Copyright © 2015 Meradeth Houston. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce, transmit, or distribute in any form or by any means. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, places, or events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
For more information, please contact the publisher:
Bookfish Books LLC
P.O. Box 274
Salem Va. 24153
ISBN: 978-0-9861910-9-1
www.bookfishbooks.com
Content Editor: Jennifer Reilly
Line Editor: Erin Rhew
Cover Artist: Anita B. Carroll
http://race-point.com
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Chapter One
The memories flashing through my mind were not my own. I recognized them, but they weren’t familiar. Like old photographs, the colors muted to sepia tones, worn around the edges. It wasn’t really me in any of them.
I knew one thing for sure—the time-travel that dumped me here had not been my doing.
The place, I could identify. I would know the musty smell of rotting hay in my grandfather’s barn no matter where, or when, I was. Sunlight streamed through the chinks between the rough boards behind me and caught the swirling dust in its rays.
When I stepped out of the shadows, I noticed a man sprawled out in one of the stalls. I edged forward, each step carefully placed, though something told me he couldn’t hear me. As I stood over his prostrate form, I realized why he remained so still. A small hole pierced his shirt, oozing blood that pooled onto the bare earth below him.
My knees gave out, and my hands hit the ground. I winced against the sudden pain. Burns on my fingers started to blister and throb with every heartbeat, but I had no idea how I’d gotten them.
No, that wasn’t true. I looked to where I’d stood before and saw a muzzle in the dust. I’d held the gun. I’d pulled the trigger. Heat from the old-fashioned weapon had seared my hands.
I fought to remember why—the memories were sticky and unwilling to reveal their secrets. I killed him. I knew his face now. Henry. My best friend’s twin.
My ex-boyfriend. Dead ex-boyfriend. There’d been a reason too; I’d shot him to keep the time-line from getting knotted. He was supposed to die, to keep the Traveler rules intact. I had to—the Travelers made me do it.
I didn’t need the ability to leap through time to know I’d need some serious therapy over this one.
Already, the fact that I’d killed Henry stuck like glue in my mind. The other truth—that Henry had died a year ago—faded to a translucent image, like some imaginary scenario I half remembered from a dream. I’d gone to his funeral. I’d mourned with his sister, and I’d felt his loss every single day since. All of that grief washed away as the horror of what I’d done here, in this new reality, replaced it.
The two timelines crashed in my mind. Even worse, they could both be true if someone had played with time. Changing the past tilted the present to reflect what happened, forcing everyone into a new reality. I hadn’t created the changes that sent me here, and I wouldn’t get to keep the memories of my previous life. Only the person who shifted the old reality to this new one would get to remember what it had been like before. How long before I forgot my past? That I hadn’t been the one to kill Henry? A minute—less?
I wouldn’t remember Henry and my first kiss or the time we’d snuck out of school and spent the afternoon wandering around London. I’d be stuck as a murderess.
The truth of my current situation had not yet settle in my mind when a familiar tugging sensation started below my heart. That pull could only mean one thing—another change had been made somewhere in time. As my body prepared to be yanked into a new timeline, I sighed with relief and ended up blowing my bangs off my forehead. I did not want to stick around here any longer than I had to.
I didn’t fight against the Travel. Instead, I went with the swirling darkness and prayed I would end up someplace familiar.
The next moment, everything felt fuzzy, and reality seemed like it might be permeable. It was almost as if I tried hard enough, maybe I could shift everything around me into an ornate palace or the beach in Maui. I blinked like I had mascara in my eyes. To my surprise, I found myself in history class, fighting off the fog of the shift.
As I watched Mr. Jefferies, my middle-aged teacher with glasses bigger than his head, drone on, I wished I’d tried harder to appear somewhere with an ocean view. Not that it would have done anything to change where I now sat, but a sea breeze and fruity drink might have made history a whole lot nicer. At least I’d returned to my regular timeline, with no post-change haze stealing memories or creating new ones. I knew for a fact I’d come back to the correct point in time because I remembered everything that had happened before, during, and after the Travel. A funny urge to kiss my desk welled up inside of me. I’d never been so happy to see the old, worn wooden table top with the words “School Sux” written on it.
