The sky blazed with exultant glory, ribbons of orange and red and pink filling the world with dying light. Beautiful. Achingly so.
Caleb could only think of the Void. He saw it when they Hopped here. These hours with Danielle, easy and lighthearted as they'd been, weighed like bricks on Caleb. With every blink he saw the inkiness of the cave, the bony fingers of Loss as the monster rose from the great stone pedestal and struck at Carter and Alia. Why did he see it when he Hopped with Danielle?
Lying in the sand, watching those streaks of blinding light fade moment by moment, Caleb wished he could enjoy it more. Enjoy it like Danielle whose laughs were delighted and frequent. Instead Caleb's mood was sour and twisted.
"so thirsty," Danielle said, sighing a little from a few feet away. She sat up and stared at Caleb.
"We can head back." His forearm was half covering his eyes, salt and sun a gentle scent in his nose.
Danielle shot up from beside him, and Caleb flinched at the sudden shadow. "My test! I never went back!"
Relaxing again into the still-warm stand, Caleb lay still while Danielle paced back and forth. The sudden shifts in shade was going to make him sick. Caleb lifted his right hand and wiggled his fingers. She stopped pacing, clapping a hand to her forehead. "I'm such an idiot."
"Not an idiot," Caleb replied, leaning up onto his elbow to squint at her back-lit outline. "Just not used to this." He stuck his tongue out at her and Danielle flicked sand at him with her foot. He spat a glob of saliva out and hacked a cough.
"What about the—" She patted her clothes and clouds of dust tumbled off.
"I expect it'll go away when we get back to the school." He stood. "You'll dry off too."
"Oh," Danielle said, taking a step back as Caleb stepped toward her. "We're going now? I thought we could just..." she paused. "Why are you laughing?"
He shook his hair and sand flew from the curls. "Because you're nervous."
"I'm not nervous," she said, defiant against his ridicule.
Caleb held up his fingers. "Itty bitty bit," he said with a high, squeaking tone.
"Not even." She stepped close to Caleb, grabbed his hand, and the world bent around them. Swirling, dazzling whirlwind of radiance swarmed around them. The air grew bitterly cold around them, and everything seemed much darker compared to the sunniness they'd left. Once more they stood on the front steps of the school. Back into the frigid, rainy day of before. Back in their clothes. The only indication they'd gone anywhere was their slightly sun-kissed skin.
"Good luck on your test!" Caleb said. He Hopped. Danielle was running inside.
Caleb was once more in the living room and was about to greet Alexander when the sharp scent of burnt ozone filled his nose. His body swayed. "No," Caleb grunted, trying to steel his body against the next moments. He had enough strength to fall onto the couch before his body seized up, and he lost control of his limbs.
"Caleb!" Alexander shouted. His strong arms wrapped around Caleb's wrists. "Caleb, calm down," he whispered. "It'll be okay. Come on." He coaxed him out of the seizure slowly, until Caleb regained control of his body. Only then did Alexander slacken his grip. Sweat soaked Caleb's sweatshirt.
"What happened?" A sleepy daze sat on him.
"I was going to ask you the same. You were doing so well."
"You don't have to make it sound like I fell off the wagon or something." Caleb tried to stand but Alexander held him back.
"Where are you going?"
"I was going to get cereal." Alexander disapproved, apparently; his face was impassive. "What?" Caleb said, "I'm starving." He was also well aware he would probably fall on his face if he stood, as a particular muscle in his butt had locked up, and he knew it wouldn't loosen for a while. Being fussed over made him antsy.
"I'll get it for you. Just stay here." Alexander walked into the kitchen with a heavy sigh.
A minute later he returned with a bowl of Lucky Charms. "What is fifteen plus thirteen?" Alexander asked Caleb before handing him the bowl.
"Twenty-eight," he said, only thinking for a second. Alexander handed him the bowl, and Caleb ate slowly, unsure if he was actually hungry or simply craving the comfort of sugar.
