Vortex

by Julie Cross

  The way he said this wasn’t manipulative or a guilt trip, it was a real question, so I allowed myself to process it. “The timeline I just came from … that Holly … doesn’t like me at all, and she’s got someone else. And the first Holly I met … she really didn’t have the best impression of me.” I shrugged, like it didn’t matter, like it didn’t hurt. “So, there’s your answer, I guess.”

  He shocked me by laughing. “Well, all the versions of me have liked you, so at least you have that.”

  “Gee, I wonder why,” I joked. “The dimples, right? Not the fascinating-freak-of-nature part.”

  He gave my shoulder a hard shove, but he was still laughing. “Finally, the robot’s gone. Now write a decent love letter, asshole.”

  It only took about half a second to decide what to write. Five words … that was all I needed to say. I quickly folded the paper and stuffed it inside her purse. I heard Dad call my name from the other room.

  “Can you tell him I’ll be right there?” I asked Adam.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, walking out the door and shutting it behind him.

  I lay down beside Holly again and rolled her on her side to face me. “Holly? Wake up…”

  Her eyelids fluttered a little and opened halfway.

  “Holly?” I tried again.

  “Does my mom know you’re in my bed?” she mumbled.

  I smiled at her even though she couldn’t see me. The second my arm draped over her waist, she scooted closer and curled up against me. “Actually, you’re in my bed.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “It smells like you.”

  I had to get away from here … or else I wouldn’t. I kissed her cheek and spoke right in her ear, “Don’t fall in love with any football players.”

  Her eyes flew open and she shot up, nearly banging her head into mine. “Did I … did I drink a lot of champagne or something…?”

  I sat up, too, and smoothed her hair down with my hand. “Um … you might have. I’m not sure.”

  She glanced around my bedroom and I just stared at her, letting a million different emotions flood over me and bury me … Then my hands were on her face. Just as she opened her mouth to speak again, my lips were on hers.

  Her response was immediate. She had her hands on the back of my neck, fingers in my hair, then under my shirt.

  “I have to tell you something,” I mumbled against her mouth.

  “Yeah?” She pressed her mouth harder against mine and then pulled back a little. She lay down on the pillow again and I could see her eyelids fluttering as if she couldn’t hold them open.

  “I just … it’s just…” I rested my head beside hers and felt around for her hand before squeezing it. “Nothing is easy for me. Being here with you … being without you … it’s all so hard, and it feels like I’ll never be able to breathe again…”

  She kissed me once more, pressing her whole body against mine. After several long seconds, she pulled away, but kept her arms around me as if she knew I was about to leave her. “You love me,” she said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “That’s why it’s hard. I know what you mean … I didn’t want to love you … I didn’t even want to like you, but I do.” She smiled as if she were joking, but I knew she was just playing it cool, in case she revealed more than I had. “This would be much easier if your Dad really was a janitor.”

  Oh right … I almost forgot the lie I originally told about my family to 007 Holly.

  I’d have to be a complete idiot to leave this girl. An absolute moron. I buried my face in her hair, holding on to her for a long time, and then I kissed her cheek before letting go.

  She was breathing deep again, eyes sealed shut in a drug-induced sleep. I slid off the bed and gave her one more kiss on the cheek. It took every ounce of willpower I had to not crawl under the covers with her and fall asleep …

  I stepped into the hallway and immediately felt the presence of someone. The slightest shuffle of feet … the almost-silent breath that was just drawn in. I flung the hall closet door open and reached blindly into the dark for something to grab. My fingers wrapped around a shirt and I yanked the owner out, surprised by the lack of weight. I pressed the person against the wall and finally got a good look at the scrawny freckle-faced kid.

  “Mason!” My hands were already shaking. Images of his body dissolving to bits reeled through my mind and I couldn’t push them out.

  “Jackson, it’s okay, he’s one of us!” Dad said from the other end of the hall.

