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“Where is the school?”

“West L.A.”

I lean back in the seat and meet his eye. I’ve never been to California. “Will I have my own room at this school?”

He shakes his head. “Uh, no, you’ll have a roommate, but you can decorate your side of the room however you like. The school has a personal shopper – just tell Claire whatever you want, and she’ll get it for you.” He smirks. “Actually, Claire bankrolled the Society School with her trust fund and is a successful businesswoman – she can’t help but make money – but her favorite thing, still, is picking out clothes for other people. She’s going to have a field day with you.”

My right hand uncurls and I lay my palm flat on my thigh. I take a deep breath, letting myself accept what is, for the time being. “I think I have a couple of broken ribs,” I blurt. They’ll be healed in a couple of days, faster if I can get some food in me, but for now they hurt like a mother.

“I know. I’ve been wondering how you’re even conscious.” He leans over and taps the front of the media compartment. The door lowers and a bottle of ibuprofen rolls out and into my lap. “Sorry, that’s all I can give you until the docs at school check you out.”

I shake out two
gelcaps and swallow them dry. “It’s okay. Ibuprofen is about as wild as I get these days.”

Christopher reaches into the backseat and hands me a flask.

“Um…”

“It’s just got water in it. I’m not a fan of the clunky glass water bottles people are always hoisting around.”

I take a quick sip and hand it back to him. He drinks after me and I burst into tears.

Chapter Two

Wyatt

It’s a blazing June afternoon, and I’m sweating balls by the time we come through the Grapevine and wind our way toward Los Angeles. My brother-in-law Raleigh tips his ball cap up and looks out from under the ratty, sweat-stained bill. Raleigh’s the reason this POS car doesn’t have AC – when he went to install the
autodrive (built from plans he’d found on the internet) he had to remove a sizable portion of the air filtration system. He’s been hunched over asleep in the passenger seat for the past hour. His wife, my sister Melody, is furiously texting in the backseat to my other sister Zellie about some girl they’ve been looking for.

I can’t be sure, but I think it’s hotter in the driver’s seat, which is probably the real reason Melody is finally letting me drive. Even though I’ve had my license for two years, she
claims
she was worried about me falling asleep at the wheel and driving us off the side of a mountain. Never mind I’m a certified coffee guzzler and that the car has autodrive. Of course, I’d have to have it
on
for it to work, but Melody doesn’t need to know that.

I am plagued with an abundance of overprotective siblings and parental-types.

“Ah, sweet,” Raleigh says, struggling to sit up taller in his seat due to the constrictive scar tissue on his torso that causes him chronic pain. His damp, blond ponytail sticks to the back of his neck. “We’re almost there. I love it when I sleep through the boring parts.”

This gives me a strong sense of déjà vu, not because I
feel
like this particular scenario has happened before, but because Raleigh has been sleeping through, waking up, and saying the same thing every year since I started coming down to L.A. with them at the age of twelve.

My sister says it’s because he was exposed to an excess of patchouli incense as a baby. I personally think it has more to do with the quantity of weed he helps “harvest” at Great Uncle Roger’s marijuana farm.

Melody scoots forward in between the front seats. “Okay, so Penny Black is set to arrive at LAX in an hour and she’ll be en route to school about twenty minutes after that. Zel and I both agree, Wyatt, that you’re the only choice to be Penny’s Lookout.”

Yes, my sister is weird and says crap like en route. I smirk -- it’s a common facial tic of mine -- and turn to her. “Am I the only choice because all the real Lookouts are already paired with a Retroact, or because you two think I’m the best person for the job?”

“You know it’s both, so don’t even start with me.” Melody is the Lookout in Charge – it used to be my Great Aunt Hazel, but she was gently forced into retirement a decade ago after a bad fall. She enjoys reminding us as often as she can that her mind is still sharp, even if she can’t run like she used to. Unlike me, Mel and Aunt Hazel were born to the position, being the younger sister’s of Retroacts. I, on the other hand, am a spare sibling and when I didn’t turn out to be special (i.e. a gay man), Melody trained me as a Lookout. I don’t suck at it.

