Rewrite Redemption (5 page)

Since Lex knew my secret, she took my apprehension seriously. “Elaborate.” 

“You know the creepy-crawly feeling I get at school, in buildings, or anywhere there are lots of people...plus the obnoxious noise in my head,—”

“The stuff Ipod calls static?”

“Yeah, well, in fourth period, it went away…just like that.” I snapped my fingers.

“So that’s good, right?”

“Kinda, sorta, but a new sensation took its place.”

“Elaborate.”

“It was calming, soothing, like my tree was following me around.”

“Okaaay…” she said, waving her hand at me, “calming…?”

“Yeah, but something more…better than calming. It actually felt—I don’t know—pleasurable.”

“Pleasurable?” she drew out the word and grinned. “You mean like—”

“No! Well, maybe a little but not localized. More like feeling kinda buzzed, without feeling stupid. Like my whole body felt—I don’t know—happier.”

“Your whole body feels happier when—”

“It had nothing to do with sex.” I felt my face flush, probably because it
was
a little like the aftermath of…not that I had any experience other than my own solo efforts. But still, pleasure was pleasure. I found myself running my tongue across the roof of my mouth and across my lips, like I could taste it…the sweetness of it.

Sweet, but something more….

It scared me.

Pain sucked but I was used to it. Pleasure on the other hand…not so much. I’d only had pocket-sized samples of pleasure, enough to know I liked it, but not enough to become accustomed to it. And I had enough sense to know that as soon as I got to like it too much, I’d reach the end of the sample bottle and have to revert to the cheap stuff. Then I’d have to live knowing what I was missing. I was suspicious of the free sample bin. This felt too good to be, well, good.

The tease of it frightened me.

“Earth to A.J.,” Lex said, “lockers.” She pulled me to the side and dialed her combination. Since I was just standing there thinking about it, she dialed mine in too.

“I don’t know exactly,” I continued, trying to sort out what I’d said out loud to Lex, from what I’d said in my head. “There’s nothing to freak about, but it makes me kinda—I don’t know—anxious.”

“It makes you anxious…” she therapized, waving me on. We began dumping books in our lockers. “Break,” she whispered, nodding her head over my left shoulder, “Jason Jackson walking south.” 

We stopped our conversation mid-word. Lex suddenly got really busy in her locker. I hid on the other side of Lex so I could watch to see if he looked at her or not.

He did.

“He’s looking at your legs,” I whispered.

Jason Jackson was her latest crush. But for some reason, she was keeping her involvement with him a secret.

“When are you going to quit pretending nothing’s going on with the two of you?” I asked.

“Not sure. Too soon to tell,” she said, licking her bottom lip. “I don’t know how I feel about it yet.”

 “He’s really cute,” I said. He was…blond hair, hazel eyes, and a totally sexy mouth.

“Yeah, right? And he smells even better. That’s the problem.”

“Elaborate,” I said, using her word.

She grinned. “I don’t know if I like him or if I just like looking at him.”

“And smelling him?”

“Exactly,” she sighed, licking her lips again.

We finished our Jason Jackson break when he rounded the corner out of sight. Then we resumed our conversation as though time had just hiccupped and landed us back ten seconds. She jumped in where we’d left off. “It makes you anxious…”

“Right,” I said. “It’s great to feel calm at school, and it’s way easier to think without the static. But this has never happened before. I don’t trust it.”

“But it feels good, right?” She slammed her locker door, and we started down the crowded hallway.

“Yeah, well, remember the kick-ass chocolate that loser gave the Chihuahua when we were ten?”

“You remember chocolate from six years ago?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “You need to get out more. Other than visiting Oz”—what Lex calls it when I jump back in time—“you have no excitement in your life whatsoever. Anyway, which loser? The Chihuahua has had so many.”

“The guy with the black Ferrari and the weird hair,” I said. “We walked in on them, doing it in the—”  

“Hello, buzz kill! Jeez, I just threw up a little in my mouth, thank you very much.” She clutched her throat and made a gagging sound.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I hope you have a reason for grossing me out.”

“I do.”

“Well, spit it out.” She gestured with her hand.

“Remember, we ate the whole box in like…five minutes?”

“So?” She lifted her eyebrows.

“It was nothing but sugar, butter, and a half a shot of liqueur in each one,” I said. “Lots of pleasure when we ate it, to say nothing of the buzz from the alcohol. But later we felt horrible.”

“Oh, right. How could I forget our ten-year-old hangover? And that relates to this how?”

“Well—”

 “Wait, wait, wait, I get it.” She laughed. “Fun while it lasted and then very un-fun the next morning.”

“Yes!” I said, nodding. “Good now, but maybe leading to bad.
Dangerous
pleasure. It’s pleasant, but unsettling at the same time. Mostly, I’m just freaked because this has never happened before.”

“The creepy-crawlies and the static going away or the pleasure-feeling thing?”

“All of it…especially here at school. It’s kinda disturbing.”

“Hey, you’re not going to, like, beam-out right here in the hallway are you?” She looked around for the first time during our conversation. She might not need invisibility, but she was protective enough of me to be concerned that I might disappear in the hallway and make the front page of the
National Enquirer
or the
Freakazoid Gazette
. That would be violating rule two—keep a low profile.

