Timesurfers (4 page)

“Cate,” her mother’s stern voice called
back.

Damn it
. Her mum was
still home.

“Those skills are for protection, not
terrorising
your
brother.
Or your
ex-boyfriend.”

Cate glowered at the open doorway. It was
like her mum could read minds. What good were badass black belt
moves if she never got to use them?

Xavier’s blonde head popped back around the
door and she speared her spoon at him. He dodged it.

“Not even close! I’m getting a ride with
Mum.” He flashed in, snatched his backpack from the bench and
slammed the door behind him.

A few minutes later the door reopened.
“Xavier, step inside and I promise to break all your fingers and
maybe an arm.” Now spoonless, she slurped the last of her cereal
straight from the bowl.

“Take your best shot, Black Belt Cate.”

Her bowl slipped through her fingers,
splashing breakfast over her face and down her school uniform.
There she sat, milk dripping from her chin, looking at Austin from
the bus stop yesterday. She pinched herself hard, adding a twist
for good measure, and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them,
he was still there. Her stomach lurched and her heartbeat
surged.

“I’m Austin. I don’t think we officially met
yesterday.”

“I know your name.” She resisted the urge to
poke him and check he was real. “Are you actually here?”
Way to interrogate an intruder.

“Yep.” The light flashed against his scars.
He wore them with such self-assurance, not so much as a glimmer of
insecurity. His grey eyes danced with laughter as his mouth turned
up in a crooked smile, which took some of the edge off his brutally
short hair.

She collected her scattered thoughts. Her mum
had an assortment of atypical friends who dropped by unannounced.
She had moved past being scared of strangers, even in her house, a
long time ago because she could hold her own. Still, she sat extra
straight, her muscles tense, prepared for a quick exit if required.
“Get your stalker self out of my kitchen,” she demanded.

“Put your hackles down.” He patted her
shoulder.

She leapt off her stool and put as much
distance between them as possible. “Touch me again and I will break
all your fingers
and
an arm for good
measure.”

“I’ll consider myself on notice.” He sat on
the kitchen bench and swung his legs, tapping out a tune with his
hands on the bench top. “How’re you holding up after
yesterday?”

“I’ve already moved on.” She wiped cereal and
milk from her face and clothes, eyeing her mobile on the bench near
Austin, and the house phone behind him.

“Didn’t plan that too well, did you?” Austin
tossed her mobile in the air. “I’m pretty sure to call for help,
you need a phone.”

She snatched at the phone, but he was
quicker.

“Let’s see what you’ve told your friends.
Hmm.” He tapped in a password and smiled. “Got it in one. You
texted Eve this morning and...ouch! Dumped by text! Want me to beat
him senseless?”

“Nope.” If anyone
pummelled
Zach, it would be her. She held
out her hand. “Give me my phone and leave, or I’ll scream the house
down.”

“Would that be before or after you make good
on your threats to render me helpless with assorted broken
bones?”

What a smart ass. “After, so I can watch you
writhe in agony while I make the call.”

“To show I’m the bigger person, I’ll wait
outside. We’ll chat on the way to school. I can maybe help you get
even with, um...” Austin checked her phone and placed it on the
counter. “Zach.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, and I
certainly don’t need your help. Save us both some time and
leave.”

“I’ve got plenty of time. I like you better
without the rainbow hair, by the way.”

Even with his face turned away, she knew he
was smirking “News flash! I don’t care what you or anyone else
thinks about my hair!”

***

Austin lounged on the veranda as she walked out in a
clean school uniform. He was rocking some tattered jeans and a
fleecy blue and black checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to
reveal blue numbers tattooed down the inside of his bicep. He was
also tall.
Not as tall as the
Ralph Lauren model dude, but over six foot
and...
oh crap
! He was watching her
check him out.

“I told you to leave.” She dug in her
backpack and retrieved her phone.

“But you didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, I did.” She took the five steps at the
front of the house in one stride.

Austin jumped over the handrail and landed
soundlessly. “Come on. I can help you put loser Jack—”

“It’s Zach.”

“Fine, put loser Zach in his place. I would
have had my way with you by now if I was going to.”

