Epilogue

From the beginning of eternity to the end of time and space; the beginning of every end and the end of every place.

There’s something terrifying about turning 29.

Everyone tells you that you’re still young, you still have your whole life ahead of you, but you know that if they’ve reached this age themselves, they don’t believe it.

It’s not the end of the world. Just the end of life as you know it. You have to stand there and wave goodbye to the last shreds of the kid you used to be, and nothing is simple anymore. That part of you is gone and you can never get it back.

Such were the gloomy contents of my mind as I cleaned up chocolate frosting and sprinkles alone, the downward spiral of my mood kept safely away from the immortal memory of a diary or any listening ears. I wouldn’t have had a party if my sister hadn’t insisted, and even then, it wasn’t actually my birthday. Being born on a leap year had its perks when I was younger at least; on the off season I could decide if I wanted a summer birthday or a fall birthday. This year, however, I decided it had been long enough. So, I chose February 28th. It’s just another day, anyway, I repeated to myself. It doesn’t really matter anymore.

I sighed for the fifty-seventh time and finished cramming the party hats and fabric banners into the box to take upstairs.

---

The attic was drafty and dark and covered in cobwebs, but I had stopped being afraid of the imaginary monsters when I was nineteen. I didn’t stop worrying about the ghosts until I was twenty-two though. All bets are off about the mice.

I carried the rubbermaid tub to the creaky shelf in the back corner, tucking it in a less-dusty spot behind an old TV and a set of snorkel gear. Brushing the dust bunnies off my sleeves and shivering at imaginary spiders, I was about to go back downstairs when something caught my eye. It was difficult to see it there on the floor by the shelf. Covered in an inch of dust, it was a cardboard box labeled “Kat’s Treasures.” I recognized my own handwriting well enough, but I hadn’t used the nickname in years.

It wasn’t curiosity that made me pull the box out under the pale yellow light of the hanging lamp and peel the tape off. I knew full well what was in it. But when I lifted the bent flaps and saw the felt brim of a familiar cowboy hat, I knew I couldn’t walk away this time.

As I ran my thumb across the clay-stained edges, I realized I was holding my earliest memory in my hand. 1861 or 1862— I couldn’t remember it exactly. My hands traced the dents in the hat and found the bullet hole that nearly ruined it, flinching at the memory. If Cody hadn’t tackled me, that hole would have gone through more than just the hat brim. I still wasn’t sure what would have happened if I had died then, though I’d thought about it for a long time after. Would I have vanished from history right there? Would it have drastically altered the space-time continuum somehow? Or would I have woken up right here and in my own bed, the same as always?

I was barely fifteen the first time it had happened. And after all these years, I still didn’t know why.

A familiar ache settled into the pit of my stomach and I set the hat aside. I was just going to take one more look inside, but when I realized just how much was left in the box, I sat down cross-legged on the grimy floor and tried to get comfortable. I was going to be here a while.

The manilla envelope tore a little at the seams when I opened it. I turned it upside down and gave it a shake, letting the photographs spill across my lap and flutter to the ground. The film had still kept somehow, even after all this time. I picked them up one at a time to study them, half afraid that they would crumble into powder at my touch. But they held together, and each blurry, grayscale image burst into colored memory.

Staring at the photographs, I immediately recognized the ragtag bunch of skinny dark-haired boys from my second trip. The guitars they carried around were almost as big as they were. There must have been dozens of the little kodak pictures. One of the lankier of the four boys kneeling by the couch with a tiny China cup of tea barely visible in his hands; another of them all trying to balance like cats on a stone wall; a shaky shot of them sprinting out of a pub— all of them blurry and unfocused from laughter and movement. I briefly paused when I found a rare shot; in this one the four of them were trying to balance a freckle-faced girl in a newsboy cap on their shoulders. I was so much different then, back when my hair was a few shades redder and my skin had a few less scars. Smiling in spite of myself, I sifted through the rest of the photographs.

“He hated the cold,” I chuckled, setting aside one of George glaring into the wind, his shoulders hunched together in a turtleneck sweater. There was Paul standing at the edge of the stage, listening raptly to a band at a church picnic. I laughed at the picture I found of John, the cuffs of his jeans rolled up and his hair slicked back like a bargain-brand James Dean. There were ones of the four of them piled in the back of a van with their gear; the grimy floors and neon lights of an underground pub; a soft-eyed boy with a terrible beard sitting at a drum kit— the last one I found was of them playing together, sweaty and exhausted under stage lights that felt like standing under the sun, all of them grinning like idiots.

I told myself I kept the pictures to save the historical timeline, to keep whatever evidence there was from anyone else. That was a lie.

