A World Without You(55)

“I’m not saying Dr. Franklin is incompetent,” Dr. Rivers says. “I just think he’s in over his head with these students.”

“The idea is nice,” Mr. Minh replies. “Help these kids out in an isolated area, focus them on their issues while maintaining an environment of education. It’s worked before.”

“But it’s not working here.” Dr. Rivers sighs. “The case of Sofía Muniz aside, there are issues that Berkshire Academy must address to pass board approval . . .”

Mr. Minh laughs. “Oh, I think it’s clear the board won’t be approving Berkshire. This whole place will be shut down.”

Dr. Rivers says something Ryan and I can’t hear, and soon they walk away.

“Did you hear that?” Ryan asks.

“Did you see that?” I snap back. How could the officials be standing right there and not notice the boy and the water? I run up the stairs, but the boy isn’t there. There’s no sign of him, not even a drop of water on the red carpet. Just Harold’s muddy footprints, and now my own.

“Bo, focus,” Ryan demands. “They’re trying to shut down the Berk.”

But who was the boy? He seemed so familiar.

“Where will we go?” Ryan continues. “I can’t go back home. This is what I knew would happen from the start. This is why I’ve been trying to keep them out of here.”

He reminded me of . . . of Sofía. He looked a little like her.

Ryan starts pacing. “There are other schools, I suppose. But I like this one. I don’t want to leave. My parents have had their eye on military school for far too long.”

And then it hits me. I know who the wet boy was, why he appeared to me.

“I’ll call my father. He’s an *, but he probably has connections to whatever board the officials were talking about. He can probably put in a good word . . . make a donation . . . something . . .”

It was little drowned Carlos Estrada.





CHAPTER 36




I don’t know if I’m seeing ghosts like Harold does, or maybe time just jumped around enough to show me Sofía’s dead friend, but I’d like to never have that happen again, please.

Ryan’s pissed that I’m not focused on the problem at hand: the very real possibility that Berkshire may close. He doesn’t understand that I do care. We’re like a family. A tiny, broken family twisted with weird powers, but a family. I don’t want to see what would happen if we’re broken up. I can’t imagine trying to figure out my powers with anyone other than these guys.

But time is falling apart around me, and Sofía is still gone.

? ? ?

At night, rather than waste time in the common room, I creep across the carpeted floor toward the last dorm room at the end of the hall. I’ve been to that room many times, but I haven’t been there since I left Sofía in the past. At first, I avoided her bedroom subconsciously, but as time kept moving forward without her, I started to avoid it on purpose, going so far as to take a different route to get to classes just to skip passing her room. That shut door used to be open all the time, spilling out little snippets of her music and the scent of her shampoo and her bright pink lamp that cast an eerie glow in the room. The fact that the door is always shut now just serves as another reminder that Sofía isn’t inside.

But now, I just want to feel close to her again. Maybe just being in a space that is hers will be enough.

My hand trembles as I twist the knob to Sofía’s bedroom door. The door creaks open. But before I can even flick the light on, I can tell that something’s wrong.

Sofía’s room is empty.

Of course she’s not there, but that’s not what I mean. It’s empty of everything that made it her room. There’s a stripped-down bed against the wall, an unadorned desk, a closet with ten bare hangers. It’s empty of her. Someone has come in and taken away everything that made this room Sofía’s.

“The hell is going on?” I mutter, turning slowly around the room.

I cross her room in three quick strides, pressing my hand against a patched coat of paint that doesn’t quite match the rest of the walls. This was where Sofía and Gwen had their first fight. The two girls were very different, but they had bonded over the first few weeks of class. And then they fought about something stupid, I can’t remember what, and Gwen had flashed too hot and accidentally burned a streak in the wall. Sofía had covered the dark spot with a poster so that Gwen wouldn’t get in trouble.

But the poster’s gone, and the dark spot is covered up. It’s as if Berkshire is trying to make it look like Sofía was never here in the first place.

There’s a flash of movement near the door, and I spin around. A short, teenaged girl with soot streaked down her body pauses, a look of confusion and shock on her face when she peers inside the room and sees me. I’m equally shocked and confused—not only have I never seen this girl before, but she’s dressed in a full-length black skirt with a black top and a huge white collar. She has a thin white cap on, covering most of her pale brown hair.

She’s from Salem.

I lunge for her. “Are you from the past?” I demand. “Have you seen Sofía? A girl—she’s got brown skin and talks differently, like me, and she may have been accused of being a witch.”