Flutter (26 page)

The goose bumps rise on my arms again, and I focus on the water as hard as I can. I see swirling grays and blacks. I feel a slippery, snaky sensation in my stomach
.

It’s then I see a collision in the surface of the water, two vehicles crashing together. Then the shadows converge, swirl. It is gone
.

I hear my boy behind me. “Tell him to go home,” he says
.

A sadness catches in my throat, and I feel my eyelids flutter. I take one quick glance at Ash, and he is staring, transfixed at the boy version of himself, all the color drained from his face
.

I feel my body stiffen, and I know I need to get to Ash. I move myself forward, walking as quickly as possible, and I throw my arms around him
.

My eyelids flutter. The thrum. The colors and then …

Nothing
.

Blackness
.

I felt a hard surface beneath my head, beneath my body.

I realized that I was lying down. I slowly regained consciousness, bit by bit, and then … 
I need air. I’m drowning, choking, suffocating
.

I heard Ash’s voice from far away. “One, two,” he said. I felt weight on my chest. I felt a slight rise in my lungs. “Three!” he screamed.

My eyes flashed open. My hands flew to my throat. I sat up and gasped, coughed, gulped for air.

“Thank God! Thank God,” Ash screamed. He put his arms around me and yelled, “Thank God! Oh, Em,” he said, placing his ear next to my chest, listening to my heartbeat, listening for my breaths.

My throat was ragged, rough, my vision blurry and disorienting.

“Oh, Em,” he said again. “Thank you, God.”

“You saved me,” I whispered, my voice gravelly. “You saved me.”

“You saved me, Emery. How did you take me with you?”

“It’s evolving.” I shrugged.

“And you’re getting more control.”

“Yes.”

“Emery, I had to perform CPR. My God, Emery, I had to do CPR for at least five minutes.”

I nodded.

“I can’t believe you’re okay. I can’t believe you’re back. You
are
okay? You’re okay?” He took my pulse again, pulled me to him.

“I’m fine,” I whispered, but I was weak, barely conscious.

“Emery, I don’t quite know how to tell you this.”

“What is it, Ash? Do we need to leave now? Are they here?” I tried to stand up, and my legs buckled. Ash caught me.

“I’m pretty sure they’re gone. Look outside. It’s a lot later. We’ll leave soon, though. In a minute.” The door was open, the windows too, and the sky much darker. The cabin itself was a wreck. Had Dad done this? But Ash didn’t seem to care about any of it. He watched me, only me, half carrying me to the love seat.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You … you’re not time-traveling.”

“I’m not? How can you say that, Ash? After you came with me. You saw it. You experienced it!” I was flustered. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed.

“It’s not a different time you’re going to.”

“What do you mean?”

“That little boy. It’s not me, Emery.”

I looked at him for a long moment. It was almost as if I could feel the ideas and concepts and theories sliding and switching around in my brain, accommodating, assimilating.

He took a deep breath. “It’s my brother.”

“But he died with your mom in the accident.”

He nodded, staring at me, waiting for it to sink in. My eyes widened. “Really? You’re sure it’s him?”

“Positive.”

“It’s not time-traveling,” I said, mulling this over. “You think it’s—”

And he said it. “I think it’s heaven.”

We went outside and quickly discovered the Jeep tires were slashed. I tried to picture Dad tossing the cabin, taking a knife to the tires. And it was surprisingly easy. That plastic smile on his face.

We grabbed our stuff from the back of the Jeep and left Dala Cabin quickly and quietly. We barely spoke. We slipped silently on foot into the forest, the wind ripping, roaring around us, through the evergreens. A severe, frighteningly heavy snowfall had begun while we were in the loop. And although I could feel the cold in my bones, I was so glad for this storm, so glad for its cover, for its slim-to-no visibility, because we had no idea how close Dad was, where his thugs were.

Ash grabbed my hand and pulled me off the path, into the thick of the pines. I followed him wordlessly.

I imagined at every turn that we would run smack into Dad or one of his dark-suited accomplices, but I just kept my head down against the wind and put one foot in front of the other, trusting in Ash, trying desperately to keep up. I was worn, exhausted from the loop, but I concentrated on my breathing, my footsteps.