I kept the pictures because this was how I wanted to remember them. Before the reporters and screaming crowds, before the substances and fighting… before they fell apart. I didn’t want to forget Paul humming on the sidewalk, or John’s wicked sense of humor, or George’s shy smile, or the way they used to cackle like gremlins at the most minor things. I didn’t want to forget who they were.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I gathered up the pictures and tucked them back into the envelope. I’d have to tape it back together later. Returning to the box, the next thing I pulled out was a somewhat more amusing memory. I traced the initials ‘J.S.’ in the side of the Swiss army knife, remembering the day I’d stolen it from him. That was the same day I spent half an hour hanging upside-down by my ankle from a tree, caught in the makeshift booby trap they’d set up. Jesse never did let me hear the end of it. I smiled a little, remembering how he’d yammer on for hours about car models and the Indy 500, and how he’d call me “darlin’” no matter how much I protested. It was hard to believe I’d had my first kiss back in 1932. I mean, we were just trying to hide their hayloft stash of moonshine from the revenuers, but it was a nice memory. It had been a long time since I felt that alive.

I rubbed the dust off the pocketknife and set it aside to finish going through the box. It was hard to get past the hollow ache that came with each reminder. There was the carved wooden box of fine Egyptian earrings that I refused to wear out of fear of losing them, the dagger I had borrowed from a certain Greek conqueror and forgotten to give back—sorry Alex— and the flint arrowheads and leather arm guards I’d been given by a Scottish archer. Funny; she was the reason I was multilingual now. Next came the fine glass cases of makeup from my trip to Paris, along with the gloves and boots that a pilot had sacrificed for my escape from Belgium during my first trip to 1942. He never even knew my name.

It took me a minute to remember what I’d tucked into the small cardboard picture tube, but then I saw the yellowed parchment and smudged brown ink in Captain Every’s handwriting and smiled. I was still the only person who knew where that crafty renegade had escaped to. Some part of me was tempted to hop a plane and fetch the buried treasure so I could buy myself a mansion, but they deserved better than that. So I slid the map back into the tube and sealed it again, putting it back in the stack along with the intricately patterned leather I’d gotten whilst fleeing from an amorous Viking prince, as well as the pocket watch I’d borrowed from my second trip to England. I was so focused on getting to the bottom of the box that I wasn’t paying as much attention anymore.

But then I found it.

Carefully folded and tucked away under everything else, I pulled the old black jacket out of the box and shook out the creases. This was my favorite souvenir, if I had to have a favorite, and I could barely stand to look at it most days. It would have been nice if I could have, though, considering the fabric had a unique ability to adjust to the temperature to be warmer or more water-resistant based on the environment. I would be long gone by the time it was invented. It always startled me how soft it was every time I touched it, even then. Out of curiosity I began to pull it on, just to see if the sleeves were still too long.

I didn’t realize it would still smell so much like him.

The memories bubbled over like foam from a shaken soda bottle. I buried my face in the scent of spiced soap and metallic residue as my eyes brimmed over with tears. If I had known I was never going to see him again—if I had known that was going to be the last night, that I would wake up in my own home again…

I was fifteen years old the first time it happened. I went to sleep at my grandparents’ house in California in 2011, and I woke up in a different time zone... that time it was 1861. Every February 28th it would happen just like that, though it would take me a while to figure out that it always skipped a leap year. It was jarring at first, but after a few years I began to get used to it. Eventually I started to look forward to these adventures even more than I did Christmas. There was always something to do or someone to meet, and I loved it. I loved everyone and everything I ever encountered, no matter how many times my adventures nearly got me killed, even though I knew I couldn’t stay. There was never any rhyme or reason to where I ended up or for how long it lasted. I was just there as long as I needed to be, and then one night I would wake up in my own world again, just as abruptly as I’d left. I learned to live with it, for the most part, until the last time.

I had loved every person I met so far, and I had more makeshift families than I deserved, but this time? This time I found him. And for once in my life, I just wanted to stay.

And I tried. I tried so damn hard, forcing myself to stay awake, begging for just a few more minutes. I would have taken just one, just half of one if it was offered. But the time ticked down, and I woke up in my own home again one last time.

I never left again.

I waited patiently for the next year to come along, hoping, praying that maybe this time I could go forward again. But February came and went, and nothing happened. The leap year passed as usual, but again the next year went by. It was like it had never even happened at all. I was left with nothing but fading memories and scars I couldn’t tell anyone about. I woke up crying from dreams and nightmares alike. I’m not sure when I finally stopped counting the days. At least before I could look forward to the next adventure, but now even that small consolation was gone. The uncertainty was agonizing. If I didn’t have the proof, I think I would have gone mad.