“That does mean,”
she continues, “that you’ll being staying in the dorm instead of at the house.”

Yes!
Don’t get me wrong, I love my sisters and brothers, but they’re all way older than me and everyone in the dorm… it’s like going to summer camp and being made to stay in the counselors’ cabin instead of with all your friends every year. I don’t have many friends, okay, any friends, back home in Rosedell, Oregon, due to the fact I’m from an unconventional family. Small town people are not big fans of unconventional. But everyone at the New Society School, they’re even stranger than I am. They’re, like, Strange Official and I’m only Strange by Association.

“That’s fine, I can bunk with Kai.” Kai is my best friend Elle’s trigger, which is basically the New Society word for boyfriend.

“Kai’s got a chill vibe,” Raleigh pipes up. “He’s bueno for you.”

“Agreed,” Melody says, patting me on the shoulder. “You could do with some happy, little bro.” She tucks her bobbed blond hair behind her ears in that way she does when she’s about to get all business on my ass. “Now that that’s settled, I need to get you up to speed on Penny. She’s a different type of Retro in that she’s been rewinding for a long time, since she was
thirteen, and she’s almost eighteen now. But it appears she’s not aware she’s doing it.”

“What? How can that be?” Most of my Retro friends had only started rewinding in the last couple of years. Sixteen was the average age, after they’d found their trigger and had engaged in some sort of sexual activity. (Reason
#782 I wish I’d developed some of my family’s powers – automatic soulmate/person who wants to do it with you more than anyone else in the whole world.)

“We’ll know more when Zellie and Avery have met with her, but from the videos we’ve been compiling at Lookout Command, after Penny rewinds she collapses and falls asleep. In some instances, she is woken up by the authorities or people that are unknown to her, in others she wakes up on her own.” Melody scrolls the page down on her phone. “Here it is. Last year, she had a guy with her, Darren Handler, age nineteen, who we haven’t seen since St. Louis when we lost track of Penny for the
eleventy-billionth time.”

“Possible trigger?”
I flip the top on my coffee mug and take a swig of lukewarm brew.

Melody nods. “I wouldn’t rule it out.” She shows me her phone and on the screen is a photo of a pretty girl with crazy pink and white locks and a tall, ripped guy with close-cropped blond hair. She’s wearing a green
hoodie and beat up jeans, slip-on black shoes on her feet. He’s rockin’ an ugly blue and gray plaid flannel, jeans, and work boots. They both look in need of a shower, but like they’re happy enough, arms wrapped around each other as they walk down some St. Louis street.

So, here’s the messed up thing that pops into my head -- Penny Black is probably not a virgin, because there is no way any guy could spend any length of time with a girl who looks like that and not want to sleep with her. I see a low-res photo of her on my sister’s ancient
iPhone 19, and I’m already picturing myself next to her instead of her boyfriend. I’ve got my arm slung around her shoulder, my fingertips dangling nonchalantly just above her right breast.

My train of thought is shameful and embarrassing, but sort of illicitly hot, so I go with it. I dip into feeling bad for Darren Handler, because if he was Penny’s trigger and she didn’t know how to save him from his certain death, then he was certainly dead. That was something she would’ve learned at the New Society school if we’d found her in time.

The shame spiral continues as I’m now slightly jealous that Darren Handler at least didn’t have to die a virgin. Because I will. I am the last person my age that I know of, have heard of, read of, listened to a song about, or seen in a movie that hasn’t had sex.

There’s not a girl in
Rosedell who will touch me, and all the girls in the New Society have triggers or they’re twelve. It’s a problem. It keeps me up at night and makes me wish I could sleep through my days. As if I don’t feel inadequate enough, with my zero powers, mediocre athletic skills, tone deafness, and general lack of creativity, I couldn’t even
make friends
with the social pariah, slutty, self-hating girl who got caught blowing the remedial reading teacher in the resource center back home. After the scandal broke, I was the only person that went up to her in the cafeteria where she was sobbing into her Salisbury steak and asked her if she was okay. She told me to do the world a favor and go hang myself. I spent the rest of the school year eating in the parking lot.