“Clearly you overestimate your abilities.
Don’t follow me or I’m calling the police.” She hurried down the
path, glancing over her shoulder before crossing the road.

Austin sat on the steps to her house and gave
a big friendly wave. She checked her watch and sped up. Hating
herself for doing it, she stole another look back. He’d gone.

“Hey,” Austin said from by her ear.

“Ahhh...” She glowered at him. “What is your
deal? The whole world stops. You people appear out of thin air, you
disarm a bomb, someone attempts to strangle me and then everyone
vanishes again. Now you’re stalking me. What the hell?”

“Most of that was magic, plain and simple.
All the normal people froze in the time stop, but not you. I want
to know why you saw everything. What makes you different?”

“Magic?” Now he was trying to piss her
off.

“Ah-huh.”

“Fine. Play your stupid games. Just count me
out.” She checked her watch again. “I’m going to be late.”

“I’ll come with.” Austin started an instantly
annoying tuneless whistle.

“So, this whole surreal experience, how
insane does it make me?” she asked.

“Define surreal.”

“The
magica
l frozen
people, ridiculous strength, vanishing people...” She ticked them
off on her fingers. “I mean, how real can they be?”

“They’re all as real as me. Want to touch?”
he wriggled his slender fingers at her.

She kicked a few tufts of grass to buy time.
“Pass.”

“Has anyone in your family ever mentioned
anything about wizard blood or mutant wizards?”

She gave him a filthy look.

“It was a long shot.” Austin walked in
silence. He went to say something a few times, but shook his head
and thought better of it. “I’ll give you a heads-up with Rafe. If
you think the word ‘vomit’ hard enough, he throws up.”

“Stop! I don’t want to know any more about
you and your magic. You aren’t a super smart kid who graduated high
school at ten and then medical school at thirteen, who works
undercover at schools befriending at-risk teens and using your
psychiatric degree to lock them up, are you?”

“What?” Austin looked puzzled.

“Never mind.” She was thinking of
21 Jump Street
, but with doctors. Her mum
watched reruns incessantly and Cate liked to point out the tragic
fashion sense and ogle a young Johnny Depp, who was hot for an old
guy, and had been
super
hot when he was
young, even with his daggy hair.

Austin’s tuneless whistle was like nails down
a backboard. She halted, contemplating her options. “Right—I’m
pretty sure I’m on the edge of a complete mental implosion;
regardless, I’ll go there. I cut my foot this morning and it just
vanished. Like
magic
.”

“Interesting. First time that’s ever
happened?”

“Strangely, yes.”

“You’re perfectly sane. Don’t sweat it. I’ll
hang around and investigate. Do you want to hear my ideas for Zach?
We could kill two birds with one stone.”

“I’d prefer if we forgot the whole thing and
you left me alone.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Loose rocks crunched under her feet as they
passed the back entrance to her school.

“So, I’ve got two ideas. I could beat Zach to
a bloody pulp.”

“I could do that without any help from you,”
Cate said.

“That’s a whole other argument for another
day. My second idea is we can pretend to be an item and make him
insane with jealously.”

“Desperate much? Not likely.” Her mum’s
reminder she needed a new boyfriend rolled around in her head.
Nothing in the rules said it had to be real, only believable to
people. Austin and her pretending to be an item would tick that
box. “Why do you want to help me?”

“Because I’m a great guy and I like to keep
busy.”

“What complete crap. My brain aches from all
this weirdness.” She pressed her knuckle hard against her eye
socket. “To be honest, I have no freaking idea about anything
today.”

The idea of Austin smacking Zach around made
her smile. Technically her mum couldn’t go ballistic if someone
else pounded him. The thought of her and Austin as an item was not
entirely unpleasant.

***

“Surf’s up, dude!” Rafe greeted them with some
surfer-type, one-handed wave from the front steps of Cate’s
school.

Here she stood between two strangers,
possibly imaginary ones, who could do even stranger things. Rafe
was a big ball of enthusiasm wrapped in a nauseating yellow, green,
and brown Hawaiian shirt.
What if I’m losing my
mind?

“You aren’t losing your mind,” Rafe said.

