Time Lifts the Light

"You said I was in your room?" D.B. asked me.
I nodded.

D.B. pulled out a black knitted hat and seemed to debate whether or not he wanted to put it on. He fiddled with one of the ear-flaps.

"What did I do in your room?" He raised a sneaky eyebrow and crammed the hat on his head.
"You..." I started, but blushed.
"Really?" he cried, grinning evilly and immediately understanding.
"No!" I protested. "I... You tried, but I hit you."

He made a funny face. It was something in between a smile and a grimace.

There was something I wasn't grasping here, just below the surface. I could tell that D.B. didn't want to discuss it, whatever it was. But I had absorbed enough to know that it was mysterious and secret and that somehow, I was involved.

He was staring intently at the twin pocket watches, following the slow click of the second hand with his eyes. He had a small smile playing on his lips, but his eyes betrayed him with an enigmatic expression.

Time.

It had to do with time.

"D-Daniel?"
"D.B.," he corrected. "What is it?"
I took a steadying breath. "How old are you?"

There was a tense moment when D.B.'s fingers flew to the scar in his right eyebrow... But then he just threw back his head and laughed. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and his entire chest heaved.

"I'm seventeen!" he finally gasped. "I may be wandering through time, but time doesn't wander through me."

He had taken my serious question as a joke. I reddened and had to restrain myself from mumbling out an awkward apology. When I looked up, D.B. was staring at me and biting his bottom lip thoughtfully. He seemed to be fighting with himself.

"Hey, if I tell you something, Indigo..."

My face sunk into a scowl. He'd been making fun of me when he'd called me "India" and "Iris" before.

"If I tell you something really, really, important... Do you promise not to-"

BBRRIIIIING

The breezeway instantly filled with students. A girl screeched as a boy pulled up the back of her plaid skirt. Somebody threw a crumpled piece of paper through the air that narrowly missed D.B.'s left ear and a group of girls pushed past me, making me stumble back a step. I got caught up in the tide of people and was swept backwards.

I craned my neck and resisted the urge to call out to D.B. Two large boys with peroxide-lightened hair were picking at his hat and pushing his shoulder lazily. They were built like refrigerators, with thick necks and broad shoulders. D.B. scowled, and he angrily shouted something at one of them, but his voice was drowned in the crowd.

I rushed to my locker to get my lunch. Maybe, if I found D.B. in the lunchroom, he would tell me what was going on. But, once I got there, he was nowhere to be found.

Confusion, anxiety, and stress replaced the hunger pangs in my stomach. I tossed my lunch without even opening it. I waltzed outsize, still keeping an eye out for -- there it was! That voice!

I whorled around and saw the three of them - D.B., Mikey, and Kim - sitting on the hood of a car coated in peeling red paint. I instantly recognized it. It was the same car that D.B. was painting in Art. I remembered the photograph clearly -- Mikey and Kim standing on the roof, dressed in formal wear, laughing. I suspected D.B. didn't really need the photo for reference, but he kept it out because he liked looking at it.

I instantly flushed because, oops, I wasn't supposed to remember every minute detail of D.B.'s life. And because, oops, I was kind of maybe super duper eavesdropping on their conversation right now.

The cafeteria was built with it's own parking lot so that students could have easy access to their cars when they wanted to go off campus for lunch. The wind carried D.B.'s voice from his car, parked near the front.

"And then Gus and Travis appear out of nowhere and start making fun of my hat and shit, the usual. And when I looked back up, she was gone."
"You idiot!" Kim cried. "She's probably telling everyone that you're some kind of freak!"
"Like they don't already know that?"
"Why didn't you go after her, dipshit?" Mikey demanded, his voice straining with stress.

"I was going to! I couldn't get Gus and Travis off my back!"

I shuffled closer, ducking behind a large SUV.

"I tried to be polite, but then Gus starts knuckling me in the side, so I told him to go shave his ass."

Mikey let out a bark of wild, uncontrolled laughter. Kim leaned her head on her boyfriend's shoulder. Mikey slipped an arm around her waist.

"And after that he gets really angry. And then Travis starts knuckling me in the side. And that wouldn't have been so bad, but he had his class ring on and -- Look!"

I peeked out from behind the SUV and saw D.B. lift up his shirt. A round, dime-sized wound on the right side of his ribcage was oozing blood. It looked slick and wet in the sun. Kim gasped and Mikey winced, looking away and pretending like he didn't feel queasy.

D.B. put his shirt back down.

"And I still haven't told her what's going on," he groaned.
"She probably thinks you're crazy, man."
"Thanks, Mike. Your words comfort me in ways I can't explain."

I decided that it was time to make my entrance. I slipped out from behind the SUV and started to weave my way through the smaller cars, trying to look inconspicuous and unaware.