Alexander and Caleb sat on the couch for a long while in quiet awkwardness. "I'll be all right," Caleb said. "You know that, right?"
"I know," Alexander said. "Doesn't mean I'm not worried about you. Or that I'm not annoyed that this wasn't fixed when you were with Rhea."
"Yeah..." Caleb said. They fell into silence once again, and the TV played a live cooking show they both couldn't get enough of.
+++
Having finished her exam with a delighted flourish, Danielle found herself losing energy and focus as the morning wore at an interminable slug. At lunch, after eating a bag of salted vinegar chips and not much else, the reality of her morning settled in with acute understanding. She truly had been in Florida, had spent an entire afternoon with Caleb on a beach.
Caleb had magical abilities—or, not magical, but abilities.
Upon glancing in the bathroom mirror between APUSH and German, Danielle noted that her skin was darker than usual, but she seemed almost...luminescent. Hadn't there been a zit on her upper lip this morning?
Even Caitlyn noticed the subtle shift after school. She snuck up behind Danielle, snaking her arm in Danielle's so they were linked. It looked like friendship, but Danielle knew it to be a trap.
"You could have told me you were going tanning," she said in an overly saccharine tone.
"I didn't," Danielle responded a little too quick.
Caitlyn winked. "Right, you got this tan line," she brushed at Danielle's collar bone, "from the trip to Hawaii you didn't take. Your skin is already beautiful. I'm sojealous."
Danielle huffed air from her nose and untangled herself from Caitlyn. Ever since Jason Rivers' party the hidden fissures in their friendship had begun to crack and widen. Apparently, Danielle had left her friend at the party, but she had no recollection of ever leaving—thanks to Caleb and Alexander. The next morning she'd had to shamefully ask her mom to drive to Jason's house to retrieve her car, which was sitting in the exact spot she remembered parking it.
Caitlyn's allusion to forgiveness had been flimsy at best, and ever since Caleb and Danielle had started to hang out consistently, Caitlyn had countered by befriending Amelia Budro, a girl from the theatre department, and a royal jerk. She was another one of those girls who considered herself far above other students. Honestly, Danielle knew Amelia lacked drive, despite her incredible talent. It was Danielle's own drive that had clenched the leading female roles in the musical the last two years before she'd quit because of one comment: "Audrey is white." Amelia's spite for Danielle might have leaked into Caitlyn, but Caitlyn tried to operate outside the façade of pettiness that had grown.
As they walked to her car, Caitlyn brought up the rumor of the day. "Elsa said you and Caleb made out in the girl's locker room today. She saw you."
Danielle whirled to look at her friend. "We did notmake out. That's disgusting and you know it."
Caitlyn shrugged. "Everyone knows about you and him, and people have a lot to say."
Danielle guffawed. "Because you're the one who's got a lot to say in the first place."
Cattiness hadn't ever been a staple in their friendship. In fact, Danielle and Caitlyn rarely argued at all. This was strange and foreign to Danielle, and she wanted to stop it in its tracks, because confrontation made her sick. It was always easier to be quiet. "I'm going home. We can talk another time." She got in her car and started driving. Caitlyn would be fine; she had a Shakespeare rehearsal today. And if her friend didn't, Danielle didn't think about it.
The rain was the kind her mom had once called "sky piss." It wasn't heavy, but it tended to soak everything with courage to step out into it. Danielle's windshield wipers slashed furiously to get rid of the water seemingly ready to cover the windshield as soon as it was clear. She was halfway to Caleb's house before waking from some sort of stupor. When she knocked on the front door as a warning and turned the knob to walk in, she found it locked. The front door was never locked. She knocked again, and Alexander met her on the front steps.
"Hey," he said, his voice low. "Caleb's actually sick right now. He's asleep, and I think it'd be better to just let him be for a while."
Danielle didn't say anything for a moment. "O—okay. Will you tell him I came by?"
"For sure! Sorry you drove all the way out," he gave her a quick side-hug and closed the door.
