Rift (Rift Walkers #1)

  “Can I go to the library after school?” I ask her, grateful my voice comes out strong instead of clipped. “Sarah Jane and I need to cram for our American history final.”

  Mom gives her permission, but I have no intention of studying. I just don’t want her to think anything is wrong.

  But so many things are wrong.

  “Home by five,” Mom says, still leaning against the kitchen counter to examine me. She misses nothing, and she never stops watching. If anything, this only adds to the fury still building inside. I let my eyes skate everywhere but into hers as Shep calls from the garage.

  “Fine,” I say, annoyed that she’s treating me like I’m eight years old and need to be home before dark.

  “Give Shep a ride if he needs it.”

  “Sure, of course,” I agree, but Shep will catch a ride with one of his gamer friends, or he’ll borrow a skateboard and get home when he gets home. Mom won’t check with him about his homework. She won’t text him to make sure he’s really at the library. She only does that to me, as if I might suddenly lose my memory halfway through the day and forget to come home when she says.

  “Saige!” Shep yells again from the garage. I turn to leave but not before I see Mom push away from the counter and head for her office. She’ll leave minutes after us, and arrive home at four fifty-nine just to make sure I’m here at five o’clock.

  “We’re going to be so late,” Shep complains as I back out of the driveway.

  “Who cares?” I ask. “What? You have big plans before school?”

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “What’s her name?”

  “None of your business,” he snaps, sliding on his sunglasses and turning his face to the window. A twinge of guilt accompanies the anger coursing through me. It’s not Shep’s fault Mom treats me like an infant, and he doesn’t know that the Price he chatted with was an impostor.

  After school, I park at the library and sit in the car, the air conditioner blowing very real air on my bare arms. I only have one thing to go on. When Price asked me to write him a note, he’d said, “We can analyze the time rift.” I take my backpack into the library and sit down at an available research station. I open my notebook to a clean page and write What is a time rift? at the top.

  I open a web browser and type in the same thing. I get five pages of information instantly. The links relate to geology terms or a roleplaying game I’ve never heard of. The frustration builds again, and I scratch my pen over the paper until it breaks. The ripping noise is particularly satisfying.

  I blink, keeping my eyes closed for a long moment. Then I refocus on the computer screen. The dictionary entries shed the most light, but they don’t provide anything I couldn’t have worked out myself.

  Rift: split apart: to split apart, or make something split apart.

  I suppose sixty years in the future, scientists can make time split apart. Price seems pretty young to be a scientist, though.

  I click on the link for a paranormal website where people claim they’ve had a true experience with time dimension travel. I read the stories for a few minutes before realizing that there’s no information to be found here.

  The other links on the search page relate to a science fiction show I’ve never seen. I send the website to the printer so I can look at it at home. The thought crosses my mind that I could talk to my mom. Maybe her job as a laser fusion scientist touches on time travel.

  Half of me wants to ask her, is desperate to. At least then I’d be doing something—maybe then I’d get some real answers. At the same time, I know she’ll ask a thousand questions and want to know why I have such interests when I never have before.

  “She’ll never give me straight answers,” I mumble to myself. I know my mom well enough to know that, and it infuriates me. This constant anger is new, and I don’t know how to deal with it.

  I gather the printouts, trying to remember what else Price said that I can look up. By the time I return to my table, I’ve remembered one more thing. Price had this freaky blue outline hovering around his body. Not really an aura, but I don’t know what else to call it.

  Performing a search on auras overwhelms me instantly. Words like “paranormal” and “scientifically explained” and “spiritual awakening” freak me out. I make a half-hearted effort to read through a couple of Wikipedia pages before closing the browser without writing anything down.

  I feel like I’m living in a science fiction movie, where the truth is just out of sight over the next outcropping of rock. I have no idea if the rock is even there, or if my eyes are playing a trick on me (as one aura skeptic claims can happen with something called eye burn), or if this thread of time is about to be swallowed into another. I claw forward anyway, because it’s better than the alternatives: Admitting my insanity or going backward. I cannot do either of those, and so I must operate inside my circle of reality, even if it’s skewed.

  After paying for my printouts and the hourly fee for the computer, I drive aimlessly around suburban Castle Pines, speculating about what Anderson Heights might look like in five years, or ten. I wonder if Call’s Ice Cream Parlor will still be on Highland Avenue, and if so, who will be serving the cookies ‘n cream? I’ve never given much thought to the future. Just living, breathing, through one more day has become hard enough.

  I’ve never spent time wondering about which college I’ll attend or what I’ll do with my life. Now, I can’t help but speculate about what I’m doing in the year 2073. If I got married and had kids, or if I ever found out what happened to Chloe.

  Something in my backpack rings, and it takes me a few seconds to realize it’s my cell phone. I don’t answer it, because I already know who it is. My mom. The clock on the dashboard reads a quarter to five. I turn the car around, and head for home.

  My phone sings again. I dig it out while I’m stopped at a red light, check the caller ID, and immediately drop it on the floor as if it’s burned me.

  How on earth is Price Ryerson calling me?

