Ch 1 - Part 2

248 1 0
                                    

I jogged across the street, into the sea of buses. Up and down the rows, I searched. Blark, there were a lot of them.

“Come on, come on, come on.” I raced down the final row and let out a sigh of relief. The last block of buses said “Accomack County School District,” my destination. I staked out a hiding spot near them, behind an old oak.

A swarm of elementary kids clambered past. Too bad I couldn’t hop on their bus. I was short for sixteen, but I wasn’t that short. Rule number one of Shifting: Don’t stick out.

Okay, technically, that would be Rule number two, the first one being: Don’t bring anything from the past back with you. But that one’s a no- brainer. Fiddle with the past all you want, fine. It’s not like you can change it. Not really. (That’s what I had to keep reminding myself to go through with the extra job I’d been hired to do today.)

But the future? No one wants to mess around with that.

A familiar voice drifted toward me, and I leaned deeper into the tree’s shadow.

“No, not the tavern. The pub.” It was the phone girl.

“Well, you should have been in the bathroom covering that hickey,” said her friend.

“Everyone knows it’s not a hickey until the blood vessels break. It’s a love bite.” “Yeah, well, guess what you can bite?”

“Jealous much?”

They stepped on one of the other buses with a group of high schoolers. Sweet relief. Their insipid banter was going to give me a headache.

Except no.

I reached for the base of my skull.

My head wasn’t hurting. At all.

Most Shifters called it the Buzz— those painful twinges that scrambled your thoughts and blotched your vision. Like mosquito bites in your brain. Some Shifts were worse than others. But it was always present. Until now.

I pulled out my vial of Buzztabs. God bless the Initiative. Without their Assistance Fund I couldn’t afford the pills, and they were the only thing that quashed the sensation. Of course, if today’s side mission went well I’d never need their help again.

I shook the tube. I wasn’t sure if I should take one even though I felt fine. But why did I feel fine?

A soft hand brushed my shoulder before I had a chance to pop a tablet in my mouth.

“You need to give those back to the nurse, dear. We’re about to leave.” The chaperone, who thankfully appeared to be a frazzled mother rather than a teacher, nudged me along without making eye contact. I put the pills back in my pocket.

Chincoteague Island, here I come.

While I hadn’t taken any formal classes like some of my friends, I considered myself a master of social camouflage. A pulled- down wisp of bang here, a curled-up slouch there, and I was all but invisible. As the bus filled, I fixed my eyes out the window and splayed my arms out so that I took up exactly two- thirds of the seat. Not so much that the chaperone would come and make a fuss. But enough to make it clear I liked riding solo. No one in their right mind would choose to sit by me.

Unless it was the last seat left.

A scrawny redheaded kid who was being devoured by a backpack twice his size shuffled up the aisle. His thick, concave glasses squished the sides of his head in like an insect. Everyone else on the bus appeared the typical sixteen or seventeen years old, but I doubted the increasingly flushed kid had seen the better side of fifteen yet. He gripped the back of the padded seat two rows up in desperate search of another vacant spot. When the chaperone began calling out names, he gave up and slumped down next to me.

“Here,” he responded to the name “Finn Masterson,” saving me even the most basic of pleasantries. He watched me out of the corner of his eye with a look of part anticipation and part curiosity as we neared the end of the list. When the bus pulled out onto the highway, he broke down and said, “They didn’t call your name.”

“Nope,” I said.

“Why didn’t they call your name?”

“Probably because it wasn’t on the list.” I rubbed my thumb against some graffiti on the vinyl seat in front of us.

“What is it?”

“My name? Bree.”

“Bree what?”

“Bree Bennis.”

“Oh.” He stared past me out the window, either deep in thought or avoiding eye contact, I couldn’t tell. Or care. I wasn’t even sure why I’d given him my real name, especially right now. Most of the time on Shifts, I doled out fake ones. But this kid had a sweet earnestness about him that kept the lie off my tongue.

Plus, he might prove useful when we got to our destination. A little civility never hurt anyone. On occasion, it made the difference between getting home to the twenty- third century to sleep in my own bed and standing in line at a nineteenth- century soup kitchen while I figured out an assignment.

Today it might be the difference in life and death.

Finn dove into a comic book. I pulled out my mission package.

There was no point in thinking about the extra job if I didn’t finish the assigned one. Nothing special with the wrapping. I shook it, and what ever was inside rattled around— probably a long- forgotten wedding ring or some other sentimental crap. It never ceased to amaze me the stuff people sent back to their ancestors. Lost love notes, baby teeth, underwear.

Oh, the undies.

And for what? Shifters saw it for what it was—pointless. It was always nonShifters who wanted to forge some imaginary connection to their past. So they could know that they were the ones who returned Great- Aunt Gertrude’s precious applesauce muffin recipe when it mysteriously showed up tucked in her front door after she’d misplaced it all those years before.

Something bothered me now as I stared down at the box. Something amiss. Muff y van Sloot. The name oozed money. Rich people never used the Institute for deliveries, any more so than they’d walk into a barber school for their next haircut. They used professional chronocouriers. Ehh. Maybe this was a feeble attempt to make amends for losing the family fortune.

Or maybe it was all for a dead cat.

LOOPWhere stories live. Discover now