Chapter 4: Practice
Tim Long tried to time leap back to 7:03 again. It didn’t work. He tried again and again. Frustrated, Tim thrashed on the bed, pulling at the soft bedspread until it twisted around him like a nest.
Tim lay in bed and counted the dots in the ceiling tiles. He reached 200 before he realized what he was doing. He forced himself to stop, closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
Keep calm and breathe.
Do I have to tune in to some special brain frequency?
Tim disentangled himself from the bedding and rolled out of the bed. He spent ten minutes making his bed, tugging and pulling until it looked perfect. Not a wrinkle in the bedspread. Mom would be proud. He stared at it. Small satisfaction.
The headache pounded for Tim’s attention. He retrieved an aspirin bottle from the bathroom medicine cabinet, hidden behind the mirror. Although many bottles and tubes lined his cabinet, the aspirin bottle was easy to find since everything was laid out alphabetically. Antiseptic…Aspirin. Second bottle.
He stared into the mirror. His tussled mess of blond hair pointed in every direction. He needed a shave. Am I good looking? Girls like blond-haired, blue-eyed guys, don’t they? Tim, it’s not your looks that keeps girls away.
Tim sighed and returned to his bedroom with the bottle and a glass of water. He stood at the end of his bed and checked the time. 7:29. He stared until 29 changed to 30. He tried to lock that image into his mind.
7:30. 7:30.
Tim moved to the side of his neat bed and eased himself down to avoid wrinkling the bedspread. He swallowed two aspirin and set the bottle and glass on the edge of the headboard without much attention. When he shifted position, the plastic bottle hit the floor and bounced with a sharp sound as the cap popped off and pills flew across the room.
Great.
Tim thought about his shopping list and mentally added aspirin. He was very skilled at remembering things: lists, dates, or random facts. He could create a mental shopping list of up to thirty items without having to write them down. He just imagined writing the words onto a paper.
The scattered pills were a mental distraction. In about thirty seconds, he knew, the urge would become too great and he’d have to clean it up, but for the moment, he just closed his eyes and flopped back on his bed. He rubbed his palms on the soft bedspread.
Oh, my aching head. Think about something else.
He focused on 7:30. 7-3-0.
The pain of his headache wound up like the pitch of a jet engine. He could almost hear the ear-piercing whine.
Please stop. 7. 3. 0.
It seemed as if all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. He gasped for air.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tim looked around his clean bedroom. He was standing at the end of his neat bed, staring at the red neon numbers of his alarm clock.
7:30!
Tim glanced at the white tiled floor. No scattered aspirin. Of course not. He was holding the aspirin bottle!
If it wasn’t for the splitting headache, he’d have jumped up and down on his bed.
Then he wondered how he got to the to end of the bed. Tim didn’t remember getting up and standing there. He hadn’t done it, but there he was: right where he had been at 7:30.
A thought took form in his head. It exploded in size and mass until he felt its presence, like a brick.
He had moved in time—and space! He had moved to where he had been at 7:30.
He wasn’t just changing neon numbers, he was traversing time back to the beginning of an event. He was time traveling!