  I came here to save Mason, to fix him … I had almost forgotten. Maybe I needed to know more or something, so I could jump more purposefully. “Mason, you gotta tell me something … some personal info … something that will help me—”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Jackson?” Dr. Melvin said. “Is this why you’re here?”

  Mason lifted his foot and gave me a hard kick in the stomach before I could stop him. I stumbled back into the wall, clutching my midsection. Mason’s eyes darted between me and Dr. Melvin and Dad … Comprehension came quicker than I thought it would, and his entire face filled with panic. Fifteen-year-old agent-in-training Mason drew a gun and pointed it right at me. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the experiment. I heard you talking to your friend about Axelle.”

  “Mason…” Dr. Melvin said.

  I lifted my hands up in front of me, not able to hide the shaking fear in my voice. “I really have to help you … Not here … Maybe I just need to know things about you … anything.”

  Maybe, if I could get a better feel for Mason’s life before I knew him, I’d be able to do the Thomas-jump to help him. Strong emotional memories always seemed to take my power to a higher level.

  He lowered the gun, his eyes locked with mine. “What happens to me? What’s going to happen?”

  “Do not tell him anything!” Marshall boomed, fighting his way into the hall. “Agent Sterling, you will hand over your gun and leave immediately.”

  Mason didn’t budge and I wasn’t all that surprised by his stubbornness. I’d seen it before many times. “Tell me what happened!”

  “No!” Dad and Marshall said together.

  Then everything that followed happened in a five-second blur. Mason pointed his gun down the hall and fired straight over everyone’s head. They dove down anyway and he came charging at me full-speed.

  He threw a hard punch right at my jaw. “I fucking hate you! If you weren’t around, they wouldn’t even come after me … or any of us … It’s because of you!”

  His anger hit me so hard, I couldn’t even fight back. “I’m sorry, Mason … I’ll fix it … I’ll fix everything … I swear.”

  “Jackson, go … get out of here!” Adam shouted, but I couldn’t even see him.

  I caught Dad’s eye from the opposite end of the hall. He gave me a tiny nod, just as another one of Mason’s blows hit me right in the temple.

  I shoved Mason off me and dove into the bathroom, but I only waited a second before jumping back to 2009.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JUNE 17, 2009, 11:00 A.M.

  I must have fallen asleep right after jumping back to 2009, because when I finally opened my eyes and took in the borrowed CIA apartment, light was streaming through the windows.

  And there was an intruder sitting on the end of my bed.

  I leaped up, tossing blankets aside and nearly tripping over Mason’s duffel bag … the one I had brought with me last night from his locker in the underground lab. The intruder sat with an eerie calm as I caught my breath and prevented my own heart attack.

  Jenni Stewart.

  Not the usual Agent Stewart, this was the train-wreck version. She still wore her clothes from last night, dried blood, grime, and all, her hair flying in a dozen directions. She looked absolutely demented. I kept one hand wrapped around my phone, which I must have fallen asleep holding on to.

  “Stewart … I’ve been trying to call you?” I said, walking back toward the bed. />
  She lifted up a pink notebook, covering her face with it. “Recognize this?”

  “No,” I said right away, and then looked closer. It was just some kind of journal or diary. Actually, Holly had one like that … 009 Holly. So, this 009 Holly would probably have the same notebook. But where was Stewart going with this? She saw us dancing last night, maybe? Or overheard some of the conversation? It didn’t matter. I’d lie and deny anything more than what she’d seen.

  She slowly opened the notebook and read a little yellow Post-it pressed to the inside cover. “Jackson, this was left in my hands and you should have it. It might help.” She looked up at me, raising her eyebrows. “This is your dad’s writing…”

  My heart raced. “Is he here? Have you talked to him?”

  “No,” she said quietly, and I could see that her disappointment reflected mine.

  “I have no idea why he left that for me. And me is the key word here … not you.”

