A World Without You(56)

The girl opens her mouth to speak; her face is twisted with fear and revulsion, as if she thinks I’m of the devil.

I blink.

And she’s gone.

Cracks in time. Everywhere I go, the timestream follows, leaking moments and people that pop up in the shadows as reminders that I am not in control.

I try to get my heart to stop racing from the shock of seeing—and then not seeing—the girl from Salem, when suddenly the door bangs open and Gwen bounces in.

“What are you doing here?” I ask at the same moment Gwen squeaks in surprise at seeing me.

“I come here all the time,” Gwen says defensively. “What are you doing here?”

“I miss Sofía.”

Gwen’s lips twist up, and for once, she doesn’t have a snarky quip to fire back. Her shoulders slump and her hair sweeps into her face as she looks down, a defeated expression in her eyes.

“I miss her too,” Gwen says. Her guard is still up, as if she expects that I’ll demand she leave. But this place isn’t Sofía’s, not anymore, and even if it were, I wouldn’t keep Gwen from whatever remained of her.

“Why do you come here?” I ask.

Gwen shrugs. “Privacy.”

“There’s no privacy in your own room?”

“I like it, okay?” Gwen says, moving past me and plopping down on the empty, bare bed. “I like the big room with no stuff in it.”

She likes the very thing I hate about this place: the echoing emptiness.

“Are you going to stay or what?” Gwen asks.

I shrug.

“Whatever.”

Gwen hasn’t really liked me since Sofía and I started dating. I can’t blame her. I took away her best and only friend—or, I didn’t take her away, but I took away time with her. And then I took her to the wrong time. Guilt clangs around inside me like a bell.

Gwen stands up and flips the mattress over. This is the bed where Sofía slept, although when she slept here, the bed was covered with pale pink-and-green sheets and a quilt her grandmother made.

And, I’m fairly certain, the underside of her mattress wasn’t covered in long burn marks.

“People think fire is uncontrollable,” Gwen mutters, kneeling in front of the bed as if in prayer. She flicks her fingers, and sparks shoot up. At first I think she’s remembered her powers, but then I see the Zippo in her hand. “But it’s not. It’s powerful, and power doesn’t like to be contained.”

She runs the flame in a smooth, even line on the silky mattress material, and it blackens and burns. An acrid stench rises up from the scorching cloth. Even though Gwen’s forgotten her powers of pyrokinesis, she’s remembered her grief. And her love of fire. There are dozens of similar black lines, burn marks, all in a row. Careful, even marks monitored and cultivated. They look like scars.

I count the marks on the bed.

One for every night Sofía has been gone.





CHAPTER 37




Family Day takes me by surprise.

I knew it was coming, obviously, but time’s been messing with me lately. During mealtimes, the servers are tailed by a small brown-skinned girl with braids, dressed in clothes from at least ten years ago, who speaks Spanish. When I stare out the window during math, a group of Native Americans stalks through the sea grass. During free time outside, the camp for sick kids is fully occupied in one moment, then an abandoned ruin again in the blink of my eye.

All around me, time is leaking flashes of history.

Or—and this is what I fear far, far more—I’m seeing death. They’re ghosts in front of me. Spirits reaching out, accusing me of messing with their pasts.

Sometimes, all I hope is to see Sofía. But other times, I’m terrified that if I see her, that means she’s already beyond my help, she’s already dead.

So I am somewhat distracted by the time Family Day rolls around. I skipped breakfast and went to the morning session with Dr. Franklin, and no one was there. It wasn’t until my science teacher, Mr. Glover, walked by and saw me waiting outside the Doc’s door that I finally figured out what day it was.

I rush outside, where the Doctor has only just noticed I was missing. He kind of fusses over all of us, like in the old movies where the orphans are paraded in front of prospective adoptive parents. Except here it isn’t about being selected to go to a new home, it’s about hoping our own parents are happy enough with us to take us back.

The parents arrive individually. It seems like forever before anyone shows up, and then, suddenly, everyone’s here. Gwen’s mom is one of the first to arrive, then Harold’s whole family. My parents arrive next, dragging along Phoebe. Only Ryan’s family doesn’t bother to show, but the Doctor makes him stand outside with everyone else, which is actually kind of a mean thing to do.

It’s still a little too cold to be outside today, even though the season is starting to change. Everyone’s wearing coats, and Gwen’s hopping around from foot to foot, trying to keep warm. Despite this, the whole place smells like a cookout. The staff associates “family” with “cheap food.” Last Family Day was a build-your-own-sandwich bar.

“Hey,” I say in the general direction of my family. Harold’s all excited to see his family, but I see mine every weekend. I don’t know why they bother to come, honestly. Phoebe never has before.