The Enemy of Time, page 1
The Enemy of Time
Haley-Grace McCormick
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, names, or persons, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2026 by Haley Grace McCormick
All rights reserved. For information regarding reproduction in total or in part, contact Rising Action Publishing Co. at http://www.risingactionpublishingco.com
Cover Illustration © Haley Grace McCormick
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 978-1-998672-16-5
Ebook: 978-1-998672-17-2
FIC027240 FICTION / Romance / New Adult
FIC043000 FICTION / Coming of Age
FIC071000 FICTION / Friendship
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Contents
. Chapter
. Chapter
1. CHAPTER 1
2. CHAPTER 2
3. CHAPTER 3
4. CHAPTER 4
5. CHAPTER 5
6. CHAPTER 6
7. Chapter 7
8. CHAPTER 8
9. CHAPTER 9
10. CHAPTER 10
11. CHAPTER 11
12. CHAPTER 12
13. CHAPTER 13
14. CHAPTER 14
15. CHAPTER 15
16. CHAPTER 16
17. CHAPTER 17
18. CHAPTER 18
19. CHAPTER 19
20. CHAPTER 20
21. CHAPTER 21
22. CHAPTER 22
23. CHAPTER 23
24. CHAPTER 24
25. CHAPTER 25
26. CHAPTER 26
27. Epilogue
28. Chapter 28
To my dad, who read my words aloud every night, thank you for lending me your voice when I was still finding my own.
To my mom, who pushed me forward on the days I dug in my heels, thank you for challenging me when I doubted myself.
To my grandparents, whose gentle, steady love has always been my soft place to land.
To my godparents, whose kindness and guidance added a light to my life that I will carry always.
And to the ones who were told their dreams were too big or their voice too small,
This story is for you.
The Enemy of Time
Chapter one
You don’t have to love to be loved.
You don’t have to live to be alive.
You don’t have to die to be a ghost.
3:00 p.m.
Dante once wrote, “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.” But the worst part isn’t remembering—it’s knowing you can’t go back.
Today is May 4, 2022. Five years had passed since I escaped my hometown in Massachusetts and moved away to college—five years since I stepped foot in my mother’s car, and now here I am, driving back to my childhood home.
“The brakes need fixing,” my mom said as we pulled into the cracked driveway after a high-pitched squeal cut the silence between us. The house looked the same. The yellow shutters were still barely holding on by silver nails, the front door remained an alarming firetruck red, and the front lawn overflowed with too many plants and flowers, causing the house to disappear into a tiny jungle. Everything appeared to be precisely the same.
Pulling my worn purple suitcase out of the rusted trunk, I struggled to drag the wobbly wheels over the cobblestone path leading to the porch steps, which desperately needed replacement.
My mother touched my shoulder. “Alex, why don’t you head upstairs and get some rest before dinner? It’s been a long day, and tomorrow won’t be any easier.”
All I could manage was a nod; words wouldn’t form. As I reached for the doorknob, my hands began to shake. Damn. How hard is it to turn a freaking handle? I cursed myself, feeling like a foolish, emotional child ruled more by my heart than my head. That’s what this house did to me, what this town did to me, and it’s why I promised never to return. But promises are just empty words, as fragile as a house of cards.
An icy dread seeped into my veins as I twisted the gold handle and opened the door. It felt like ripping a bandage off my skin. I cautiously stepped over the threshold, entering the house like a five-year-old intent on sneaking a cookie from the kitchen, my red pumps barely making a sound on the heavily scratched wood floors. The house was just as I had left it: small and overcrowded with furniture and trinkets.
The loud clatter of my suitcase against the stairs filled the silence as I wrestled it towards the top. Our house wasn't grand, but the stairs certainly were. My mom and I had moved in with her new husband, Julian, and his son, Lucas, when I was five years old. His wife had passed away three years earlier; Julian had been living alone, and it showed.
The walls were covered in garish yellow wallpaper, and the wooden floors were hidden beneath a layer of green shag carpet. Mismatched chairs in the living room were held together with duct tape, and random pizza stains tainted the fraying brown rug. Although the house dated back to the 1870s, it was clear that a 1970s renovation, with its bold colors and lava lamps, had obscured its Victorian charm.
My mom wasted no time restoring the home to its original craftsmanship. On the day we moved in, she tackled the staircase, which was covered in the same green shag carpet that plagued the rest of the house. My mom immediately grabbed a box cutter and slashed the carpet off the steps, pulling it away with such force that Lucas and I became covered in fluffy shreds of decade-old material, making us look like characters from The Muppets.
Next, she sanded down the old, chipped paint from the original banister, leaving a thick layer of powdery dust throughout the house. It took six days to strip the staircase of an unappealing brownish-green paint down to its original beauty, but it was all worth it when my mom applied the first coat of stain to the mahogany wood. From the delicate carvings on the banister to the intricate molding on the wall, every element of the staircase gleamed as if it were thanking us for bringing it back to life.