I glanced around, half-expecting my fellow classmates to react to my latest disappearance, but they were all hunched over their desks, absorbed in one of Jefferies’ infamous tests. No one had noticed the blip in time. Not that they would have. They were Normals. I was the only Traveler in the room. How did they handle this world when it was all so linear? But still, that had been massive. How could so many people not feel it?
A rash of goose bumps crawled up my arm. Someone had created a pocket on a closed loop and erased my last Travel. No one saw me leave because I’d never actually left.
I decided to pick the brains of the rest of the Travelers later. Maybe they knew something. Or more likely, my best friend Joan knew something. Out of everyone, she had the latest dirt from the elders in our community, and I’d perfected the art of getting information out of her.
And it wasn’t as though stuff like this happened often. No one messed with time anymore. Not since the treaties left us living more and more like Normals.
As a last resort, my dad might clue me in, if I got lucky. My parents never gave me much information when it came to Traveler politics, but they might make an exception given today’s events.
“Intending on completing your exam, Miss Crenshaw?” My teacher, his comb-over grating on me worse than his patterned shirt and plaid pants, leaned over my desk so his nose almost touched mine.
He desperately needed dental work. And gum.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” I forced a grin and hoped he didn’t notice the way my hands shook a little.
While balancing my pencil in my fingers, I studied my palms. Whole and unblistered. Technically, I didn’t kill Henry. That pocket never happened, not really. But the truth couldn’t stop the ache in my chest as I remembered him lying there.
Dead. Again. And I had killed him this time. Even if I’d done it because of Traveler rules, it still hurt. Just like it hurt in this reality. I missed him every single day. The loss of him had settled behind my heart like a stone, a sharp and constant reminder that no matter what I did, there was no way I could’ve saved him.
Chapter Two
I twisted the delicate bracelet on my wrist until it cut into my skin. I hated it, this dog leash that kept me from Traveling freely. I longed to remove it, but the guy who put it on me said it would take a blowtorch to get it off. Since I still hadn’t figured out how to do that without burning my hand off, I wore the thing and bugged my parents about it.
Not that today looked particularly good for winning that battle.
My front door loomed before me. I paused, knowing what waited on the other side. My failed test weighed down my bag. My teacher had made a phone call home for this one. I hadn’t exactly flunked the class, but a D- was lower than my usual C’s.
If the bracelet came off, I could fix these bad grades in a snap. I could transform my average C’s into shiny A’s and wind up in a “college of my choosing,” as my dad put it. But my inability to travel freely, without my parents’ snooping, kept all those dreams from coming true. What was the point of being born a time-traveler if I couldn’t at least change my answers on a crappy history test?
That logic wouldn’t fly with Dad though. His motto about living a “normal, fulfilling life” crept into every lecture. Whenever he started, I had to stifle an eye roll and yawn. All that “blah, blah, blah” translated into “lead a boring life” and “don’t use your natural abilities to their full potential.” At least, that’s what I heard when he started in. I thought that was stupid. He thought it was honorable. I kept my opinions to myself.
I blew out a heavy sigh, which sent my bangs flying. Again. Why did I bother with the flat iron when my own habits undid my hard work? I took the steps two at a time, no sense in delaying the inevitable. My parents were going to yell, and nothing could change that. I opened the door, doing my best to be as silent as possible. If I got really lucky, I might make it upstairs before they realized I’d arrived.
The bad news: Mom waited for me in the foyer. The good news: she looked relieved.
“What took you so long?” She rushed to my side and patted me all over like she needed to make sure I didn’t have blood spurting from any injuries. I hid my grimace and hugged her to get her to stop.
“I had to drive home.” I held up my wrist and wiggled my bracelet. It caught the light. “If you’d remove my shackle, I’d be able to pop on home like any other Traveler. It’s pretty embarrassing to be the only Traveling teen who still drives.”
