by Leslie Rule
If.
I hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to continue working with Twin-Star. My biological parents had signed a contract with Twin-Star. But I had rights. I was pretty sure the scientists couldn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to.
I toyed with the idea of telling Dr. Grady I had no intention of returning—no intention of ever wearing the visor again. Then Kyle smiled at me. “You were great, Jenna!” he whispered. “Really great!”
I melted as his shining eyes held mine. The PK experiments were so important to him—a tribute to the grandfather he adored. Involuntarily, my lips curved into a smile as wide as Kyle’s.
“I wish my grandfather was alive to see this,” he said proudly.
In that instant, I made a decision. I would help with the experiments. But I’d make it clear to everyone it was my choice. “I’ve got some time Saturday,” I told Dr. Grady. “I could come in for a while in the afternoon.”
I told myself I was doing it for Kyle. After all, what difference did it make to me how many knots I could tie in a fork with my mind waves? I could see no practical application for my newfound talent. The one time I’d tried to use it outside the lab, someone had gotten hurt. Whenever I saw Ruby hobbling around with her walker, I felt a fresh wave of guilt.
But my guilt, my doubt, and my gnawing sense of foreboding were whisked away with Kyle’s kisses. When he dropped me off, he held me close. As his lips gently brushed mine, I felt a surge of emotion I was sure must be love. I wanted to make him happy, and I silently vowed to do my best on Saturday.
On Saturday, everything changed. My drive to succeed had nothing to do with Kyle or Dr. Grady or any of the scientists at Twin-Star Labs. You see, I discovered the reason behind the PK experiments. It was a theory so fantastic, it seemed impossible. But if it proved true, I could right the terrible wrong that had been done to me.
14
It was thoughts of Rita that led me to the truth. She was constantly on my mind. When I looked in the mirror, I imagined her eyes staring back at me. At night I dreamed of her. Vivid dreams that seemed to fill every second of my slumber.
The dreams usually started happily. Rita and I would find each other and she would instantly recognize me as her sister. Ecstatic, we’d laugh and skip like children. We’d frolic over rolling hills, dance under rainbows, and bounce on pink, fluffy clouds.
But always the dream lost its soft fairyland quality, sharpening and distorting until it twisted itself into a grotesque nightmare. Rainbows turned black and clouds wept blood. Rita became a skeleton, rattling her bones as she danced away from me.
“Rita!” I shrieked. “Come back!”
“I can’t, Jenna,” she replied. “Can’t you see I’m dead?”
The awful dreams left me sick and anxious.
You’d think I’d want to forget her, to shove all thoughts of her from my mind. Rita’s life had ended so tragically. What was the point of dwelling on it?
Yet, I made no effort to forget my sister. On the contrary. I ached to know all I could about her. I slept in her room, strolled on her beach, stared at the same stars that sprinkled her sky. Still, it was not enough.
Listening to Rita’s music partly filled the void. On Saturday afternoon, when my parents were away visiting friends in Salem, I programmed our computer to play the melodies my sister was so fond of. I could hardly wait for Mom and Dad to leave so I could have the house to myself. But Mom had dawdled, watering the plants and changing her outfit three times, and then had practically begged me to go with them. “Please come with us, Jen-Jen,” she asked with annoying cheerfulness.
I cringed at my childhood nickname—the corny, gooey name she gave me as a baby. I’m not your Jen-Jen! I wanted to shout. Instead, I said stiffly, “I’ve got things to do.”
“Your homework will still be here when you get back. The Halversons would love to see you! You haven’t seen Sheila in over three years. You two girls were so cute together when you were little,” she gushed, her eyes focused in that faraway, sentimental way she gets when she reminisces. “I remember when Marnie and I used to bathe you girls together. You had a little blue plastic tugboat you named Betsy. You took it in the tub with you and —”
Her words died as she noticed my cold stare.
“Thank you for inviting me,” I said with icy politeness. “But I really have things to do. Dr. Grady is expecting me at the lab this afternoon.”
Dad slipped a sweater over Mom’s shoulders and warned, “We’re going to be late, Esther.” To me he said, “We’re proud of you for sticking with your commitments.”
Then he ushered Mom out the door, and I hardened myself against the last pleading glance she’d thrown me, pain skittering across her violet eyes.
Did she think she could win me over with sugary memories of my babyhood? Was that her way of convincing me everything was okay? If anything, her reminiscing had the opposite effect. It only served to remind me it had all been a lie. That she was simply pretending to be the person she wasn’t. My mother.
I had spent the first seventeen years of my life living the lie she’d spun for me. Now, it was time to learn about the real me, my real family. My sister! And so I programmed the computer to pour out Rita’s music.
The old music was so different from the music I was accustomed to. It was startling to hear actual voices of real human beings singing to me—such a far cry from the perfectly pitched computerized voices of the twenty-first century music!
At first the bands with such silly names—The Beatles, The Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin—seemed quaint and sweet and ridiculously old-fashioned. But as I listened I heard stories and messages and warnings in the strange lyrics. My mind drifted with the haunting voices and my feet tapped involuntarily to the music’s beat.
