Rewrite Redemption (56 page)

“What’s so darn funny?” I snarled.

 “Okay, wait for it,” she said, laughing and pounding me on the back. “Wait…we’re pre-freaking, A.J. You can fix this. That’s what you do! We just do it again…go back to the right time!”

I just looked at her for a moment and then snickered. And then we were both laughing, slumped on the floor.

“Helloooo!” she said, “time travel!”

We slowly pulled ourselves together.

“That was close,” I said, standing up and giving her a hand. “I’m just not used to this yet.”

“No duh. A.J., check this out. I don’t freaking believe it.”

We looked out the door at what used to be my house. But instead of the dilapidated, run-down place we’d left behind; we saw a newly painted, remodeled house. This was a home people cared for. A stone path wound from the tree house to the house and around the side. The grass was freshly mowed. Classy lawn furniture sat around a brick barbeque. Everything was immaculate. The trees were trimmed and there were roses cascading down trellises. It was beautiful.

She turned to me. “We panicked for nothing.”

“Yeah, something just messed up, that’s all. I must have grabbed the wrong place on the ring. I was so shaken up from…well, you know. I can get us back. At the very least, I can take us back to Seattle. I still have the branch.” I held it up. “Hey, that reminds me. Where’s the branch from my oak tree?”

She grinned. “I left it at his house.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got your back, A.J., you know that. To him, a branch is a ticket to somewhere. Maybe someday, he’ll cash it in.”

“Yeah, well.” I couldn’t think about that now. I needed to focus on getting us back. “Sorry for the screw-up. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“We need to find out what went wrong
here
,” she said. “We must not have been able to save the house. I’m getting some answers.” She started across the bridge. 

“Wait! What are you doing? We can’t just—”

“Sure we can.”

“What if we run into someone?” I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her back.

“What are they going to do, shoot us?”

“No…I don’t—”

“I want to find out what happened, so we can change it when we get home. At the very least we need to find out the date. I’m not about to give up my home, especially now that I’ve completely pissed off the Chihuahua. And besides, where is Sam?”

Sam. She was right. We needed to find out.

“Okay,” I said. “But please be quiet.”

“No problem,” she said, walking across the bridge.

I followed in stealth mode.

The slider was unlocked. She eased it open, and we stepped into what used to be my bedroom. My perpetually unmade bed was gone. So was the dollhouse. Instead, two brightly covered twin beds were in their place. And everything was clean, I mean, really clean: no dust, no cobwebs, and new wallpaper. I looked at Lex, and she looked at me and—

We heard voices from below…happy voices.

“Someone could come up here,” I said, backing up, ready to run. “We better go.”

“Wait, that’s my sweater,” Lex hissed, grabbing it off a chair. “That’s the sweater my father sent me from Bergdorf’s…the cashmere one.” It did look like her sweater.

“Listen!” Lex put her finger to her lips.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

“Shit!” She ran for the slider, tripping over a pair of boots by the bed.

I gave her a hand, pulling her up and—

Sam walked through the door.

I dropped her midway. She fell to the floor with a thud. I let out a gasp. Someone had given Sam a makeover. For a moment, no one spoke.

Then a clean-shaven, well-dressed, younger-looking Sam walked slowly up to me and smiled. “You’re back,” he said. He pulled me tight against him and he didn’t smell like beer. He smelled like the old Sam.

He let me go and stepped back to look at me, holding my shoulders. There were tears in his eyes, and they streamed down his healthy cheeks. “Thank you,” he said. “My precious, baby girl, you saved me. You saved us all.”

“Sam?” Lex called from the floor. “Is that really you?”

Sam laughed. He reached out, pulled Lex up, and hugged her as he had me. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s really me. Thank God,
this
is me! We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m lost,” I said, looking at Lex.

 “Don’t ask me!” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Are we dreaming?” I asked. Then it hit me. “Oh, my God, Lex. We’re dead. We died in the vortex, we—”

“No, no, Autumn,” Sam laughed, hugging me again and bringing Lex in on it. “You’re not dead and you’re not dreaming. Admittedly, there’s a lot to tell you and a heck of a lot to make up to you, Honey. I’m so, so sorry for all those years. You have no idea. I just wasn’t myself.” He kissed the top of my head. “I know you’re confused. We knew you would be when you came back and things were different. We tried to make it smooth.”

The door opened, and a voice from my past softly spoke my name, “Autumn?”

Lex squeaked.

I looked up—

Then the room started to spin, and everything went white.

I returned with the pizza to find A.J. gone and Lex and Ipod still laughing and talking about the changes. They tore into the pizza but I wasn’t hungry. A few minutes later, A.J. walked in, looking beautiful, but stressed. Almost immediately, she told Lex she wanted to get going. The next few minutes went by in a blur.

Ipod thanked me. Lex hugged me. And before I knew it, A.J. was pulling Lex into position to jump.