We emerged from the woods near Winging Stables. I held my arm up against the onslaught of heavy, slushy snow falling now. It was really coming down out here, beyond the shelter of the trees. Ash led us toward Jimmy’s truck, and we slipped inside.

Ash checked under the floor mats, and there were no keys. Ash flipped a panel off the dashboard, and he was in the process of hot-wiring the truck when Jimmy’s stocking-hatted head appeared out of the swirling snow at the driver’s-side window. I gasped, and Ash threw his arm around me in protection.

Jimmy’s face registered with us, and Ash unrolled the window.

Jimmy pushed his hand through the window and handed Ash the keys.

Ash looked at him solemnly and took them.

“They came here looking,” Jimmy said. “I sent them on a goose chase to the bus station. I didn’t know anything … I hoped. I wanted to buy you some time.”

“I will repay you, sir, somehow,” Ash said. “The Jeep, they slashed the tires and—”

“Don’t you worry about that. Just go. I hope I bought you a few hours. I’m here for you, son. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’m here for you. And, Ash, do you know your father called yesterday? Left a message with Jeannette.”

Ash’s jaw clenched. He nodded. “Thank you,” he told him. “We have to leave.”

We took off, driving slowly, carefully, holding our breath with each passing car.

“Jeannette told me about that phone call. I didn’t quite hear her. I should’ve told you. Who do you think really called you?” I asked Ash.

“Probably the cops,” he answered flatly.

We drove through town, the snow hurling down from above, big heavy flakes now, but with the wind, it looked like it was coming from above, from below, from the east, the west. It was everywhere.

We were on the outskirts of town when we saw three police cars with their flashing lights on driving quickly in the direction of the cabin.

Ash and I exchanged a dark look. Neither of us spoke.

After we reached the highway, Ash broke the silence. “They must be searching the town, the forest. They probably thought that we doubled back on them, that you crawled out the window and into the forest.”

“Who knows what they think?” I said.

I dared to breathe easy only after we had crossed the Mackinac Bridge and left the UP far behind.

I was shaken by the depth of the search that would be going on for us. Dad. I tilted my head on the headrest and tried to keep my breathing even, slow.

We drove for a long time, hours. We put mile after snow-covered mile between us and what had just happened. Between us and our hideaway, our cabin, our safe place.

The afternoon turned to evening, and we were in Illinois, the highway slushy and gray from the beaten and battered snow. We stopped only for gas and coffee.

I had told Ash what Frankie said—to go home. Ash had heard him too. So that was what we were doing, hoping that Dad would not know enough about Ash to follow us there, hoping that the police would not expect Ash to show up there. But Frankie wanted us to go home. We had to.

“It’s not every day that you get orders from heaven, Emery,” Ash had said.

I agreed with Ash. I did, in that we had to do what Frankie said, no matter where Frankie was. But heaven? No way. No fucking way. I leaned my forehead against the car window and went over everything in my mind, every last loop I could remember, each person I had encountered there. Could it really be something other than time travel? Could I really have been so impossibly wrong for so long?

I turned my head farther toward the window, struggling
to keep myself from crying. I mean, was I dying and coming back each loop? Just going back and forth in some semi-alive state? Was each loop bringing me closer to really dying? Permanently dying? No. I couldn’t face these questions right now. It was too much.

We drove past rolling snow-covered farms, one after another. They were idyllic in their white blankets of snow, each looking much the same as the last, most with Christmas trees twinkling in the windows. But I knew that I would recognize Ash’s farm immediately. I had been there many times before.

I was still reeling. However, there was a small part of me that was happy to be on this road trip with Ash, glad to be together. Even as we sat here, on the edge of reason, on the edge of reality. It was silly of me, but honestly, I just loved being next to him. I couldn’t get enough of that feeling.

And I was scared of what it would do to me to have to live without him, now that I had understood and experienced the alternative.

I sat in the passenger seat, watching Ash drive. His profile was strong, but the way his mouth set when he was deep in thought gave him a softness that wasn’t there when he was aware of himself. He was quite possibly the most beautiful person I had ever met in real life, the five-o’clock shadow on his jaw, the disheveled wave to his thick strap of hair, the goodness in his eyes.