She went back to her car worrying at her lip. Caleb had been completely fine earlier. Now he was suddenly sick? Had she done something wrong?
Driving back home, it struck her. Caleb was a time traveler. Danielle barked out a laugh. She'd been so focused on seeing Caleb she hadn't actually thought of the implications of her best friend being a time traveler. How was she supposed to react to it? Was she allowed to ask Caleb to take her a bunch of places? Obviously he would, if he was willing to tell her in the first place, right?
At home she finished her homework in an hour. She ate dinner, watched the Bachelorettewith her parents, and went to bed early, hoping to catch Caleb at some point after school the next day, since he hadn't been responding to any of her messages.
+++
Since the incident, Caleb's dreams tended to start in this manner. Always, Caleb was met with the gentle, lulling blackness of sleep. Eventually, a tiny pinprick of light, like a train at the end of a tunnel, would bloom, growing and consuming until it was blinding. On the other side of that beam, a destination would rush to meet him until he fell into it, and Caleb would wake in a place he couldn't recognize.
Tonight, Caleb's dreams pulled him somewhere familiar, though it wasn't at all exciting. As if falling from somewhere above, Caleb awoke in front of Rhea James, who was seated at her desk, hair unbound and flowing over shoulders. She seemed to be deep in thought and so didn't notice Caleb until he coughed.
"Caleb!" she said, gripping the egde of her desk in obvious fright. "What are you—how—" she stopped. Collecting herself, Rhea James leaned back in her chair, once more calm.
"What am I doing here?" Caleb asked.
"I could ask you the very same thing." Rhea arranged her features into a winning smile, but Caleb knew the hidden confusion in her eyes; he was too used to it in himself.
"I'm dreaming," he replied. "Well, when I dream I wake up in places I shouldn't be."
"That would explain your lack of clothing."
Caleb looked down. He wasn't wearing a shirt. Cheeks burning, Caleb covered himself with his arms.
"Why does this happen?" he gestured to his half-naked body and quickly returned his arm.
"It's a side effect of Ringlock, though an unusual one." She leaned closer to Caleb, and he noticed her lack of wrinkles. She was still wearing her own ring, and looked as if she couldn't be any older than thirty.
"You mean it's a side effect of the Void leeching off me," Caleb replied. He'd been thinking about this recently. Trying to understand why he got Ringlock after being in the Void.
Rhea shrugged. "More or less," she replied. "How are things with Danielle?"
"They're good," Caleb nodded, "Yeah, they're great. She's great." He said these words quickly. He was fully aware Rhea had deflected his statement, which meant he had hit a goldmine he needed to dig into a little.
"You like her?" she asked, raising her eyebrows to him.
He parried with a deflection of his own. He wasn't about to blush again in front of the Queen of Time. "What does Danielle have to do with the Void?"
Rhea lifted her eyebrows. "I'm not saying she doesn't, but what makes you think she has anything to do with it at all?"
"Besides the fact that you want me to essentially betray her into your hands? The moment I touched her at the party, we went straight into the Void. I wasn't leading us, and she isn't a Timewalker."
Rhea hummed a quiet noise in the back of her throat. "Astute observation, but based on happenstance."
"When I Hopped earlier today with her, I saw the Void again. The cave I saw with her, the one from the Dream Toxin."
How the ram-rod posture of Rhea James straightened even further, Caleb didn't know.
Her brown eyes filled with sudden interest. "Did you see anything different this time?"
He shook his head. "No, I just saw the cave." Biting his lip, he went on, "Why do you want Danielle?"
Rhea leaned forward and used her fingertips to hold her chin up. "Despite what you think, I'm not a bad person." She held up her hand before Caleb could speak. "I know, a villain always says that. I'm not a villain, I promise. If Danielle is connected to the Void, as I know she is, and you're the one to close the Void for good, it is important for you two to know each other. To work together. Her compliance is incredibly important.
