Twist (40 page)

Future Me appeared to be in the most pain, but the most resolute as well. The tendons strained from her forearms like scalpels that could slice through her skin at any moment. Blood leaked from her nose, too, and I felt a trail of my own dribble to the corner of my mouth. She caught my eye in the reflection of the reservoir and gave me a weak attempt at a smile. The reverter grew hotter and hotter until I screamed. I had to grip the edge of the reservoir to stay upright.

The fire had reached every cell of my body, explosion after explosion after explosion. But even in the midst of the never-ending inferno, a brighter blaze told me this was the right course.

The fire reached the backs of my eyeballs, outshining my surroundings. Before my vision faded completely, I caught one last glance of my Future Self. We were both mouthing the same thing.

“Until the end.”

 

Epilogue

I ALWAYS LOOK
at the curtains first.

Purple curtains mean Mom's house. Lacy ones mean Dad's.

Well, Mom-and-Dad's, but Dad is so dang turn-of-the-twentieth-century that it's hard to think of this house as anything but his when I see lace. Which, this morning, I do.

Technically it's the same house, same bedroom, just different centuries. But it always gives me a headache to think about that.

So I don't.

I yawn and stretch my arms in one of those rapturous reach-the-rafters sprawls as my little brother Peter's Boston terrier Toodles dashes into the room barking.

“Out.” I toss a pillow at the dog. It would be fun to see what Tufty would make of this mongrel, but Mom has never let me Shift an animal either direction to find out.

I throw on a simple T-shirt and long, cotton, pleated skirt that covers my very non-era sneakers. I'd rather wear a pair of jeans, or waist overalls as Dad calls them, but I'd either get rude stares from strangers or a lecture on discreetness in Shifting from my mom. So a skirt it is.

Dad's eating a bowl of some kind of granola-esque cereal, a jug of milk out on the table next to him. I skip the cereal and chug a mouthful of milk. I'll give the twentieth century this: they do milk right. So fresh and creamy. We really should look into getting a pegamoo, but they're a lot more work than a cat, and Mom has a point that we never know when one of us will be in the twenty-third century to let it out.

Without looking up from his newsprint, Dad hands me a glass from the sideboard.

“Sorry,” I say.

“You were not raised in a barn,” he says with a hint of mirthful reproach, but still not looking up from his reading.

“Some of my classmates might quibble with that.” I glance out into the street where a Ford Model T narrowly misses a slow-trotting horse.

Dad looks amused, but he changes the subject anyway. “What are you up to today?”

Hmm. A free Saturday. No homework. Mimi and Jaf had wanted to go shopping, but there was this cute guy named Charlie who Mimi met at the caf
é
last weekend and something told me she wouldn't mind the excuse of hanging out with him instead. And Jafney … well, she never passes on an excuse to spend the day lip-locked with Wyck. Besides, I'm not feeling any pull to the twenty-third century. It's not like there's a way to force our tendrils to go somewhere they're not called. So twentieth century it is.

“I think I'll just go for a walk,” I say.

“Take a sweater.” Mom appears out of nowhere, my brother Peter at her side. Neither Dad nor I jump, both of us used to her sudden arrivals. I decide Peter's strawberry-blond curls need a good noogie, and he fights it off with a “Bree-ee!”

Dad always says it's good that he was such an avid Jules Verne fan when Mom told him what she was. And it was good that she'd handed him a stiff shot of whiskey when she told him she was pregnant with me. By the time Peter arrived six years ago, her ability was old hat. The only hard thing was her insistence that she keep me with her when I was little, and now Peter, whichever century she's called to. That means some missed family dinners.

It gets a little complicated.

But complicated can also be fun.

Mom kisses Dad on his bald spot and bends her arm at a weird angle. “I think I twisted my elbow.”

“Do you want an aspirin?” he asks.

