Rift (Rift Walkers #1)

  Sometimes Soda’s already been there, because he’s asleep in his armchair, a tray of mostly uneaten food next to him.

  A couple of times he’s been awake, and after I fix him a cup of tea, he’ll tell me stories about Cascade. I’ve learned that she loves to paint landscapes, that she shaved her head in sixth grade, and that her favorite soda is orange Fanta.

  Shep has fond memories of Cascade as a kid, and I can tell he misses her now as much as I do. I arrive at her red door and place my palm against it, desperate to feel her pulse behind the wood. I can’t help hoping that she’s returned, though Shep promised to chat me the moment he knows anything.

  I knock and wait, knowing she’s not here. He doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t chat, but I enter anyway. Shep is asleep in his chair, but there’s no indication that Soda has been here yet. I move silently into the kitchen and put the water on to boil. I’ve just put the cinnamon raisin bread in the toaster when Soda arrives.

  “Price,” she exhales. I turn to find her clutching her chest, her eyes wide. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was just going to chat you and let you know I’d take care of him today.”

  She smiles sadly, crossing through the living room toward me. She wears no jewelry today, one of the only times I’ve seen her without it. “No word from Cascade?”

  I shake my head, pushing against sudden tears. I won’t cry, not in front of Soda. I won’t cry over Cascade, I tell myself. I barely knew her.

  I know I’m lying to myself. I can’t think about anything else. I don’t care about Dad, or the Hoods, or jamming. I only care about Cascade, and seeing her stormy eyes, and smelling the coffee on her breath.

  Soda readies the tea while I butter the toast. She plates everything and takes it to Shep. She nudges his shoulder, but he doesn’t wake. She retreats back to the kitchen, joining me at the kitchen table where I’ve settled.

  “I’m sorry, Price.” She covers my hand with hers. “I know you miss her. I—” Her voice cracks. “I miss her too.”

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I ask, realizing that Soda and Cascade have been friends for a long, long time. Friends from another lifetime.

  Soda meets my desperate gaze, the same fear in her eyes that I feel coursing through my body. “I hope so. If there’s anyone who can figure out how to get home, it’s her.”

  I nod, thankful for Soda’s reassurances, even if they are empty.

  “Come to Heath’s tonight,” she says. She’s invited me every day this week. I haven’t gone, because I feel hella bad about sending Cooper away to solve my problems. Heath should be the one moping while Soda and I cheer him up.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Yes, you can,” Soda argues. “Heath is not mad at you. He wanted to send Cooper through the rift.”

  “I know, but….” I can’t help feeling like I’ve put Cooper in danger. That maybe the rift wasn’t the rescue Heath was hoping for. “He hasn’t invited me.”

  “I’m inviting you,” she says, standing. “And you’re coming. No arguments. No excuses.”

  That night, I show up at Heath’s. I just can’t stomach the thought of Soda being disappointed in me too. She whips open the door, a wide grin on her face. “Price, come see what Heath got.” Her mood is the complete opposite of this morning, when we sat in companionable silence, missing Cascade.

  In the kitchen, Heath and his parents are studying something on the counter. Heath glances at me as we enter. “Blood.” He removes himself from his family circle to come clap me on the back. “Cooper left us a note.”

  “No way,” I say, suddenly eager to see what everyone else is looking at. On the counter lies a piece of paper, blindingly white against the dark flatpanel. Cramped handwriting fills half the paper, detailing how Cooper is doing. His letter tells of a good apartment, a dependable roommate, and a secure employment contract.

  One line near the end of the note catches my eye. I’ve found that I really like toast and jam, and my efforts at homemade blackberry jam are going well.

  I know that line is meant for me. I haven’t checked to see what the Black Hat has been up to, or what kind of jams Cooper has chosen.

  I meet Heath’s eye, and he looks so happy. “Excellent letter, bro,” I say.

  “I know, right?” He smiles, and then we all sit down to eat.

  The following day, Shep hails me. For one terrible moment, I think he’s heard from Cascade. “I’ve seen her,” he says. “Not in person, but as an echo.”

  My heart rate spikes. “What does that mean?”

  “A time echo, an imprint on the timeline. I know it’s not her, but it means she’s tethered to this timeline. I’m going to run some tests and thought you might like to come over.”

  “Definitely.” I’m not sure exactly what he means when he says she’s tethered to this timeline, but if there’s a chance I can see her, I want to.

  So I go. I hang out in his kitchen while he checks data and runs tests. We don’t talk much, beyond his explanation of timeline tethers. “It means that she belongs here,” he tells me. “It means that if she can find a rift, she can find her way back to this timeline, to us.”

  His words give me hope, but as the day wears on and his tests don’t yield the results he wants, I feel the hope withering.

  “That can’t be right,” he mutters to himself close to dinnertime. “Science doesn’t lie.”

  I remember thinking the same thing the first time I saw Saige rising out of my body.

  “Can I go up to Cascade’s room?” I ask, suddenly wanting to get away from Shep. I don’t want to live my life with only science to guide me.

