He eyes me warily. I don’t really believe someone in the past needs my help, but no way I’m admitting that. He finally shrugs, which I take as his concession to help me.
“How will I get back?” I can’t believe I’m even considering walking through this rift. It’s unregistered, so I really have no idea how old it is, how long it tends to stay open, or how much energy it releases when used. Not to mention that rift-walking is illegal.
“I won’t let the rift close,” he says, determination in his voice. “To be safe, you should only stay for a few minutes.”
I take a deep breath. I already do a few technically illegal things, but rift-walking feels like inviting the Hoods to dinner and then confessing.
The Hoods won’t take anything I’ve done lightly—they don’t take anything that involves time travel lightly.
I look into Newt’s eyes. He’s been waiting for me to say something. “I’ll only stay a few minutes.”
I fling my shorts on my bed and pull on my newest pair of designer jeans and a black polo. I pair that with the technofoil jacket my mom bought.
“Price,” Newt says. “This is important. You can’t upset the past. You go messing around too much, and lives could be erased. Yours, or your mom’s or dad’s. Mine. Anyone’s.”
“I just want to talk to her,” I say. “Find out her name, and if she’s lived in the house a long time, and maybe what she did to open the rift.”
“We should do some more research,” Newt says, looking behind him at something in his space. “Find out who she is, what she has to do with rifts…. We don’t have to do this now.”
“The rift could vanish at any time, right?” I ask.
Newt squirms, something I’ve never seen this tech-guru do. “Well—”
“Well what?”
“There are certain ways to control a rift, especially one like this.” He glances at his readings. Maybe they tell him more than he’s told me. “Make it open when you want.”
I sit on my bed to absorb his words. “Can you close it when you want?”
“That’s not as easy. The environmental variables are hard to track once you go into the past. Most rifts are timer-sensitive. That’s where the risk comes in. If you go, and it closes before you come back….” He trails off, the worry evident in his voice as well as his face.
“But you just said you could keep it open.”
“I honestly don’t know what I can do with it.” Naked fear shows in his expression. “I can try some things, but honestly? I can’t guarantee you anything.”
“You’re a genius,” I tell him. “I trust you.”
“If all goes well, you’ll walk through time.” A hush settles over us with Newt’s words. Though he’s a holographic image, he’s a real person, living somewhere in the country.
“Try to get the date.” His eyes get this faraway quality, and I restrain myself from snapping my fingers to get his attention.
“Price!” Mom’s voice makes me jump to my feet, my heart battling my ribs. “Can you come downstairs, please?”
“Tonight,” I whisper to Newt. “Midnight.”
“I’ll research it,” he says as he grabs his cube and gadgetry from my desk.
“Tonight,” I repeat as I move toward my bedroom door. “This feels important. Like if I don’t go tonight, I’ll miss my chance.”
Newt doesn’t answer, and I practically hear the house asking, Chance for what?
Saige
I LAY IN BED WITH the file gripped in my fist, looking past the piano and out the open window. The wind moans, but it doesn’t bother me since it’s actually cooling my room.
I drift to sleep, but I hear “Crap. I’m late for practice.” I feel like I’m falling for a second, and then I realize where I am, and what I was thinking.
I hear nothing unusual now. No breathing. No talking. Just as a precaution, I took one of those pills my mother counts every Sunday. It was easy too, just the opening of a cabinet and the twisting of a lid. A quick drink, a fast swallow, and the anti-hallucinogen will keep all noises and visions at bay.
I don’t know why I took the pill. I think maybe I was starting to feel crazy again, what with mulling over the missing person’s file for the past twenty-four hours and seeing and hearing so many strange things.
I roll over, and my half-open eyes catch blurred movement near the piano. I lay very still, my heart pounding in my throat. There’s nothing there, I tell myself. I clutch the sheets, and there doesn’t seem to be enough air.
Nothing stirs, nothing moves, not even the curtains. The wind has died.
Just as I start to relax, the loudest noise I’ve ever heard pierces the absolute silence. I press my face into my pillow and cover my ears with my hands. There’s no release from the all-consuming roar.
My body feels detached from my bed, as if I’m floating up, up, and away, and this scares me more than anything else I’ve experienced lately. As quickly as the deafening roar had begun, it stops.
I can’t force my body to turn. To lift my head off the pillow. To open my eyes. If I don’t look, I won’t have to admit anything. I pray that whoever’s there will simply go away.
Because I know someone’s there, the same way I knew when Chloe wasn’t.
“It’s the same girl.” The voice echoes in my ears, and as much as I don’t want to look, I find my hands lowering and my neck turning my head in the direction of the window.
That same neon light from yesterday afternoon hugs a person’s frame, momentarily blinding me. I piece together a guy with grayed-out hair and a face completely concealed in shadows. His hands hang loosely in his jeans pockets. I can still hear the last reverberations of his voice. Girl, girl, girl.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
The plastic sleeves of my missing persons file slip to the floor as I scream.
The noise echoes through my house, settling into the old walls and bouncing around in the spidery attic. I expect my mom to come running. A scream’s one thing she never had with Chloe.
