“The one getting beat up.”
“You sure? It’s pretty dark–”
“It was him,” I almost shout, still reeling with fury at the bullies.
“Okay.” She steps away from me and I shudder that I raised my voice to her. She adds, “I believe you.”
And puff, with a shudder of the earth, those words make me time travel, for I’m gone again in a whirr. I land face down in the grass somewhere. My nostrils seize with the smell of moss. I cough and sputter and push my face up from the ground.
“No!” I bolt up into afternoon sunshine – not darkness anymore – and realize I’m on my front lawn. “Bring me back!”
∞
Nothing I say returns me to Jennifer.
“Don’t panic,” Vlad says to me half an hour later. I’m waiting for him at his house after school. He unlocks his front door, slings his backpack over his shoulder and we step inside. “You hungry?”
I’m trying to come to grips with the sudden departure from Jennifer. “No thanks. Mind if we just get to your computer?”
The place is empty. He ignores my urging to hurry upstairs, leads me to the kitchen and makes himself a peanut butter sandwich.
“Can we get to it, please? I’ve got some new information.”
He bites into his sandwich. “I think you’re losin’ it.”
“Maybe. But what have you got to lose by helping me?”
He wavers. He must know that
I
have a lot to lose. My sanity for one. My health, maybe, for another. But I don’t want him to feel sorry for me. I hate that.
“I just want some help,” I say. “Someone to talk through the logic with me. That’s all. I can’t do it alone. I’m trying, but I keep popping in and out of time–”
“I hope you don’t say that in front of anyone else.”
“Just Burgen.”
“Not sure about that guy either. Want some cookies?” He tosses me a bag of chocolate chip goodies.
“Yeah,” I say, as we finally head up to his computer.
“Before you saw Burgen, you said you went to school. Did you find anything Jennifer wrote?”
“I went up and down the halls and looked at all the bulletin boards. Nothing.”
“What about last year’s yearbook? Did you have a look? Did you buy a copy last year?”
I shake my head. “I never buy them. What for? So I can look at my own stupid photo? Everyone signing shit they don’t really mean?”
“Me neither.” He unzips his backpack and flings a book at me.
I catch it. “Last year’s yearbook! Where’d you get it?”
He grins. “Swiped it from the guidance office.”
I laugh. “Thanks, man.”
I jump onto the bed and leaf through the pages. His basketball rolls off the mattress. I pick it up and twirl. My arms are skinny and my jeans are loose on my legs. I’m feeling more tired than I did with Jennifer a few minutes ago.
“You said you got some new information.” Vlad flops onto his rolling chair and turns on his computer. “What?”
“Jennifer’s parents were divorcing. That’s why she left.”
“Rough luck,” says Vlad.
“They left without warning last fall,” I explain. “So there must’ve been a big argument.”
“And?”
“She told me her mother wanted to move to Hawaii, her father to Alaska.”
“What cities?”
I scratch my neck. “I never got that far with her.”
“Why not?”
“I got distracted.” With those gorillas beating up on Simon. I wince at the image still burning in my brain. They were so much bigger than he was. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize their faces because it was dark.
I can’t tell Vlad about Simon. I can’t own up to it. Anger and frustration and my inability to do anything to protect my younger brother keeps my mouth shut. I’ll find the bastards responsible and show them how it feels.
“Luke?
Luke!
”
I snap out of my thoughts and back to Vlad. “Yeah? Sorry.”
“How are we any further ahead than we were yesterday?”
“Because at least we know it’s one of those two places for sure. Alaska or Hawaii.”
“You think she moved with her mom or her dad?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. She’s a girl. Statistically speaking, I bet most girls choose to go with their mothers.”
“My cousin Ermina went with her dad when they divorced.”
“Then it’s a fifty percent stab in the dark. Let’s try her mom first. Hawaii.”
“And you said no brothers or sisters….”
“Right.”
Vlad taps at the keyboard. “Let’s pull up a big map of Hawaii so we know what we’re searching.”