  “Sure,” he says. “But you won’t find anything there.”

  I wave his comment away as I head upstairs. I will find something in Cascade’s room—her. When I walk in, my stomach tightens. The room breathes Cascade into existence. I collapse in her chair and put my hands on her desk. Her jewelry hangs on a nail in the wall. Her closet holds her tanks and sweatshirts. I lie down in her bed, and breathe in the smell of her skin.

  The aching thought flies through my head that she doesn’t want to be with me, because of my family, because my dad couldn’t save hers.

  I refuse to entertain such a thing. She kissed me like she liked me and wanted to be with me. I stand up and survey her gadgetry. “There has to be something here I can use to repair the rift.”

  I’m not the one who’s a genius with technology. I’m not the one who rotated in holographic form and brought gadget after gadget to my room to measure the visible light spectrum and capture video images through the rift of a person slamming a window.

  Cascade had done that, acting as Newt.

  I don’t know how she did it. I don’t know what technology it’ll take—

  “Dad does.” My dad will know what gadgetry is needed. He’s mended the rift before.

  He’s mended the rift before. The thought is hella loud in my head.

  I spin, looking for the outdated flatpanel that shows him attempting to save Cascade’s dad. Cascade had said the rift collapsed in another time, and that Dad had to do some repairs on this thread too. I can’t find the flatpanel, but it doesn’t matter. I will find his scientific journals. I will discover what he did. Even if it means I have to jam again to make sure Dad—or the government—doesn’t find out what I’m doing. After all, they’re probably both relieved the rift has gone kablooey as it solves a lot of problems on many levels.

  I will repair the time rift and step through it to bring Cascade home, even if the thought of VersB personalities makes cold shivers skate down my spine.

  “I will,” I say to her bedroom. “I will.”

  Saige

  I KEEP MY HEAD DOWN until I’m sure I’m not going to throw up. My arms shake as much from supporting my body weight as they do because of the cold.

  My mind tangles around the thought, Its not June anymore.

  I pant, taking short slurps of air to get my hear
t to calm and my nerves to settle. Finally I raise my head and drink in my surroundings.

  I’m kneeling in my backyard, but the grass is dead and covered in ice—which means it’s definitely not the same time as when I left. I have no idea if Mom lives in this house, or if I’ve only gone back in time a few years.

  Cascade lies a few feet away, her eyes closed and a gash wrapping up one arm and around her shoulder.

  “No,” I moan as I scramble toward her. My hands flutter around for a moment before I decide where to put them. I slick away the congealing blood and find the wound pulsing with my sister’s life. I press down hard and scream for Mom.

  “The rift exploded,” I say, coming to the only logical conclusion. “While we were inside it.”

  No wonder I couldn’t get out.

  I test the strength of my legs as I pace in the living room. Shep—still fourteen—watches me from the couch, and Mom’s disappeared into her office to tend to Cascade’s injuries.

  I rub my arms against the chill as I move. I relive the memories of this old house. The kitchen where Chloe and I would make cookies on Sundays—at least until the day she left. The game room where Chloe taught Shep to play pool.

  “Is it really her?” Shep asks. When he and Mom came out of the house, they’d both stood there like they couldn’t believe I was real. And if they looked at me like that, they stared at Cascade like she was from another world.

  Because she is. She didn’t want to come home with me, not to stay. She has a contract with Guy Ryerson in the future, and I can’t even imagine the consequences—for her and for us—if she doesn’t return.

  Mom had carried her inside. Cascade appeared too small, her skin too gray, her hair too shaggy. She doesn’t quite fit here, in the house, in our family.

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s really her.” I don’t dare tell him that they live together in the future. That he’s taken care of her for the past several years—that she now takes care of him.

  Mom steps out of her office and gently brings the door closed. Her gaze flickers between me and Shep. Then we’re all crying, and Mom’s stroking my face and hair, saying, “You’re alive. You’re really alive.”

  Once she’s assured herself, and Shep has hugged me so tight my ribs creak, I sink onto the couch and wrap myself in a blanket. It’s toasty warm and my muscles sink into relaxation. I lean my head back and close my eyes.

  “Where have you been?” Mom asks.

  “In the rift,” I say automatically. “I went to talk to Cascade, and when I came back, I couldn’t get out.”

  “You’ve been gone six months,” Mom says, not quite accusatory but not quite compassionately either.

  “I was stuck,” I say, peering at her. “In the freaking rift. Something happened to it. Did you see that gash on Cascade’s arm?”

  Mom’s jaw works overtime. She looks toward the backyard like she still can’t quite believe she found us there.

  “How did Dad die?” I ask her.

  She swings her gaze to me violently, her eyes full of naked fear. She opens her mouth.

  “And don’t say he was on his way home from buying science fair materials.” I stand up, realizing that if I straighten all the way I’m as tall as my mother. I have just as much power as she does.

  “Was he inside the rift when it collapsed?” I ask.

