Tomorrow Is Today by Julie Cross Read Free Book Online Page B

for college students.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Is that why you have a job?”

    “Nope.” Totally true. I don’t even get paid. I’m a volunteer, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. She had obviously already made up her mind about me. “Well…it was nice to see you again, Karen.”

    “Whatever,” she grumbled.

    I left the store quickly. Jumping back to the present didn’t require the same level of focus as going into the past, mostly because I always had to come back before I could jump again. Adam calls the present my “home base.” He’s mastered the art of dumbing it down for me to understand. And baseball analogies are my favorite. Hopefully, I wouldn’t return to a bunch of strangers staring at my catatonic state.

Chapter Three

    TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2009, 12:25 p.m.

    When I opened my eyes again, Adam was standing over me. “Jackson?”

    “Dude, you need a breath mint,” I mumbled, shoving him to the side.

    “You were a zombie for one-point-eight seconds. I was almost right. Pretty soon I’ll have enough data to produce exact calculations. You didn’t sustain any injuries this time, did you?”

    “Nope.”

    I knew exactly why he asked. Last week, I jumped a few hours back, lost my concentration, and ended up in the middle of traffic instead of inside my apartment. A huge semi truck ran right over my leg. When I jumped back to home base, I felt this sharp pain shooting up my thigh and then it was gone. A light purple bruise appeared, but otherwise my leg was perfect, even though that truck totally should have shattered my bone.

    I stood up and dusted off the back of my pants. “Apparently we had a class together. But I totally pissed her off just now. Well, in the past. You know what I mean. So, if the theory is wrong and I did change something, she’ll be annoyed when she sees me again.”

    “Let’s find out.” Adam waved to Holly. “Hey, Hol, we’ll be right back.”

    I grabbed Hunter, who was inching his way off the grass and toward the pile of abandoned backpacks, looking for some loot to stash in his pockets, no doubt. “Come shopping with us, little dude.”

    The three of us strolled through the door as the girl at the register was dumping a box of key chains into a plastic container. I stopped and stared at her, playing dumb. “Aren’t you…in my economics class?”

    Her eyes lifted and she actually smiled a little. “Yeah…Professor Larson.”

    Ding, ding, two points for Jackson Meyer . She didn’t remember me pissing her off. Just like I said. Nothing changed as a result of my jump thirty minutes into the past.

    “Karen, right?” I said.

    Her eyebrows lifted. “And you’re Jackson, the French poetry major, right?”

    Adam groaned and shoved past me. “Don’t see anything I want in here. Let’s go.”

    I ignored Adam and lifted Hunter up onto the counter. “English lit, too. I have a double major.”

    Even though my little excursions to the past didn’t change anything in my home base, there were some advantages, like getting information. So, I guess, in theory, time travel to the past did change something.

    It changed me.

    Adam, Hunter, and I left the store and all of us stopped outside and came face-to-face with Holly. She had a handful of garbage she was dropping into a bin outside the store. I took her hand and pulled her over to a tree that we could hide behind.

    “Adam’s got a thing for that chick in the store. I was trying to help them hook up.”

    Holly laughed and I nudged her backward so she was leaning against the tree. “Did Hunter steal anything?” she mumbled, but my lips were already on hers, preventing her from speaking clearly.

    “Not that I know of.” I kissed her again and felt something wet land right on my cheek. Both of us pulled apart and looked upward just as the sky opened up and rain came down in huge sheets.

    “Damn! I thought it was supposed to be nice all day,” Holly said.

    We left our tree and made