I study the yearbook in front of me. I turn to my class from last year. There’s Jennifer. I smile at her serious expression. The sparkly eyes and thick brown hair. I glance to my photo and I lose my smile. I was thin and pale. You can see that I was sick and didn’t know it.
I turn back to Jennifer’s photo and ask, “Where are you?”
Vlad glances over his shoulder at me, ignores my comment, and peers back at his screen. It’s got the islands of Hawaii.
I leaf through the book, stopping to stare at all the candid photos. I spot one of Jennifer in the Drama Club. “I didn’t know she was into Drama.”
“Huh?” says Vlad.
“Drama,” I repeat. “Allison’s standing next to her in the group photo. Even though she doesn’t have any more information about Jennifer, I wonder if the others do.” I take note of the names so I won’t forget. I’ve seen them around. Three girls and two guys.
“What does her mom do for a living?” asks Vlad.
“I got the impression she was a stay-at-home mom, but can’t be sure.”
“You’re not very helpful,” he says.
“Just start a list of the major cities on each island, okay?”
He taps on the keyboard as I turn another page in the yearbook. There are two poems in the upper corner, but nothing written by Jennifer. I turn two more pages, and find something. My heart jumps. It’s a poem.
Why Do I Care?
by Jennifer Marks
Why do I care
How small a space we share
When it’s your smile and your presence
That capture the charm of your essence
When your lovely sketches
Protect me from the wretches
Why do I care
How small a space we share
“Find something?” asks Vlad.
“Yeah.” My voice is gritty with emotion. I clear my throat. “She wrote a poem.”
“Well, well, well. Any clues to where she might’ve gone?”
“Not really.”
Vlad stretches from the chair and reads the poem over my shoulder. “’
How small a space we share
.’ Your locker?”
I nod.
He taps the basketball off the bed and it bounces to the floor. “The poem’s about you.”
“Yeah.” She’d written it a year ago, about me, and I never knew till now. My sketch of the chocolate cake did mean something to her. Who did she mean by wretches? Her parents?
Our friendship at the locker meant more to her than I realized. I meant more than I realized.
Vlad spins back to the computer. I run my hand over the page and Jennifer’s private words, desperately wishing that I was so much more than I am.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m ready for mistake number two,” I tell Burgen first thing the next morning, Thursday, after a restless night of sleep. I sink into his sofa. “To correct mistake number two.”
His chair creaks as he leans forward. “You sure?”
I pick up the basketball that I left in his office and twirl it. Holding onto it calms me. I’m supposed to participate in a basketball game tomorrow but due to the time traveling, I missed a practice yesterday. It’s not an excuse the coach will likely believe, not that I can ever tell him. “I’m not sure about anything.”
“Let’s back up for a minute. When you go back in time, how’s it going with Jennifer?”
“Every time I start a conversation, a good one, I’m yanked out of it.”
“Try to control the time-traveling words you utter.”
“She said them last time, not me.”
“You’re there with her already?” He leans back and pushes his glasses up on his nose. His blond hair wavers at his temples. “That can happen when you’re connecting on a deep, emotional level. Her words start to trigger your traveling. There’s no way to stop that except to be extra careful of the triggers. Sometimes, just the words alone make you jump time.”
“I’ll try. And what’s with the strong smells, Doc?”
“Yeah, that’ll fade. You’ll get more used to them. Are they making you vomit?”
“I almost lost it a couple of times.”
“It’s because the olfactory nerve is closely situated to the memory nerve centers. I’ve got a high-tech solution, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Pinch your nose.”
“Ha.”
“It helps.” He gets up and pours us each a glass of ice water. The rumples at the back of his navy shirt catch the sun streaming in from the window. I plant my sneakers on the floor and reach for the water.
He settles back in his chair. “Any luck trying to find Jennifer in real time?”
“Not so far.” I curve my fingers over the basketball. “If...
when
I do locate her, Doc, what’s gonna happen? Will she remember that we met back in time?”
He’s pensive. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure what your experience will be like. How the people you met on your journey will respond. It takes more time for some to work it into their memories than others.”