Memories flooded back with each step I took. The way light filtered through the stained-glass window at the top of the stairs, broken four times throughout my childhood; the creaky step that woke mom up when I was fifteen and trying to sneak home in the middle of the night; the way the baseboard still smelled of nail polish from when I splintered the wood and covered it up. Each step felt like swimming through the past, my eyes dancing over the familiar field of memories displayed on the wall. Photos of family, friends, and cherished moments from my childhood were mounted in thick, ornate frames. They ascended the stairs like a picturesque timeline, a mismatched storm of bad haircuts and braces. For most families, the kitchen was the heart of the home, but in this house, it was the staircase. Somehow, this pile of carved wood brought our two broken families together and created a home for us.
One picture, mounted in a gaudy gold frame hanging six steps up, immediately drew my attention. It was of Lucas and me on his seventh birthday; I’ve always hated that he was older by just a few months. The party was pirate-themed, which he still denied was my idea, even years later. We had been bickering since sunrise, a common occurrence back then, but it escalated to unprecedented heights on that particular day.
Competitions against each other were constant: best grades, the highest score on Mario Kart, who could run fastest from the car to the front door—trivial stuff. On the morning of his birthday, we had a teeth-brushing competition, and Lucas won, putting me in a bad mood for the entire day and ramping up my competitiveness to level 10. An intense relay race occurred just before our parents cut the cake, which I won by 1/10 of a second. Lucas refused to accept the loss and called a foul, blaming me for his trip right before the finish line. I was furious at his accusation, even though he was entirely correct.
That morning, I applied a layer of super glue to the soles of his shoes to make them extra slick. What Lucas called cheating, I called competitive ingenuity. As Lucas was about to blow out his candles, Mom was prepared to take the picture, but he grabbed a chunk of the cake and threw it at me, painting blue frosting all over my white shirt. I retaliated by blowing out his candles and smashing his face into the cake. The result? The infamous family food fight photo.
That picture of two kids covered in the aftermath of sibling rivalry had always been my favorite. Back then, Lucas and I couldn’t go five minutes without talking to each other, but five years of silence had passed because of one decision: one moment, one stupid fight, one second that altered the course of our entire lives. How insignificant a single second seemed until it became the last.
As I reached the top of the stairs, I could feel the weight of adolescent mistakes piling on my shoulders like boulders trying to bury me in a mountain of regret. Yet, there was a weird sense of comfort and peace, knowing my childhood would always be preserved on that wall, a time capsule forever hanging right there, a speck of proof that life was once pure. That peaceful feeling died quickly upon seeing a photo that stopped me dead in my tracks.
It was him.
Jamie and I met about a year after we moved in with Lucas and his dad. He became my first and only friend despite my mom’s failed attempts to force me to socialize.
It was an agonizingly hot day in July—the kind that turned the playground, made of 40% plastic and 60% metal, into a blistering barbecue upon which you could cook a child's leg. I had the burn marks to prove it. My mom, hoping for some sibling bonding, had taken Lucas and me to the park. Lucas and I had been at each other's throats ever since I moved in, and not just with typical sibling bickering; I mean, full-on barbarian head-bashing attacks. Once, when Lucas tried to steal my pink unicorn eraser, I stabbed him in the hand with a pencil—no regrets.
Laughter had filled the air at the park, but none of it had been mine. I’d never been the giggly type, and once Lucas saw my mom's attention drift to the other parents, he abandoned me for the other six-year-old boys, leaving me alone on the teeter-totter. As I sat there, my bare thighs sizzling on the searing metal, a blonde, blue-eyed girl approached. I thought maybe I’d have some company, but then I recognized her—Bethany. Our moms had forced us into playdates a few times, the last ending with me spilling watercolor paints all over her puffy princess dress. Her tiny feet rushed toward me, and without a word, she threw a muddy rock at my head, knocking me off the teeter-totter and into the wood chips.
When I opened my eyes, four girls surrounded me, with Bethany clearly in charge. She grabbed my hair like a grizzly bear clutching a dead fish while another girl beside her menacingly snipping pink scissors. The instant I felt the tension released from my scalp, I knew she had taken a crucial chunk of my hair. I was still convinced those Barbie bitches worked for the devil, and I was meant to be their human sacrifice.
A blur of movement caught my eye as a boy about my age with black hair darted in front of me. Bethany folded her arms across her chest and stepped forward, clearly ready to confront him. As she moved, the boy stuck out his foot, sending her tumbling forward, crashing into the wood chips below. The sunlight caught on the glittery sandals of her friends as they gasped and scattered in a flurry, racing back toward their mothers. Bethany scrambled to her feet, little sticks clinging to her knees, and shot me a venomous glare. ‘You’ll pay for this!’ she yelled before stomping off after them.
The boy helped me up, then grabbed the fallen scissors, turning them in his hand for a moment. Without a word, he snipped a chunk of his hair, mirroring my missing lock.
“I needed a haircut anyway,” he said with a smile that lit up his face.