  Price

  THERE ARE NO FLASHING LIGHTS, no rotating tunnel, and no strange sensations when walking through a time rift. It’s like blinking. The world goes dark for a fraction of a second and then it materializes again.

  We step into my bedroom in some other time, just like stepping from carpet to hardwood, or grass to sidewalk, or outside to inside. The folds of time must be incredibly close in my bedroom, because the sun still streams through the window. Without the air conditioning unit, it instantly feels ten degrees hotter than it did in my room in 2073.

  “We have to keep moving,” Cascade says, taking a few steps to the bay window and peering into the street. “They’ll follow us.”

  “When are we?” I ask, because I know where we are. It’s not my bed, and the walls are painted a wispy sky blue—the color they were before I slathered slate gray on them four years ago. We can’t be that far in the past.

  “I just need a few minutes to cool it down in here.” She yanks open the closet door and steps inside. I hear a clanking sound and then the ceiling opens up. The air conditioning blasts icy air into the room.

  She closes the closet door, but she won’t look at me as she steps to the window. I don’t really want her to, because I’m standing there with my mouth open.

  Cascade holds lacy, white curtains to the side as she scans the street. I can’t get the anger in my dad’s eyes out of my mind. He’s going to be so pissed when I get back.

  “How do you trap enough gravity to move through time? Create the energy it takes to move us at near-light speeds?” I’ve taken enough science courses and read enough books to know that time travel is complex, and complicated, and some say, impossible.

  “We don’t,” she says. “It’s a natural fold in time. We don’t need the gravitational pull from a black hole or the energy of light speed to use them.”

  “Rifts are manufactured. There’s nothing natural about them.” I lean away from her. “And you’re saying we just need the t
emperature at sixty-four degrees.” I fold my arms, completely disbelieving.

  She catches the sarcasm in my tone. “Even things that appear flat, aren’t.”

  “Like a bowling ball,” I say, remembering that lesson from physics. “I’ve studied that. So what? You’re saying that time isn’t flat? That there are divots and holes and—”

  “Wormholes,” she corrects, finally dropping the curtains. “Not just divots, though those exist too. I’ve only ever used the rifts. I don’t really want to drop into a time divot and land in the year 1647 and never come back.”

  I don’t either, I think, but don’t say. I simply regard her with open curiosity. She looks twice as techno in this baby blue and lace room. The racing lights across her nose, the Mohawk, the loads of silver jewelry and piercings. I move closer to her just because I can.

  “What’s going on, Cas? Why did we have to run through the rift?” Now that I’m questioning, I can’t stop. “Why couldn’t we just talk to them? Who are they?”

  Cascade chews on her bottom lip and wrings her hands. She meets my eyes, and this time, I see determination and a little bit of fear. “You’re not going to believe any of this.”

  I talked with a girl named Saige who lives sixty years in the past just last night. I’m going to believe pretty much anything Cascade says. “Try me.”

  “You have the notebook?”

  I pat the straps on my backpack. “Right here.”

  “Those guards, they heard us talking about it.” She moves toward me like she has more to say, but doesn’t quite know how. I know the feeling. The rift arrives before she can speak. “Time to go.”

  She darts into the bathroom and returns with a small knapsack. “Over here.” Her leg disappears as she steps into the rift. I see a thick pair of boots coming through the rift closer to where I stand. It can’t be Dad—he was wearing a suit and dress shoes.

  I don’t understand where we’re trying to go, or why. Surely we’ll have to go back home eventually. I blink, and it’s like the lights go out on my life. Like everything I’ve known is gone. Shadowed.

  “Price!” Cascade calls, and I spring into action as the rest of a jean-covered leg seeps into the room.

  I join my fingers with hers, and we enter the rift again.

  “Call this number,” Cascade says, handing me a slip of paper from her back pocket. When I take it, it’s still warm. I try not to think about where it came from.

  I stare at the numbers—eleven of them—with a series of dashes. “Call?” I ask.

  She takes something small out of her knapsack and hands it to me. “It’s a phone. You dial the numbers.”

  I don’t admit that I’m surprised she has a phone. I haven’t used a phone before, though I’ve learned that cell phone technology is where many of our scientific advancements stemmed from.

  I don’t ask who I’m calling or why. I don’t ask how that knapsack got in that bathroom at that particular time. I don’t ask about the notebook. The way Cascade holds her body with such tension tells me that this is no game, and she doesn’t have time for my questions right now.

  “No answer,” I say, hanging up without leaving a message.

  Cascade swears and begins pacing in the bedroom that becomes mine. I know enough to realize that we can step from one year to another. The time of day doesn’t change, only the year. The location is the same—my bedroom is where the rift is grounded.

  “Can you control the year we step into?” I ask Cascade. I glance around at the eggshell white walls, the set of bunk beds in the corner, and no electronics to be found anywhere. A lamp with a dinosaur shade glows on a bedside table. There’s thick carpet on the floor, completely different from my deep hardwood.

  She casts me a look filled with spikes. “Sometimes.”

