SKIPPING TIME

Chapter 11.5

 Cacee pushed back her plate and looked at Jess. She didn't understand why he wasn't fat. Out of an eighteen-inch pizza, she ate two and a half slices. Between her and Jess giving him bites, Shane ate about a slice. Jess ate the rest. The pizza tasted delicious though, with just the right mix of cheese and olives and a thick, chewy crust that dripped with tangy sauce.

Now that she was fed and cleaned up, she felt stronger and more in control. It turned out the blood on her all belonged to Jess. Other than a few bruises, a bad headache and some ragged holes in her T-shirt, she was fine.

While they ate, Jess told her the story of what happened after she passed out. He tried to explain how he got stuck in his own past where he hit his head and cracked his skull. Nothing he said made much sense. The only part she understood was that, even as the clearing tore itself apart, he somehow protected her. That was why he looked all beat up, but she was fine. Saying thank you didn't cover it, but Jess seemed embarrassed by her gushing, so she shut-up about it.

He caught her eye and motioned to the half slice of pizza still on her plate. "Are you gonna finish that?"

She shook her head and laughed when his eyes lit up. He looked a lot better too. With his face washed and his skin-tone returned to its normal tan, the gash on his forehead didn't seem as bad. He still looked like he'd come out on the bad end of a fight, but he pulled it off. Even covered in bruises and wearing filthy clothes, Jess was getting checked out by numerous girls who  clearly didn't care that he sat with her. As for Jess, he was too enthralled with his food to notice.

She smiled when he passed the last quarter of the slice to Shane, who sat in her bag, on the booth between them. She asked, "Better?"

Jess nodded. "Yeah. Much."

"So now what?"

He glanced outside before grabbing one of the red napkins and starting to fold it. "Well, it's too late to do anything tonight, plus I'm beat and I'm sure you are too."

She nodded. In her own time, she figured it would be about six am. Now that she'd eaten, she just wanted to sleep.

She yawned as Jess said, "We have enough money left to get a crappy motel. Then, tomorrow, I figure we can..."

She prayed for him not to suggest it.

Jess looked down, intently twisting his napkin before saying, "We'll need more cash."

Before she began arguing, he added hastily, "But maybe I won't have to do it again after that. We came to the exact time and place of my painting. I have no idea how, or why, but if we buy more painting supplies and go back to that alleyway I'll..." He shrugged wearily, "I don't know. Try to make it happen again?"

Her stomach churned so anxiously she regretted the pizza. Even though she'd been unconscious, she wasn't in any hurry to repeat their particular traveling experience. She'd already told Jess about her knowledge of time-travel. They talked about Einstein's theory of Relativity and time-space being a fourth dimension. She clarified what she could about wormholes, black holes, the Tipler Cylinder and Cosmic Strings.

Unfortunately, none of the scientifically accepted modes of time-travel came close to explaining what happened to her and Jess. The closest she could come was theorizing that it had something to do with Ley Lines and dark matter. She tried to clarify to Jess why galaxies spinning faster than they should proved the existence of dark matter and how matter that can't be seen, measured or quantified at all is four times larger than normal matter.

She tied that in with the purported existence of Ley Lines and Rifts, the most common ones being Stonehenge and the Bermuda Triangle. They discussed random Rifts in the Ley Lines that seemed to open and close on their own, utilizing vast amounts of unseen energy and thus creating Portals in the time-space continuum.