(Time Guardians, #1)
Young Adult Sci-Fi
Date Published:February 24, 2014
Fifteen-year-old Jack Bishop has mad skills with cars and engines, but knows he’ll never get a driver’s license because of his epilepsy. Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body—that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era. Since his seizures usually give him spazzed out visions, Jack presumes this is a hallucination. Feeling fearless, he steals a horse, expecting that at any moment he’ll wake back up in the clinical trial lab. When that doesn't happen, Jacqueline falls unexpectedly in love, even as the town in the past becomes swallowed in a fight for its survival. Jack/Jacqueline is caught between two lives and epochs, and must find a way to save everyone around him as well as himself. And all the while, he is losing time, even if he is getting out of algebra class.
EXCERPT
Jack Bishop has epilepsy. In this scene his doctor has
triggered a seizure. During which, Jack finds himself transported into the body
of a girl named Jacqueline who is starting her school day in an old-fashioned,
single room school house. Jack doesn’t adapt very well to the sudden change of
scenery...
###
I bolted out the door.
The teacher called out after me, rushing to the front of the
school. I untied Lucille’s horse from his post and jumped up on him again, this
time struggling to get my hips over his back because he was already galloping.
He was more than happy to race off, back down the hill. I hunkered down with my
arms around his thick neck, and heard Lucille’s voice, no longer so cheery:
“Mrs. Jayme, she’s stealing my horse! Jacqueline, stop!”
I looked over my shoulder and watched the already small
schoolhouse shrink before the curve of the hill blocked it from view. We passed
a wooded area on our right, and I listened to the horse’s hoof beats as we
traveled outside the edge of the village. At the bottom of the long hill the
animal slowed and then stopped to nibble on some weeds growing next to the
road. Cars definitely had an advantage over this shit. I heard rushing water,
so I pulled the horse’s neck toward it and we trotted over, through weeds and
brambles that got thicker as we went. I had to grip the saddle tight with my
thighs to keep from falling off. And once again I was reminded that I didn’t
have my boy junk. My stomach considered revolting. I had passed the tree line
and under the lush branches, finally felt a little more at home. Maybe these
were the same woods where Sanjay, Jeannine and I relaxed after school, and I
was re-crafting them here in my mind. We didn’t have a river, but we had the
same humid air and cushiony, moss-covered earth. I threw myself back over the
saddle and crashed to the ground. Bad, bad hallucination. The horse, for his
part, seemed content to nibble at the green stuff that grew next to the tree
roots.
When would I be back home? Why was I in this place? Couldn’t
I have created a nicer environment if I had to be seizing?
Seizing. I wondered if I was having a terrible or worst-ever
episode, and if this whole series of events was evidence that I was sicker than
usual, or dying. Maybe I’d wake up in the doctor’s office, or maybe inside an
ambulance. Well, that didn’t make sense, since the study took place at the
hospital. Dumbass. I stood up,
brushing off old leaves and clumps of dirt, and wiping my hands on the front of
my wool pants. My hip, which stuck out farther from me than I was used to,
ached from where I’d landed on it. I had wandered away toward a sharp curve in
the river. It wasn’t as large as say, the Mississippi, but at this spot it was
a good twenty yards across. Cool water met my skin as I put my hand in the
river, and I could see the polished stones that sat at the bottom. Next to the
flow was a puddle, some kind of spot where water occasionally overflowed here
and got stagnant, and grew mosquitos.
I leaned over the puddle and looked at myself. Angular
features, small nose, dark brown eyes and hair. A similar but less full jaw
line than mine. I wasn’t very old yet, maybe eight or nine or ten, but I could
discern how different this girl’s body was from my real one. My hands curled
into fists tightly enough that I yelped from the pain of my fingernails in my
palms. Geez, even my hands were different—slender,
with tiny knuckles. Vision or not, I didn’t care. Without
thinking I picked up a rock and hurled it into the river.
“Careful,” said a voice from behind me, “you’ll hurt the
fish.”
I swung around, another stone in my hand, searching for
whoever had spoken.
“Up here,” said a boy sitting high in a tall tree.
“Leave me alone,” I said. “I don’t care about the fish.”
“What an angry girl you are.”
“Go away.” For a place as desolate as this, I sure ran into
a lot of people.
“Pray tell, why are you so upset?” he asked, shifting his
weight.
The branch fluttered.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Why not?”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Shouldn’t you?” he asked. Even behind the large leaves I
could tell he was smiling. God, I hated smiling.
“If you don’t leave, I’ll throw these rocks at you!”
“I don’t think you can throw that far.” He kept one hand on
the tree trunk. He wore torn brown knickers cinched at his knees, a gray button
down, collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and thin laced shoes that
each sported a small hole where the balls of his feet had worn through the
hide. His messy, dark bangs clapped against
his forehead and suggested he was not fond of a barber’s
chair.
I considered showing the little brat that I didn’t throw
like the girl he thought I was, when all of a sudden he came crashing out of
the tree. It was a twisting, snapping fall that elapsed in several portions as
his body hit strong branches and by the time he smashed onto the forest carpet
I had made up the ground from the river bank to his tree.
He was breathing, wincing with each inhale. His legs flexed
at terrible angles. Tears cut lines over his dirty skin.
“I’ve never fallen before,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“You’re bad luck, you.”
My Review
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Thanks for sharing an excerpt today. Looking forward to reading your review! :-D
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