When I begged my Uncle Ben (he’s pretty much the only one I can talk to about these things) to look into the future and tell me if he saw me with a girlfriend, he told me his glimpses have always been iffy. I countered that maybe when I moved to Portland in the fall to attend Portland State, things would change for me. He just shrugged and asked me if I was sure I wasn’t maybe bi like him, because that’d really open up the playing field.

I wish.

“Wyatt Adams,” Melody says abruptly, sternly, sisterly. The hairs on the back of my neck trudge through a layer of sweat to stand up. My Penny daydream makes a run for it. “Do you have the
autodrive on?”

Raleigh tips his ball cap down over his face and slouches back into his seat.
“Uh ohhhhhh.”

Chapter Three

Penny

The flight attendant, in her navy blue pantsuit with a red scarf knotted jauntily at the side of her neck, plows through the curtain between First Class and Coach. She rushes down the aisle. I crane my neck to see what’s up, and she starts whisper freaking out on another flight attendant, a guy – same outfit, but with a tie instead of a scarf. He holds his hands up defensively at first, but then curls them into fists when the woman jabs him in the chest with her index finger.

I’ve never been on a plane, so I don’t know how things are supposed to go, but I’m guessing it’s no bueno when the flight attendants are so obviously going nutball on each other.

“Lover’s spat,” Ben says to me.

I’m sitting in between him and Christopher, who’s been asleep for most of the flight. When we got on the plane he’d warned me he might be out of it for a while because he’d need to recuperate after using a lot of his mental capacity to get me out of juvie. I wanted to know more, but Christopher had literally fallen asleep the instant we were in the sky, leaving me with Ben. The guy is extremely good looking, a total dime, especially for someone pushing forty -- Mr. Tall, blond, and California tan -- but he keeps giving me this weird look and then shaking his head and saying, “Sorry.”

Ben either isn’t as reassuring as Christopher, or Christopher’s been messing with my mind and my perception of him is off.

Perfect couple o’ blokes to take your first plane ride with.

“So you’re married?” I ask because I figure making small talk is the right thing to do.

He nods. “Fifteen years this month.”

“To your…uh--”

“Trigger? Yeah, Connor’s my one and only. We have a daughter and are totally boring and normal. I don’t know if Christopher told you much about my sordid past and how he helped me and Connor get back together, or--”

“Not really, he just said you and, uh, Dr. Adams knew what it was like to be…” I look around the cabin. No one’s paying attention to us. All eyes are on the flight attendants who’re still going at it. “…different and not have anyone to turn to.”

He smiles. “That’s right. Before I met Zellie, Dr. Adams to you, and Christopher, a lot about who I was didn’t make sense, even though I had a really great Lookout – my Uncle Frank.”

“So, he was your real uncle and not simply claiming to be in order to bust you out of a detention center, right?” I tease.

“Right.” Ben laughs. “I’m sorry if I’ve been acting weird. I just still kinda can’t believe that you’re here and coming back to school with us. I didn’t know if we’d ever find you.”

“Well, I was trying my hardest not to be found.”

The female flight attendant comes barreling down the aisle and charges through the curtain again.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Ben whispers.

“What?”

“She was angry because he cheated on her, but now shit’s about to get real.”

“Sure--”

He gets a twinkle in his eye
.“Because he was cheating on her with another man. The ladies so don’t love that.”

“Did you use one of our
powers
to discover that?”I ask, lowering my whisper to a sub-whisper.

“Nah, he totally checked me out when we boarded. Pilot did too. They’ve probably been mile-
highing each other domestic style at the Marriott for at least a few months.”

“Wow,” I say, amused. “You’re not full of yourself at--”

A gunshot blasts through the curtain, the bullet lodging in the last overhead compartment on the left. “Let go of me, you asshole!” The female flight attendant screams, crawling and clawing her way up the aisle, a gun in one hand. The Air Marshal is on her, his arm looped around her chest, pulling her to him while he reaches for the gun.