“Are you kidding? Don't you remember that time I took one, and it made me sick to my stomach for an hour? I don't trust any medicine made before the twenty-second century.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, turning back to his paper

I grab a sweater off the hook and—
mwah, mwah, mwah
—plant a kiss each on Mom and Dad's cheeks, then the top of Peter's head.

“Be careful,” says Dad.

A trek through ancient Mongolian warlord camps, I'm careful.

A stroll down the block, I think I should be fine.

But he's my dad. He worries. So all I say is, “I will.”

And as I traipse down the street and trip over a pile of dried horse dung, I realize maybe I should have listened to him and been more careful after all. I sail headlong into a mud puddle, then give the puddle a sniff and console myself with the fact that at least the green tinge seems to be from algae rather than manure.

It's not as much consolation as one might think.

Especially as there are witnesses. Well, one witness. There's a guy standing about ten feet away, laughing at me. At first I think his hair is brown, but it glints red in the sun, and I realize the best color to describe it would be fiery auburn.

I hadn't seen him before. It's like he popped out of nowhere.

He's humming a song.

“What are you singing?” I ask.

“It's a song about being green.” He gestures to the puddle and starts humming again.

“That song…”

“Do you know it?” He suddenly looks worried.

“I … no.” I don't. But somehow, it feels as if I should. Like when you're listening to an echo fade away, and there's that first sliver of silence after the last faint reverberation. You know there should be
something
there, but, “No.”

It's subtle, but he lets out a little puff of relief. That's when I stop and really look at him. He's wearing the male equivalent of my outfit, completely nondescript. His watch is on his wrist. That fashion trend has barely started—none of Dad's friends wear one. I have a hunch about what he is, but I need to be sure.

“Fine morning,” I say.

He nods in assent.

“Fancy a stroll toward the Mall?” I ask. “I always love visiting the Lincoln Memorial when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.”

“Me, too,” he says.

“Liar!” I stab an accusing finger at his chest. “I knew it.”

The color drains from his face in streaks. He looks like a chameleon that can't pick a shade.

“You're a Shifter.” I drop my voice down to a whisper, even though there's no one else around, and even if there were, that word would mean nothing to them.

“How did you…? Wait.” His lips form a perfect O. Kind of cute that way. “So are you.”

“The Memorial isn't even going to open for another few years.”

“You were testing me,” he says, but I can tell he's impressed rather than angry.

How exactly I know that, I have no idea.

“When are you from?” he asks.

“I asked you first.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Well, I meant to. It's practically the same thing.” I lift myself out of the puddle with his offered hand.

“Do you have plans?” he asks. “I really do love it when the cherry blossoms are out.”

“Me, too.” I turn away to shield my smile. He's what my father would describe as fetching. He's what I'd describe as blarking gorgeous. “And I'm free.”

Our steps fall in line as we walk in the direction of the cranes and scaffolding and piles of marble, which will soon become the Lincoln Memorial.

We talk about movies.

We talk about books.

We talk about how hard it is to get a decent meal in eighteenth-century Bavaria.

I tell him green is my favorite color.

He sings me the song from earlier, about being green.

We reach the Mall, and a tour to the top of the Washington Monument has already started. I haven't been all the way up in it since I was nine. Heights aren't my plink, but something about this boy makes me brave.

“Do you want to join it?” He points to the tour group. “Or do you think we're too late?” Then he shakes his head as if he can't believe he's forgotten something. “My name's Finn by the way.”

“I'm Bree. And I think we're fine.” I take his offered arm as we join the back of the queue. “It's only beginning.”

 

About the Author

Karen Akins
lives in the Mid-South. When not writing or reading, she loves light-saber dueling with her sons and forcing her husband to watch BBC shows with her. Karen has been many things in her life: an archery instructor, drummer for the shortest-lived garage band in history, and a shockingly bad tic-tac-toe player. No DeLoreans were harmed in the making of
Loop
or
Twist
. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

    

 

 

ALSO BY
KAREN AKINS

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2