  She laughed a slightly insane cackle. “Right … it happens to belong to the girl you danced with last night. Short … blond hair—”

  “I know what she looks like,” I snapped. “Again … I don’t know her and I have no business reading any of her personal belongings, and neither do you.”

  “Really? That’s funny, because you’re all over this thing.” She flipped to the middle of the book and I held my breath, waiting. “June twenty-third, 2009. When I get to camp this morning, I have no idea what to expect from Jackson. I almost feel more nervous than last night. We kissed. One incredibly hot, amazing kiss last night. We established nothing. Decided nothing. So, yeah, today’s weird.”

  Oh, God … it can’t be … can it? Something from another timeline that I hadn’t brought myself? Did that mean that I had definitely created another timeline when I left Holly in August 2009? Eileen seemed to think I may have done the Thomas-jump, but I doubted that. Especially after my failed attempt last night.

  Spots appeared in front of my face and I was nearly positive I’d pass out any second so I sank down onto the bed. “No … no it’s not—”

  “Not what, Jackson?” Stewart prodded with a scary edge to her voice. “Not a journal documenting months of make-out sessions and some seriously fucked-up angst? You know, she’s even got me in this thing? Oh … and then there’s the fact that pages and pages have been devoted to August, September, October … 2009. As in the future…”

  She got up and stood across from me. All I could do was wait and be ready for what would inevitably come. There was no way she didn’t know about me now.

  I didn’t expect the derisive laughter that followed. “All these fucking months I was trying to figure you out! Do you know how crazy it’s been for me? I’ve known you since you were seventeen. Knew everything about you … and then suddenly you’re an agent and speak every fucking language in the goddamn universe. It all makes sense now … perfect sense.”

  Okay, here we go. I moved my hand from the cell to the gun tucked under my pillow.

  She tossed the diary onto the couch. “Displacement! That’s what fucking happened to you, isn’t it?”

  Huh? “Huh?”

  “Don’t look at me like that … You came from another timeline, didn’t you?”

  Yeah … or at least I’d thought so until Eileen … “Uh…”

  Stewart stopped staring at me and started pacing across the floor. “So, something happened to you or whatever … And they made one of the EOTs move you.” She froze in place. “Or did they do it on their own … like as a threat to your dad, and now you’re stuck here ’cause your brain might explode if you get moved back?”

  My mouth hung open. I had no idea what to say or how the hell I had managed to keep my secret a secret. She thought an EOT had changed my timeline … not that I was an EOT. Dr. Melvin told me about Displacement when I had jumped off the roof with Holly that one time.

  Go with it, I told myself. “Um … yeah, something happened … and, well … it needed to not happen again. So, yeah, you’re basically right. But I promised my dad I wouldn’t give all the details. You know how it works. It’s not healthy for any of us to know too much about the future.”

  Now it was Stewart’s turn to let her jaw drop. “Damn … how far ahead were you? I mean, you don’t look much older. Did you already start agent training? Because that would explain the rapid progress.” She sighed, looking disappointed. “I guess you don’t have to tell me if your dad said not to.”

  “What if I just say it was less than a year in the future, and yes, I had some training?” My heart still pounded and sweat dripped from everywhere, but Stewart was too fascinated by the discovery to even notice these obvious signs of lying or concealing things. Although most of it was true. Sort of.

  She suddenly dove for the pink notebook again, flipping frantically. “Wait … I think I know why you left that other timeline. The day before I found out you were our newest recruit, I was assigned to follow you to work. But you weren’t there.” She stopped on a page closer to the front and placed the notebook in my lap. “Here, read this.”

  I looked down at the page and recognized Holly’s handwriting immediately.

  MARCH 15TH, 2009

  I work on Mars or maybe Jupiter. Seriously. It’s that weird. I’ve been to Manhattan plenty of times, but mostly tourist places where normal middle-class people, like myself, gather to look at something. Or whatever.

