Rewrite Redemption (35 page)

“I guess,” she said hesitantly, stretching her legs out on the coffee table.

“Think of it like this,” I said, using my hands for emphasis. “The greater the impact, the wider the spread, the more difficult it is to change. Also, the farther back in time it happened; the harder it is to rewrite. Plus, there’s the multi-causal factor as well.”

“Meaning…”

“Twenty guns aiming from all angles…there’s probably no way I could block the screen from getting wet. The easiest things to change are the ones where there are limited causal factors—preferably just one.”

“Doesn’t sound like you can do much,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Yeah, it’s tricky,” I said, “and not as easy as it sounds. But small rewrites can have huge consequences.” I sure knew about that one.

“So, hypothetically,” she started. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. “Say something happened recently. And say it had a single causal factor. More precisely—someone’s mother selfishly shooting off her big mouth.”

“Yeah…” I said tentatively, knowing where things were going.

“Could you go back and change it? Hypothetically?” Her eyes filled with tears, but she held them back. They didn’t fall.

I looked down at my hands and gave her a second to regroup. When I looked up, the tears were gone, but there was a little spot of wet on her right shoulder.

“Hypothetically, yes,” I said, truthfully. I couldn’t help but think that Ipod was conveniently out of the way, leaving A.J. open to fall for me. That kind of worked for me. “Does this have something to do with Ipod?” As if I didn’t know.

She nodded. “His monster of a dad—we call him the Hammer, the son of a bitch—Hulked out on him here. He probably laid into him again when he got him home. The Hammer could have whacked Ipod and buried him in the backyard for all I know. That’s just the thing. Ipod doesn’t have his phone. He hasn’t been online. He’s dropped off the grid and I can’t find him anywhere.”

“That sucks,” I said. Part of me wanted to have A.J. to myself and part of me wanted to help the guy. The A.J. and me thing wasn’t looking so good at that point. “So you know the exact causal factor?”

“Yes, the
exact
causal factor,” she said. “If this one thing didn’t happen, Ipod would be sitting right here. We need Ipod. It will just kill A.J. to lose him.”

I felt a knife in my gut. “We can’t have that. How do you know there was a single causal factor?”   

She grimaced and kind of shook her head. “My mom found out Ipod crashes here most of the time. Since she’s such a sleaze herself, she assumed we were all going at it like bunnies and that it would be a problem for her if I got knocked up. So, bitch manipulator that she is, she decided to remove Ipod from the equation. The easiest way to do that was to tell Ipod’s dad she’d sue his ass if Ipod got me pregnant.”

“Whoa,” I said, “that’s lame.”

“Yeah, lame is her first name. Right before bitch.”

“Can you
sue
for that? Doesn’t sound—”

“She’s a lawyer!” she said, slamming her fist down on the sofa. “She sues if someone looks at her funny. It doesn’t matter if she has a case or not. By the time it’s over, the other person’s broke. Besides, she plays dirty and she always wins.”

“Harsh.”

“Exactly, “she said. She got a determined look on her face. “
She
screws up—Ipod pays.
Not
okay. She made a big mistake, messing with my people. I’ll deal with her later. Right now I want to know about rescuing Ipod.”

“Are you and Ipod…?”

“No…well, first, not my type. He’s like my little brother. God, when I met him, we were still losing teeth. I know him way too well for anything romantic to possibly happen. But he’s family.”

My hopes sank even lower. So it
was
him and A.J.

“I just…I kind of feel responsible for them,” she said, sighing. “A.J.’s my BFF, but she has a lot to deal with. Somebody needs to have her back. And Ipod, someday he’ll do something amazing. But he’s just so freaking brilliant, he doesn’t fit well in the real world. And now they’re both gone. They could be in serious trouble, and I just…” she trailed off and shut her eyes for a minute.

“It’ll be okay,” I reassured her. “How’d his parents allow him to live here in the first place?”

“His mom’s dead, and his dad couldn’t care less,” she said, opening her eyes and scowling. “He never has.” She told me the story of how they found Ipod lying in the ditch.

“Harsh,” I said when she was done. “That’s messed-up.”

“Exactly.” She narrowed her eyes. “He was in bad shape that day. But A.J. healed him, and the three of us have been tight ever since.”

“What do you mean she healed him?” I asked, confused.

“You know, she tapped into the tree and channeled it into Ipod. Twenty minutes later, he was fine. Don’t you all do that?”

“Not that I know of,” I answered. “Most Editors can keep themselves healthy. We heal fast and we have long lives. But healing someone else? I don’t think so. Besides, the things we do take time to learn.”

“That’s my girl. I always knew she was all kinds of special. People laugh at her. They don’t have a clue.”

I was blown away, but at that moment, I didn’t want to think about how special she was. Mostly, I didn’t want to think about her and Ipod. I stood up and stretched, hoping that Lex would change the subject.

She didn’t. “It took us some trial and error, but we finally realized that as long as Ipod showed up for violin lessons once a week, he didn’t have to go home. I guess getting the bill for that once a month was how the Hammer knew he was alive. We were fine until my mom butted in. So,
one
causal factor. You can get him back, right? It’s making me crazy, worrying that he’s hurt and suffering.”

Suffering—that word hit home. I had to help her. I couldn’t leave him there, not even to get him out of the way. Their gain/my pain. “It sounds pretty straight forward,” I said, reluctantly. “Once A.J.’s back, we’ll figure it out.”