The guy standing next to my bed flails his arms. “Stop that!” he hisses. “You’ll wake someone up.” He glances behind him, becoming more colored as he does.
That’s exactly what I want to do. I take a deep breath to scream again.
“My name’s Price,” the guy says, now in full human hues. “Please be quiet.”
Everything about Price is wrong. His hair color is a shade of brown I’ve never seen before. Almost like his surroundings have been muted, but his hair saturated with color. His gray eyes flit around my room, noting details I wish he wouldn’t. His clothes look like jeans and a polo, but at the same time they’re not like anything I’ve ever seen, other than the fact that I can tell they cost a lot of money.
A faint blue outline hovers across his shoulders, almost like someone’s outlined him with construction chalk. He adjusts his jacket, which I note is made of some strange, shiny material, and the blue line quivers too.
My thoughts whirl, but somehow I speak. “Where did you come from?”
Price takes a couple of quick steps forward and retrieves my missing persons file, probably because he can tell that I won’t go banshee on him again.
“I think the better question is when did I come from?” he says, clutching the papers like he doesn’t know he can crush them.
I push myself into a sitting position, noticing the definite chill in the air. I can’t believe he’s talking back. Chloe’s never acknowledged me, and she’s certainly never been as solid as Price. Panic lodges in my throat and prevents me from speaking.
I cast a quick glance toward the bathroom, noting the absolute darkness beyond. My scream didn’t even touch Shep’s state of unconsciousness.
“Don’t flip out again,” Price says. “But I live in your house. This bedroom, actually. Just at a different time.”
My heart thunders through my chest, up to my throat. I can’t talk, even if I did know what to say—which I don’t.
Price looks around the room. “Nice piano. You play?”
“Are you dead?” I blurt. I don’t want to tell this strange guy anything about myself. I don’t want him here. Not now. Not ever again.
Price chuckles, but it’s more nervous than anything else. “No, I’m not dead. I live in the year 2073. What year is it here?”
I can’t wrap my mind around anything else except that he’s from the future. This can’t be happening. It opens too many doors, too many possibilities. I blink, sure he’ll disappear, but he’s still standing there watching me.
I can only stare as he crosses my room to the piano and puts his freaky futuristic fingers on the keys. They sound a dissonant chord that accompanies this nightmarish scene perfectly.
“Okay, let’s try your name?” he asks, plunking out an unfamiliar tune—from the freaking future, I’m assuming.
“Saige,” I choke out, and then want to take it back or give him a false name. Maybe Chloe’s. I think of her and her fearless nature. The way she shaved her head in sixth grade because she thought it would be fun. Where she was courageous,
I was timid.
Where she laughed loudly,
I smiled politely from the corner.
“And it’s the year 2013.”
Price peers into the bathroom. He turns back to me and hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “Who sleeps in the other bedroom?”
I’ve given him enough information. I press my lips shut and cross my arms. There’s a real guy in my bedroom! My next thought causes equal amounts of panic and satisfaction to sing through me.
If Mom knew….
I’ve been living under my mother’s dictatorship for five years. Always stepping in the shadow of Chloe’s disappearance. I’m tired of being that fearful, silent Saige.
“My brother sleeps in there,” I say, forcing my voice to be clear and loud. “He’s fourteen.”
“And you?” Price asks. “How old are you, Saige?”
My name sounds weird coming from his mouth, yet I kind of like it. The palm of his right hand glows with unearthly blue light. “I’m seventeen,” I say. “What’s that on your hand?”
Price holds up his hand. “It’s my Receiver. It’s a fiber optic implant, so we can access the Circuit without machines.”
A roar of thoughts converges in my mind. What he’s saying makes no sense. This is crazy whispers amidst the noise, and though Price’s mouth moves, I can’t hear what he says.
He places his non-Receiver hand on my shoulder, and I want to swat it away the way I would a spider. “Hey, you all right?”
I shake my head, willing the tears to stay hidden, but they don’t comply. He shifts uncomfortably and says, “Who are these people?” He studies the file with pictures and hand-scrawled notes to myself.
I yank them from his vice-grip so he can’t judge me the way the detectives did, the way Mom did. I can still see their eyes, the hope obscured by the disbelief. The sadness that I wouldn’t be swayed, that I’d spent time putting together a file that meant nothing.
I don’t want him to see Chloe, I don’t want him to know that Saige, the one I’m trying to overcome.
“That’s nothing.”
“Those people are all missing,” he says, glancing at me. I don’t see the familiar sympathy I’ve found in everyone else’s eyes. There’s no hope, no sadness. Only open curiosity. “Do you know them or something?”
“Not all of them,” I hedge. I shove the file under my blankets. “What are you doing here?”
He glances toward the dancing light. “Did you…? Do you know what this is?”
I shake my head. My mother’s the scientist, not me. If she or Chloe were here, they’d be scurrying around, taking measurements of things I can’t even see.
Price narrows his eyes like he thinks I’m lying to him, then he says, “I want to try an experiment. Will you help me?”
“What’s in it for me?” I ask.
He smiles as if he finds me slow. “I want you to write me a note,” he says. “Put my name on it, and today’s date. Hide it here in the house, somewhere no one will find it. Can you do that?”