"I won't just kidnap someone, as much as you might think that is the case. I am being patient. The most important things in life don't require hasty fixes. They are imperatively slow burning."
Caleb opened his mouth to speak again, but Rhea stopped him again.
"Danielle is not the key to closing the Void. She's part of the equation, but I don't know all of the factors yet."
"Why is it so important for the Void to be closed?" Caleb asked. Goosebumps slid up his arms from the steady flow of a vent on the ceiling.
"I'm at fault for it even rupturing in the first place," Rhea said. "I need the Void to close to rectify the mistakes that I made. The goal has always been to close the Void. To get rid of Void sickness."
"The Void has to open completely for it to be closed," Caleb said. His teeth wanted to chatter, but he held them fast.
"We all lose things to the Void. Hairpins, wallets. I lost someone, and I've wanted them back since before you were a toddler." She leaned back in her office chair, and the early evening light played against her beautiful skin.
"But you don't know what will come out of there," Caleb replied. "What if the stuff that goes in is supposed to stay there?"
Rhea stood and crossed her desk to sit very near Caleb. "It's not. The person I lost was never supposed to be in the Void, and he never came back."
"Who was it?" Caleb asked, hoping she might be upfront and say it had been Carter. He wanted her to confirm it. Felt if she did confirm it, he could tell Alexander his brother was, in fact, alive.
Rhea smiled. "That secret remains with me," she said.
Caleb shivered. "If Danielle is part of the equation, what other possible variable could there be?"
"It's a who," she said. "A child of two Timewalkers. You don't need to worry about that portion. You only have your part to play. But please, bring Danielle to me by the end of your month."
Caleb's blood had run cold. Was she talking about Alexander's daughter? Was she alive? "You don't think there will be consequences when you open the Void?"
"There are things in life that can't be stopped. We have to make the choice between what is right, and what is best." She reached out to Caleb and tapped him on the forehead.
Caleb flinched back, but in that instant he awoke in his bed, the ring searing into his flesh in the same way it had the first night. His mind felt soupy and fogged, as if he had actually been dreaming. He wondered vaguely if any of this was happening at all. Perhaps he was even in another dream—a nightmare where pain could be felt.
But no, this was different. This was his room, the one he awoke to after every ring-led midnight excursion. His hand was on his chest, and the sweltering pain was riding deep into the skin above his solar plexus. The surging ache disappeared, left with only the dull throb and itchiness of a fresh burn. He hadn't cried out. Somehow he'd been able to hold back.
The sun wasn't up yet, and it couldn't be later than three in the morning, and Caleb stumbled as he ran downstairs. The the pain in his hand and chest intensified. The skin was bright and puffy in the wan light of the kitchen. Caleb filled a cup with water and ice and shoved his hand down into it, liquid splashing over his shorts. Blissful relief flooded Caleb.
With his hand placed in the cup of water, he padded over to Alexander's room. He hadn't been inside when his mentor was sleeping before, and something about it felt weird and creepy to him. But he pushed those thoughts away and woke the quietly snoring man up. "Alexander," he pushed on his shoulder.
Immediately Alexander was out of bed. He smacked the glass of water out of Caleb's hand, and it careened across the room where it shattered against the wall.
"What's wrong?" Alexander's voice slurred with tiredness.
"Get up. We need to talk."
A minute later, the two were sitting on Alexander's bed, lights on, shattered glass of water forgotten. Caleb showed Alexander his hand. "I had another dream. I was in Rhea's office..."
"You can't have Hopped there. The rings are programmed to stay locked out."
Caleb shrugged. "It doesn't matter how I got there. Just that I was there."
"What did she say?" Alexander rubbed sleep from his eyes.
"She told me that she needs a child of two Timewalkers and Danielle to open the Void."
Alexander stiffened. "She told you that?"
"Yeah," Caleb said. "Somehow Danielle is the reason she and I got shoved into the Void. Apparently the Void is the reason I have Ringlock." His hand was throbbing now, and so was the mark on his chest.
