Rewrite Redemption (50 page)

I was making it all into some stupid fairytale. I mean, we never even kissed. In my inexperienced mind, we were half way to happily ever after. Probably, everything I thought was happening between us was just my imagination because I was so new to all the Editor stuff. I was embarrassed that I’d slammed the car door that morning and walked off in a huff as if he’d done something wrong. I needed to shove my unrequited love-saga out of the way before I really humiliated myself. I needed to get a hold on things.

Besides, even though I was losing Constantine, we were getting Ipod back. I should be happy. I
was
happy about that, but the happy was just squashed by the sad. I couldn’t help it. My eyes filled with tears.

“It’s going to work out.” Lex soothed me as if I was five and had skinned my knee or lost my teddy bear.

“Yeah, I know,” I sniffed. I elbowed her and gave her the “shut up” look. I didn’t want him to see me crying. I quickly wiped my face on my sleeve. I hopped out of the car the minute we reached my house and hurried to the back yard, not looking back. I knew my eyes were red again. Probably my whole face was puffy. If I could just get a quick minute with my tree, I could stabilize, fix my face a little, and pretend that everything was okay. I didn’t want his last picture of me to be like that. I scrambled up the tree house ladder. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I walked up to the trunk, pulled some energy, and made myself better. Kinda better. Better on the outside.

Inside my chest, my heart was busy ripping itself to shreds.

Lex walked in the door and sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “So let’s rock!” she chirped. “What’s the plan?”

She was obviously psyched about the jump. I’d been jumping back all my life. It was new for her. I couldn’t blame her for being excited. I pulled away from the trunk and smoothed down my skirt, trying to appear normal.

Constantine came through the door and looked over at me with a worried expression. “You okay to do this?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. I wanted Ipod back as much as Lex did. I was ready.

“Did you map it out?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Okay, as a last resort, you know how to get home. So if anything goes wrong…” He left it hanging.

“No problem,” I said. The traveling itself didn’t scare me at all once he showed me how to control it. Trees, I connected with easily. It was the
guy
thing I really sucked at.

“You better launch sitting down,” he said. “Lex will pass out. You don’t want her to hit her head. I showed you how to stay conscious, remember?”

I nodded again. “I got it,” I said softly, “really.”

His eyes looked tired and he seemed distracted. He kept running his hands through his hair. I noticed, for the first time, that his shirt was buttoned wrong. He was a mess. I wanted to just get Ipod back and then make Con’s nightmare go away. That was worth something. And I realized that having him be okay was more important than having him for myself.

I fumbled with my key—rubbing it for luck—and walked over to the tree. We got into position, me leaning back against the trunk with Lex in front of me. “Slump down a little and lay your head against my shoulder,” I said. “I don’t want your head to whack me in the face when you pass out.”

She leaned back. “Ready,” she said. “Let’s, as Ipod would say, defy physics as we know it.” 

“Good luck,” Constantine said from across the room.

I nodded with my eyes closed. I just wanted to get through it. I concentrated on the location and time—the tree house, the day before the Chihuahua had confronted the Hammer. I harmonized my vibrations with the exact spot on the ring. My “GPS” kicked into gear. I could feel it rumbling deep inside me. There was a minute or so of bonding with the tree. It seemed like an hour. I did it with my eyes closed so I didn’t have to look at Constantine.

Finally, we jumped. The trip was smooth. I held on to consciousness, but Lex was limp in my arms. It only lasted twenty, maybe thirty seconds—we weren’t going back very far—but while it lasted, it was insane. Incredible colors, flavors, sounds, sensations…like being bathed in sensory art. If I could package it and sell it at school, I’d retire by the time I was a senior. It would put all the local drug dealers out of business. Too bad, I was too sad to really enjoy it that time. I’d have to try to hold Lex conscious for the trip back. She’d flip.

When we arrived at the tree house, I laid Lex gently down on the floor and stuck a pillow under her head. The past tree house looked the same as when we left…well, except for the lack of Constantine. I was going to have to get used to the lack of Constantine.

I made sandwiches while I was waiting for Lex to wake up. I hoped that Constantine was making use of our refrigerator. Lex had told him to. I wondered if he was touching the same loaf of bread I was. I made sure to leave him plenty of turkey. By the time Lex came to, I was half way through my sandwich.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Did it work?”

I nodded and handed her a sandwich. “Eat.”

“So we’re eating food in the past?”

“Yeah.”

“Weird. I wonder if it disappears from our stomachs when we travel back.”

“No clue,” I answered. Trust Lex to think of something like that.

“Chips?” she asked. I went back to the cupboard. “Water, too.”

I brought both back. We finished our lunch with Lex talking about how cool it was to travel back in time. I knew she was trying to distract me. I tried to throw myself into the game, let her have fun. We left our plates in the sink. She wanted to see if they’d be there when we got back to our time.

“Ready?” I asked.

“I am
so
ready for this!” 

We walked west to Broadway and caught a bus to her mom’s office building. The Chihuahua was prepping for a trial and would be there all day. She didn’t do lunch. It was strange knowing where people would be, like hindsight ahead of time. I had to admit it was cool.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked as we dropped into seats near the back of the bus.

“Blackmail, basically.”

“You’re going to blackmail your own mother?” 

She snorted. “As if!
Birth
mother. Pat hasn’t been my mother since she popped me out and tossed me to the nanny.”

“Well, true…I guess.” I knew it was true.

“You
guess
? Hello…where have you been the last ten years? Has she ever attended even one school function?” She began counting off on her fingers like Ipod was always doing.

“Well, no—”

“Who does my parent/teacher conferences?”

“Arthur.”

“Who do I spend Christmas with?”