I can. The question is Do I want to?
“Yes,” I hear myself say.
“Good. Then we can analyze the time rift,” he says, leaning against the piano and shuffling through my music like he owns the place. “Where can you hide the note?”
My bedroom has no loose floorboards; the kitchen was just remodeled; the attic is too dangerous—and Mom would question me mercilessly if she found me loitering up there. “I—I don’t know.”
“Quickly,” Price says, his voice edged with panic.
“There’s a game room downstairs,” I say. “We hardly ever use it.”
He shakes his head. “No, that won’t work. Just because you never use it, doesn’t mean the family after yours won’t.”
Frustration rushes through me. Mom would never let another family live in this house. I feel confined to it indefinitely.
“There’s an old cupboard in that bathroom,” I say, hooking my thumb over my shoulder. “Way in the back of the top drawer?”
Price nods and finally stops pawing through my music. “Leave it tonight, okay?”
Before I can answer, the bright light that’s been shimmering behind him shifts. I have the wherewithal to realize it’s changed to blue.
Price spins toward it. “I’ve got to go.” He definitely sounds like he’s about to have an anxiety attack. He steps directly into the light. His foot doesn’t land on the floor the way it should. The light—he called it a time rift—eats his leg, cutting his body in half as he steps on solid ground somewhere else. I refuse to let myself think he’s going somewhen else.
“Later, Saige,” he says, before committing fully to disappearing into the freaky light without any sound at all.
I’m left wondering if my anti-hallucinogens are expired, because I definitely saw all that, participated in a conversation with a guy.
“I saw him,” I whisper. “He was real.” Much more real than Chloe, with her mute footsteps and silent tongue.
I barely believe she could exist somewhen else, but it’s the only thought in my head. I launch myself out of bed and gather a paper and a pen from my backpack. Price might be my only connection to the time rift—and now Chloe. He wants a freaking note?
He’ll get a note.
After depositing a hastily penned “Price, were you really in my bedroom tonight? It’s June 3, 2013. Saige” in the appointed cupboard in the bathroom, I grab the quilt off my bed and wrap myself in it at the window seat. I stare through the glass the same way Chloe has so many times, though I don’t hum a tune the way she used to.
Sleep takes a very long time to claim me. Even then, the house seems to shift around me, with new rooms forming and old ones falling into black pits. The walls whisper things I can’t grasp. Years, places, names. I jerk awake at one point, knowing something very bad just happened, but unable to pinpoint what. I feel a sense of loss as deep as the gulf that buried me the day Dad died, and the morning we found Chloe gone.
The next morning, I wake to footsteps. Panic seizes me, and I sit up just as Mom starts down the stairs. She calls to me to get up and get ready for school. I answer, but I take a moment to think through my dreams.
Did I really see Price? Talk to him? Leave him a freaking note?
I jump up and head for the bathroom. Once inside, I stare at myself in the mirror. “A dream,” I whisper to myself, yet I can’t stop thinking about him. Last night, I’d determined to swallow my fear, to be strong. This morning, I want to be that stoic Saige, but I still feel the tremors of fear in my stomach. I still wonder: Would he take me through that time rift? Away from here?
I’m reaching into the cupboard to remove the note when Shep enters the bathroom. I yank my hand out of the cupboard, cursing myself for being so reckless. He doesn’t seem to notice as he bumps me with his shoulder. “Your computer is beeping,” he says.
I glance over my shoulder to my bedroom. “It is?”
“Can’t you hear that?” He abandons his toothbrush and goes into my room. I follow, where I find him clicking on the Internet browser. My email opens. “See?”
No, I don’t see. I have no new messages, even though I haven’t checked for days. Chloe and I used to email each other, even though we didn’t have anything to say. After she disappeared, I filed all her messages. I couldn’t bear to delete them permanently, and my email has been stagnant for years. Same thing with my cell phone. I used to want one, until Mom gave me her old model—complete with her stuffy scientist contacts still in the memory—and no one called.
He points to a box in the corner. “Someone’s chatting you.” Shep looks at me like I should be thrilled. I force myself to smile. “Oh, right. Thanks, Shep.”
A noise bleeps from the monitor.
“See? Instant messaging.” Shep sounds so proud. “And who’s Price?” A smile spreads across his face while dread settles in my stomach.
“Your boyfriend?” Shep sounds absolutely gleeful, and I can’t help the twist in my stomach. I remind myself that Price is not alive at this time and look at the message: Hey, this is Price. Is this Saige?
I stare at the words, disbelieving though I’d just started to accept that Price was real. But he’s real in the year 2073, not now.
So how is he chatting me?
Price
NEWT IS HAVING A HELLA loud fit when I return. His voice pitches an octave higher than normal, reminding me of Saige. He holds up gadget after gadget, exclaiming about colors and readings and charts.
I nod and pretend like I care. I do, really, but just not at one a.m. with a note that’s been waiting for sixty years. Not when I can have physical proof that I just walked through a time rift and spoke to a girl who would be close to eighty years old in my world.
An alert sounds in my ear speaker. “Price Ryerson, confirm that you are awake and alive.”