That was the moment I knew this messy-haired boy was my favorite person in the world. When I met Jamie, my entire life flipped on its axis and lost all direction. That moment changed my life forever. If only I had known then just how much.
A few minutes passed before my mother finally noticed the chaos and rushed over to Jamie and me. After examining my new scrapes and the uneven haircut, to my surprise, she didn’t yell or scream. Instead, she looked at us with the biggest smile. Her greatest wish had finally come true: I had made a friend. She quickly pulled out the disposable camera she always kept in her purse and snapped the first picture ever taken of Jamie and me.
“Why the hell hadn’t Mom removed this picture?” I muttered to myself as I squinted at the old photograph, feeling a pang in my chest as I traced the edges of our smiling faces.
I tore my eyes away from the photo.
“Keep moving,” I whispered, a plea to my feet, urging them to take me toward my old bedroom. I opened the door and found the room half-filled with boxes—my parents had finally decided to turn it into a puzzle and craft space. I couldn’t blame them. After all these years, why not? But standing there, seeing everything packed away, it felt like walking through a graveyard.
The walls were the same soft purple, but the paint was now faded and chipped beneath the yellowing crown molding. My bed was still pushed against the far wall, but my once-black comforter had been replaced with a vibrant pink one featuring yellow watercolor daisies along the edges. The desk I used to do homework on was gone, and a long craft table cluttered with old papers and books stood in its place.
I walked over to the window and looked outside at the backyard, which used to have a trampoline and swing set before Lucas broke them both. Apparently, playground equipment couldn't handle a lightsaber battle between my six-foot brother and Jamie. Laughter had once filled this room, but now emptiness echoed through these ghostly walls.
As I wandered around, a small, faded black door in the corner caught my attention. A smile spread across my face. It was my old hiding spot—my imaginary castle as a child and dungeon as a teenager. Mom let Jamie and me turn it into our secret clubhouse, where we discussed important things such as the best pizza toppings and what was better, Star Wars or Star Trek.
Kneeling at the door, I pushed it open to reveal a small, cramped space that had once seemed massive. Crawling inside, an overwhelming scent of forgotten youth—A.K.A. the Justin Bieber perfume phase—smacked my nose. Everything remained exactly as I had left it: vibrant tapestries draped the walls, stacks of magazines and comic books littered the blue carpet Jamie had picked out, and two five-year-old Coke cans rested on the wobbly shelf we used as a table.
I'd like to think my cleaning skills had improved since childhood, but one look at my Boston apartment said otherwise. Top of Form
I sank into the old beanbag chair only to get jabbed in the spine by a pointy edge, most likely something I'd hidden from Lucas, or a fossilized slice of pizza Jamie had stashed away. After unzipping the bean bag chair’s cover, my fingers brushed against a rigid rectangle covered in soft leather. I swiftly pulled the object from the chair’s grasp, revealing a thick, well-worn journal—my high school diary.
Flipping through the musty pages revealed secrets and stories that had been kept hidden from everyone, even myself. The taste of salt passed my lips as tears trailed down my cheeks, and my chest heaved with a mourning cry. The diary held memories in its pages, memories I didn’t want to remember yet desperately wanted to hold onto. Memories of Jamie, my first friend, my first kiss, my first love, my first heartbreak.
I wanted to leave the diary right where it was, to let it sit in the chair as nothing more than a forgotten artifact. Burying it back into the silence of the room felt easier than facing the pain it had promised, but the harder I tried to ignore it, the louder it screamed. Crawling out of that little room of forgotten happiness, dashing down the stairs of memorialized youth, and running as fast as my legs could carry me out of that town filled with flashbacks wouldn’t erase the past, no matter how far I tried to escape.
I had already tried that once, and five years later, I was a twenty-three-year-old woman just as broken and terrified as the day she left. The thing about the past was that no matter how far I ran from it, it always followed me like a somber shadow, a stalking ghost, a wound that would never heal.
So, instead of burning the journal and watching every particle of the past go up in flames like I had wanted, I opened the diary to the first page.
Less than twenty-four hours remained until I had to confront the stark reality of who I was. In just twenty-four hours, the past and present would collide in a morbid dance at our high school reunion. Twenty-four hours before my eyes would meet Jamie’s for one last time.
Chapter two
You don’t know love until it hurts.
You don’t miss happiness until sadness strikes.
And you don’t appreciate a moment until it becomes a memory.
5:30 p.m.
“Alex!”
The deafening sound of my mother’s voice pierced my right ear like a needle. Rubbing my watering eyes with the back of my hand, I slowly peeked my eyelids open, allowing tiny bits of light to filter back into my corneas. I was huddled in a ball, my knees firmly touching beneath my chin and my face pleasantly smushed on my pillowcase. Piled on me, the crumpled bed cover created the perfect mountain of cushiony solitude.
“Come help me with dinner!” my mom called, the canals of my ears vibrating as she pronounced each syllable.