“What is that noise?” Kyle asked when he came to pick me up to take me to the lab.
I grabbed his hand and danced him into our living room. “It’s The Beatles!” I said. “Kids listened to this music almost a century ago!”
He laughed. “It sounds weird.”
“It grows on you after a while,” I said. “Kids back then didn’t have Tune-Chips and they liked sharing their musical experiences with each other. I’ve been reading about a rock festival called Woodstock. My sister went to it with her cousins in 1969. Half a million people showed up! Imagine all those people groovin’ to the same beat!”
“Groovin’?” Kyle repeated scornfully. “You sound like my grandma!”
“That’s the way kids talked back then,” I said defensively. “Anyway, Woodstock lasted for three days, and it started raining and everyone was sloshing around in the mud helping each other because they were into peace and brotherhood and—”
“What a bunch of spards!” he interrupted. “I’d hate to wallow in the mud with a crowd of strangers listening to weird music.”
“But it was different back then! People were into the earth and each other and—”
My words trailed away as Kyle’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “I thought you were going to put all that stuff about the past behind you, Jenna.”
“I’m just listening to old music. What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s like you’re obsessed I’m worried about you.”
Touched by his concern, I said gently, “I just think this old music is interesting. That’s all.”
He plopped down on our couch and said, “I hope you mean that, because I’ve been feeling kind of bad about what happened to you. That’s got to be a real mind twister to find out you were on ice for a hundred years.”
“It is,” I said flatly.
“I thought maybe you’d blame me because my family owns an interest in Twin-Star,” he confessed, ducking his head to avoid my gaze.
Taken aback by his sudden show of sensitivity, I sat silent for a moment, searching for the right words. “This isn’t your fault, Kyle,” I finally said. “I blame the adults—the scientists and my parents. They’re the ones who did thi
s to me. You weren't even born when they decided to plant me in Mom—let alone when they froze me!”
He smiled weakly. “You seemed upset at the last session with Dr. Grady. If you want to quit the experiments I’ll understand.”
“I thought you were excited about this! Your grandfather invented the visor and you’re helping to carry on his work. I thought it was important to you—”
“It is! I was close to my grandfather. It means a lot to see his work continued. But not if it hurts you.”
I sank onto the couch beside him. “I know sometimes I act like I have brain-drag, but that's just because I get moody,” I said. “I want to help with the visor experiments.”
It would have been a relief to unload on someone, to express how terrible, how disoriented, how lonely I felt.
But Kyle already felt bad. There was no point in making him feel worse. As I smiled brightly, insisting I was excited about the experiments, my only goal was to make my new boyfriend happy.
I, however, still mistakenly believed the visor held no special significance for me. I did not guess the scientists were keeping yet another secret from me.
But with Rita forever on the edge of my thoughts, I was soon to discover the truth. It started out as a routine experiment. Dr. Grady and I were alone in the lab. He handed me the visor and placed a sealed cardboard box on the table.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
“A paper clip.”
I was disappointed. I figured I’d graduated beyond bending paper clips and was ready for something more exciting.
“I want you to transport it to my office,” he said.
I stared at him.
“There’s a sealed empty box on my desk,” he explained. “It is identical to this one.” He picked up the box and shook it. The paper clip bounced softly against the cardboard. “Visualize it. Concentrate on transporting this paper clip to the empty box.”
“How?”
“Your mind holds that secret, Jenna. Do it. Do it the way you’ve accomplished every other task we’ve asked you to.”
“But is it possible?” I asked, and then remembered the boy who had transported his teddy bear across the country. And my sister who had made a paper clip vanish. Did it really vanish? Or did she transport it to another place?
I flicked on the visor and stared at the box. Rita did it! I can too! The thought hung there, between me and the box. I tried to erase it, for I’d learned that PK exercises are most successful without words. Thoughts just seem to clutter the air. And the air must be clear of all but what I want to accomplish. I tried to empty my mind.
Rita did it!
It wasn’t working. I could not concentrate on transporting the paper clip. All I could think of was Rita’s paper clip.
Rita did it!
The blue rays poured from my eyes and rippled over the box, flowing like punch. I was wasting the visor’s precious fuel. I was about to admit that this exercise was too complicated when the rays suddenly flared into an orange light. A loud pop followed. For an instant, it seemed I’d set the box afire. Then the orange faded back to blue. The box was still intact. I turned off the visor.
“Something happened,” I said.
Dr. Grady picked up the box and rattled it.
“It’s still there,” I said, shrugging my shoulders apologetically. “My mind’s not on this today.”
“It sounds different,” he said, shaking the box again. It made a tinkling sound, like metal on metal.
He ripped open the box. The paper clip was still there. Beside it was a second paper clip, its edge smudged with white paint.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
Dr. Grady’s eyes gleamed as he stared at it. “This is incredible,” he gasped.
“What? What happened?”
When he hesitated, I snapped, “I have a right to know!”
“I have no intention of keeping anything from you,” he said evenly. “Something quite remarkable has occurred, confirming all we’ve been working toward. If I’m not mistaken, this paper clip was sent here by your sister.”