My mom frowned. Her brow creased in that familiar way, and I could practically hear her saying “It’s for your own good.”
Instead, she ignored my comments, smoothed my hair down, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I was so worried.”
“About what?” I ducked away from her. “You know I’m fine. I’m not due to die for another eighty-seven years.”
She scowled. I hated that expression she got when I discussed taboo topics like death-dates. I’d known when I would die since I turned eight years old. But adult Travelers always turned up their noses when I mentioned how I’d kick the bucket, like I’d just discussed my bathroom habits or something.
She shook her head, closed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Today’s shift…” She turned and glanced at my father.
He stood from his perch on the living room couch and crossed the room to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “It was a bad one.”
I shivered and glanced down at my palms, half expecting them to be covered with blisters. Nope, normal as ever. Not that it did anything to stop the gnawing ache in my chest.
“Yeah, it was intense.” I wondered if I could blame my failed test on this afternoon’s random time-shift. Given the worried glances shooting between them, I calculated a higher than normal chance of success. Instead of going for the kill shot right away, I decided to keep on this path a while longer, just to up the ante. “Did the Committee figure out what caused my time-shift?”
My parents exchanged one of those glances that seemed to communicate a ton of information they hoped I wouldn’t clue in on. “Yeah. They caught Cyrus going back too far. When we got back to the normal timeline and could all remember what happened, it wasn’t hard for the Committee to track him down.” My father’s expression turned to stone, and he settled back down on our giant leather couch.
Dropping my test-heavy bag by the door, I ignored the weary eye-roll from my neat-freak mom and kicked off my heels. Padding across the plush carpet, I sank into my favorite spot in the suede armchair.
“I didn’t like watching this timeline fade out, forgetting everything,” I admitted. It still freaked me out, even with my memories intact now. I would have lost them all if we’d remained stuck in the pocket.
My mom opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off before she asked any uncomfortable questions—particularly ones related to shooting my dead boyfriend. “So what’s going to happen to Cyrus?”
My mother took a shaky breath. “They’re going to cuff him.”
I froze in my seat, gripping the cushions like they were some kind of floatation device. “Cuff him? Just for going back past his lifetime?”
While my silver band acted as a GPS tracker when I Traveled, Cyrus’ cuff would prevent him from Traveling at all. For him, time would become linear, just like the Normals saw it. The idea terrified me.
I must have looked as freaked out as I felt because Mom perched on the arm of my chair and hugged me. “We know how much you hate wearing that bracelet, Sienna, but it really is for your protection. Time travel is dangerous and has serious consequences. Cyrus found that out the hard way.”
Henry’s face, contorted in death, floated through my mind. His eyes had been shut so I couldn’t see their perfect shade of green one last time. Dangerous—what an understatement. For a brief moment—a very brief moment—I appreciated my piece of jewelry and my parents’ protection. Even if it meant I had to live with that D- on my history test.
My father snorted. “Come on, Cyrus didn’t learn a damned thing. He swears he was framed.”
“You know I have no great love for Cyrus, but being cuffed…” She shook her head. “Of course he’d say whatever he could for the chance to Travel again.” Mom smoothed down my bangs. I tensed, sensing the real reason for this little family gathering.
“You need to be extra careful. We don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t want to see you get into something—”
“Especially when you’re failing history.” Dad frowned.
So…I wasn’t going to get away with my bad grade. As I debated the best way to get out of the coming argument, my mother jumped in and ruined any chance I had at escape.
“History is one class you should find helpful, and you can’t take it seriously.” She sniffed and twisted her mouth into a grimace.
“I’m sorry.” I lowered my head and told myself to stop there. But my mouth continued on without approval from my brain. “Anyway, it’s not like I’ll actually ever get to Travel to see any of this stuff.”
The fiery glare in Mom’s eyes made me wish I could time-travel and take back my comment. “Sienna Crenshaw, just because you can’t Travel past your lifetime doesn’t mean you shouldn’t appreciate and understand the complexities of how we got here.”