  But people actually live on the Upper East Side. That’s just nuts. Oh and I made a great first impression. Remind me not to walk and read at the same time because accidental collision with very cute boy (I almost don’t want to write “boy,” but “man” sounds creepy and “young man” sounds dorky) may occur. And if you’re really stupid and decide to read, walk, and carry big strawberry smoothie at the same time, you may ruin the cute boy’s shoes.

  I was like, OMG!! But I’ll admit, he took it well. Actually, he laughed then saved my book from the smoothie, which was awesome because I would have had nothing to read on the way home.

  For the rest of this month, it’s just training two nights a week, so no real work yet. However, I did something really cool today when Mr. Wellborn, our camp director, mentioned that his computer lab instructor for the camp took another job and he was looking for someone with extensive computer knowledge. I got brave and raised my hand and was like, “One of my good friends is going to MIT and just won the National Science Fair. He’s awesome with kids and is looking for a job.”

  Mr. Wellborn was really impressed and took Adam’s info. Adam will flip when he finds out the pay and I know he’d like to get out of Jersey just as much as me. We’ve always had that in common.

  When I was leaving, the same guy I had run into earlier and ruined his shoes, walked out the door, right in front of me. I watched him get into this long black car, waiting for him out front. The driver (wearing a black suit and some kind of earpiece) even ran around and opened the door for him. Seriously.

  I rolled my eyes and I think he saw me because he smiled. Obviously he’s an Upper East Side product, but why the hell does he need a job? Maybe court-appointed community service? Wouldn’t really make sense given the pay rate for the job and all the applicants. He should have been assigned to a camp for disadvantaged children in Harlem or something.

  That’s all for now.

  Love,

  Holly

  “That was you, wasn’t it?” Stewart asked, yanking the notebook from my lap. “The ruined-shoe guy? That’s the day you met her … and the day you became a member of Tempest.” Stewart looked at me and rolled her eyes. “And, what? She walked into the building, smoothie still intact … so dramatic … and tragic. Did you pick the date? ’Cause that’s really corny.”

  “Yes,” I managed to say. This notebook was harder to swallow than any of the pictures Dad had of her from his “source.”

  “God, you’re such a pathetic loser,” she said with a groan.

  I glared at her, and she looked slightly guilty. “
Sorry, I’m sure it was heartbreaking … but damn … how weird is it to, like, do the same day again?” she asked.

  I let out a breath I’d been holding for I didn’t know how long. “You have no idea how weird it is.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, looking more serious and businesslike. “You’re gonna have to tell Kendrick. She’s all girlie and in love and I wouldn’t be surprised if she plans another matchmaking session between you and Blondie. Obviously, whatever made you need to be out of this girl’s life was too important to get screwed up with another fifty-thousand-dollar dance.”

  “Damn,” I muttered under my breath. “Was that really just last night … as in less than twenty-four hours ago?”

  Just the mention of last night caused Stewart’s face to darken, and I remembered how angry she was, how she stormed off and no one heard from her. “Hey—where were you, anyway?”

  I stood up and she did the same, making a great effort out of closing Holly’s diary and placing it in my hands. “Here … you should keep this.”

  I set it on the counter and stepped closer to Stewart. “Come on … just tell me where you went last night. No offense, but you look like hell.”

  She moved toward me so quick, I was nearly positive it was an attack. But then she kissed me … like she had a few days ago, except more urgent. I let it go for about ten seconds, trying to rationalize the situation. It was obvious she wanted a distraction, like I had the last time. I gently pried her off of me and grasped her shoulders firmly with both hands.

  “This is a bad idea.”

  Her hands slipped into the front pocket of my shorts. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  I shook my head right away. “Stewart, I know what you’re trying to do … I saw it happen, too … I kept seeing it … seeing him … every time I closed my eyes last night—”

  “Stop! Just shut up.” She tried to wiggle out of my grip, but I held on tighter.