Tempest. Part 6

"Of course, I drank a bottle a day."

She laughed again. "That can't be true. So ... will I see you roaming the halls soon?"

I forced back the disgusted look I knew was about to take form on my face. No way was I going back to high school.

"Probably not. I'm thinking of taking my GED, just tired of the whole high school scene." The waitress dropped off my dinner and I picked up the fork and stabbed a spear of asparagus. "Actually, I gave my dad an ultimatum, public school or GED. He's leaning toward the GED."

"Public school isn't that bad. I went to one, and look how I turned out," she said.

"That's what I told him." My eyes dropped to the plate in front of me.

"You look a little glum. Is everything okay?"

I nodded. "Just jet lag. I got back a few hours ago and it's still two in the morning for me."

This wasn't far from the truth. In terms of actual time, I hadn't slept much in two days. Of course, only hours had pa.s.sed in this year.

This stupid freakin' year.

"Sorry to hear that. Well ... I better get back to my date." She nodded her head in the direction of a man sitting alone at a table using a spoon to examine his teeth. She leaned closer to whisper, "This is the last time I use an Internet dating website."

"You can always fake a stomachache ... or food poisoning."

She smiled before turning around. "Take care, Jackson."

I grinned until she had her back to me, then dropped my eyes to the journal lying on the table. I plugged away at writing the details of my latest excursion and was so engrossed in other years, I didn't even notice the waitress standing in front of me, tapping her toe against the floor.

"Sorry, did you say something?"

"Is everything okay with your meal?"

I looked down at the now-cold salmon. The fishy smell was revolting. "Yeah, it's fine. Could I have my check now?"

She placed it in front of me. "Do you want me to box that up for you?"

"Um ... no, thanks."

The plate disappeared, along with the waitress. The idea of bringing leftovers with me had taken on a new meaning with all the time-travel theories spinning through my head. This was the stupid s.h.i.+t Adam and I would have tossed around while playing Guitar Hero and drinking shots of Crown Royal. I'd start it and Adam would take it twenty steps further than my brain could ever comprehend.

Questions like, if I did get back to 2009, carting my doggie bag, would the salmon be two years old? Or if I went into the past again, would the fish still be in the box? Technically, it wouldn't have been born yet. Can a living thing travel to a time before it's born?

Then, if we could, we'd test it out.

Trying to make plans without Holly or my father catching on was difficult. Holly always knew when I wasn't telling her the whole truth or when I was feeding her a complete load of c.r.a.p. Right now I'd give anything to go back. Even if it meant listening to her shout at me again or being locked out of her room for hours.

The waitress was on her way back, so I pulled out my wallet and stuck a credit card on the edge of the table. I flipped through the pages of my journal, looking for something to help me form a plan. Any plan. My fingers froze on the page with January 13, 2003, across the top.

The credit card was removed from the table and the waitress stomped away while I continued to stare at the words I had written.

I THINK MY DAD WORKS FOR THE CIA!.

Just thinking about my dad's hands around my throat, the anger hardening his eyes, put life back into my muscles in the form of a major adrenaline rush. He never said he was CIA. But he sure acted like it, in that moment. Not that I knew any more about the Central Intelligence Agency than what Hollywood had presented me with. Still, I knew something. A CIA agent (or former agent) would be following me and my sister on the morning of January 13, 2003. I don't know why this was my current point of focus, but the idea that I could see the face to go with the voice coming through the phone seemed like a good reason. Honestly, most of my actions over the last couple days had been driven by anything but logic, just a lot of fumbling through time (literally), searching for something concrete to grasp on to. Something real. Facts. Answers. I closed my eyes and focused on the date four years in the past.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2003, 7:35 A.M.

The sun blazed in my eyes again, but this time an icy breeze swept over me, stinging the ends of my ears. I stood outside a coffee shop a few blocks from my building. The door opened and an inviting gust of warm air rushed out. I ducked inside and grabbed the morning paper off an empty table.

I confirmed the date and felt a small amount of satisfaction. It was nice to know when I was for a change.

My legs felt so light, they were like rubber. I sank into a chair and rested my head on the table. A few deep breaths later, I lifted my eyes and looked around.

The only problem was ... I didn't know what I was looking for. Why would it matter if my father worked for the CIA? Although ... come to think of it ... it might explain the angry dudes with guns storming into Holly's dorm room. The idea that my dad had a hand in what happened to Holly made me sick to my stomach. As much as I wished the blame didn't rest on me, I hated the idea of it being my dad's fault. Still, if I put on my logical (sane) hat for a minute, there were only a few scenarios that could explain everything. I forced myself to sit down and go through these in my head before I made any crazy, impulsive moves ... although it didn't really matter, since I wasn't in home base. I shook that thought from my head and set it aside ... for now. I grabbed a sc.r.a.p of paper and a pen to jot these theories down, even though I couldn't take something back with me. Not in this kind of jump. But seeing the words on paper right now would help.