And off she went. I’d memorized this argument years ago. The past changes the future, all timelines interconnect and affect one another. Blah, blah, blah. Being restricted to my own lifetime—I’d like to punch the Traveler who created that rule—reduce me to little more than a fortune-teller. Sure, I could guarantee that I didn’t screw up a future job interview, but I’d never get to do any of the cool stuff my ancestors accomplished. Like Travel back and meet famous people, go to all the best concerts, or make sure big crappy stuff didn’t happen. If I met Monet, would the course of the world be changed? No. And one more person at Woodstock certainly wouldn’t make a difference. Not even my parents could argue that World War II made the world a better place. If it weren’t for all the Travelers’ rules, I could make the most out of this time traveling gift. But yeah… I yanked at my bracelet again.
“So you’ll try harder in history?” Mom’s voice interrupted my musings.
“Mmm-hmm.” My brain spun on the idea of receiving painting lessons from Monet.
“Alright then. I’ll look over your next few assignments to be sure you stay on track.”
“Fine.” At least I’d get to keep my car and internet privileges.
Mom walked back toward the kitchen, and Dad picked up his tablet. I blinked in surprise. I’d expected more lectures and “discussion” time. As I crept up to my room, dread washed over me like an unexpected wave at the beach. My parents must have been really worried about what Cyrus had done if they let me off the hook so easily.
Chapter Three
Up in my room, I dumped the contents of my bag on my giant desk and riffled through it until I found my lip gloss. I had so much homework to do tonight that I considered marathoning a TV series instead. As I dropped onto my bed, a brief crackling noise caught my attention. I twisted around to find Joan materializing in the corner. Though I squinted, I could barely see her jeans, hideous bright blue shirt, and long brown hair, which appeared wispy and see-through at first. A heartbeat later, she fully materialized with a cheerful, odd, out-of-place smile.
I hadn’t seen her grin like that since her twin died a year ago. Our friendship had floundered so much since then. Sometimes, I wondered if she considered me more of an enemy now. The day Henry died, grief swallowed her whole, leaving just the shell of a person with poor fashion sense.
She sat down next to me and crossed her ankles when she stretched her legs out. “I take it you heard the news?”
I hesitated for a moment. A part of me wanted to believe my best friend was back, the one I’d spent countless hours talking to about everything and anything. I missed her.
But the girl in front of me bore little resemblance to the Joan I remembered—not after she’d spent a year lost in mourning. But I totally understood her grief.
For now, I decided to go with the strange smile Joan offered and play it off. “Yeah. And then my parents found out I’m almost flunking history. It was fun.”
Joan stifled a giggle. “Well, if you studied with me, you’d be fine.”
I rolled my eyes. Joan couldn’t sit still long enough to teach someone how to tie their shoes, let alone help me with pre-calc. I’d always relied on Henry to help me study—not that any amount of studying ever really helped me improve my long string of C’s. Yet another reason I missed him.
My heart twisted. I glanced down at my hands, but Joan didn’t seem to notice.
“Well, it’s only history, isn’t it? I mean, what are you going to need that for anyhow?” She settled back against my headboard and plugged her phone into the speakers on my nightstand.
“Don’t be a hypocrite.” Her smugness irritated me. She might be a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, but she didn’t have to rub it in.
“No, but really, it’s not like anyone’s going to let us Travel back to any of that stuff. We can go forward a few years, but we can’t go back past our birth. What’s the point?”
She’d made this argument so many times that I didn’t even bother answering. Like Joan, I resented the limitations on our Travel. I actually kind of wanted to meet Nefertiti sometime, and my great-grandmother, Eleanor, whom dad always referred to as my intergenerational-twin. But if I started this conversation with Joan, she’d launch into a long rant I didn’t have time for.
“I mean, why even have the ability to Travel at all? Honestly, what’s so important about keeping our abilities a secret? I think we’d be a whole lot better off if we went back to the way it used to be—when Travelers could go anywhere, anytime.” Joan spoke like she had memorized that statement, complete with complementing hand gestures.