  Tears leak out of my mother’s eyes. “I didn’t know what was happening,” she says. “It was Chloe who figured it out afterward.” Her voice wavers, pitches too high. I see her weaknesses for only a moment before she regains her confidence. She glares toward her office. “When she took my research and left, I couldn’t believe it. I spent the better part of a year disbelieving it. I accused every Ryerson I could find of kidnapping her.” Her eyes are furious, her words clipped.

  “But it wasn’t true. She stole everything from me and vanished in the middle of the night.”

  “How much knowledge have you recovered?” I ask.

  “Almost all of it,” she says, raising her chin almost proudly. “I’m nearly back to where we were when she was here, working with me.”

  “Congratulations,” I say sarcastically. I roll my eyes at my brother, who’s volleying his gaze between Mom and me. I’ll need to fill him in on everything I’ve learned.

  “Is Chloe going to be okay?” Shep asks, his voice full of concern. I remember how bright his eyes were, even sixty years into the future.

  “Yes,” Mom says. “She just needs to rest.”

  I don’t like that she’s in Mom’s office alone. I catch my brother’s eye and we both get up. He leads the way to Mom’s office while she calls after us. I ignore her and follow him into the room, fully expecting to find it empty.

  But Cascade’s there, lying on the couch with her arm and shoulder bandaged. Her skin is regaining some of its color. Her eyes are closed, but her chest rises and falls with the rhythm of sleep. Shep and I exhale at the same time.

  It seems surreal to have her here. I brush my fingers along her eyebrow, hoping she’ll wake up and be okay so I can hear her voice again.

  “Will you stay with her while I go shower?” I murmur to Shep.

  He nods, understanding in his expression. I should be able to trust my mother more, but right now I don’t. We need to see if we can find a way back to each other. Mend what had broken between us when Chloe went missing, when Mom had me drugged instead of telling me the truth.

  Upstairs, I let the memories wash over me with the hot spray. I let the missing six months of my life hurt for only a moment, and then I send that down the drain.

  As I get dressed, a corner of my mind wonders about Price, and if he misses my sister the way I did when I woke up and found her gone. I wonder what she said to him; I wonder how he’ll mend his heart. Because if anyone knows what it’s like to lose Chloe, it’s me. I had five years to heal, and I didn’t.

  I move into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. “I’ll ask her,” I say to my reflection, almost like I’m telling my sister. “I’ll find out,” I promise myself, promise her. I’m determined that there will be no secrets between me and my sister, even if that means the girl in the mirror has to morph into someone else, even if it hurts.

  Even if Cascade has to go back through the rift to the year 2073.

  Read on for a sneak peek at the first 2 chapters of the high-octane conclusion to Rift, in Mend, coming on December 11, 2016!

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  Books by Elana Johnson

  YA dystopian romance:

  Possession

  Surrender

  Abandon

  Resist (free)

  Regret

  YA time travel thriller:

  Rift

  Mend

  YA/NA dystopian fantasy:

  Elemental Rush (free with newsletter sign-up)

  Elemental Hunger

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  Elevated

  Something About Love

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  Open For Love (novella, free with romance newsletter sign-up)

  All Hallows' Eve Timeless Romance collection (novella)

  Under Your Spell (novella)

  Until Summer Ends (Redwood Bay Romance #1)

  Until Winter Breaks (Redwood Bay Romance #2 - coming March 2017)

  Adult fantasy:

  Echoes of Silence

  Price

  I STAND IN MY NEWLY remodeled bathroom, leaning into my fists as I battle with myself. Cascade hasn’t left me a note. Even if she had, it would’ve been blown up with the rift six months ago.

  Still, I can’t stop myself from checking the cupboard every morni
ng, this silken thread of hope pulling pulling pulling through me with the force of gravity.

  Heath hails me with You comin’ or what?

  I release the breath I’d been holding and chat him back. Yeah.

  I walk away from the bathroom, the cupboard, the note that could be waiting for me. I slip out the window and use the newly built column to slide to the porch. While the house was rebuilt, I’d slept on the couch in our downtown apartment for June, July, and August, with Dad right on top of me, those eyes seeing, appraising, judging everything.

  That same tension settles on my shoulders as I cover the couple of blocks to Heath’s house. The front door stands open, and I climb the steps and enter the living room with heavy footsteps.

  I’m tired though I sleep all night now. I keep up in all my classes, fulfill my civic duties, exceed my outdoor practice time. But organic chemistry and theories of fluids can only excite me so much. I don’t know how people live like this. No jamming. Nothing beyond school, work, swimming?

  Boring.

  As I enter Heath’s kitchen and find him swiping on the screen embedded into his counter, I realize I’m not tired. I’m bored.

  He raises his eyes and waves me over. “Come look at this.” The interest in his voice spikes my adrenaline. Heath’s been speaking in a voice as dull as mine for months—ever since his girlfriend Soda moved to Florida just before school started. With the rift explosion, and given that she and her mom weren’t exactly proper residents in our time, they thought it wise to get as far from Castle Pines as possible.

  Most days, I want to do the same.

  “What is it?” I want it to be a message from Cooper, a notorious jam that crippled a city government somewhere, something.