“No, no, it’s not that,” I assured her. “But it freaks me out, not knowing what’s going on.”

“Let’s get home,” she said. “See what Ipod thinks.”

I sensed the power the second I set foot in the school. I heard it too, right through my earbuds.” Instantly alert, I yanked my buds and stuffed them in a pocket. I wanted no distractions to this just detected and most unexpected turn of events. I couldn’t believe it.

It was a low undulating hum, melancholy, like a cello or an oboe. It radiated cleanly and swept through me as if I wasn’t there—perfect acoustics. It needed nothing to bounce off of to make it rich and full. And the
feel
of it…whoa. It washed across my brain, and I had my first moment’s peace since before the accident. Screw tree juice—this was better. All my stress and anxiety just melted away. I was stunned. An Editor at Boulder High?

It didn’t compute.

I’d checked the area for any of my kind as soon as my parents announced the move. There were three Editors listed in Boulder County but none who would have any business at a high school. Besides, I would have been notified if one was coming here. The Guild was meticulous about proximity notices. They didn’t make mistakes.

Well, maybe they did; but if so, they just changed the timeline so that you never knew they’d screwed up. So it was seriously strange that I was picking up power at Boulder High.

Already late, I headed for the office, bathing in the energy and wracking my brain as to who the source could be. I mean, we all give off
some
energy, but this was the most intense power I’d ever felt. Plus, it had a resonance to it that was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. Not even the Regents had such perfect “pitch.” What the heck was—?

The realization slammed me so hard, I had to stop and lean against the wall. I dropped my backpack to the ground and said out loud to an empty hall, “Dude, that’s impossible. You’re hallucinating.”

I ran my fingers through my hair, fighting to get a handle on the chaos inside my brain. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I’d finally cracked from all the stress. It couldn’t be. The odds were like hitting the lottery.

But then…
somebody
wins the lottery.

I sent my feelers out, flowing through the school, filtering through the fragments of the energy source. If I was hallucinating, I was doing a darn good job, because there it was, no mistake…pure and clean and sweet. No matter what the odds, there was a Shadow at Boulder High.

Shadows exist because of the Editor Program, but they aren’t a part of it. There’s this saying in the computer world called Moore’s Law. It claims that computer processors double in complexity every two years. Devices continue to get smaller and smaller. Think of what technology might be able to do in, say, a thousand years.

The planet we’re partnered with is light years ahead of us. They have a device called a Hitchhiker Mechanism. It’s so small; it can hitchhike on a strand of DNA and get passed down genetically. It only expresses sporadically and only under certain conditions. But if it does, it comes into play from the moment of conception, building a very different human being by rewriting their parts of their DNA.  

Their planet is exponentially more advanced than ours is. But even their tech isn’t perfect. There are occasional glitches where the Hitchhiker Mechanism goes into overdrive, giving an Editor too much power. Shadows were a glitch.

When an Editor is born, their signature registers on extremely sensitive equipment. The Guild is alerted to their existence. From that point on, the Editor’s movements are tracked and limited. But not Shadows. They’re invisible to our technology and the Guild has no control over them. They’re born undetected and can travel back in time under the radar. But they were incredibly rare. There were only a few known to exist.

Still, if a Shadow survived the changes at adolescence with their sanity intact and figured out how to deal with time travel, they had the world on a string. Unfortunately, the known Shadows were all corrupted by their almost unlimited power. They were mega-rich. They hung out on yachts and lived on private islands with battalions of bodyguards. They traveled in private jets and limos. They didn’t hang out at public high schools.

That meant this was an
unknown
Shadow…unknown as in
they
, themselves, didn’t know they were one. Power that strong, left to flow unchecked, unregistered with the Guild…nothing else fit. That
had
to be it! There simply was no other explanation.

My mind went into overdrive. I slumped against the wall, slid to the ground, and began connecting the dots. I got the implications immediately, the implications of what this lottery win could mean for
me
.

An unknown Shadow would have no knowledge of the Guild, much less a commitment not to interfere in my case. They would be clueless about what was going on with them and grateful to the person with answers. And with a little help, a grateful, unknown Shadow could travel undetected, alter my timeline, and give me my life back. Suddenly, I was frickin psyched we’d moved to Boulder, Colorado.

The bell rang and kids exploded out the doors, fumbling for phones and texting on the run. I sprinted down the hall, weaving through the crowd, fighting to get a handle on my growing excitement. More than anything, I wanted to hunt for the Shadow. What I was supposed to do was meet with Vice Principal Lowenstein. The last thing I needed was more trouble. I showed up at the meeting.

I gave short answers to the Vice’s few questions. Mostly, he wanted to lay down the law, show me who was boss. I knew the drill. Finally, he handed me my schedule, gave me directions to English, and released me.

The power had been muffled in the office, but it grew strong again as I walked into the hall. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. It had a strange, melancholy vibe, and threads of it reverberated through the empty hallways like music in a wind tunnel. It was haunting and compelling…like it was calling to me.

I prowled the halls with my radar up, sweeping each classroom, each office, the teacher’s lounge, even the restrooms. It took me wandering through half the school before I zeroed in; but finally it got exponentially stronger as I stopped outside the door of what looked to be a Spanish class.