Five years passed and I finished my master’s degree. A PhD in quantum physics followed. I spent a decade searching for answers, travelling across countries and continents to colleges and laboratories, reading every scrap of research I could find. Journalists found out about my mad quest, and I ended up in more than a few magazines that questioned my sanity. I didn’t need them to do that for me. Some researchers laughed in my face, while others directed me to programs investigating wormholes and dark matter. Over time I was unofficially declared the leading expert in general relativity, as well as a multitude of Theories That Don’t Exist. Dozens of college students and a few science fiction authors interviewed me for their writing projects, while my employers and family fretted over my mental state. I scoured the internet and every corner of every library I could get access to, searching every nook and cranny I could find, and all I had to show for it were more questions. I could do calculus in my head and speak Latin and was a Nobel prize nominee— though I never went to the ceremony— and yet I still didn’t know how I’d done it.

When I met Leland, he said they’d sent him to find me. He said it was because I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong anywhere, apparently. He’d taken me to the scientists, and they’d tried to explain the experiment they’d done so long ago and how it had gone wrong, how there was an anomaly and it had somehow displaced me… and instead of listening, I ran. I should have listened to them while I had the chance, should have let them try to help me… Now I would never know, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

I’d tried hard to accept my fate, but I never got used to this lingering sense of misplacement. It was this constant feeling, like a was on my way somewhere, but I’d forgotten where I was trying to get to. It was like I was living someone else’s life. My clothes fit me too perfectly, never too big or too hot; my own footprints too deep and permanent for the impact they made. Everything felt colorless. There was nothing to fight for and nowhere to run to. Sometimes I still ached from wounds that had long since healed. I had to live with it, knowing everything I had lost, and no one even knew. There was so much I had grown to love, and it was all just gone, like it never even existed. And I never got to say goodbye.

It took me so long to learn how to cope with the memories that followed me like anxious ghosts, to stop avoiding museums and art galleries, to drink a cup of tea without crying. My sister still didn’t know why sometimes I’d wake up screaming, or why she’d find me sitting on the roof looking at the stars when I was lonely. The only reason I hadn’t lost my mind with grief were the items I now had scattered around me on the grimy attic floor. I shivered as another draft sent a few loose items fluttering around me and sat up, zipping up Leland’s jacket. Wearing it too long would make the smell fade, I knew, but I needed it tonight. Sighing over the sob that desperately wanted out of my chest, I tucked my frigid hands into the pockets—

I froze when my fingertips found something.

My breath caught in my throat as I pulled out a folded piece of paper, bent and splitting at the edges. I wasn’t sure how I recognized the shaky handwriting, a valiant effort at writing neatly in a foreign language, but then again, who else could it have been? Completely at a loss as to how I’d never found this note until now, I unfolded it and started to read. I swear I could almost hear his voice.

Kat,  
I'm not sure how or when you'll get this. I wish I had something better to give you, but it was the only thing I could think of.  
It feels strange to write this when you're still right here next to me. I know you said that one day I was going to wake up and you were going to be gone... but I don't know how I'm supposed to say goodbye like that. I don't think I can.  
Do you remember what I told you when we met? That I would always be able to find you? I guess I was technically threatening you at the time, but I want you to know that I still mean it. So wherever you end up, wherever you go next, promise me you won't be afraid to be there. Then again, I guess telling you that's like trying to tell a river to run. I know you're not afraid of anything. I just don't want you to forget.  
There's a whole world out there, and it's not going to wait for anyone. Not even you. So you better have more stories to tell me the next time I see you. I'll make soup.                                                                                           
                                                                                                     - L.A.

P.S: I am going to find you. You still owe me for all the stuff you broke.

I had to put the letter down. I could taste the salt on my lips as I pulled my knees to my chest, only to burst into tears all over again. Too tired to even bother trying to fight it anymore, I curled up right there on the dirty wood floor and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe.

“Okay,” I whispered, clinging to that letter like it was the only thing keeping me from drowning. “I promise.”

Leland was right.

I didn’t belong here. I never did.

I couldn’t live like this anymore; just sleepwalking my way through a world that didn’t want me, grieving for a home that didn’t exist at the expense of the one I could make for myself. I needed more than this. Enough was enough. Something had to give, and it was going to have to be me.

I only had so much time left on this planet, and I wasn’t going to waste any more of it.

He didn’t need me to wait for him.

---

Epilogue

I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I was disturbed by the sound of voices.

Caught somewhere in limbo between asleep and awake, I groaned and tried to sit up. My face felt sticky from crying and my back was stiff and sore from sleeping on the floor—why was it so warm in here? And who was yelling?

“Emma! Where did you put the rest of those boxes?!”

“In the back, where I told you they were!”

I suddenly noticed a strangely garlicky smell, like someone was cooking or something…

“I told you, I can’t—”

There was a slamming noise and the shouting stopped abruptly. I managed to unglue my eyelids and was blinking groggily into the light when someone swore softly.

“What the hell?”

My gaze eventually landed on the silhouette of the person that was looking down at me with his hands on his hips.

“How long have you been back here?”

All I could do was smile.