by H. J. Lawson
Scarlet jumps, fighting with Hector and knocking him to the ground, quickly recovering to go after Clint as he tries to flee. And more men fall.
It’s chaos. More of Gumi’s men come back into the warehouse, but they quickly fall, one after another. And that’s when I realize we are no longer alone in here.
Someone else is here and has some pretty impressive skills with a gun.
They all fall, one after another, all around us. All I can do is stand there and hold Tora close to me and wonder whose side this person is on.
It’s a woman, around my mom’s age, with the same fiery hair as Scarlet, and the look of emptiness that I’ve caught in Scarlet’s eyes. It’s Scarlet’s mom.
I back up when she walks toward me, but it’s not me she wants. She reaches toward Tora and takes her very gently from my arms. I think I hear her whisper, “I’m sorry,” as she checks her face for injuries.
“Scarlet?”
“You can trust her,” Scarlet says with disappointment as she walks over to us.
“She’s your mom?”
Scarlet nods. “Beth. How did you get here?” She addresses her mom using her real name. She spoke of this woman earlier. She’s their self-appointed leader.
“Parker sent you back to me,” Scarlet says, staring at me with wonder and making me feel uncomfortable.
A ripple appears in the warehouse, making my eyes feel blurred, but there isn’t anything wrong with them.
“More of Vandir’s men are coming,” I announce.
“Scarlet, hold onto Tora,” Beth says.
Out of the ripple a man appears, every angle of the man’s face sharp and harsh. His eyes feel as if they are ripping into my soul, bringing my deepest worries and fears to the front of my mind. He’s not Vandir’s man, he’s Vandir himself. The temperature drops from his arrival, yet sweat begins to pour down my face.
Scarlet and her mom glance back and forth between one another, and then from Vandir to me.
“Vandir,” Beth says firmly.
“Beth,” Vandir smiles, creating sharper wrinkles in his face. Vandir’s pale face stares at me. I feel like he’s inspecting every part of me.
“What?” I snap at him.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Parker,” Vandir replies condescendingly. He knows me. How does he know me?
“Isn’t this lovely, Beth? We finally have the family all together.”
Beth’s face twists up. “It’s time to leave,” she says as she places her hand on my shoulder.
Scarlet gasps, a sound that is left unfinished because everything disappears.
Chapter 27
I wake in my bed with that sensation of falling that sometimes happens when you first fall asleep. I gasp for breath. My whole body jerks. And pain flares in my arm. I sit up, snap on my small bedside lamp, all the muscles in my body screaming with the movement. I look at my arm. The wound is still there, made by a bullet grazing against my body.
And my skin is on fire. Sunburned.
I glance at the digital time display on the television. 01:07:32.
I take off my glasses and rub them with the corner of the sheet. When I put them back on, Scarlet is standing in the middle of my room, with a ripple fading behind her. I jump, sliding back against the wall and pulling the sheet up over my lap.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. “I’ve already seen your boxers.”
“Before, I came back with clothes,” I spit out.
“Might be because before, you time traveled by your own will and not because your assignment was over.”
My head is spinning as I try to comprehend that this really happened.
I study this girl standing in front of me. She looks like Scarlet. The same hair, the same eyes. The same dark clothing. But there are not marks on her wrists from where the ropes cut into her flesh. No bruising on her face from all the punches she took while she fought Vandir’s men, or Gumi’s men. No signs at all of what just happened to us.
“Why aren’t you bruised?”
“Because my present is different from yours. The Scarlet that was with you in Tokyo is at home recovering from her experiences.”
“Oh.”
That makes sense. Or, at least, it would make sense if I believed—or even understood—all this time travel stuff.
I watch her as she turns and moves around my room, taking in the video games piled on nearly every possible surface, her fingers playing over a stack of school books on my desk, pausing at a picture of my dad and me taken a few months before he died.
Why did Kimi tell me not to trust her? Does she betray me at some point? Does she try to hurt me? Does she lie to me?
I don’t know. But she’s the only other person I know who can travel in time. And, if I’m not simply having some sort of psychotic break, I kind of need to trust her so that she can teach me how to control this thing I can apparently do. And to teach me some of those karate moves so I’m not quite so useless next time.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m here to show you a little of the future,” she says, turning to face me again. “I want to show you Tora’s future. To show you a small part of the reason why we had to protect her.”
“How? I thought you said you never find the people that you rescue.” In the ice cream shop before we went to Tora’s uncle’s bar, she had told me that the people they rescue either disappear or end up dead. A weight lifts off me at the thought of Tora not ending up as the others.
A small smile touches her full lips. “You might want to get dressed first.”
Note to self: start wearing more clothes to bed.
