Timestorm (32 page)

A plate of cut-up melon, apples, pineapple, and strawberries was placed in the center of the table. Both Holly and I looked at it, wide-eyed, before diving in. Emily reached slowly for a piece of fruit, obviously not reacting like it was foreign as the two of us were.

The fruit was followed by piles of scrambled eggs, orange juice, toast, and fake sausage that tasted much better than I’d anticipated. Holly was given more vitamins than I knew existed but she swallowed each one without complaint.

Katherine sat down with us, taking only small portions of everything. Holly shoveled the food in as fast as I had but she never took her eyes off her mom. Like maybe she wanted to memorize every movement, every characteristic just in case they ended up apart again.

“Is this what’s going to happen when you live in the dorms this fall?” Katherine said to Holly. “You have to be responsible. You have to take care of yourself.”

Holly set her fork down, letting it clank against her plate. “You’re right. I’m probably not ready for that. I want to live at home.”

This was the most bizarre conversation I could possibly imagine at the moment, but luckily we were interrupted five minutes into Holly and Katherine’s verbal list of the pros and cons of her living in the dorms at NYU in the coming fall.

The doorbell rang at around eight in the morning and Katherine rushed to answer it, Holly quickly on her heels. A few seconds later, Adam and Stewart stood in the kitchen, trying to hide that they were clearly pissed off at us, how shocked they were to see a twelve-year-old Emily, and the relief that we were still alive.

“How’s it going?” I said to Adam. “You guys still freaked out about that whole security thing at camp yesterday?”

Adam’s eyebrows lifted. “Right … yeah … that was …
man
…”

“Insane,” Stewart filled in for him.

Holly’s mom stuck her hand out to Stewart. “Katherine Flynn, and you are?”

“Jenni Stewart,” she said, shaking hands and then nodding toward Adam. “Adam’s girlfriend.”

“So you work at the camp, too?” Katherine asked, her eyes bouncing between Adam and Stewart as if just looking at them several times would help her figure out how this unlikely pair had become a couple.

Adam looked nervous as he awkwardly tossed an arm around Stewart’s shoulders. “Yep, she’s a counselor, too.”

Stewart turned her head and grinned up at Adam. “That’s right. I just love little children.”

Adam coughed back a laugh. “She has amazing patience. And tolerance.”

“Are you guys hungry? I’ve got plenty of eggs left,” Katherine said, gesturing toward the table filled with plates of fruit, toast, and eggs.

Pretending everything was okay and that I hadn’t seen the worst event possible take place just hours ago was making me feel caged and claustrophobic. I stood up and grabbed Emily’s hand, pulling her to her feet beside me. “We’ve actually got to get back to the city. They came to pick us up.”

My eyes locked with Holly’s and I waited for her to speak. “I’m staying here,” she said.

I hated leaving her but I knew there was no changing her mind. She just wanted to sink into her old life and I wanted her to be able to do that. More than anything.

Despite the fact that Holly hadn’t established any relationship with me from Katherine’s point of view, I still leaned in to kiss Holly’s cheek before leaving.

“I’ll call you later, okay?” I whispered into her ear.

She gripped the front of my shirt, holding me in place. “Do I even have a phone number? Do you?”

Adam overheard her and nodded, indicating that he’d taken care of this already. Maybe he’d retrieved his own phone and already had Holly’s number programmed in it? Did that mean that he didn’t have the duplicate-self issue either? Or worse—the
I’m supposed to be dead so I can’t show my face at home
issue. He looked too happy at the moment to have encountered any problems with going home so everything must be okay on that front.

Holly met my eyes again and then gave me a quick kiss on the mouth, even with her mom watching and Adam and Stewart watching. “Thanks for staying over last night.”

“Sure.” I stepped away from her and headed toward the door with Emily. “I’ll see you later, Holly.”

The second we were out the door and down the block, Adam and Stewart both dropped their facade and turned to me, looking royally pissed off.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Stewart snapped. “Do you know how worried your dad and Courtney were?”

I stared at the sidewalk ahead of us, and muttered, “Sorry.”

