I reached into the box and extracted the hourglass. Unscrewed the lid the way he’d done. Poured a third of the purple granules into my hand.
I thought about that last morning when I’d awakened in this room, full of easy joy and happiness.
The sands began to do their thing. Swirling, glowing with sparkling amber light. Surrounding me, carrying me back up the river.
The door to my room opened. “Hey Joey, do you know why the cat is freaking out?”
My eyes met Dragon’s an instant before the conveyer belt of time yanked me away.
Chapter 10
“It’s better if you do him right the first time.”
-Notable quotable from Grammy B
“Holy hangover, Batman.” I put a hand up to my throbbing temple. It felt like a team of gorillas were tap-dancing while simultaneously crank starting a model-T inside my skull. “What was that?”
When there was no response, I dared to crack open an eyelid. I was splayed out flat on my back on my bedroom rug. I sat up. “Hello?” There was no sign of Robin, Dragon, or Puck/Clara the cat. Light spilled into the room through the open window and a warm breeze made the curtains billow inward.
Hang on a second. Warm? It hadn’t been warm enough to have the windows open since October.
I stood on shaking legs and then staggered to the window. The mountain hillside beyond the house was dotted with the standard evergreens along with burnt orange, ruby red, and golden yellow leaves. The air suffused with the scents of ripe apples and woodsmoke.
The sound of children laughing and a lawnmower carried to me. Across the street sat a dusty blue pickup truck that old man Tate had sold several years ago when his daughter had yanked his license. It looked a hell of a lot nicer than it had then, far less corrosion in the bed.
A moment later, Mr. Tate himself emerged, looking far younger than the last time I had seen him hobbling into the café. The hair on his head was gray, not white. He bent down to pick up the newspaper, moving with an ease that I hadn’t seen him display in years.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Newspaper. We hadn’t had newspaper delivery since the town paper shifted to online news more than half a decade ago. The papers were still available but had to be purchased from the grocery or the stand outside the post office.
“It worked.” My fingers itched to snag the paper out of his hands and check the date. I’d traveled back in time for sure but to what time? What was the date?
I turned and scanned my bedroom for clues. The trophies were there, but the article detailing my accident was nowhere to be seen. A picture of me, styling with hands in the air with Grammy B and Grandpappy standing proudly on either side. I had given the photo to Grammy after he died.
“Clues clues clues,” I chanted and moved to the desk where a physics book sat on top of an SAT study guide. I’d never taken the SATs in my junior year, though I had gotten the book. First training for elite status and then the fallout from the accident had taken up all my time.
There was a poster from the movie Clueless taped to the back of the door and another for Empire Records on the closet. Both of those movies had come out in 1995. Darcy and I had snagged them from the theater. Getting warmer….
A few miscellaneous titles cluttered the bookshelf, nothing that was too helpful in grounding me in the date. My Baby-Sitter’s Club books had already been relegated to attic storage. Years before Twilight, which I was too old for, but had read anyway. No Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. That had come out when I was a junior.
I snapped on the radio. It was set to the alternative station. One Headlight, by the Wallflowers. Definitely mid-nineties.
A basket of wadded up leotards and leggings sat in one corner. I picked the top one up. It was still warm and damp as though it had been recently removed. Probably had. To keep up with my elite training, I put in two hours before school and four to six after, with ten to twelve hours on the weekends. I held it to my face and sniffed. The scent of sweat and chalk invaded my senses, so familiar it made me ache.
“Joey, hurry up!” my mother called from downstairs.