A World Without You(53)

“I’d leave him,” Jenny says. “Maybe he was a doppelg?nger. Maybe I fell into a horror movie or something.”

“Some people do. Some people just walk away from their families and never go back. And some people live with it, basically faking their love for the rest of their lives. And then some people start to think that the only way to get back the person they loved is to kill the fake person.”

All three girls are silent for a moment.

Phoebe stands suddenly, her footsteps clattering down the stairs to the front yard. I scurry into the shadows, but it will do no good—there isn’t enough darkness here to hide me. Pheebs turns, her eyes scanning high, looking for her friends still on the porch, but then she hesitates, her gaze drifting toward me—

And then the timestream violently yanks me back to my own world, my own bedroom, my own time.





CHAPTER 34




More time has passed. I checked the calendar. Each sheet marked in my own special code.

I’ve lost three days.

Three days gone, replaced by just a moment of time at my parents’ house, spying on my little sister.

Three more days gone, and Sofía’s not back. I’m getting worse. I’m way, way out of control.

But if I can’t control the timestream, I can’t control anything. I can’t save Sofía. I can’t even save myself. Is this what a supernova feels like? Melting down from the core, destroying everything close to it.

I have never felt so helpless in my life. It feels like the entire world is crumbling around me, and no one even notices me trying to save it.

This all reminds me of something Sofía once told me. About the first time she saw someone die. She was at a pool party for a friend’s quincea?era. Everything was loud: the music, the conversations, the kids splashing in the water.

Everything was loud, except for Carlos Estrada.

No one noticed. There was a large group there, playing and shouting, and the soccer team was on one side of the pool having a water fight. And Carlos—he just sort of bobbed there in the deep end for a bit, and then he went under the water. And he didn’t come back up. Not until his mother dove into the water with all her clothes on and dragged his body from the pool.

“That’s the thing that stayed with me,” Sofía said quietly, after she described his blue lips and his skin that was cold to the touch. “You always think that drowning is loud. In the movies, if someone drowns they scream, they churn the water. Everyone notices a drowning person in the movies.”

Sofía looked down, and I thought she was crying, but when she looked up at me again, I realized her eyes were dry.

“Real drowning is quiet. It doesn’t announce itself. It just . . . it just happens. And then you’re gone.”

I didn’t understand what she was saying before, but now I think I do. We’re all drowning here, and no one’s noticing a damn thing.





CHAPTER 35




There’s a fire in the fireplace.

That shouldn’t be odd. But it is.

How did I get here?

I tilt my head, watching the red flames lick at the soot-stained stones.

Not soot. Rain. Rain-drenched stones.

Because the fireplace isn’t in a house.

Blink. Yes, it is.

Blink. No. It’s not. This fireplace is a ruin, crumbling and unusable, the last place I saw Sofía. It’s not filled with fire, it’s filled with dirt and rainwater, and I am standing outside, staring at the place where a house was hundreds of years ago.

But when I blink again, the house is there.

Time is stuttering. The timestream is breaking. With just a blink of my eyes, I’m thrown into the past, then back into the present.

Or maybe it’s not the timestream that’s breaking. Maybe it’s just me.

“Bo?” a voice calls.

I’m not sure if the voice is coming from across the field or across time. But then I see Harold walking up the path toward me.

“What brings you out here?” he asks, as if it’s perfectly natural for me to be standing in front of the ruins in the pissing rain.

“Something’s wrong,” I say.

“Yes,” Harold replies.

Just yes. Like, obviously, something’s wrong.

He twirls an old iron key in his hand.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, staring at it.

Harold’s eyebrows raise, one of the few times he’s actually let emotion show on his face. “You gave it to me,” he says. “Just now.”

Time is stuttering all around me. I’m not even in control of myself.

“Do you see it too?” I whisper, almost hoping. “The way everything’s out of sync?” Out of the corner of my eye, I see the sun rise and set and rise and set in quick succession, but when I close my eyes and force myself to breathe, time slows to normal again.

“I never see,” Harold says calmly. “I only hear.”

Time isn’t stuttering for him—just me. Only me.

“I hate the voices, and I love them, and sometimes I think they’re killing me,” Harold says. He turns toward Berkshire and starts walking away, not looking back once to see if I’m following or not. I am following him, though. I don’t remember how I got to the ruins or what I was doing, but I should get back to the academy. I don’t want to get Dr. Franklin in more trouble, even if he’s forgotten who I really am . . . who he really is.