“What has to be figured out?” she asked.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. “I have a problem,” I said. “I majorly screwed up a while back. For now, I’m blocked from the timeline. ”

She arched her eyebrows at me. “You can still get A.J., right?”

“Yeah, I haven’t lost all my abilities. I just can’t travel. That’s why I have to pull A.J. back.”

“So, can you do that with Ipod?”

“No…whole different scenario. The timeline will have to be changed. If we can figure out a way to keep your mom from talking to Ipod’s dad, we can pull it off. But A.J. will have to travel back and do it.”

I slumped down on the sofa with my feet on the coffee table. I let my head drop back and closed my eyes for a moment. “Think of it like having clearance, like a key card to get into top secret facilities. Each card has an ID or a signature like a retinal scan. Mine has been blocked. A.J. has 007 special, black ops—no one even knows she exists. She can come and go as she pleases. I just need to show her how.”

She jumped up and raised both clenched fists in the air. “Yes!” Then she gave me a sly kind of look. “So, New Guy, what exactly did you do?”

I told her the story of how I’d changed my timeline and what happened to Devon.

“That sucks!” she said sympathetically. “We knew he was in a wheelchair, but we didn’t know why.”

“Now you do,” I said, feeling a wave of guilt creep back over me. “Yes, I am the why. Anyway, the Guild caught me and yanked my travel privileges.”

“You mean, they wouldn’t let you go back and fix it,” she said.

“Right.”

“That blows.”

“Tell me about it!”

“The reason?”

“Teach me a lesson, I guess.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to launch into the power addiction speech, at least not then. “It’s complicated.”

She shook her head and folded her arms. “So, nobody else knows why it all turned out this way with your brother?”

“Other than Guild members, you’re the only person who knows about any of this. And the Guild banned any other Editors from helping me.”

“Shut up!” she said. “So that’s why you were so eager to meet A.J. You screwed up, and now you need redemption.”

 “Sadly so,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “I’m going to get my brother his life back if it’s the last thing I do.”

First, I had to get
her
back. Sure, she wanted Ipod, but at least she’d be safe. If Ipod made her happy, well, I’d get him back too. I needed to concentrate on Devon and my family. School. I had a brief little jolt of satisfaction that at least I was having forethought. Small jolt. Atom sized jolt. And then just a punch-in-the-gut feeling of loss.

“I think it’s time,” I said, walking to the door to look at the fading light. 

“Cool! What do you have to do? Can I help?” She got up off the sofa and stood there waiting.

“Does she pass out when she jumps?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “She usually gets into position so she doesn’t hit her head.”

“It might happen too fast for that this time,” I said, walking over to the trunk. “So just be ready to catch her when she morphs back in. I’ll do the rest.”

“How long will it take?”

“It could take a few minutes, or it could happen really fast. I’ll try and give you a warning.”

“This is soooo cool!” She braced her legs, and held out her arms. “Ready.”

I rolled up my sleeves and took a deep breath. After giving Lex a slight nod, I closed my eyes. The moment I put my hands solidly on the trunk, an energy surge ripped through my body almost knocking me off my feet. “Damn, this is one powerful tree!” I yanked my hands free and shook them. I needed to play this right. I needed to ease into it slowly.

Lex gave me a worried glance.

“It’s all good,” I reassured her. But I didn’t feel reassured. If it hadn’t been A.J. out there, I doubted I’d try again. But it was. And I would. This was probably my fault and she could be in trouble. She might need help. She might need
me
. I wanted her to need me. What
I
needed was to not screw this up.

I spread my legs wider, getting a more solid stance. I touched the tree again, just barely with my fingertips. Slowly, I moved my palms closer to caress the bark, letting my energy meld with the tree. I felt the surge, but I stood my ground, letting it wash through me.

The tree hummed with life and infinite vibrations. I struggled to separate out the noise, get rid of the clutter, and find the basic melody. I played with it like a piano, dancing lightly over the surface, learning the music. When I achieved harmony, I followed the flow. I played my way through the rings, back, back, back. My consciousness stretched like a rubber band between the now and the ether of time.

A hint of her, far away and ephemeral, breezed lightly into my awareness.
Ahhh
. Gently I latched on to it and tugged it my way. I felt a touch…recognition…a hesitation…and then….

It pulled back! 

Wham! I broke free of the now. The past sucked me in so fast I couldn’t stop it.

On the way out, I heard Lex yell, “Nooooo!”

But it was too late—I was in the vortex.

I fell asleep to thoughts of Constantine. I even dreamed of him. But in the middle of the night, I woke up shivering. I knew where I was immediately and swallowed a huge hunk of disappointment. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees, and my fingers were ice. Pulling my hoodie tight, I wondered how I was going to make it through till morning when I was so very cold.

The moon was full and high in the dark, night sky, and it gave an eerie glow to everything. A mist covered the meadow. The water drops, on the waving grass, sparkled in the moonlight as they had at home from my fairy lights. At home it had been comforting. But there in the tree, it looked surreal and somewhat ominous. A coyote howled in the distance, and it made me realize just how very far away from home I was…to say nothing of very far-a-
when
.

Down below, all three men were snoring. The campfire had died down low. In spite of the company, I felt alone. I felt really alone. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe I was stuck in the past, and up a tree, and clueless as to whether or not I could get back to my time. I hated this. My family needed me. They needed the tree house. It was their home. But without me, it wouldn’t be.