I pull on some sweats and a t-shirt.
“Sit on the edge of your bed and close your eyes.”
I do what she says.
“Now remove everything from your mind. All thoughts. Try to make it a blank slate, a place where there’s nothing, no worries, no questions, no emotion.”
I peek at her from under one eyelid. “How do I do that?”
She rolls her eyes. “I would have thought it would be easy for you.”
“Unlike you, I do actually have a heart. And last night was pretty intense.”
She waves her hand. “Just concentrate on your breathing. A deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out. Can you do that?”
“I think I can manage.”
I close my eyes again and do as she says. Deep breath in. Hold it for three heartbeats. Let it out. I find myself wondering what my mom would say if she walked in and found Scarlet here. Would she even see her? I mean, if I’m delusional, Scarlet might be just a figment of my imagination, right? But there are marks on my body. I couldn’t just do that with the power of my mind, could I?
And then I think of Tora. I hope she’s okay. As bad as my dad’s death was, it was nothing like what she had to go through.
And then… breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
“Good,” Scarlet says. “Now come here.”
She stands in the center of my room again. I go to her and she takes my hands. I finally have a girl in my room and all she does is hold my hands. Story of my life.
Scarlet’s eyes move slowly over the clothes I’m wearing.
“Do you have anything nicer?”
“What’s wrong with this?”
Her eyebrow rises like she’s wondering why I don’t see it. Then she shrugs.
“I’ll come back later and take you shopping. Your sense of style definitely needs an overhaul.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
“How?”
She shrugs again. “I told you: there are lots of benefits to time travel.”
I stare at her for a second. “Do you rob banks?”
“No, of course not. But there are lots of ways to get money when you can move around in time.” She kind of jerks her hand where her fingers are still locked around mine. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know. And you nee
d to tell me how you were able to time travel out of the assignment—everyone wants to know that.”
“Everyone wants to know?” My cheeks tingle with pride.
“Yeah. You’re the new kid with special tricks,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Can I go to meet them when we get back?”
“Not until after school. You need to get some sleep, and I have other things to do.”
She sounds an awful lot like my mom. “Now close your eyes. Empty your mind.”
It’s like she can read my mind.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re traveling. Normally I would tell you to concentrate on the place you want to go, but this time we’re going where I want to go. So you keep your mind blank and I will take us to our destination.”
So I do as she asks. I’m anxious to learn how to control this thing so that maybe, just maybe, I can go where I want to go, affect the future or the past the way I want to.
I close my eyes and concentrate. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
I suddenly feel odd. A strange sort of tingle runs up and down the nerves throughout my body. And then I open my eyes and we’re no longer in my bedroom.
We’re in an apartment somewhere. There are windows and I can see signs outside. Japanese characters.
We’re back in Tokyo. I was kind of hoping to never see this place again.
Chapter 28
“Where are we?”
I go to the windows to get a better look. We’re fairly high up, but I think I sort of recognize the street far below us. It looks vaguely familiar. And I can see the river not far in the distance.
“Scarlet? Where are we?”
She moves up beside me and looks out over the city, but she doesn’t answer.
I turn into the room and look around. It’s a nice room. A little narrow, but decorated nicely with a couch and matching club chair. There’s a television that’s so thin I can’t believe it actually works. And there’re other gadgets I don’t really understand. But they apparently still believe in displaying pictures in the future. There are a couple of framed pictures on a low table behind the couch. I pick one up and have another of those surreal moments as I recognize myself. Only it’s a future me. I don’t have even a hint of facial hair in this picture, but my face and my shoulders are fuller, my arms almost muscular. And there’s a girl in the picture with me. She’s petite, a beautiful Asian girl.
“Who is this?” I ask Scarlet.
Almost at that same moment, we hear the sound of a toilet flushing somewhere deep in the apartment. I turn around, facing the source of the sound.
“We’re not alone?”
“No. It’s the girl from the photo.”
“She’s here?”
“She’ll be here in just a second.”
I put the picture down carefully and quickly reach up to smooth the hair on the top of my head. Before I can make any real difference, however, a beautiful petite woman walks into the room. She’s dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a white blouse. The colors seem to make her tawny skin glow. And her eyes… I could lose myself in those eyes for hours and hours, I think.
There’s something familiar about her. Something about the way she holds herself, maybe. Or maybe it’s something about those amazing eyes.
“Tora?”
The woman pauses, her eyes moving slowly over me. I can’t quite read her expression, but she doesn’t seem displeased to see me.
But then her eyes fall on Scarlet.
