Flutter Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Gina Linko

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Colleen Trusky

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Linko, G. J.

  Flutter / Gina Linko. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Although doctors want to treat 17-year-old Emery Land for the seizures that define her life, she runs away from the hospital in the hopes of uncovering the secret behind her “loops”—the moments during her seizures when she travels to different places and moments in time.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98636-9

  [1. Convulsions—Fiction. 2. Near-death experiences—Fiction. 3. Future life—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction. 5. Runaways—Fiction. 6. Fathers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L66288Flu 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011049637

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Zoe, Maia, and Jack

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Loop

  Chapter One

  My Boy

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Kaleidoscope

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  The Dala Horses

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  The Key

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Scared

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mom

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Labyrinth

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nine

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nan

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My Boy

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  With Me

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Home

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Loop

  It is bright. I try to shield my eyes from the sun, but my hand moves clumsily. I’m thick, awkward in the loop. Dad looks much older. What’s left of his hair is silver, his bald head covered with age spots, his eyes warm and alert, yet wrinkled at the corners.

  “We scientists don’t like to be without the answers,” he says.

  “I know,” I say, thinking of my pink notebook back home, with so much unverifiable data scribbled in each entry. In the back of my mind, I’m semi-aware of a thousand questions swirling around, begging to be asked, so many facts and hypotheses that I need to run by Dad, now that I’m finally with him again. But as usual when I’m here, serenity rules. I’m calm, in the moment. Zen.

  I take in a deep breath of the crisp spring breeze coming off the river and smile. We sit on our favorite bench in Setina Park overlooking the water and the university buildings. The stone fountain flows on the far side of the park, and a gaggle of white geese sun themselves on the nearby lawn. The skyline looks the same as it does in my home loop. I’m sure in the years between then and now, there have been changes, buildings added or demolished, changes in the landscape of downtown Ann Arbor. But I can’t pick them out. It looks the same to me.

  “Things are going to happen soon,” Dad says.

  “What things?” I ask.

  “Different things.” He considers this. “I know about the boy. Your boy. You have to help him.”

  “I do?”

  Dad nods then, and I notice the wrinkles under his chin, on his neck. The brightness of the day shadows over for a moment, as a large bird flies directly above our heads. The thwack, thwack of its wings reverberates in my eardrums. I look up and see the gray-blue heron as it lands not ten feet from us, folding its wide wings close to its body.

  Dad watches the heron too, but he continues, “You will be scared.”

  “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

  Dad just smiles.

  The heron stands in a regal pose, its long neck and beak pointed directly toward us. It’s staring right at us, I think. Like it knows something. It watches me and walks slowly forward, now only three or four feet away. The bird seems oddly close, unnatural in how it watches me. I kind of want to reach out and poke one of its black, beady eyes. I’m uneasy here in the loop. This is new, weird. Usually, my loops are pleasant, good.

  Dad ignores the heron now. “You will think you can’t do what you have to, but you can,” he says. “Maybe not anyone else, but you can, Emery.”

  I tear my eyes from the heron and gaze uncertainly at Dad. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Soon,” he says. “Just remember that you can do this.”

  I feel pride swelling in my chest then, competing with something else. Fear? Unworthiness?

  I reach my arms toward Dad, but I feel awkward and can’t lean in exactly right. My body seems rigid, my joints stiff.

  Dad hugs me. I lay my head on his shoulder for a moment. He smells different, this older Dad. He must’ve changed his aftershave. I look over Dad’s shoulder to see the heron, but it is gone, down near the shore. I see the colors then, a prism in my peripheral vision, and I know I’m going.

  For a split second, I raise my head to look at Dad, suddenly aware of this lost opportunity—Do we find the answers? Do we figure it all out? Do I get control soon?—but there isn’t time.

  “See ya,” I say.

  Dad smiles.

  I’m gone.

  One

  “The loss of oxygen, however temporary, however minimal in the grand scheme of things, is taking its toll.” Dr. Chen spoke in low tones, but she knew I was listening.

  “What was the length of this episode?” Dad asked. Present-day Dad. Distant Dad. Emotionless Dad.

  I turned toward the window then and tuned them out. This episode had been long. The loop had been long, and I knew it.

  They knew it too, I think. My body was having a harder time coming out of it. I could tell. My breath was still uneven in my chest, and I had been awake and back here for over an hour. My double vision had stopped, but still I knew that it was getting worse.

  When I was younger, when I was little, I barely noticed the physical effects of looping. It was just my brain, my thoughts, left with all these odd little questions about the other places, the other people, my other lives.

  Back then, I thought I was normal. I thought the loops were normal. Daydreams.