I’d heard Joan mention this before too, but something about the vicious tone in her voice unsettled me. She flicked through the songs on her phone, changing her choice every few seconds.
I would never admit it, not when she was finally opening up and I hoped our friendship could return to normal, but she was wrong. From what I’d heard and read, chaotic didn’t even begin to describe life before the Travelers organized and instituted rules. Everyone lived in fear of someone going back and screwing up the past, and therefore, the future. The rules prevented that from happening. Sure, sometimes we messed up. But we kept track of our Travel so we could always put things back in order.
Like today. Whatever Cyrus did alerted the Committee, and they corrected any changes he made. No one’s random great-grandfather got killed, and I never actually shot Henry. While the rules chaffed—sometimes literally, like with my bracelet—they were important.
But I knew my logic would make no headway with Joan. She focused on only one rule—our deaths. Since we Travelers always knew the exact time of our demise, we lived with a giant clock counting down over our heads. But our rules stated that we weren’t allowed to change anything about how we died. At. All.
Joan and I both understood the impact of this law from personal experience. And it had changed Joan. She’d never mentioned the rules much before; now she openly discussed her hatred of them.
Not that Joan ever broke any—she left that up to me. She fit perfectly into the bitter angel role. She liked to invent new ways to walk the line between what the Committee accepted and what got us in trouble. I always got caught wearing the horns, which meant I’d keep my bracelet until my parents were sure I was responsible enough to live without it…which probably wouldn’t be until I turned eighty.
While Henry’s death changed Joan, it had also changed me. My grades had slipped, and I’d been left wondering what the hell was the point of living. I wished I could have saved him. I wished the stupid natural death rule didn’t apply.
But I couldn’t save him and still obey the Traveler rules. Cyrus was a perfect example of what happened to rule breakers: screw with the Traveler community and become no better than a Normal.
My grades were way too crappy to live a regular life anyway.
I glanced at Joan, grateful she was too absorbed in her music to notice I zoned out during her tirade.
“Hey, I have the new album you were talking about from next year. Do you want me to send you a copy?” she asked.
“No thanks. I’ll wait.”
Since I already knew what would happen to me on the way to school and the name of my future spouse, I’d learned to enjoy surprises. Henry had taught me that. And somehow, waiting for those little pleasures helped keep him alive.
“Yeah, I should have guessed you’d say no.” Joan rolled her eyes. “I did have a reason for coming over here though. Do you have any plans for tomorrow?”
“Not while wearing my bracelet.”
Joan bobbed her head, her focus still on her music collection, which blared something I was pretty sure required head banging. “I might need your help with something in the morning.”
“Something like…”
“Nothing much, but I’ll tell you in the morning. Okay?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure.” Generally Joan didn’t keep secrets, but I wasn’t in the mood to press her. My homework gave me the stink-eye from my desk.
“Good. Oh, and I almost forgot.” She shoved her phone in her pocket, the sudden silence a relief. From her butt pocket, she removed a folded and creased set of papers and pressed them into my hands.
“What—?”
“It’s the history exam from next week. Just don’t let your parents see it.” She giggled, and her eyes danced with mischief.
My jaw flopped open as I inspected the exam. Sure enough, next week’s date stared back at me. “Thanks. This is really…helpful.”
And so out of character for Joan—Little Miss I’d Never Cheat—that it settled uncomfortably in my gut. But what could I do? Joan finally seemed to be acting like we were friends again. I refused to screw that up, and I might even save my grade too.
Joan leaned over and pulled me into a quick hug before she jumped back and vaporized.
I stared at the place where she’d sat and stuck out my tongue. I had yet to master the whole “vanish from my bedroom to end up at the mall” trick. Not that I got a whole lot of chances to practice. I frowned at my bracelet and briefly wondered if I could find a blowtorch. Perfect Joan, on the other hand, had figured out the whole place-to-place traveling trick at ten. Sighing, I turned the test over in my hands a couple of times.
What was going on with her? Nothing had been the same since Henry died, but to give me a test early? She’d never helped me cheat before. Something didn’t add up.
