the way he looked so quickly.

  “Damn.” She threw down her work, slipped stitches galore in it now, the section she’d been working on a total mess.

  Things had been strange since she’d bought the peacock blue jumper, she realized. Even it was strange, unraveling on its own, almost as if it wanted something new to be made of it. She took off the hat and examined it. Every stitch was in place. The ends were still woven in tightly.

  “Obviously I do a better job making things than whoever made the jumper,” she muttered as she gathered up her things. “Except for the cowl. I’m screwing that up big time.”

  The late afternoon light was fading and the air growing chilly. Soon both moons would be up. Maybe she should get a cat, she thought. Something to come home to.

  She was crossing 54th Street when a car swung around the corner, tires squealing, shots ringing out from the rider’s side window. Maddie squeezed down tight into herself and ran for her apartment. Another car followed,
firing at the first one. Maddie dug out her keys with shaking hands, opened the front door and ran inside. Her neighbor was on his way out. Maddie didn't know his name, but she grabbed his arm and said, “Don’t go out there. People in cars are shooting at each other.”

  Her neighbor gave a small laugh. “So what else is new? They never shoot at anyone on the streets. They have those laser guns or whatever they’re called that target what the shooter is looking at. So long as you don’t draw attention to yourself, they never look at pedestrians.”

  More gunfire was being exchanged on the street, the pop, pop, pop escalating till it seemed just one big long explosion. Maddie hurried to her apartment and shut the door behind her, leaning on it as if to keep the world outside from getting in.

  Slowly her breathing returned to normal and she began to feel foolish. She sat on the couch and pulled out the cowl. It would take a while to undo all the bad stitches. Rows of them. Unravel the tangled yarn. It wasn’t like her to mess up a piece that way. She’d been knitting since she was nine and was good at it, conscientious. She dutifully undid all the tangled yarn and wrong stitches, listening as the gunfire outside lessened while she worked and stopped all together as she undid the last wrong stitch.

  She put the cowl aside, made a dinner of grilled cheese sandwich and spinach salad, and decided, quite out of character, to turn on some music. She liked silence mostly. Or thought she had liked silence, but now she liked music. What sort did she like? Classic rock, she decided, and found a Pandora station to fit.

  The knock at the door startled her. Trish hadn’t said she was coming over and she knew not to show up unexpectedly. Maddie peeked through the spy hole in the door. Oliver, in a red flannel shirt and a gray duster, grinned at her. She drew in a breath and cautiously opened the door.

  “Ah,” he said, striding into her living room, “Strawberry Fields Forever. That was my G’maw’s favorite Beatles song. G’paw liked Eleanor Rigby. Edgier, he said.”

  Maddie knew she was staring and forced her gaze away. Oliver was Copper Penny again. She had the oddest thought: that he looked that way because she’d unraveled bearded Oliver. Just as she’d unraveled the shooters on the street.

  “I’m gonna,” he said, and tilted his head toward the bathroom.

  As soon as the door shut, Maddie grabbed her peacock blue yarn and needles. She worked fast but carefully, thinking, This is crazy. Oliver will walk back into the room the same as when he left it. I’m losing my mind.

  Oliver returned, running a hand through his copper penny hair. He slipped off the black sweatshirt with a Los Angeles Kings hockey logo on the front. His green-and-gray striped t-shirt fit snuggly across his broad shoulders. Maddie glanced quickly at her own shirt. It was the same one she’d had on all day. At least she thought it was. Yes, it was. Definitely.

  He settled beside her on the couch. “Do apartments come up for rent here often? I can’t believe all the space you have.”

  Her apartment was tiny. It was all she could afford on a barista’s pay. Trish had said if you stood in the middle of the bedroom you could touch both walls with your fingertips. Her place wasn’t that small, but no one would say she had a lot of space.

  She looked down again and fiddled with the strand of yarn running from her needles to the ball. The cowl was finished. Without looking up, she reached for the scissors and cut it loose from what little was left of the yarn ball.

  Oliver laid his arm over her shoulder and pulled her toward him. Maddie stiffened. She felt him shift his weight.

  “Oh, shit. Look at the time. We’re supposed to meet everyone for karaoke.”

  He stood and held out his hand to help her up. She looked around her apartment, saw how spacious it was, the good quality of the furniture and art on the walls, her extensive hardback book collection. Those years in school getting her MBA had paid off. She hadn’t thought she’d like finance when the job was first offered to her, but it turned out she had a flair for it and loved the work.

  They stepped out into the night—not into the seaside town where she’d lived that morning, but into a bright and sparkling Manhattan. A smile curved her lips. Oliver slipped an arm over her shoulders again. She snuggled close to his strong, hard body, breathing in his familiar scent.

  A Note from the Author

  Thank you for reading Jumper. I hope you enjoyed it. You might also like Shadowline Drift, a novel set in the Amazon where little is what it seems to be. You can check it out here: goo.gl/ehPQRc. It’s available as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Meg Xuemei, Randy Jackson, Dan McNeil, and Jay Howard, wonderful writers all, for their help in shaping this story.

  Much love to Chris, Larkin, and Colin Razevich who make my world perfect.

  About the Author

  Alexes Razevich writes speculative fiction. She attended California State University San Francisco where she earned a degree in Creative Writing. After a successful career on the fringe of the electronics industry, including stints as Director of Marketing for a major trade show management company and as an editor for Electronic Engineering Times, she returned to her first love — fiction. She lives in Southern California with her husband. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found playing hockey or traveling somewhere she hasn’t been before.

  Email: LxsRaz@yahoo.com

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