She had shoulder-length coal-black hair that was frizzy and looked like a bit of a rat’s nest. Only her family and a few close friends knew her hair style was intentional. She liked it that way, and she didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought.
Everything in her life was that way. She felt driven and focused, and nobody could tell her to do something in a way that she didn’t want to. She was of the mind that if somebody didn’t like her as she was, well, that was their loss.
Erika was slim and healthy, and she radiated a wide and infectious smile at all times. Most of the boys in town thought she was beautiful, although they rarely said that out loud.
She herself didn’t care about that. She had bigger things on her mind. That had been true since she was six years old and she found her real history buried deep in her soul. Since then, she’d kept her secrets, but she’d also worked toward fulfilling her destiny.
The Sabos were one of only six black families in Aynsville, but she rarely thought about that or bothered to worry about being different. She was different in too many other ways. Her skin color was a fact about her, the same way her black hair was a fact and the fact that she was five-foot-one. Nobody cared about her hair color or height, and she could never figure out why anybody would care how much pigment her skin happened to carry.
It had only been an issue once.
Erika had a younger brother, Sam, who was now twelve years old. He was quiet and afraid of pretty much everything in his world. That was a bad set of characteristics when the bullies showed up.
Sam’s anxiety and fear was born from his shyness. As he grew older, the shyness mutated into more and more extreme anxieties, almost a pathological fear of conflict of any kind. Erika and her parents were always careful to be calm and loving to him. Home was the only place Sam felt safe.
It was three years earlier, when Sam was nine years old, that he was walking home from school, head down, as if he could ostrich himself enough that nobody else would see him. He walked alone, as always, and the farther he hurried from school and the closer he came to home, the better he felt.
Bad timing fell on him, because Peter Smythe and Jason Chartz were walking behind him, and they were already pissed. They were fifteen, Erika’s age, although she barely knew them. They’d been sent to the principal’s office mid-afternoon for “accidentally” spilling glue in Cindy Jones’s hair. They now owed writing a thousand-word essay each, explaining how their behaviour was wrong. So, they were in shitty moods, and Sam happened to be their first target. They ran to catch up with him, and Sam’s eyes grew wide with fear. This was the worst of all his nightmares.
“Well, lookit the little nigger boy!” said Peter. “What are you afraid of, little nigger?”
To Sam, Peter and Jason looked like giants. He was short for his age, like Erika and their parents, while the two older boys were six years older and easily double his weight.
Sam couldn’t find a way to say a single word or to try to run away. He lowered his head further and closed his eyes, as if he were wishing the whole situation away.
“Hey, you dumb runt!” said Jason. “We’re talking to you. Can’t your dirty little ears hear us?”
That’s when Erika caught up with them.
Jason noticed her running over and nodded toward Peter, catching his eye. The two boys quickly lost interest in Sam. There was a new game in town.
Peter grinned. “Well, if it isn’t another dirty little nigger come to play.”
Erika stopped about five feet from the two bullies.
“Sam, come with me,” she said. She tried to ignore Peter and Jason and took a curved route around them to get to her little brother.
“Hold on, sweet cakes.”
Peter grabbed her shoulder. She turned immediately to glare at him, yanked herself free, and then pushed her arm out as if to smash him away from her.
What happened next was the subject of rumor for months. The only people who really believed it were Peter and Jason, but they were known liars, so whenever they said anything about the incident, everybody they knew would raise an eyebrow with disbelief. After all, it made no sense.
Erika pushed her arm straight out toward Peter, but she didn’t touch him. There was at least a foot of empty space between them.
From Peter’s perspective, she might have looked closer, but he knew for sure that she didn’t touch him. Jason had the clearest view, standing to one side. He knew there was a good twelve inches. That grew to twenty-four in his re-telling.
The separation didn’t help Peter. He went flying into the air, six feet above the ground, and then he crashed into the lawn beyond the sidewalk.
Everybody froze, wondering what the hell had happened. Everybody except Erika.
Peter moaned and pulled himself into a fetal position.
Erika walked over and knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he crawled slowly away from her.
“Stay away from me.”
Erika put her hand on his shoulder and whispered, “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
He continued to crawl for a few seconds but finally stopped. He looked up at her. “How did you do that?”
She shrugged and smiled at him. “Afraid everyone will know a girl could throw you? Just a bit of karate.”
“That wasn’t karate.”
“Well, some other martial art, then.”
He shook his head.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can see into your heart, Peter. You’re not a bad person. You just need to stop doing bad things.”
“You hurt my knee.”
Peter tried to stand but his leg collapsed and he cried out in pain.
“Shh…”
Erika smiled at him and put her right hand on his knee.
“Try again.”
He stood, the pain gone. He glanced over at Jason and then back to Erika.
“You’re a witch or something.” His voice no longer sounded fearful. He looked uncertain, but when she kept a smile fixed on her face, he smiled back.
“Or something,” she agreed. After a moment, she added, “Go have a good rest of the day. Sam and I won’t bother you any more.”
Peter could only nod.
“Sam, let’s go home.”
Erika took her brother’s hand and they hurried away.
Chapter 8
I woke up Thursday morning after a deep sleep. I’d had the strangest dream, a vision of myself moving back through time, changing the speed of time, and even stopping it.
“Holy shit.” I snapped my eyes open.
It was real.
I remembered the note from my grandmother and how I’d found the peaceful and tranquil place within myself, enabling me to control time.
Jewish magic.
I’d never heard of Shelljah before, and like everybody else, when that happens, I do the logical thing. I ran a Google search and got zero hits.
“Crap.”
I think this was the only time I’ve ever searched for anything at all that Google didn’t know a damned thing about.
Last night, I’d programmed Grandma’s coffee machine to start a pot brewing at 7:00 a.m. I could smell it now, so I stretched my arms, went to the bathroom to splash water on my face, and then finally poured myself a cup while I sat at the kitchen table.
Then it hit me:
I can go back in time and fix anything I want.
The thought was unbelievable, and it was followed by an equally challenging question.
What would I want to change?
The answer came to me almost immediately, but I was reluctant to actually do it. What if there were unintended consequences? I turned on the television that was sitting on a small table in the corner and flipped it to CNN. I knew they were covering the launch extensively. After all, the aliens were the biggest story in, well, forever. The Sagan was taking the first steps to figuring out the answer to a thousand mysteries.