Chapter Four
With three books open and spread out around me, a sheet full of notes, and my phone locked in my bathroom to keep myself focused, I vowed to get my homework done. As I struggled to work through another math problem, my eyes drifted to the photo framed on my desk. The one I couldn’t quite bring myself to remove, even if seeing it made my throat tighten.
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and dotted my paper with little puckered wet drops. In the picture, Henry, Joan, and I were laughing, our heads tipped back, wrapped in a three-person hug in the brilliant sunshine. Henry’s amazing body—the product of the swim team—stood out in the photo like something off the cover of one of the magazines they hid at the back of our local bookstore, the kind Joan and I used to sneak back and dare each other to peek at.
Friends since birth, the twins and I did everything together. It only seemed natural that Henry and I would end up together, and Joan hung out with us more often than not—at least when she wasn’t busy with some extracurricular activity or her obsession with environmental activism.
When Henry came over to help my study, my parents strangely didn’t have problem with the two of us spending many late nights working together. And kissing. Lots of kissing. I liked to think my parents never caught on to how he helped me study that.
While I would have given up every painting I’d ever completed for the chance to kiss Henry again, that wasn’t what I missed the most. I missed sitting on my bed with him—talking, laughing, and watching movies. We used to catch old horror flicks, the kind that were so awful they were funny. We’d watch them with the sound off and supply the voices and storyline ourselves. I would laugh so hard I’d almost pee at the way Henry made himself sound like a sour old guy. Then we’d curl up, tangle our arms and legs, and let the world beyond my room just disappear. I’d fallen asleep like that countless times, so comfortable and so confident in how we felt about each other. In those moments, nothing else mattered.
I missed that most. Every time I thought about him, my heart ached.
As I studied his unflinching gaze, his eyes captivated me. I saw now what I couldn’t see then—the sadness creeping in. The knowledge that he’d never spend another afternoon with us at the beach. Even as a Traveler, especially as a Traveler, his clock ticked down so fast. Too fast.
I often thought about trying to Travel back to a time before his death to talk and visit with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d said my goodbyes, and for now, I needed to keep moving forward.
Even if I sometimes wondered how I could possibly manage life without him.
The test answers rested under my notebook, and I pulled them out. Maybe things would turn around now. If Joan managed to get back to semi-normal, maybe we could help each other. Maybe I could keep myself together.
But for now, I kissed my fingertip and pressed it to Henry’s face in the photo. I whispered a soft “love you” and tried to return to my homework.
***
Mom spent most of breakfast reminding me about the importance of yesterday’s lecture. Annoyed, I made a stupid comment about my bracelet being like a cuff since I never got to Travel. That earned me another lecture from both Mom and Dad, only slightly shortened compared to yesterday.
Ecstatic to leave for school, I wrestled with my bag and shoes by the door. To my surprise, Mom came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me.
Time paused for a moment—not because we Traveled anywhere, but because I could tell how worried she was about me.
“Just be safe. If anything happens, forget the bracelet and get to us as fast as you can, okay?” She turned me around to face her and cupped both my cheeks in her hands. I wished I hadn’t been so stupid to say such mean things this morning. She didn’t deserve that.
“I will.” I managed a weak grin, not sure why my eyes stung like I might start crying any second. Maybe this whole thing with Cyrus, and my shooting Henry in that alternate world yesterday, affected me more than I realized.
After a quick hug, she let me go. I waved until I could no longer see my petite mom in her oversized sweater smiling at me.
Running late, as always, I drove too fast to school. My tires screeched as I whipped into a parking space in the back lot.
“Honestly, be careful, would ya?” Joan materialized in my passenger seat with a smug grin.
I narrowed my eyes at her. Her ability to Travel into a moving vehicle annoyed me, but her magical appearance in my car flat out pissed me off. If anyone saw her show up out of nowhere in my car, we’d be in major trouble with the Committee. They were anal about secrecy. Cyrus’ cuff would look like a slap on the wrist compared to what they’d do to us.