1. My dad, the CEO, is secretly well trained in the art of killer self-defense and paranoid about the safety of his children to the point where he hires, I don't know, maybe an injured ex-CIA agent to follow his kids everywhere. But that doesn't explain Dad's ability to follow us without me or Courtney noticing!

2. My dad DOES work for the CIA and his day job is a cover, but he's totally the good guy and it's not his fault that a couple dudes with guns decided to threaten his one living family member because he refused to hand over a secret government pa.s.sword that, if it fell into the wrong hands, would potentially set off nuclear weapons across the world. He just forgot to tell me to watch out for these dudes. Or maybe they got to him first ... in 2009 ... I mean, how would I know without going back?

3. My dad does work for the CIA as a spy and found out about me being a time traveler in 2009 and decided that me and anyone I'm a.s.sociated with are a threat to national (or world) security and must be locked up (or killed) to keep the world from being destroyed.

4. Again, he's an agent for real, and knew that his own son was a freak and had to be studied with brain scans a few times a year and eventually used by the government as a lab rat. Or sold to Russian spies.

Okay, so maybe these theories sounded a little too much like summer box office hits, but seriously ... some CIA agent (or maybe he's an injured, one-legged ex-CIA agent) was following my twelve-year-old self and the twelve-year-old version of my twin sister. So, yeah, my theories have a lot to live up to. And even if options two through four had less than a one percent chance of being possible, it ruled out the solution of just asking my dad, in 2007, what he really did for a living. Although I kind of ruled out confronting him before this list, right after the strangling incident.

I trudged up to the counter to buy some coffee and come up with a plan to spy on the guy Dad had spying on the younger me and Courtney. "Large regular coffee."

The man nodded and took my money, then I slid over to wait.

"Small hot chocolate with skim milk and extra whip cream."

My head shot up when I heard that voice. The man handed me my coffee and I s.n.a.t.c.hed it and turned quickly. I knew as soon as I heard her speak, my plans to follow the seemingly invisible Agent Freeman wouldn't happen. Not when I so desperately wanted to talk to my sister again.

How could I do this? Lure her somewhere without Agent Freeman seeing me? Or what if I could lure her somewhere and he did follow? Then I'd get to see him, and since this jump didn't change anything ... who cares if he sees me? As long as I could get Courtney alone for a little while.

Then it hit me, like a sack of potatoes. The stupid pa.s.sword Dad gave us. Courtney and I would roll our eyes anytime he mentioned it and we made him give it up in high school. "Never go anywhere with someone who doesn't know the pa.s.sword," he had recited every single day from the time when Courtney and I started kindergarten.

It was like a bad PSA announcement. Over and over. Another example of what up to now I'd just dismissed as Dad's overprotective paranoia. But today it might actually be useful.

I turned back around and looked at the twelve-year-old version of my sister: bright green stocking hat and matching mittens, white ski jacket, uniform skirt sticking out from under her jacket, cheeks pink from the cold, yet so bright and healthy. As she handed the guy at the register her credit card, I breezed past her and muttered, "Go fish."

She jumped and dropped her wallet on the counter before looking at my face. We'd been given careful (and annoying) instructions to listen to anyone with this code. But no stranger had ever walked up to us and given us "the pa.s.sword." The younger me probably would have thought it was a joke. Courtney was a little more serious. Still too humiliated to tell her friends about it, but more responsible.

I slid next to her, keeping my eyes forward. "Do I look even a little familiar to you?"

I could feel her eyes burning into the side of my face, then she whispered, "You look kinda like my brother."

I couldn't help smiling. "Wanna hear a crazy story?"

"Okay?" she said slowly.

"I can't believe this," she muttered for like the twentieth time. "So, you talked to me before? How many times?"

"Just once." After Courtney had skillfully managed to sneak out of school between homeroom and first period, we were in a little bookstore around the corner from the school. I told her the same version I had the first time. She was right. This was like Groundhog Day.

And I couldn't stop looking around, waiting to get a glimpse of the sneaky spy, Agent Freeman, but so far he was nowhere to be found.

"If you knew where you were headed, why didn't you think to wear a coat?" she asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Funny. I didn't have time to pack."