  “But not right now,” I say, my frustration rising to meet hers.

  “Try the number again,” she says, and I sigh as I obey.

  “No answer.” I retreat to the bathroom and find ancient fixtures on the sink. The cupboards are completely different too—a deeper, darker brown. “How far in the past did we go?” I ask, returning to the bedroom.

  “Too far,” Cascade replies. “We’ll have to wait until they return to your bedroom and open the rift again. We’ll go through it when they do.”

  “When are we trying to go?”

  “Anytime they’re not.”

  I frown. “We’re already in a time they’re not. So…won’t we have to go back eventually? Can’t you open the rift?”

  “Not here, I can’t. If I can get us to the right time, we can use a different rift to get home.”

  I cross my arms and peer at her. “So we are going to go back.”

  She doesn’t look at me. “Your dad saw you go through the rift, which is bad enough. But if we can get back before him, well, you can pretend like you have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me, he won’t pursue it.” Her voice sounds like she’s barely holding back in the disgust department. She pins me with her dark eyes. They’re stormy and dangerous. “He’s got too much at stake, and he won’t punish your first offense. So we’ve got to get back first, and then show up at your house as if we’ve just finished dinner and are ready to start studying.”

  “First offense?” I ask. “You mean using the rift?” I think briefly about telling her this isn’t my first offense. I remember slipping through time—straight to Saige’s bedroom—last night. Why we can’t get there with a single step today makes no sense to me.

  “Right.” She continues her pacing. “He’ll ignore it. He won’t want to punish you anyway.”

  “What does my dad have to do with rifts? Or punishment for using them?” I ask, burying the idea of telling Cascade that I went through the rift last night. It feels like a conversation for another day.

  She just looks at me like I’ve gone crazy. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  She sighs like she can’t believe I’m acting this way. “I think this is something you should ask him.”

  “Something? Something what?”

  “Do you even know what he does at the Time Bureau?”

  “Sure, he’s the lead developer of technology. He oversees their security systems, their power grids, their operations. That’s how I knew so much about the building—how to get in, how to get out, which sector had the best Link stations.” I watch her as I explain what Dad does. “It’s why Heath asked me to find out what’s going on with Cooper, which—” I point at her. “You’re helping me with when we get back.”

  “Why would I know what’s going on with Heath’s brother?”

  “You might not,” I say. “But I know you’ll have some gadget or something that will help. All mine are currently on hold until the permissions go through. If they even do, after this.” I can’t believe this is happening right after I’d admitted to him that I have unregistered regulated tech in my possession. The timing couldn’t be worse.

  “Fine, I’ll help,” she says. “But I’m not telling you about your dad. You should ask him what he really does at the Bureau, because it’s not tech development.”

  I press my eyes closed and wish we were still at Sunnyside Up! eating burgers and drinking soda. This nightmare isn’t anything like what I imagined my first date with Cascade would be. My stomach growls about the dinner I didn’t eat.

  I open my eyes and appraise her. “Fine. I’ll ask him.” Though the last thing I want to do is ask Dad what he really does at the Bureau. “So you’re saying we had to run through the rift because those guards heard us talking about that notebook—which you didn’t even look at and I didn’t take out of my backpack. And my dad knows about this rift at my house, but he won’t punish me for using it because it’s my first time?” If Cascade knew he was nosing for information just this morning, she’d change her mind.

  “Right, and right.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Trust me, he’s going to gr
ill me about everything. He saw me go through the rift.”

  “If you can convince him that it wasn’t you—at least not the you from today—he’ll ignore it.” She looks a tiny bit worried but mostly confident that I can play off walking through a rift as nothing.

  “Are you serious? You don’t think he’ll ask?” I shake my head. “You don’t know my dad. He’s going to ask.”

  Cascade’s expression turns angry. “He won’t ask, because he’s using the rift illegally and he doesn’t want you to know about it.”

  Before I can process what that means, Cas says, “Finally,” and silver and blue light strobes to life in the bedroom. “I can get us there this time.” She takes a tiny step to the right and then back to the left, examining the light of the rift. Another minute adjustment and she makes up her mind.

  She reaches for my hand, looking fierce and strong, exactly like she did six months ago, the first night at social time that I realized I liked her. That night, the wind blew across the city with moans and howls. Winter in Castle Pines is vicious, and it had snowed all day. Our social time was supposed to be a flick on space travel, but the organizers had decided to combine our outdoor practice with social time. Thus, the snowball fight that had started innocently enough. We wore matching wristbands to signify which group we belonged with. Soda, in all her artsy glory, was useless and had sat on the sidelines most of the night. Which meant Heath had too.

  Cascade and I, we made quite the team. She was fast and agile, and I could hit almost any target, moving or not.

  She’d lead us out, dashing behind the cover in the designated area. I’d stay behind, waiting for the fire from opposing teams as she ran. She’d just made it to safety, and I’d just taken out three guys when our eyes had met.

  She looked just as fierce then as she does now. Her hair was completely concealed beneath the knit hat she wore, and when she smiled at me, my stomach dropped to my feet.