"You became friends with Danielle because she told you to, didn't you?"
"How did you know?" Caleb bit his lip.
Alexander smirked. "'What if Rhea James allowed it?'" He mimicked Caleb from the other day. "I've wondered if that's what happened, since you were so adamant about becoming friends with her. She's just a girl who's pretty, I thought at first. Then I started to wonder if maybe Rhea had an ulterior motive."
"I sort of told Danielle about all of this too..." Caleb said.
"Caleb!" Alexander shot from the bed.
"She told me to..." Caleb said. "I had to."
"You're not even sixteen," Alexander said. "She wouldn't hurt you. She's not a monster. You just tell her no."
"She took your daughter," Caleb replied. He was still sitting on the bed, and his hand still ached with pain. Alexander rifled through a drawer in the bathroom and tossed him tube of Aloe Vera. Even in his anger Alexander was still looking out for Caleb. This made him feel guiltier.
Alexander sat in front of Caleb, placed his hands on his shoulders. "Look me in the eyes when I tell you this."
Caleb did. The stormy gray of his irises pulled him in.
"Since Danielle already knows, we're going to be very upfront with what it entails. We're going to tell her she might have a connection to the Void. And when Danielle is faced with the choice, as I'm sure she will be, we'll give her the chance to say no."
"I can work with that..."
"But I forbid you from Hopping with Danielle alone. You're not allowed to take her anywhere else unless I'm present."
Caleb's expression must have been mutinous, because he felt heat rise to in his cheeks. "You're forbidding me from doing it? Rhea told me I ought to." Caleb really wished he had a shirt on at that moment. He felt maybe he might have more of an argument if he were properly dressed.
"And she seems like the best person to take advice from?" Alexander groaned, rubbed his temples.
"I mean... probably not."
"Why did you lie to me?" Alexander was suddenly very serious and appraising Caleb deeply.
It wasn't a question Caleb was meant to answer, but he did anyways, and he was unsure where the hint of hostility had come from. "You know why I didn't say anything?" he stood up to be on the same level as his mentor, even if he was a foot shorter. "Because for the first time in my life I have a friend who cares about me, and likes me, and enjoys me. Danielle is the best friend I've ever had, and it's evident."
Alexander whirled on Caleb. "And what am I?"
"What do you mean, what am I?" Caleb asked, his own voice raising. "You're not my best friend. You're like my dad. That's two different things. You don't think that means something?"
"I'm not your dad," Alexander replied, softer. "I'm your mentor. I'm teaching you to Time Hop."
"Oh yeah, because I haveparents. I have parents waiting for me back in my time, who didn't just walk out one day and never looked back." Caleb wasn't sure what they were arguing about now, but his eyes prickled with angry tears. "You know why I woke you up tonight? Because I knew I could."
Alexander looked blindsided.
"I don't even remember them. But you're already better than them. Because you wouldn't just walk away."
Alexander pulled Caleb into his arms, and Caleb broke down. He didn't want to. Didn't mean to, but his mentor's hug was too much. He felt stress fall off him as the calm heartbeat of his mentor pulsed against his ear. They stayed there for a while, until Caleb pulled himself together.
"I'm going back to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."
Alexander let him go. "See you tomorrow."
+++
Caleb was lying in bed twenty minutes later unable to sleep. He had gotten so good at keeping his parents out of his mind. Now they floated in the forefront, stabbing him with their betrayal.
Well after three in the morning, Danielle shouldn't have been away, but he had a steady stream of message from the last twelve hours. They were all questions; he could tell without having to read past the most recent. He sent on message in return:
I'll answer every question you have. GO TO BED.
He threw his phone onto the dresser and it bounced, skid, and slid onto the floor. He grabbed it, hoping it hadn't broken. When he saw everything was okay, he sighed. Then looked around his room with the realization he was acting idiotically, on his hands and knees, staring at his phone. To make a point--if only for the nonexistent audience in the room--he left the phone on the ground and climbed into bed.