All of the passengers, including me, duck low in our seats. I wish like hell my knife hadn’t been taken away from me by airport security. Not that knife beats gun or anything, but it has always given me some confidence.

From the rear of the plane comes: “I can’t believe you tried to shoot me, bitch!”

And then a rolling cart loaded with tinkling glass bottles of water and juice and booze sails past our row.

Another gunshot, and I yelp, taking hold of Christopher’s shirt collar and dragging him into a hunched position. Ben flicks Christopher on the forehead, right between the eyes.

“
What, pray tell, the eff, Benjamin?”Christopher says, keeping his eyes closed.

Ben smirks. “I just thought you’d like to help me and Penny
rewind this silliness.”

Christopher shrugs. “Go on, girl,
go’head, get down.”

“Okay, man.” Ben looks at me. “Ready?” He
stands, arms out.

“Wait!”I grab onto his pants leg. “I’ve never done this awake before.”

He looks down at me and winks. “Good thing you’re still asleep then.”

I don’t even have time to react to that before my body forces me to my feet. I climb up onto my seat and ready myself to begin conducting -- at least that’s how I always think of it.

I raise my hands up and the scene playing out before us stops. Only Ben and I and the plane are moving, unpaused. We fall into a natural partnership; he lets me rewind the woman and the Air Marshal, while he takes the male flight attendant. Two bullets explode backward from their landing spots; one in the overhead compartment and one from the top of the drinks cart. The shattered glass pitcher of lemon water that was resting on the cart fuses itself back together as Ben reverses the cart into the hands of the angry man. I neatly slip the bullets, one, two, back into the gun, and now that the cart no longer blocks the aisle, I step up onto the arm of Ben’s seat and hop down. Pushing, pulling, bending time to my will, I send the woman and the Air Marshal back through the curtain into First Class. They chase each other in backward steps toward his seat. She replaces his gun in his holster before the hot coffee she’d thrown in his face arches through the air and returns to its vessel.

Then, I’m
unstorming down the aisle with her. Ben’s waiting on the other side with the guy, the word “bitch” winnowing its way back into his mouth.

“Your call what to do here, Penny.”

I don’t
know
what to do. This is the first time that I’m aware I’m not just dreaming, but actually doing this. The awareness quickly becomes self-consciousness. I stand there frozen, waiting for the answer, for the calm to come over me again.

“Let’s
stow them in separate bathrooms for now?” Ben suggests, and I’m grateful at least one of us isn’t a complete dumbshit.

We get
Cheaty and Shooty stashed and Ben holds them both paused while I start up the rest of the people on the plane.

“Now this,” I hear Ben say as I begin to fade out of the dream, slipping down, down, “is the tricky part. I should’ve thought to collect a bunch of pillows or…”

I wake up cradled in Christopher’s lap on the floor at the back of the plane. Ben is standing above us, a palm on each of the bathroom doors.

“Hey,” Christopher says, smiling down at me and stroking my forehead. “Nice wor-”

A woman strides toward us, her gaze flicking from our scene on the floor up to Ben.

“Go on back to your seat,” Ben says to her. “You can hold it.”

She turns around abruptly without speaking and goes back up the aisle. I look at Ben. “You can do the mind stuff too?” For some reason, that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m so confused and starting to feel a little overwhelmed. What exactly am I capable of? What powers have Ben and Christopher been using on me that I don’t know about? What powers have
I
been using without knowing I’ve used them, besides the rewinding, of course?

Of course.

Fist. Stomach. Snap! I flop off of Christopher’s lap and use my free hand to steady myself as I stand up.

I am on an airplane.

I am on an airplane with men I don’t know, who’ve been controlling my mind since I met them, going to a place I’ve never been. Sure, they say it’s a school…but
wow
. WHAT IF IT ISN’T?

This is crazy. I’m crazy.
Gullible. Christopher drinks after me without hesitating, without treating me as if I’m some piece of street trash with gross mouth cooties and
I put my full trust in him
?

