A World Without You(77)

“Sofía?”

She grips the bow like it’s a sword. “This is a fugue,” she says in a horrible monotone. Her eyes are dead and empty as she advances toward me. My back’s pressed against the wall.

She pulls her arm out, her soulless eyes locked on mine, and drives the cello bow into my chest.

Everything goes black.

I don’t mean I passed out. I mean, one moment I’m there, with a cello bow sticking out of my chest, the wood splintering but still powerful enough to pierce my skin, and the next moment I am floating in nothing. There’s no more cello bow.

There’s no more Sofía either.

There’s no more world.

There’s only . . . nothing.

“Hello?” I say into the void.

Silence.

For a long time, I exist in the nothing. And then light starts to glow around the edges. I start to feel pressure on my back; I’m lying down. My room comes into focus, and I sit up in bed.

On the nightstand beside me, my clock ticks.





CHAPTER 53




When Dr. Franklin comes to my room the next day, I keep my guard up. I pretend everything is fine. Dr. Franklin talks about banal things, like paranoia and trust, and I nod along. Soon enough, I’m allowed out of my room and back with my unit.

“Where have you been, spaz?” Ryan asks me quietly as I make my way to the library. I’ve been given permission to skip all my classes and do silent study, as long as I have private sessions with the Doc.

I don’t answer, so Ryan follows me down the hallway.

“You’re going to get in trouble for skipping class,” I say.

He shrugs. “I bet they won’t care. This place is all going to shit anyway.”

“The Doctor will care.”

“If he’s even the Doctor for much longer.”

I stop short in front of the library, my hand on the door. “What do you mean?”

“I overheard the officials talking to the Doc the day before spring break. They completed their investigation. They’re contesting the, uh . . . the accreditation of the school. I didn’t know what that meant, but I looked it up, and it’s bad.”

“So what does it mean?” I ask in a low voice.

“My dad said the school would lose funding, and there’s no way it’ll stay open if that happens.” Ryan looks back at Dr. Franklin’s closed office door. “Dude, it was brutal. Those officials tore Dr. Franklin a new one. They said the school wasn’t safe and Sofía was proof of that—and so were you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, they brought you up. I told you not to be such a freak in front of them. They said Dr. Franklin let you get away with too much and that he wasn’t ‘providing you with all the resources you need.’ They mentioned Harold too. That he should be put in a home or something.”

Poor Harold. He’ll be locked away in a padded cell if Berkshire shuts down.

The sound of hammering fills my ears, and rattling shakes my bones. I look down, and the floor is gone. I am balancing on wooden beams, high above the unfinished construction of the academy, as carpenters and electricians and plumbers work to create the building.

I blink, and the floor is back, the hardwood nicked with age and dust gathering along the baseboards.

“I’m going to be pissed if the school closes,” Ryan continues, oblivious to time cracking up around him. “I think I know what I need to do, but . . .”

What will my parents do with me?

I think about how much I frightened Phoebe, on both the night before I left for Berkshire and the other night when we sat outside, before time snapped me back here.

Maybe I should be locked up.

“I wish Sofía were here,” I say softly.

“Me too, man,” Ryan says, his voice bitter. “If she were, those officials never would have come.” His fingers are curled into a fist, and he punches the wall beside the library door. Hard. “Damn it!” he says, seething. “I will not let those damn officials mess this place up! They’re ruining all my plans!”

There’s something about that last sentence, something about Ryan’s plans that rings in the air like a struck bell. But I’m too distracted to really focus on it. All I can see is the way the wall ripples and moves like water where Ryan struck it.

I blink, and the wall is normal again.

“I’ve got to go,” I say, pushing the library door open.

Ryan follows me inside. I wish I knew how to get rid of him.

I go to the ancient computers in the back of the room. Ryan talks at me while the hard drive boots up. He’s bragging about all the stuff he has in his home in LA, how he spent all break swimming and surfing and doing all kinds of cool things he doesn’t get to do here. I want to call him on his bull—Ryan doesn’t look like the kind of guy to go swimming without a T-shirt on, let alone be a surf expert—but I just don’t care enough to push it. He exhausts me, honestly. And I don’t think he even likes me. He just wants an audience.

“Look, I’ve got work to do,” I say. “You may not give a shit about your classes, but I do.”

Ryan flips me off, but at least he leaves me alone for a bit, wandering up and down the book aisles.

I turn back to the computer and quickly type in Sofía Muniz. Several links pop up—mostly social media profiles for other girls named Sofía Muniz—but when I add Berkshire Academy and Pear Island to the search, the top hits are all newspaper articles, as well as an official statement from the academy’s board.