“What’s the deal with the kid?” Adam nodded toward Emily.

Emily’s hand landed in my palm as she walked beside me, matching my stride perfectly. I couldn’t say it out loud. Couldn’t speak the words that would explain why she came back and what we had seen. All I could do was keep walking, heading toward the station and the train that would get us back to the city and force us to make the next move as the clock ticked on this horrible game of chess.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

DAY 2: 2009. MIDMORNING

After standing in silence while Dad chewed me out for leaving, while looking way more relieved to see me than angry, I snuck away from the group and sat on the floor in the room Holly had occupied the previous night.

Finally, I allowed myself to absorb what I’d seen and within seconds my entire body was shaking, my stomach in knots. My chest tightened with that familiar panicky feeling, but this time the dread was a whole notch higher. Sweat trickled down my neck and back.

When the door flew open, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Courtney stepped inside, slamming the door behind her.

“Do you have any idea how much I hate you right now?” She had her arms folded over her chest, foot tapping with more than the average annoyed-with-my-brother body language. Her eyes met mine and all the anger dropped from her face. “Oh my God, what’s wrong?”

She sat in front of me, resting her hands on my knees. I drew in a shaky breath and then allowed a few tears to fall out of the corners of my eyes before pressing the heels of my hands to my face, covering them. “Holly … Holly’s…”

My composure was completely gone and losing my shit like this wasn’t exactly a regular occurrence for me. Courtney had to have been shocked but she hid it well, scooting closer to wrap her arms around me, her head leaning in close to mine.

“What happened to Holly, Jackson?”

I shook my head, sucking in a breath and finally pulling my voice to the surface. “Not yet … nothing yet but next year … she’s going to try and kill herself … over and over again.”

My eyes stayed hidden behind my hands as I relayed everything Emily and I had seen to Courtney. She was eerily quiet and still as a statue, her hands frozen on my back.

“I don’t know if I can keep fighting this battle,” I mumbled. “It keeps getting bigger and more hopeless.”

“Jackson…”

I lifted my head, wiping my eyes on the T-shirt Holly had loaned me. “I want to stop trying. I want to spend time with you, with Dad, Holly, and Adam, and Emily. I don’t want to take it for granted that we’re together right now. I want to be selfish and not think about the rest of the world anymore. I’m not ready to start missing you again.”

“Or Holly,” Courtney choked out through her own tears. “You stayed with her last night? Like all night?”

Despite the emotions still flowing freely in my head and my heart, I managed to roll my eyes. “Like you’d ever give me the details of your secret makeout sessions with Mason.”

I had meant that to be a joke so it caught me off guard when Courtney rested her own face against her knees and started crying really hard. I stretched out my legs and put my arms around her. “What happened with Mason? You can tell me. I won’t say anything to him or Dad.”

She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “It’s not that … it’s just … stuff like this makes me miss you … the other you. The one who was going through the same thing as me at the same time … and then it just … makes me really sad because now I know what it was like for you … after I was gone.”

“It was awful,” I admitted. “I felt like part of me died, too.”

Courtney wiggled out of my arms, scooted back, and sat up straighter. “You’re right, Jackson, we’re here now. Let’s figure out how to make the most of it.”

I nodded slowly, and the sadness of giving up swept over me.

“But you know,” Courtney added, “Emily would never have showed you what she showed you if there were absolutely no hope of fixing it.”

“Yeah, I know.” I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath. I had thought of that already, but how many people would we have to lose while trying some long-shot plan that had almost no chance of success? How many hours, days, or months would we waste on this mission, whatever it was? How many days did Courtney even have left before the cancer would take her life all over again? Probably two or three months at best.

I opened my eyes again and stared at my sister, letting her see the resolve written on my face. “What’s the first 2009 thing you’d like to do?” I asked, attempting a smile.

“Go home,” she said immediately.

“You and Holly both.” I paused for a second, thinking. “Do we even know what the status of our building is and everything?”