“So Jennifer might not remember for a while?”
He nods.
This concerns me. What if I meet up with her and things between us are exactly the same as they were before? “What about the butterfly effect?”
“Ah, the butterfly effect. The theory that one small change in time traveling to the past will result in a humongous change here.”
“Yeah. Does that happen?”
“Has it happened so far?”
I think about the two times I’ve time traveled. There doesn’t seem to be any major effect in real time. Although I haven’t caught up to Jennifer yet in real time, so I don’t know.
Burgen shakes his head. “It’s an urban myth. There’s no butterfly effect, except emotionally for all the people involved. And that takes some time to work through the process, for the memories of then and now to blend. As I say, everyone’s different.”
This gives me such hope. I lower the basketball to my chest.
“When Jennifer does remember,” Burgen warns, “you have to make sure she remembers in real time, and not that time. Don’t allow her to know that you’re time traveling when you are. It can be very dangerous for her. It could wipe out
all
of her emotional memories, about everyone she’s ever met.”
“Well thanks for telling me
now
,” I say with a panic.
“I told you before you time traveled the first time, remember?”
“You said it’s best for them not to know, not that it’s dangerous!”
His mouth gets pale. “Oh-oh. What happened, Luke?”
“We had this conversation about déjà vu.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“No, but I showed her the dice.”
“
Don’t do that again
.”
My pulse leaps. “Okay, but you should’ve told me precisely why not.”
“It’s natural to try to hide that you’re time traveling, in case the person thinks you’re crazy. I assumed you’d be guarded, and that you’d heed my warning.”
He’s right, I was guarded, but… “Is there anything else I should know?” I say sarcastically. “Like if I mention any certain words, someone might die?”
He laughs and the color returns to his face. “Don’t exaggerate.”
“You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry. You’re fine. And no, there isn’t anything else you should know.” He studies my face, which maybe doesn’t look so good from absorbing all of this information. “You sure you want to time travel today? We can stop –
you
can stop – anytime you want. No consequences at this point.”
My emotions are still doing a skydive. What if I don’t select to go back to Jennifer this time, and therefore never see her again? I kissed her, but if I don’t see her again and it takes a long time for her to remember, what does it matter? And how would I know if she remembers, if I never find her in real time?
I’ve
got
to find her.
Should I move on to mistake number two, even though it doesn’t involve her?
The right thing to do, the thing my heart tells me to do, is to move forward. My brother needs me.
“Mistake number two, Doc. My brother.”
“That would be Simon.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about him, Luke.”
∞
It takes a moment for me to feel comfortable enough to speak. I set my basketball aside. I step off the sofa and go to the window. The blinds are open and I peer at the trees. Cars weave through the parking lot. I don’t know how to begin. My hands sweat and my lips are swollen with remorse. “I was a bully to Simon.”
“What did you do?” Burgen asks from his chair.
“I used to beat him up.” I cringe at the memory.
“Most brothers fight, Luke, it’s not something–”
“I used to brush it off, too, like it was natural. But I never saw the damage it did to him. The way he looks at me now. The way it must’ve made him feel. Garbage. He must’ve felt like garbage.”
Burgen exhales, like he’s not sure what to say.
I squeeze my eyes shut but the memories spring up. “I used to take his head and punch....” I try to rub the shame out of my eyes.
“Why?”
“
Why?
Because I’m an asshole.”
“Let me rephrase this.
When
did you beat him up?”
“Whenever he’d try to tag along with me and my friends. They’d come over and he’d try to follow us.”
“You’d hit him in front of them?”
“Nice, eh?”
“How did Simon react?”
“He’d swing back. Sometimes he’d get a good one in. But he’s eleven. Five years younger and smaller. I never used to realize my own size. I always thought of us as more or less equal. Stupid, huh? At first, it took a lot of punches to get him to stay home. Then fewer and fewer.”
We are silent for a moment, like a judge and confessor might be in a courtroom. I turn around and sit back on the sofa, but can’t relax.