When I Find Her (5 page)

She’s what you call an over-analyzer. She didn’t use to be this bad, but since my diagnosis, she goes over everything she says to me and always finds something to regret.

And Simon still won’t look at me.

Burgen once asked me what my earliest vivid memory is. It has to do with Simon. He was just under a year old, hadn’t learned to walk yet. I was six. We were in the backyard. It wasn’t fenced in yet. My mom put Simon on a blanket and went inside to get his pacifier, since he was crying for it and it was just inside the door. In the seconds she was gone, a big dog bolted from the back of a dumpster and attacked Simon’s leg. It bit right through the cloth into his shin. I beat the dog off with a stick. Even when the dog turned and attacked my arm, I just kept fighting it. Both Simon and I required stitches and rabies shots. Simon lost a lot of blood. I was the hero of the neighborhood, my mom told me, for saving my younger brother. They even put me in the newspaper. I don’t remember much of that, I only remember my great relief when that monster stopped chewing on my baby brother.

Sadly, I’m no longer a hero for Simon.

I gulp down that reality.

We seat ourselves around the kitchen table as my dad comes through the front door, home from work at the family gas station that he and my mom bought ten years ago. He looks like the shaggy grass. At some painful point, he stopped looking after himself, too.

“Hi Natalie,” he says to Mom as she gets up and takes his lunch cooler. I wish they would kiss, but they never do anymore.

“How was your day, Tom?”

He mumbles, “Fine,” and cleans up at the sink.

“How is everyone?” he asks when we’re all seated again.

“Fine,” we reply one by one. We are far from fine. We’re on the brink of losing it, of collapsing as a family. If I tell them about the Vegas apples…
oh, man
.

Someone must’ve turned the TV to a comedy station, because the canned laughter from the program fills our awkward silence at the table.

I recall something else Dr. Burgen said to me today. That I should communicate all of my concerns to my parents and siblings, no matter how difficult. So I broach what’s been on my mind for weeks, ever since I read it online on the Hospital Help Forum.

“If I do wind up...
going
,” I say to my parents slowly, carefully, “I hope you don’t get divorced.”

How is it possible that awkward silence can get even more stilted?

Simon finally looks up from his plate, bleary-eyed. I notice a bruise on his cheek and his ear.

“Stop talking nonsense,” my mom says, passing the salad. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re in remission, remember?” She gives me a shaky smile.

But I need to explain. “I read that most parents who lose a kid wind up–”

“
Stop it
.” Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Then promise me.”

No one speaks.

Simon bursts into tears. “I don’t want you to split up! What’s gonna happen to
me?
”

“Is that true?” Ivy asks Mom. “That most parents divorce if they lose a kid? But what if they have two other kids left?” Her gaze snaps to mine and her lips tremble. “Oh, I didn’t mean...sorry Luke...I didn’t mean...sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She bursts into tears, then so does Mom.

Everyone’s bawling except me and my dad, and he turns as pale as the potatoes on his plate. He gets up and walks out.

And that is why advice from a therapist sometimes totally sucks.

∞

There is one person I
can
tell about the time traveling.

“You gotta help me find Jennifer,” I say to Vlad two hours later at his place, after I finished mowing the lawn. I rushed to clean up, turned on my laptop before I showered and let my favorite documentary play in the background –
On the Life of
Whales
. Watching their great, glistening bodies turn and flip in the blue ocean calmed me. But I was out of breath again getting to Vlad’s place. I chalk it up to my enthusiasm about telling him about Jennifer.

Seeing her is the only thing that matters to me. No one else understands me like she does. No one else can talk to me like she can.

We’re upstairs in Vlad’s room, where he’s sitting at his computer. His parents work the afternoon shift at the hospital, so Vlad’s usually got the house to himself. That’s one of the bonuses of visiting him. The other bonus is that he never talks about my medical condition unless I start that conversation first. I rarely do.