  But I started to put the pieces together when I was about six:

  “Her eyes flutter when she sleeps, Jonathan. We need to talk about this.” Mom’s lips were pressed together, and she had that fist at her hip, her elbow cocked out in that funny way, the way that always told me she meant business.

  “REM,” Dad q
uipped. “Particularly vivid dreams.” He didn’t look up from his newspaper.

  “Seems more than that,” Mom answered, watching me carefully as I drew with crayons at the kitchen counter. “And the stories she tells.”

  Uh-oh, I remember thinking to myself. I knew they were not dreams. Mom knew this too, I think. Part of me wanted to run and hide under the butterfly bedspread in my room, but the other part of me, the part that was on the cusp of grasping that something different, something important, was being addressed or at least circled, wanted to stay. Even then, I guess I was hungry for answers.

  “Tell him how I knew about your old doggie, Mom.”

  “Jonathan,” Mom said sternly. Dad looked up from his newspaper then.

  “Tell me, Emery,” Dad said. “What are you dreaming?”

  “He only has three legs, and he has one black spot on his eye. He likes to play in the water. On the beach.” I looked at Mom. She nodded, urging me to go on. “He goes under the water and stays for a second. You get afraid, Mom, like he’s drowning. But then he pops up.”

  It was silent for a moment while my parents traded looks, and then Dad said, “I’m sure you told her about these memories, Veronica. She’s seen the pictures.”

  Mom shook her head. “Emery, tell him about how Bailey lost his leg.”

  “Well, he got his leg caught in a squirrel trap in the woods. It had metal teeth.” I made a big chomping sound, my teeth meeting with a click.

  “I thought it was just a car accident,” Dad said.

  “So did I. That’s what they told me,” Mom said, eyeing Dad hard. “But I just asked my mother about it earlier. Emery’s right. Bailey gnawed himself out of the trap. Limped home. My parents concocted the whole story because they thought the truth was too violent.”

  “Maybe your mom told her,” Dad offered. But Mom just looked at him, shook her head.

  Dad studied me, like he was seeing me for the first time. And I knew, even at age six, that something important was going on. That I was different somehow.

  I think I scared Mom back then.

  I remembered how her eyes had narrowed at me when I had been about to tell my grandmother, Nan, about the loops. From then on, I just instinctively knew it was all a secret. That had been when I was about seven, right before Mom died, before it was just Dad and me against the world.

  Then, a few years later, I was fairly certain I had my episodes figured out. I chose my words very carefully, and I explained to Dad that I was jumping the space-time continuum. And I think I finally scared Dad too.

  I listened to the beeps on the monitors and let my eyes unfocus in the low-lit room, all the glowing numbers and blips fading into a blurry cloud of blues and greens. I bit down on what was left of my thumbnail and closed my eyes, swallowing hard. I turned back toward Dad and Dr. Chen. I took a deep breath and summoned my courage.

  “You know it’s a loop, right?” I said. “Tell me you’re considering it.”

  “Emery, of course—” Dad began, running his hand nervously through his thinning hair, his eyes avoiding mine. The gesture angered me. He was brushing me off.

  “You’re going to go bald,” I said, wanting to hurt him. Something.

  “What?”

  “In the future. Someday. I saw it.” I hated how childish I sounded.

  “Sweetheart, really—”

  “Don’t sweetheart me.” I tried to sound stern, but I was tired, and my voice was uneven, shaky.

  Dr. Chen surprised me then, pulling up a chair and sitting next to my bed. “Emery, of course we are considering it. It’s just that we have to consider all the options in front of us. It’s not that we don’t believe you.” She was younger than some of the others. And she looked at me a little more like I was a person and not just a lab chimp.

  She was the one who had brought me that article from the New England Journal of Medicine that one time, when I had mentioned the new research on homeopathic controls for epilepsy: passionflower, skullcap. At the time, I thought she had done it to show me that she was on my side, possibly believed me, and maybe she had for a moment.

  I looked at Dr. Chen now. “If you believed me, you would test my theory and quit shutting me down. I mean, what’s wrong with you people?” I locked eyes with Dr. Chen. “Help me convince him,” I said, gesturing to Dad.

  Dr. Chen’s eyes met Dad’s, and I hated the understanding that passed between them, the silent agreement that I was wrong. But worse than that was the pity. A fresh wave of exhaustion washed over me. I gave in to it, let my head sink into the pillow, and let the urgency of being understood fold in on itself inside me. It was always there, an uncomfortable weight in my chest, a bitter seed.

  Dad rose from his chair, signaling the end of our conversation. “You are our number one concern,” he said, shaking his finger at me. The same finger that had wagged at me when he had caught me painting with nail polish on my bathroom wall or smuggling green olives under the table to Pancake.