“Dad went there early this morning,” she said. “He thought you might be there. I don’t know if it’s exactly how you remembered it in 2009 but we still live there, so…”

“Good enough for me.” I stood up and held out a hand for Courtney. She grabbed on but when I pulled her to her feet, she wobbled and nearly fell over. I caught her with one arm. Her eyes squeezed shut and she held her breath. “What’s wrong?”

Her forehead stayed tightly wrinkled and her breath came out jagged as she shook her head, then leaned against me, face pressed into the front of my T-shirt.

I shook her shoulders gently, panic hitting me again. “Courtney, tell me what’s wrong!”

I watched her fingers curl up around my shirt, gripping it tight. “Dizzy,” she sputtered. “Head … hurts…”

“Helpless” was the best word to describe how I felt in that moment. My sister had tumors all over her brain and all I could do was stand there and keep her from falling over, unable to take any of the pain away. Her head pressed harder into my chest and her hands tightened around the fistfuls of shirt locked in her grip. The pain was getting worse. “I’m gonna pick you up, okay? I’ll find someone to help.”

“Just go and come back.”

I took two seconds to think that over, recalling the image of her convulsing on the floor of the forest and decided against leaving her alone. “I’m sorry, I have to.”

She groaned as I lifted her into my arms, her eyes still shut tight. I jerked the door open and rushed into the hall, spotting Mason at the end of the corridor.

“What happened?” He was already running toward us, concern filling his face.

“Go get Dr. Melvin!”

Courtney’s fingernails dug into my chest, her hands squeezing around my shirt. Mason didn’t turn around to run toward the lab where I assumed Melvin was. Instead, he flung open a door closer to the far end of the hallway.

“Bring her in here!” he shouted, and for some reason I actually listened to him. The room was large and cold. After scanning it quickly, I recognized it as an operating room. “Set her down on the table.”

I laid Courtney down on the cold metal table and watched her curl up in a ball on her side right away. “Go get Dr. Melvin,” I snapped at Mason, who seemed to be busy digging through a supply closet.

What the hell! Is he planning on operating or something?

“He’s at Lenox Hill Hospital.” Mason snatched several bags of pills from a shelf and stood in front of Courtney.

“What the hell is he doing across town?” I blew out a frustrated breath as Courtney’s breathing got more jagged, indicating that the pain was getting even worse. “Go get my dad, then! And maybe Kendrick?”

“They’re all the way up on the ninth floor.” Mason leaned close to Courtney, pulling her hand away from her face. “How bad does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten?”

“What the fuck, Mason? Go get someone who can tell us what’s wrong with her.” I reached out to pull him away from Courtney, but he moved quickly out of reach.

Mason glanced at me for a second before returning his eyes to my sister. “Scale of one to ten?” he repeated.

“Eleven,” Courtney said with a whimper, then after attempting a deep breath, corrected her answer, “Nine … it’s a nine.”

He stepped away from the table and sifted through the bags of pills he’d removed from the closet. He took two round orange ones from a bag and held them in his fist. “Do you feel nauseous?”

Courtney gave a tiny nod and Mason looked through the bags again, removing two longer brown pills. Part of me wanted to shove him out the door and force him to get some real help but the fact that he seemed to have some kind of specific plan caused me to stay rooted to my spot near Courtney’s feet as I gripped her ankle, wanting to stay connected as long as possible.

Mason found a paper cup and filled it with water before lifting Courtney’s head and getting her to swallow four pills at once.

“You better know what the fuck you’re doing,” I said as the pills entered her system.

Mason ignored me and began digging in a drawer, removing two tennis balls and a package of those hospital footie socks. He stuffed the tennis balls into the sock and then tied it tight at the end. When he put them on the operating table and then laid his hands on my sister to roll her onto her back, I almost yanked him away from her. But curiosity stopped me. I had no idea what the hell he was doing but it seemed like something very specific. The sock of tennis balls rested behind her neck. He lifted one of her hands, massaging the space between her thumb and index finger. His other hand landed on her forehead and he turned to glance at me. “There’s a red button behind the door. It should set off your dad’s cell phone and tell him to come down here.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Now you tell me.”

After the red button had been pushed, I returned to holding Courtney’s ankle while Mason massaged both her forehead and hand at the same time.