Vlad’s hair is wet from a recent shower, and his pocked skin looks squeaky clean. He’s almost as tall as me, almost as broad-shouldered, but he walks with a lot of confidence. Not arrogant, just quietly, like he knows he’s cool. I think all the girls go for him mostly because of that. He’s the kind of guy that can even make zits look good.

“Tell me again,” says Vlad with suspicion.

“I was time traveling. Burgen sent me.”

“That’s bullshit. Time traveling? What are you going to tell me next? That you got here by teleportation?”

“It’s true,” I say, feeling somewhat stupid. I take out the Vegas apples. “He gave me these. I’m not kidding you…I think I really was time traveling.”

He eyes the red dice. “Then go back in time and find her.”

I wouldn’t believe me, either. “I tried but can’t make it happen. I’m going to see Burgen tomorrow, but you’ve got to help me now.”

He taps his desk with a pencil. “You think I can undo what that shrink of yours did? Or what he made you
think
he did?”

“Burgen’s okay. I
like
what he did today.”

Vlad’s expression softens. He thinks about it. “All right, I’ll give it a shot.”

I push the red dice back into my pocket and crash on the sofa next to his computer. He puts on some music that blasts from the subwoofers as he searches the web. I pick up a spongey toy basketball and toss it at the hoop mounted on his closet door.

“How do you spell her last name?” Vlad perches over the keyboard. Now we’re getting somewhere. He’s going to help me.

If there’s anyone I can trust, it’s Vlad. We’ve known each other since junior kindergarten, when I let him take my pet rat home every weekend and we didn’t tell his mom. Since middle school when he lent me his new bicycle every Saturday so I could ride it. Since last year, when I got diagnosed and he’s been the only guy on the basketball team who still invites me to his house.

I spell it out for him. “M-A-R-K-S.”

“That’ll make it super easy,” he says sarcastically.

I moan. I know – there are thousands of people with the same surname in every state and province.

“Where do you want me to look?”

“When she disappeared last year, I started in Hawaii. That was the rumor where she moved. Hawaii or Alaska.”

“That’s it?” he scoffs. “Only those two small places?”

I sigh.

“Well,” he says, “did you have any luck in your search?”

“Lots of luck with Marks. Too many of them though, and I don’t know her father’s name to narrow it down.”

He taps his keyboard and grumbles. “I don’t know much about Alaskan geography. What are the major cities?”

For the next hour, we study a map. We search social media sites, but there’s no luck. At least, not with the correct Jennifer Marks. We find nineteen of them, but judging from their photos and personal information, not the one I’m looking for.

“Do you know anything else about her? Brothers or sisters? Mother’s name?”

“No brothers or sisters. The only thing I know is that her father worked for that boat place. But there’s no record of him on their website. I called their Human Resources office but they wouldn’t give me any information.”

He shrugs. “What about her friends? That Allison girl she used to hang with?”

“I asked Allie about her. She said Jennifer never said goodbye, and her cell phone went dead shortly after she left town.”

“Who started the rumor about her moving to Hawaii or Alaska?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I asked around but no one could tell me why those two places. She moved here from Chicago. I tried there, too, but nothing.”

“Hmm. What about a forwarding address?”

“I-I made up an excuse one day and went to the guidance office...” This sounds lame even to my ears. “...said I had her e-reader and had to return it...”

“Let me guess. Her family left no mailing address?”

I nodded. “Right.”

“Well, they can’t just disappear.”

“Hey!” I shoot forward on the sofa. “She likes to read. She
did
have an e-reader in the locker and was always carrying books.”

“Let me quickly check and see,” Vlad says sarcastically again, “if I can uncover her library trail.”

I scowl. We’re not expert hackers. We’re not hackers at all. How’re we supposed to break into a library database online? And
which
library?

“Does she write anything herself?” Vlad asks.

“You mean like stories or poems?” I say.

He nods.

“I’m not sure.”

“Could you find out?”

“How?”

“At school. Check some of the bulletin boards. See if any of her work was posted.”

“A lot of that stuff from last year has been taken down already.”

“Some of it’s still up until they get the new school year going.”