“What?”
“We can’t keep you in the dark any longer. It’s important you understand the reason for the experiments if you are to successfully aid us.”
“How many more secrets do you have?” I asked, bristling.
“We never intentionally kept secrets from you. It’s just that some of the facts are difficult to comprehend. We didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much too soon.”
“Just tell me what’s going on!”
He set the paper clip on the desk and looked me in the eye. “We’ve been trying to crack time barriers,” he said. “That is the whole purpose behind the visor. For decades, our research has indicated that telekinetic energy transcends the tangible laws that apply to matter. Your unique PK skills, when combined with the visor, result in an ability to create time warps. Tell me something, Jenna. Were you thinking about Rita’s disappearing paper clip a moment ago?”
“Yes. I tried to concentrate on moving the paper clip like you asked me to, but I kept thinking about Rita and what she did to her paper clip.”
“I suspected as much. A century ago, in a controlled laboratory experiment, Rita sent this paper clip on a journey. Apparently, you zeroed in on it and caused it to materialize here.”
I barely had a chance to comprehend this new development before Dr. Grady led me to his office and asked me to try something new.
“Visualize a later time in the day—let’s say around five p.m.,” he said. “It’s 1:15 now. Try to transport yourself to this room at five.”
It was an incredible request. The thing he was so matter-of-factly proposing was impossible. He might as well have asked me to sprout apples from my fingertips. I wanted to ask him how I was supposed to accomplish such a thing, but I could already hear his standard response: “Your mind holds the key, Jenna.”
Perhaps it did. When I thought of the things I’d done these past days, anything seemed possible. So I sank into Dr. Grady’s cushiony chair, turned on the visor, and tried to do what he asked of me. As the rays shot from my pupils and my head seemed to vibrate beneath the visor, I imagined my mind held a clock and I pictured the hands of that clock sweeping round and round until they rested at five.
When I glanced at Dr. Grady’s desk clock, I was surprised to see it was 5:06. He was no longer in the room, but Tarynn was there, watering the plants.
“Tarynn, are you busy?” the receptionist called over the intercom.
“I’m almost done with the plants,” she answered.
“Somebody named Daniel is on the phone. He wants to know what time he should pick you up. He’s real cute!”
Tarynn smiled. “Don’t get any ideas. This is our second date and I think it’s getting serious.”
She reached past me—rather rudely, I thought— and punched a button on Dr. Grady’s telephone so the face of a young, bearded man appeared on the telephone screen.
Then she sat down—on me! That’s when I realized she couldn’t see or feel me, because I could not feel her. I was not there. My mind was. It was as if I was having some sort of psychic vision.
As Tarynn chatted with her boyfriend, a sharp sheet of hail pelted the window.
“Jenna, can you hear me?” Dr. Grady called. “Are you alright? Jenna!”
Suddenly, the room spun out of focus and when it slowed again I was staring up into Dr. Grady’s anxious face. “You were in some kind of trance.”
“I did it!” I gasped. “I was here at 5:06 and Tarynn was watering the plants and then this guy called.”
His eyes narrowed skeptically. “You didn’t go anywhere.”
“I did!” I insisted. “His name was Daniel. Tarynn sat right here in this chair and talked to him on your phone.”
Dr. Grady sighed. “You’ve been accomplishing great things. But I asked you to do too much too soon. I had hoped you could actually transport yourself through time, and I give you cred
it for trying. But the fact is, you weren’t able to do it.”
“You think I’m lying?” I asked, indignant.
“You wanted to believe you could accomplish what I requested, and you simply convinced yourself you had.”
He had asked me to do the impossible and somehow I’d done it. Now he didn’t believe me! Angrily, I snapped, “I didn’t imagine it. It was real!”
He looked thoughtful. “Alright then. Tell me everything you saw and heard.”
I described the hail hitting the window and Tarynn’s phone conversation. He didn’t bother to write anything down, and I was beginning to suspect that the hidden video cameras my father had told me about were everywhere in Twin-Star, recording everything all the time.
Dr. Grady confirmed that suspicion during my next session, the following Saturday. “I owe you an apology,” he said, not sounding the least sorry. His hidden office camera, he informed me, had taped Tarynn watering his plants at 5:06. It also caught her conversation with Daniel and the hail beating on the window.
“The visor committee has thoroughly studied the incident and we’ve concluded you projected your mind through time,” he said. “We had not previously considered the possibility of a mind-body separation in connection with time travel. That is why I initially doubted your claim. But the videotape of Tarynn substantiates everything you said. With a little more practice, we believe you may be capable of moving your entire being.”
“You mean time travel? Like they do in stories?”
“We certainly have every indication that you will accomplish what scientists have only dreamed of for centuries. We now have the technology to amplify your PK skills, making it possible for you to travel into the future.”
“If I can go into the future,” I asked, “can I also go into the past?”
“If that were feasible, we’d be inundated with tourists from the future.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “If I can move forward in time, why not backward?”
“It may be possible,” he admitted. “But we’re looking at an ethical question here. If someone actually traveled into the past, it could have devastating repercussions on the present.”