It broke my heart to know that he couldn’t forgive
himself. I couldn’t do that for him. I couldn’t take that on for him. If I could, I would. If I had learned anything from the odd little life that I had lived, especially in the last few years, it was that you had to be kind to yourself. Sometimes no one else was.

Ash caught me staring at him. He placed a hand on my knee and squeezed. “We’re okay,” he told me, the old tightness setting in his jaw again.

“I love you,” I told him, not realizing I was going to say it. It just came out. “I mean, we haven’t said it, but I know—”

“Emery,” he said, smiling this Cheshire cat grin.

But I had more I wanted to say. “I love you, Ash. And that you can’t forgive yourself over the accident, over your father, it’s terrible.”

He rubbed at his stubble. “Emery, I don’t want to—”

“I know. But for me, I need to talk about it.”

He didn’t argue with me. So I began quickly. “I need you to hear me about this. You know that it was self-defense. I’m not saying that it isn’t awful, Ash. But what I’m saying is just the way you told me the story. The way you looked, what you said. I think you know that you didn’t do it on purpose.”

His jaw clenched. He nodded. “Maybe.”

“Explain it.”

“I still killed him.”

“That’s not it, Ash. Tell me what it is.”

Ash was shaking his head then, and in a moment, he
slammed on the brakes and violently turned the wheel to the right, parking us on the shoulder of Interstate 39.

“The truth is, Emery, after he rolled onto that fucking knife, after his blood was all over the boards of our back porch, all over me, I stood up from the whole mess, and I just looked at him. I could’ve called the cops. I could’ve run for help. I didn’t. All the pain and the scars, the look in my mom’s eyes after he beat her. I just stood there thinking of all that, Em.”

His eyes got this faraway look, and I knew that he was traveling in time, right back to the scene. He had probably replayed it in his mind thousands of times, measuring the degree of his guilt, wishing, praying for a second chance.

“I looked that bastard in the eyes as he realized exactly what was happening to him, as he dug the knife out of his throat, and I spit in his face.”

Ash’s voice broke on his last few words, and I heard him choke back a sob. I grabbed his hand then. “Oh, Ash.”

“I left him for dead, Emery. He called out to me—‘Son,’ he said—and I left. I was glad he died, Emery. Glad that the earth was rid of him. And I think, I think … if he hadn’t rolled over onto that knife … I’m pretty sure I would’ve done it anyway myself.”

I leaned over and held his face in my hands.

“I’m a monster, Emery.”

“You are not a monster. You are—”

“A monster, who should never trust himself around anyone ever again. I caused my mom’s and Frankie’s deaths, and I killed my own father.”

“That’s not true.”

We sat there on the side of the road, cars and semis whizzing past us. And we were quiet with one another. I stroked his hair, his cheek, his lips. I held his hands in mine.

“Ash, I—”

“Emery, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was there. I know me. I saw me in the moment. I knew me in the moment.” He looked away, staring straight ahead.

I could feel it behind my eyes, beginning. In fact, I realized then that I was starting to always be aware of it, there, just behind my eyes, a buzzing always present, waiting for an opportunity. “Ash, you can’t do this to yourself.” I reached for him, but he flinched away.

“I used to always wish I could go back, just another chance to go back in time, to try to do … better. But, Emery, I don’t know. If I was there again, in that moment. That’s the worst thing, the worst truth, that I still
understand
me.”

I couldn’t stop it then. I gritted my teeth and tried to push it back, but it came, and my eyes fluttered, my body tensed. My breathing became ragged.

“Emery!” Ash grabbed me by the shoulders. “Don’t go, Em. Stop it. Fight it.” He spoke evenly right into my face, but I could hear the terror in his voice. Was it because he
was afraid that this time, or the next time, or the time after that … I wouldn’t come back?

I stared directly at Ash’s face, and I fought it. I pushed against the buzzing. I concentrated on Ash’s face, his deep-set eyes, that one crooked tooth. I felt my body relax just a bit.

My breathing slowly came back to normal. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’m okay. I’m staying here.”