"Hey, turn around, D.B.!" Kim crooned. "Speak of the devil!"

He turned to see what she was talking about and instantly saw me.

"Indigo!" he cried. "Uh... wait... wait, I..."

I immediately realized how stupid it was to come over here. I reddened dramatically and shrunk under Kim's cool gaze. Mikey was unabashedly staring at my chest, and I still didn't know what to say. Why had I even approached them in the first place? I should have tried to speak to D.B. when I'd gotten him alone again.

"I think we need to talk, D.B.," I said in a voice that was surprisingly meek.
"I think we need to talk, D.B.," Mikey mocked in a squeaky voice. Kim rolled her eyes and took a gigantic bite out of an apple.

"Shut up, guys," D.B. muttered and rubbed the back of his neck. When he lifted his arm, I could see the spot of red on the side of his shirt where the ring-inflicted wound had bled and soaked through the fabric.

He hastily grabbed my waist and led me around the cafeteria, to the back of the building where the air conditioning systems clanged and made evil hissing noises. His forehead was glistening with sweat, and he pulled his hair back with his hands, making a frustrated noise as if he wished it were long enough to pull into a ponytail.

D.B. finally turned around to face me and gave me a hard stare.

"Don't even try to tell me you're not human!" I blurted before he could even open his mouth. "I read somewhere that aliens would have to have sub-zero body temperatures to survive anywhere other than Earth, and you're sweating so you obviously-"
"I'm human."
"You're from the future!"
He sighed. "No. But close."

I hadn't, in fact, read that aliens were cold-blooded. But it seemed like it would make sense.

"I'm from here," he insisted. "I'm in the year I'm supposed to be in. The minute, the sec -- well, I'm in the right minute. I think."
"But...?"

A single bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and disappeared into the eyebrow with the scar in it. He took out the frozen watch and put it in my hands.

"But... Even though I'm not from the future, this watch is. It's from four months into the future."

My brain told me to pull a Frodo Baggins and destroy it. I held powers that I'm sure I could never comprehend. But my heart ached for it. I suddenly realized that I had been feeling slightly twitchy ever since D.B. had taken it away. Now that it was in my hands again, I felt calm.

His dark brown eyes found mine.

"Do you understand what I'm trying to say to you, Indigo?"
"You travel time," I breathed, squeezing the watch in my fingers. "You travel time."
"In four months, I'll accidentally travel backwards in time," he said quietly. "I can usually control where and when I want to travel, but I come unstuck sometimes while I'm sleeping."

Unstuck. Unstuck in time. I felt like I was going to faint. I felt like I was buzzing. There were so many answers I needed that my throat ached. It was all I could do not to let loose the bubble of insane laughter that I was cradling in my stomach.

"In four months, I will come unstuck and accidentally travel into your room. I'll travel back in time, so you won't know who I am. You will hit me and I will drop my pocket watch."
I made a noise that was meant to show him I understood what he was telling me, but it came out like a garbled squeak.
"And, the next day, I will come to school with a black eye or a bloody nose-"
"Split lip," I told him quietly.
He smiled wanly. "I'll come to school with a split lip and my pocket watch will be gone."

I opened the watch and saw the date again. 12-04-09.

"And on December 4th," I whispered. "The watch will start ticking again."

"That's right," D.B. nodded. "So... You keep it until then, okay?"
"Really?" I asked, a little too eagerly.
"Yeah, I'm going to be missing it on December 5th. I hate being without it, you know? It's sort of comforting. So... you'll have to give it back to me then. Okay?"

The bell rang in the distance.

"I have to go," D.B. said. "I know you're smart enough not to say anything to anyone about this, so I don't have to tell you."
"I know."
"Not even your parents."
"I know."

He heaved a sigh and tugged his black ear-flap hat on his head. His slender forearms were dusted with golden hair that looked yellow in the sun.

"I'll talk to you in History, okay?" he promised awkwardly.
I nodded.

He laughed loudly, breaking the tension.

"That's the first time I've had to tell anyone that secret since I told Kim and Mikey five years ago!" he cried. "God, I was nervous."

I shot him a small smile and he bowed low and graceful.

"Good morrow, lady," he said with a half-smile and a shake of his head, as if he believed he was smarter than the rest of the world.

It occurred to me that he wasn't being cocky; that he probably actually knew 16th century commonalities from personal experience. And, for a second, I believed he was smarter than everyone else too.

By the time I came down from where his half-smile had pulled me, which was - as best as I could guess - somewhere above infinity, he had already begun to walk away. He took some silver-wrapped chocolates from his pocket and started opening them, leaving a tinfoil trail behind him.