I’d made my decision, but I hated that things were ending that way. Something was wrong. She barely said goodbye. She wouldn’t even look at me. I just stood there, devastated, watching from the doorway.

Then, at the last minute, the critic got into the game.
You fool,
he scoffed,
sure, you’ll delete the DeMille nightmare. But you’ll be losing the most amazing memories you’ll ever make. You’ll be losing the times you felt the most alive. You took a bullet for her. She saved your life.
And suddenly, the answer to that question came crashing into my mind.
Dude, you idiot, the answer is yes!

 
It
was
better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

What I’d had with her was far too precious to give up even if it was all I’d ever have. I
loved
her. I loved the very
idea
of her. My world was better, just knowing she was in it, no matter how she felt about me. Who knew what might happen in the future? What had I been thinking?

Besides, she still had to deal with her abilities and eventually the Guild. What if she got in some kind of trouble? What if the Guild tried to exploit her? I couldn’t chance that. She might need me. Even if I couldn’t have her, I had to make sure she was okay. I hadn’t even thought about that.

She started to shimmer—she was seconds away from the vortex. I moved fast, lunging for the tree, desperate to keep from making the biggest mistake of my life.

I’d just caught hold, when some guy burst through the door, shouting her name. “Autumn!” he yelled, running towards her. It had to be her dad.

I reached for A.J., grabbing her shoulder, trying to stop the jump. The next thing I knew, I was swirling in the vortex. For a moment, all three of us were there: her, Lex, and me.

Then, suddenly, I was alone.

The vortex was amazing, as it always was, but I was too stunned to enjoy it. What the heck happened? Where was I going?

When
was I going?

When it hit me, I almost had a heart attack. Holy Shit! My timeline hadn’t been changed yet. My signature was blocked, which meant, I couldn’t initiate a jump. How was I going to get home? I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew one thing. I might never be able to return from it. I could be stuck there forever. This was
not
good. This was
so
not frickin good.

The trip was fairly long, which meant I was headed to before I was even born. I wondered if she’d flung me back to Hosa’s time. That would suck. That would suck big-time.

The vortex slowed and the sensations faded. The world came into view, and I landed by an oak tree in the middle of a field. A house was under construction nearby, but it was almost sundown and it looked deserted. There were houses in the distance so it wasn’t all that far back. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least, I’d have some kind of civilization.

I jumped at the sound of someone behind me—stunned, I whipped around.

A guy stood there about ten yards away, holding a load of lumber in his arms. He was tall and wiry like me, and maybe a few years older.

I was confused, and for the moment, had no clue how to handle things. I’d never had an exposure before. Something was off. I should have landed shaded in front of a normal person. He’d seen me land. He was standing there staring at me. He was obviously working on the house. But he didn’t look startled or freaked like someone who’d just seen a guy appear out of nowhere. In fact, he was smiling.

For a moment, he just stood there with a huge grin on his face. Then he dropped the wood, walked up to me, and held out his hand. “So I’m not the only one,” he said. “Welcome to nineteen-fifty-four.”

It took me a minute but then it hit me. I looked up at the oak tree above me. It was smaller, sure, but still familiar. I looked back at the guy. He had auburn hair and amber eyes. I hadn’t sensed his energy because it was too close to my jump. I shook his hand, and once I touched him, I knew. He was a Shadow. And he was grinning at me as if he’d just won the lottery. This was good. This was
way
good.

“You must be Charlie,” I said, grinning back at him. “Ha! I don’t frickin believe this. You must be Charlie.”

I’d been dreaming—one of those magical dreams that you wish would never end. I struggled to hold on to it, but someone had put a cold cloth over my eyes and forehead. Had I been sick? The dream faded and I reached for the cloth.

“A.J.?” Lex looked down at me, anxiously. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“My God, Lex, I had the strangest dream. We were—” I stopped midsentence. This wasn’t the tree house. We were in the bedroom, the one in my dream.

“It’s all good, A.J.,” she said, helping me sit up, “like seriously.”

I looked around; feeling like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz
. Sam was there, the dream Sam. And—

“Autumn?”

I turned and there she was.

For a moment, I just froze, trying to make sense of it. Then I sprang off the bed and lunged for her, grabbing her before she could disappear. I didn’t care if it was a dream. I didn’t care if I was dead. I didn’t care if I was in freakin Oz. She smelled of lilacs and she was soft and warm. She was my
mom
.

She held me, stroking my hair, saying my name over and over. I sobbed unrestrained, holding her close, and breathing her in. I kept my eyes closed tight, afraid that if I opened them, it would all go away. Then I felt Sam bring his big arms around us both. He pulled Lex in too. She giggled in my ear. I cracked my eyes to see her grinning at me…her gigantic, happy Lex-grin. I opened my eyes all the way.