She marches over to the windows. Even though there is anger and tension in every inch of her slight body, she respectfully bows to Scarlet. Scarlet does the same. Then Tora speaks, a rush of Japanese words rushing over Scarlet. Scarlet just smiles even though I get the distinct impression that what Tora had to say was not kind.
“I couldn’t help myself,” Scarlet says with amusement dancing in her eyes.
“You know he doesn’t like it,” Tora responds in perfect, unaccented English. When did she learn English? Less than five minutes ago she didn’t know English, but that was five minutes in time-traveling time. How long has it really been since I saw her?
Scarlet just shrugs.
Tora turns to me and her expression softens. “How are you, Parker?”
“Confused.”
She smiles softly. “I’m sure you are.” She crosses to me, but moves around me to pick up the picture I’d been holding just a moment ago. “Time travel can be very disorienting.”
“That’s me in the picture,” I say.
“Yes.” She studies my face for a second. “How old are you? Fifteen?”
“Sixteen,” I say, pulling myself up to my full height.
“You found me again. And we now live together. Here,” she says, gesturing around herself. “We will be very happy.”
I blush. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve dreamt of that moment when a girl would look at me with something other than disgust on her face. Every night, in my fantasies, that girl is Clara. She will see through all the crap Travis and his friends have done and she will see me for the guy I am. And that could still happen. But it’s kind of nice to realize that someday I will have a girlfriend that’s even hotter than Clara.
Tora smiles as she watches the color burn on my cheeks. Then she touches my face, her fingers cool against my jaw, and reaches up to offer me a soft, gentle kiss on the lips.
On. The. Lips.
A thrill washes through me that is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. And to think, someday I’ll have the right to as many of these kisses as I want!
Tora smiles as she steps away.
What a day! I’ve gone from this kid that preferred to stay away from others, hiding in my room, to going on a full-blown adventure, and I have two girls that like me!
“You should go,” she says, her words clearly meant for Scarlet even though she’s still looking at me, “before he gets home.”
I hadn’t thought about that. My present self was here somewhere, running around the city, unaware that his past self was standing in his living room, kissing his girlfriend.
“What happens if we run into each other?”
“Nothing,” Scarlet says.
“But—”
“He’ll be angry,” Tora says. “He doesn’t like it when Scarlet brings you into the future.”
“But why? Could it cause some sort of paradox, like in the old movies?”
Scarlet laughs. Tora just touches my arm lightly.
“As long as you are aware you can time travel,” she explains. “If you didn’t know, then it might mess with your head a little. But that’s it.”
Scarlet comes over. “But we should go,” she admits. “Wouldn’t want to watch Parker have one of his meltdowns.”
“Meltdowns…?”
But before I can finish my question, Scarlet grabs my hands and the apartment sort of melts around us. We’re back in my bedroom before I can say goodbye to Tora or… I’d wanted to ask for another of those sweet, spine-tingling kisses.
I can only console myself with the knowledge that she is my future.
Chapter 29
“I still don’t understand,” I say even before Scarlet lets go of my hands. “How does all this work?”
“I told you, I’ll come back when you get out of school and explain it.”
“How can you leave me? I have too many questions. Who gives us the assignments? And how do they know what changes will benefit the future and which won’t?”
“I don’t have time now, Parker,” she says, a little coldly. “But I will be back.”
“How do I know that?”
She shrugs. “You just have to trust me.” Trust her.
She shakes her head. “You ask too many questions. You’re just going to have to be patient.”
And then she closes her eyes and disappears, leaving a faint ripple behind her.
I stand there a minute, staring at the place where she had been. It was all so
unbelievable.
The whole thing runs through my mind like a movie on fast forward. Waking up in Tokyo. Running first into Tora, then Scarlet. Clint and Hector. Gumi and his gang. Mr. Oshiro and his wife.
“Don’t trust Scarlet.” Kimi’s last words for me echo inside my brain.
There’s nothing I can do about that now. I have something more important to do: save my dad.
Those words keep playing in my mind like a song on repeat.
Save Dad. Save Dad. Save Dad. Save Dad…
And I know I can. I might be the only one who can.
I close my eyes and….
Author's Note
Infinite Time, started off as a bedtime story I told my daughter, Callie. The characters grew each night, Callie named the characters Parkers, Scarlets and Douglas.
I hope you had as much fun reading the story as me and Callie had creating it. If not, it’s my own fault for taking writing tips from a seven-year-old!
We’re working on the second book, where Parker’s and Scarlet’s adventures carry on. I would love to hear your thoughts about the book, and would really appreciate a short review.
hope you enjoyed the book, and if you have a spare moment, I would really appreciate a short review on the page where you bought the book.
www.amazon.com/infinitetime
www.goodreads.com/InfiniteTime
Thank you.
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