“Me, Sam, and Ipod.” The Chihuahua always went skiing.

“Who’s taken care of me when I’ve been sick?”

I had to think a minute on that one. “I can’t remember you ever being sick,” I said, finally.

“Exactly! Ever remember Ipod being sick or you being sick yourself?”

“Well, no, now that you mention it,” I said, shaking my head.

“That’s cause we’ve never been sick! How amazing is that? We just never noticed because you don’t notice things that aren’t there. Ever thought about why that is, huh?”

“My tree?”

“It has to be! And you,” she said, poking me in the chest. “You keep us all healthy, better than any mom could do.”

“I guess.” She was right. We’d never been sick.

“Who took me to the hospital when I broke my leg?”

“Sam,” I answered, obediently.

“Ding! When he called the Chihuahua, Arthur faxed permission and insurance info from the office. She didn’t even show up at the emergency room. And who slept the next two nights with their arms around me, making me better? And on whose sofa?”

“That would be me and my sofa.”

“Right. More points for Sam and A.J. And what did Sam spend that afternoon and all the next day doing?”

“Umm, don’t remember…long time ago. What?”

An old woman across from us seemed riveted with our conversation. Lex didn’t even notice. She wouldn’t have cared anyway. She was on a rant. “He built the bridge from the tree house porch to the house, so I didn’t have to climb the ladder.”

“Oh, right, right, right. I forgot that’s why he did it. Well, point for Sam.”

“Yeah, point loss for Pat.” She glared at the old woman who was openly staring at us.

“She does pay our grocery bill—”

“Damn straight. Insurance policy for possible neglect charges—lawyer, remember? She needs a paper trail. And the money…you know
I’m
the reason she has the big bucks.”

 I did. I knew a lot of stuff…like the details of the Lancaster/Archer war. I knew about the bet between Lex’s dad and the Chihuahua’s father, Rick Lancaster. This bet was at the core of Lex’s animosity towards her mom. She wasn’t all that happy with her father about it either.

Lancaster’s legal firm, Lancaster/ Basset, is one of Boulder’s highest priced law firms. For almost a decade, Alexander Archer (Lex’s dad) was Lancaster’s archrival. For years, they competed for clients and argued opposite sides of high profile cases. They trashed each other in the news. So who does the Chihuahua date right after she gets out of law school and joins her father’s firm?

Ding
. If you said, “Who is Alexander Archer,” you’d win the prize.

That really pissed Lancaster off.

It pissed him off even more when they got married six months later. Archer was loaded. His dad had invented some high-tech, data-storage device in the nineties—we’re talking big bucks. The Chihuahua loves money and she went after Archer with everything she had. But she loves a good fight too. She just couldn’t help herself. She got off on pitting her dad and her husband against each other, which she did over and over, until it all blew up into the divorce from hell. It was legendary.

The prenup said that if they split up, the Chihuahua didn’t kick in to the really big Archer money until they’d been married five years. It was obvious by the first two that she’d never reach that five-year mark. The time was reduced to three years if she had a child. So the Chihuahua had Lex and then she dumped Archer. It was a financial decision, through and through.

Lancaster represented his daughter in the divorce against Archer. The old guy was ruthless, tried every trick in the book to take everything Archer owned in spite of the prenup. During deposition, Archer claimed the Chihuahua had gotten pregnant just for the money, that she didn’t deserve any of it. That pissed Lancaster off—his archrival claiming something so demeaning of his little girl. The two of them got up in each other’s faces one day outside the courtroom, arguing about it. There’s video of it on YouTube. Archer swore what he said was true. He bet Lancaster that she’d admit it if he threw a Mercedes into the settlement for her admission.

Archer won the bet.

Lex played Angry Birds on her phone. I knew she was thinking about the bet. She confirmed that, with the next thing she said as she knocked a pig into Angry Bird hell. “Think I haven’t read transcripts of the divorce? Please, I know all my mom’s passwords. I’ve done due diligence.”

“I know.”

“My dad had her number,” she said, “not that
he’s
any prize.”

“I know.”

“He wanted it in black and white,” Lex continued, “and he got it, in the public record, no less.”

“I know.”

“Which meant I had to find it and know about it.
That’s
my legacy.”

“Well, no one forced you to break into your mom’s office and hack her computer. But yeah, you know about it, which sucks.”

“I didn’t break in. I had a key. The bet didn’t even embarrass her. She’s not my mother!” 

“Better than nothing—”

“No way, Jose’. At least you had your mom until you were nine. Simone adored you. She was good to me. I loved her too. It was devastating when she died. She
wanted
you. You have a story about it in freaking Life Magazine. You weren’t a down payment on a trust fund.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, softly.

“And you have Sam,” she added.

“He’s barely there,” I said, leaning my head back against the seat.

“Sam has a broken heart. Remember, before Simone died he was fun and used to smile and play happy music on the piano? I do. I remember those days. I hold on to those days. We take care of
him
now. That’s what family does. Family isn’t just blood. Sometimes you have to make your own. Family is who’s there for you. I learned that by Shrink Two. I know who there is for me…you, Ipod and Sam.
That’s
my family.”

She was right on all counts. I changed the subject, before the old woman across from us called social services or something. “You ready for this?” I asked her.

She nodded, emphatically. “I am soooo ready for this. I’m going to beat the Chihuahua at her own evil game. She will never squash me again. This time,
I
win.”

The gigantic wooden doors at the entrance to Lancaster/Basset probably weighed a ton apiece. We walked right past the fashion-model receptionist, who was on the phone and unable to stop us. Suits were everywhere, walking and talking on the phone, standing, and texting, hunched over laptops on big desks in huge offices. No one even noticed us.