SKIPPING TIME

Chapter 16

Cacee came back to reality all at once, like someone had thrown a bucket of it in her face. She sat in a hardback chair, huddled under a red knit blanket. She was next to Jess, who lay on a twin bed in one corner of a cavernous room. Jess's shirt was off and a thick blue quilt covered most of his body. She counted nine stitches across his forehead. Ray sat on the opposite side of the bed, still suturing up Jess's arm.

Although he remained unconscious, Jess's chest rose and fell steadily.

Shane lay on top of Jess's quilt, soaked and trembling, his head resting on Jess's stomach. Her own teeth chattered madly, but she took off the blanket to cover her pup. Shane licked her hand and let out a whimper she understood meant thank-you.

Ray's head snapped up. "Cacee! Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"Is Jess okay?" The hysteria in her voice surprised her. She felt calm. Numb.

Ray reached over Jess and took her hand. "He'll be fine. His vitals are good; he just lost too much blood. He's also exhausted. His body couldn't handle anymore stress.  But all he needs is to rest for a few days and he'll be good as new."

She snatched her hand away and spoke through chattering teeth. "H-how c-c-can you be s-sure? Are you a d-doctor or something?"

Ray said, "No. This is all basic stuff. He'll be fine, honey. I promise. It's just the combined effect of the skip and the blood loss."

She heard grudging respect in Ray's voice. "He stayed on his feet a lot longer than he should've been able to. The kid's got some fight in him, I'll give him that. What happened to his arm anyway?" Ray gestured to Jess's arm.

She remembered the warmth of Jess's hand squeezing her own. A clear message to not tell Ray anything she didn't have to.

She ignored the question, just as Ray noted, "You gave your blanket to your dog." A smile lit his face, and he reached beneath a nightstand next to the bed and grabbed a yellow quilt. He handed it to her. "Sorry. I should have given Shane his own."

She wrapped herself in the blanket and didn't acknowledge Ray. The more she returned to reality, the more alarmed she became. She shivered. "It smells like apples in here. Why does that freak me out?" She didn't expect Ray to answer as the question was directed more at herself than him.

But he said, "It's the air fresheners I keep so it doesn't get musty. I apologize if you don't like the smell."

She ignored that and took in her surroundings with a growing sense of surprise, fear and wonder. They were in some kind of spacious room; it looked like a converted warehouse. Above her the circular lights covering the beamed ceiling shone bright puddles onto a polished slate floor. Each "room" was just a different corner. Jess lay on the bed in this corner. A rectangle of red carpet defined the "living room," where a black trunk plastered with travel stickers acted as a makeshift coffee table to an overstuffed suede couch. A tiny red and white kitchen rounded out the far side of the room.

The walls were a creamy ivory, the largest one covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves that housed everything from colorful paperbacks to leather-bound encyclopedias. None of that kept her interest though, not even the books. It was the pictures scattered around the room that held her spellbound.

They were all of her.

There she was: riding her tricycle, eating an ice-cream cone, holding a Science fair trophy, holding a Math League trophy, laughing with her friends in Pennsylvania. More recently—with Shane in her backyard, in her clearing in the woods, splashing in the creek. That didn't even count the pictures of her with her mom. There they were building castles in her sandbox, sunbathing in the backyard, laughing together in their kitchen.