“I could try last year’s yearbook,” I say, cheering at the thought. “If she wrote something for it, her writing might lead us to clues on her frame of mind. Or destination she was heading to. Like an
‘I Hate
– or –
I Love Oahu’
poem. You’re brilliant, Vlad.”

“That’s why they call me the Guru of Wisdom.”

“Who calls you that?”

“My folks. But only when we’re arguing.”

I laugh and toss the sponge ball at him.

He smacks it back and it ricochets off my shoulder.

I leave Vlad’s better than I’ve felt in hours. I have a plan. Two plans. To see Burgen again, and to discover if Jennifer’s a writer. I’ll go to school first and try to find anything she might have written about while she lived here.

CHAPTER FIVE

I barge into Burgen’s office the next day, Wednesday, just before I know he goes for lunch. I’m coming from my morning classes, where I looked for clues to Jennifer’s writing and didn’t find any. Why couldn’t this be easier?

Facing Burgen seated behind his desk with official-looking papers stacked around him, I’m shaky on what did and didn’t happen yesterday. Maybe my mind tricked me. Maybe all I needed was a good night’s sleep for clarity.

“Luke.” He rises. He smiles a little and adjusts his glasses.

I shove my hands into my pockets. I scour his office for my basketball and I spot it in the corner. So I did leave it here.

“What happened yesterday?” I demand.

“You’re back. Are you all right?”

“Fine. Was it real?”

He shakes his head. “That’s not for me to answer.”

“You’re the one who gave me the red dice. Tell me.” I pull out the square dice from my pocket and slap them on his desk.

He stares at them, then back at me as if weighing something in his mind. He goes to his office door and closes it. When he returns, he says, “I don’t have all the answers.”

I’m frustrated.

I ask another question that’s been nagging at me for almost twenty-four hours. “You say I have three chances to fix three mistakes. Can I go back and stop the leukemia?”

His eyes convey compassion. “Was it your mistake that you got it in the first place?”

“Well...no one says so. They all say they’re not sure what caused it. That it could be a thousand different things in a thousand different people.”

He says nothing and keeps staring at me.

I
get
it. “Then how can I go back and fix a mistake that I never caused?”

He exhales slowly.

That means I’m stuck with it. I go to the window. I look out over the park and at the cars streaming by on the street, and sigh. It’s like I’m getting the diagnosis all over again. But it’s
in
remission, I remind myself. I swing around because I need to watch his face while we’re having this conversation. “Can I go back and stay in that time permanently?”
With Jennifer?

His leather chair squeaks as he sits down and closes a folder on top of his papers. “No.”

“Then how long can I go back for?”

“Six hours. And you have to wait six hours in between times, before you can travel back again.”

That would explain why I couldn’t get back to Jennifer when I was on the subway. Six hours hadn’t passed.

A drip of sweat at his temples glistens through his short blond hair. “That’s at least in the beginning. Toward the end of your three mistakes, you can control the time more. Shave the six-hour intervals.”

“How do you know that?” I ask.

He adjusts his glasses. His eyes glisten. He comes around to the front of the desk and leans back against it. “Because that’s what it was for me.”

I’m stunned. “
You
went back?”

He nods.

“Who are you? How’d you discover this?”

He takes a deep breath. “Sit down, Luke.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” I pace the room. “I want you to explain this to me.”

“My grandfather showed me how to do it. His Vegas apples, remember? You’re the first person I’ve shown since then. The
only
person.”

“The only?” I turn and study him. His eyes are sharp and wide, like he’s telling the truth. He’s never lied to me before.

I
want
to believe him. I want to believe that I can go back to Jennifer.

“My grandfather granted me three chances to fix my mistakes,” Burgen says gently. “Someone granted him three chances. And I was allowed to grant one person the same thing.”

His expression is sincere, and his body language – not that I’m an expert but I’ve had a lot of practice watching doctors and therapists and blood specialists talk to me over the last year – his body language is not uptight. His shoulders are slack and his posture is open.

“Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute.” I wave my arm. “Each person gets to pass it down to one person?”

“That’s right.”