The Rockmore House

17 | Sinking Ships

During the last few minutes of US Government class, my teacher went over the requirements for the persuasive paper we had to write about a local government issue, while I scribbled a note to myself about the dream I had the night before.

I was driving a snowmobile across the frozen river at night. Paul had strapped a crate full of bottles to the seat behind me and told me to drive without the headlights on so I wouldn't get caught. The fine layer of fresh snow over the ice glowed in the light of a full moon, and I remembered wondering why I wasn't sent on this smuggling mission during the darkness of the new moon instead.

As I approached the middle of the river, the gentle rattling of the glass bottles grew louder and the ice split below me. The snowmobile quickly sunk into the freezing water, but I couldn't let go. My hands were locked on the handlebars, which turned into a steering wheel as the snowmobile fell through the darkness into bright light.

Then I was driving an antique boat over sparkling blue water. The polished mahogany gleamed in the sunlight. Liz was sitting beside me on the forest green leather seat, with her dark hair tied back in a scarf, gazing out at the water and with a faint smile on her face.

My note to myself looked more like: Nov 10th- Paul, snowmobile, booze, full moon, so bright, frozen river, sexy boat, sunshine, Liz- happy?

After the bell rang and most of the class had cleared out, a voice over my shoulder asked, "Already brainstorming ideas?"

I quickly slapped the notebook shut and answered with a terse, "Yup."

"Wanna partner up?" Eric sat at the empty desk next to me.

"We don't have to work with someone, it's optional."

"Come on, I'm the perfect partner for this. I'm very persuasive."

His usual confident grin faltered when confronted with my resting bitch face and I almost felt bad for him. But that was before I remembered how he pinned my bag under his leg so he could interrogate me on a subject I'd made it very clear I did not want to discuss. But no matter how annoyed with him I was, I would need access to the Rockmore house again for what I had planned, so I reluctantly agreed.

When I got home later, I would tear out the note about the frozen river dream and transfer it into a document that I had hidden and password protected on my laptop. During class and sometimes at work, I wrote cryptic messages to myself to expand on or research once I was safely sequestered in my room.

The document contained a section where I wrote about all of the dreams and nightmares I'd had that were related to the events of that summer, to see if I could decipher a meaning or find patterns. There was another section with notes on time travel in general and on the different theories and paradoxes of time travel from popular movies, television shows and books.

I also brainstormed theories for my specific situation. In the summer, I thought I had to be submerged in water, but later I discovered I could travel through time by just touching the water. In the bathroom at the Rockmore house, it happened when I splashed my face with running water from the sink and again when I dipped my hands into the still water in the bowl.

But what about at Madison's house? I remembered the basement wall feeling cold and damp before I got sucked into the past and Madison and I were out in the rain when we got sent back.

Wasn't there water everywhere, though? Wasn't there water vapor in the air? If time travel for me required contact with water, and water was in the air, could it theoretically happen anywhere, anytime? The thought made me fear I could never let my guard down again, but if I was honest with myself, I was already getting to that point. Thanks to my recent unpredictable lapses into the past, I was on edge all the time.