“Pen-
ny,” Christopher says, getting to his feet, his eyes locking on mine. “Don’t freak.”

My racing heart slows to a reasonable pace.

Ben gives me a kind smile. “I can absorb the powers of others for a short period of time…this is all stuff you’ll get a better explanation of at school. We’ve actually got an entire class devoted to kids with extra powers like mine and Christopher’s and Dr. Adams’.”

“I want to believe you,” I stammer, my voice sounding weirdly calm even though I still feel so unsure and shaky on the inside.

Christopher touches his index finger between my eyebrows. “In your mind’s eye, focus on a future point in time.”

“What? I don’t-”

“You have the ability to see the near future, to conjure up a waking vision. We call them glimpses. I think it’s the only way you’re going to know for sure that we’re legit and mean you no harm.”

I glance over my shoulder and check out the other passengers on the plane. No one is looking at us, they’re all engrossed in their own things; reading their
digi-mags, listening to music, trying to keep their toddlers from climbing over the tops of the seats in front of them.

I’m just here. Existing in the same world I always have, invisible as I’ve always been, but now I’ve got this incredible secret and it seems like everyone should be staring, everyone should know…

“Focus, Penny. You can do it. Think about…next week. Any day next week,” Christopher coos and takes my hand.

My eyelids drop closed and I’m watching myself.

I lean into some guy’s firm chest. He’s standing with his back against a green door -- number thirty-six. And this tall, wiry, not-quite-grown man with wavy brown hair and caramel colored eyes… I want him. His, thick, dark eyelashes are so long. I want those eyelashes tickling against mine, his full lips brushing across my lips. I go up on my tiptoes and his big warm hands cup my face. He looks at my mouth, his gaze a mixture of desire and apology. I grab onto his hips and draw him nearer, closing the distance between his mouth and mine. I kiss him gently and then he reciprocates, the pressure deepening.

I open my eyes.

“Awesome,” Ben says, nodding his head like Ah, Yeeeeeeeeah. “At least you know the future will be hot.”

I glare at him, even though the needle on my trust-o-meter has swung back over into the positive. If I truly did see what was going to happen to me next week and hadn’t felt anything bad toward this guy, then this
crazyass adventure I was embarking on couldn’t be a wrong choice. But why did I want to kiss him?

Darren’s face blooms in my brain and I instantly feel like I’ve cheated on him, which is ridiculous because we haven’t been together in the year since I ditched him to get clean. “Who’s the, uh, dream guy?”

Ben grins widely, dropping at least a decade off of his looks. “Your Lookout, Wyatt Adams.”

I check with Christopher and he nods.

“And the lip lock is for sure? I mean, he looks nice enough, but he’s not really my type.” He’s the opposite of blond and muscular Darren, in fact. I remember watching D fall asleep on the mattress in the building we’d been squatting in on my last night in Missouri. The slow rise and fall of his chest as I slipped on my boots and tucked my good-bye letter underneath the balled up sweatshirt he used as a pillow. If it hadn’t been for his own good, I never would’ve left him, would still be with him. Transitioning between the way I felt about D and the way I was
going
to feel about this Wyatt, it just didn’t seem possible.

“Glimpses aren’t one hundred percent accurate,” Christopher explains. “They’re more of a big picture vision – any little action can change the outcome, but only in the slightest ways. The most important thing,” he drums his fingers against my palm, “what I felt and saw through our connection here, is that you were safe and weren’t in any distress or immediate danger. Forget about the feelings of, uh, attraction or whatever, if you want to-”

“Like she wants to!”

I glare at Ben again. “Enough about…that.” From the front of the plane comes a voice over the intercom cheerfully demanding we all return to our seats and make it snappy with the upping of our tray tables. I gesture to the lavatories. “What are we going to do about them?”

Christopher and Ben exchange a glance and then Ben opens both bathroom doors. The flight attendants reanimate and start to go for each others’ throats. Apparently, not all is forgotten or forgiven between these two.

“The plane is about to land,” Christopher says, making direct eye contact with the woman.