Cate blinked. He read her mind.

Austin’s I-told-you-so look piqued Cate’s
curiosity.
Vomit, vomit, vomit.

“Childish and plain nasty,” Rafe replied
between deep breaths and dry retching.

“Then get out of my head.” She shot him an
innocent look laced with what she hoped was a vicious mental
shove.

He staggered and winced. “Ouch, that hurt!
You’re freaky. First you’re all bright-eyed and not frozen at the
bus stop, and now you did whatever that was to my head.” He nudged
Austin. “Watch the brunette.”

Cate’s eyes followed where Rafe pointed. A
fierce gust of wind sent the brunette’s skirt swirling, exposing
her yellow G-string.

“You read minds and see the future?” Cate
asked.

“Big leap there,” Rafe said. “No one can
predict the future.”

“If he reads minds and lifts buses, what do
you
do?” Cate asked Austin.

“The list is long and impressive. Alas, I’m
not a big sharer.” His eyes sparkled as he smiled.

What an infuriating,
arrogant—

“Yikes! We should go, Austin,” Rafe said.
“Naitanui is waiting at the Break.”

“I suppose it would be too much to ask who,
what and where Naitanui and the Break are?” Cate asked.

“Your perception skills are excellent! Think
about my offer to help with the Zach situation.” He brushed her
shoulder with his hand as he walked past. “I’ll see you very
soon.”

She cleared her throat and took a deep
breath, uncomfortably warm all over. A quick glance down confirmed
she had not burst into flames. As Austin and Rafe disappeared down
the street, her brain buzzed.

“Cate, wait up!” Eve hobbled toward her.
She’d separated and twisted pieces of her high ponytail and clipped
them to her head with numerous green bows like some type of
crown.

Cate hugged her friend. “What happened to
you?”

Eve pulled away first like she always did.
“Too much hugging and the new gossip around school will be
we’re
an item.”

“Let them talk.” Cate grabbed Eve and kissed
her on both cheeks. “Oh, wait...they’re already talking about
me.”

“You’ve got a weird vibe going on today.” Eve
lifted the back of her skirt to reveal a bloody scrape at the top
of her thigh. “I skidded down the bus steps about two seconds ago.
I can’t see anything. Is it bad enough to get me out of gym?” she
asked hopefully.

Cate crinkled her nose with distaste.

“Come on,” Eve whined. “Who else can I ask to
look up my skirt? I’ve got my good underwear on.”

This was when they needed to be part of a
popular posse, so one of their other four BFFs could volunteer to
help. Now five years on, she continued to pay for breaking Zach’s
nose on her first day at Socrates. Zach forgave her because she
said she’d be his friend, and Eve had thought it was cool. Everyone
else had given her a wide berth ever since. The video of it showed
up every year, which thrilled her mum.

“Fine—if I throw up, don’t say you weren’t
warned.” She took a few deep breaths and bent down. Eyes closed,
she placed both hands gently on Eve’s leg.
Please
don’t let there be too much blood
. She opened one eye and
peeked under her fingers. “Hmm.” Eve had shown her a bloody graze.
Now...there was nothing.

“Is that a ‘you need to go home’ hmm? Your
hands are making my leg feel good, by the way.”

“Dykes...” Jeff, one of Zach’s new friends,
called, walking by with a group of boys.

“Rack off,” Cate replied as she glanced at
her palms. This was bizarre.

“Didn’t waste too many brain cells on that
response now, did we?” Jeff said.

Exasperated Cate grabbed Jeff by the jacket
“You want articulate? ‘How do I loathe you, let me count the
ways...I loathe thee freely, I loathe thee purely.’ Articulate
enough for your pea-sized brain, you tool?”

Jeff shook off her hold. “Losers!” His jibes
were reassuring. This was how a normal day unfurled.

“You are the daughter my mother wishes she
had,” Eve said. “That quote would be heaven to her literature
teacher’s ears. Any updates on the Zach front to report?”

“We’re done. The end. Everyone move on.” Cate
hooked the strap of her green backpack over her shoulder. “There’s
nothing wrong with your leg. You’re spectacularly good to go for
another thrilling school day.”