  His number one concern and a significant scientific breakthrough. I was sure Dad could already see his byline on the Harvard Medical Review abstract or the Time magazine article.

  I closed my eyes then, signaling to them that I needed to rest. But I added one more thing.

  “You were there again, Dad. Today.”

  Silence. He didn’t believe me. I knew that. I heard him whisper something to Dr. Chen. The scratching of a pencil on paper.

  I was exhausted from my loop and from having to keep up with the differing feelings that I had for my father. How could the future version of Dad be so supportive when the present-day Dad was everything but? It opened up too many questions. Was Dad destined to become that version of himself at Setina Park, or was that just one possible path? Too many big questions I had worried about for too many years. The truth was I just didn’t know.

  I glanced at the pink notebook on my bedside table. Part of me wanted to record my data before I drifted off. I usually did, almost always. I thought about the stacks of filled-up notebooks in my closet at home. Where had it all gotten me? No closer to control, no closer to understanding it, proving it, owning it. No closer to the big question. Why?

  I heaved a deep sigh and let my body relax, my eyes close. I could record my information in the notebook later. I would wait to write down my encounter with Dad, his warnings, the uneasiness.

  “You were there,” I said again to Dad stubbornly.

  I was drifting off to sleep and to whatever else, but I knew the look that had been exchanged between Dr. Chen and Dad. I had seen it many times before.

  My eyes fluttered. I saw the crisp, pale blue of the hospital room wall for a moment. It looked cold. I felt cold.

  I closed my eyes.

  I felt the exhaustion wash over me and my body relax.

  I began to seize again. In a moment, my eyes rolled back and my body stiffened. My breath came in fits and starts. Then the smell of ammonia. And I was gone, in a flash, back to the loop. Back to my other … my other me … my other places. My other times.

  My Boy

  Ammonia. I open my eyes, and I’m there—this time with the boy.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He smiles back at me. He must be nine or ten, gangly, all teeth and ears. I think briefly that I should ask his name, but it doesn’t seem important. I’m already feeling Zen.

  I blink a few times. The colors are bright, as always. It’s sunny, very sunny. Cheery. Happy. We are on Next Hill again, by the well. Clusters of clover bloom in the grass around me, and I can smell them so clearly.

  I raise my head and breathe in a big gulp of fresh air, and I feel the calming buzz of the loop wash over me. A soothing, electric sensation radiates through my core, my limbs, my head. I’m content, serene.

  The boy takes my hand then and pulls me up. I realize for the first time that I must have been sitting. His hand feels exactly real in mine, a small, tanned-from-the-sun hand grasping my own.

  The grass is knee-deep here on the hill,
and I take in the view of the farm below, the red barn, the blue-and-yellow farmhouse, the multiple outbuildings. Everything beautifully maintained. A picture postcard. I think briefly of when I first met the boy down in that red barn, where he showed me many of his treasures: the Victrola, the early windup jukebox—antiques to me, yet marvels to this young boy in this past time.

  My boy yells, “Come on!” and yanks me in the opposite direction from the barn. He takes off toward the stream at a good clip, pulling me after him, and my legs feel rubbery, heavy, less coordinated than they do at home.

  I trip. I stumble a bit and then find my rhythm. He laughs and pulls me faster. I’m slow, thick, as I always am in the loop.

  But I am here.

  We are at the stream, and he lets go of my hand and kneels down. “There!”

  I crouch down, miscalculating the incline of the stream bank, and land on my butt. I laugh and then see what it is that he’s showing me.

  “Tadpoles!” I say.

  He takes a jar from his knapsack and dips it into the stream, attempting to capture a few of the tiny fish-frogs.

  I dip my hand in the water and try to swish the little tadpoles into the jar, but my movements are awkward. I watch the boy gracefully scoop the jar out of the water, and then he’s sealing the top in a moment. He smiles at me.

  “They’ll be frogs soon,” he says.

  “But right now they’re just happy to be swimming around, aren’t they?” I say. “Look, that one is starting to grow feet!”

  “Heavens to Betsy!” the boy says with a laugh.

  I find this funny and giggle, watching the smile on my boy’s face. We stare at the four little tadpoles swimming in the jar for a long moment.

  A cool breeze catches my hair, and I watch as the boy takes his jar up the bank a few feet and settles in the tall green grass, sitting cross-legged, a serious look on his face, a look of concentration.

  I turn to join him on the bank and lose my footing. I trip and land on my knees in the shallowest part of the stream. The water is cold on my skin. The bubbling and gurgling of the stream, which has been in the background, registers in my ears now. Through the clear blue water, the stones on the bottom are many shades of greens and blues and grays. A fish swims quickly by and startles me.