She rocked back on her heels and then leaned against one of the bookshelves. "How long has it been since you left the future? The 2009 future."

"I'm not sure exactly how long, but it feels like forever. You want to go somewhere else with me?" Someplace where Agent Freeman might follow.

"Sure, but we should get you a coat first. Short sleeves in ten-degree weather is not a good way to blend in."

I smiled. "A twelve-year-old with a credit card. So dangerous."

She snorted a laugh and then we left the store and headed out into the cold air.

Courtney at twelve was different than I remembered. I always got along well with my sister, but she just seemed so bubbly and adorable to me now. Mature, but still a little girl with an imagination. Exactly why I could feed her my crazy freakin' story and she believed it. Kids are much more accepting than grown-ups. Even so, there was a limit to what a kid will believe, but it was like Courtney could see through me, knew I wasn't lying.

Courtney used her credit card to buy a new coat from a department store before we planned our next adventure.

"How do you do it, the whole time-jumping thing?" she asked.

We were at the Met, blending in with the visiting tourists. "I don't know how to explain the actual jumping part. How do you explain breathing?"

"Do you think I can do it?"

I turned my eyes from her face. "Good question. Go ahead and try."

She smiled and shook her head. "Why can't you just tell me if the older me has superpowers? I need to mentally prepare myself for something like that."

I hesitated, feeling the grief sweep over me like it had the last time, but I forced it down and kept my eyes straight ahead before answering. This wouldn't last much longer. Someone would come for her soon. "Sorry. Can't break the ethical codes of time travel. I'd get booted out of the club."

I sighed with relief when she didn't seem to notice me balking at that question.

"d.a.m.n. This has to be because of Mom, right?" She said this like it was common knowledge. "Dad's not a time traveler. Superpowers come from a superparent."

"Or a vat of toxic waste," I added.

Courtney giggled and shook her head. "I doubt it."

Adam and I had gone in the genetics direction just a couple times with our theories. One being the time when I thought I saw a younger version of my sister wandering around the zoo. We never even came close to any concrete theory, let alone a conclusion. We did have a pretty elaborate plan to steal medical records, one that never happened because I ended up in 2007. But it was my records we were trying to steal, not my mother's. Courtney and I never knew our mother. She died from childbirth complications just days after we were born. Dad didn't want to talk about her and, after I turned seven or eight, I stopped asking questions. It's hard to want something like a mother when you've never had one. I didn't know any different.

I stopped and Courtney turned to face me. "You think it was Mom?" I asked.

Even if I wanted to get hold of her records, where would I look? She'd been dead for so long. Besides, medical records aren't exactly easy to steal.

Courtney shrugged. "Could be why Dr. Melvin always does those scans of our heads."

I didn't know if it was Courtney's revelation or just a lack of sleep and food, but I got dizzy all of a sudden, feeling even lighter than I had a couple hours ago. "I need to sit down."

She dragged me by the hand over to a bench. "You look really pale. Are you okay?"

Beads of sweat formed over the back of my neck and trickled down my s.h.i.+rt. "I'm just ... tired."

I lay all the way across the bench and closed my eyes. Courtney swiped her hand across my forehead, removing the cold sweat. I needed to get back to 2007 before I pa.s.sed out in the past or something worse, which might require medical attention. That would be interesting. Where the h.e.l.l was the spy? This whole trip would be pointless if I couldn't see him.

I opened my eyes and put a hand on her cheek. "I don't think I should stay here much longer, okay?"

Her eyes were teary. "I won't remember this, will I? Like when you go back to 2007, that me won't remember this?"

My throat tightened and I had to force out the words and force back the tears. "I don't think so."

She nodded. "It's kinda like daydreaming, isn't it?"

"Exactly. Something you do when you don't want to face the real world." I stood again, very slowly, and she put her arms around my waist. "I love you, Courtney."

"I love you, too, even if I never tell you," she whispered.

I could feel myself going back, but not by choice. One second she was in my arms, and just like that, cold air replaced the warmth of her body.

Courtney would never have left Holly there dying. She was the brave one. Always did the right thing. And if n.o.bility counted for anything, I would be the one buried under the ground, not my sister. But not only am I still alive, I'm the twin that got handed the time-traveling superpower.

Just as the darkness swept over me, a short stocky man about my age came running up behind Courtney, followed by my dad. I tried my best to memorize his face. Focused on it for as long as my body would let me.

"There she is!" I heard the man shout.

"Don't shoot him!" Courtney screamed. But then they were all gone. Or I was gone. Back to purgatory.

CHAPTER TWELVE.