A World Without You(84)

“Hey.” I sit down beside the Doctor, facing the chimney as well. What should I say? How do you tell someone that the life they’re living is a lie, an illusion created by a crazy teenager with far more power than responsibility? That the world is stranger than you believe, and you have powers you cannot fathom?

I open my mouth to speak, but then, out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of movement catches my attention. I see Carlos Estrada, dripping wet and shivering. He raises a finger to his lips. I nod subtly and wait for the Doctor to speak first.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Dr. Franklin says finally.

“No one ever does,” I say. “Even me.” This is the most important thing I’ve learned since Sofía disappeared: The future is all possibility, countless options that you can choose to take or not.

I start to speak again, but behind the Doctor, the image of Carlos stares me into silence.

“I’ve failed a lot here lately, Bo. I failed Berkshire. I failed Sofía. I failed you.”

Ryan is doing this to you, I want to say. Ryan is making everyone believe something that’s not true. He’s powerful. We all have powers, even you. But his are stronger.

I want to say all this, but I don’t. I don’t.

“You were in my office last night, weren’t you?” Dr. Franklin asks.

I look down at my hands. “I had to find out the truth.”

“And did you?” He won’t look at me.

“I think . . . I don’t know, but . . . maybe?”

“Good.” The Doctor works to keep the emotion out of his voice, so I don’t know if he’s surprised or proud or disappointed. But he smiles a little when he pats my shoulder. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you came out here, to the chimney, like I did,” Dr. Franklin continues. “You’ve fixated on this place, and little wonder. Bo,” the Doctor says, touching my arm and forcing me to pull my attention directly to him, “I want you to know it’s natural to feel guilt in a situation like Sofía’s death. I feel guilt too. In fact, a lot of my guilt is rooted in her death. But Bo, it was suicide. Sofía’s depression was not something you were equipped to deal with. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it.”

Suicide. The word reverberates inside me.

“Do you remember that first day here at the academy, when we were introducing ourselves?” The Doctor doesn’t wait for me to answer him. “We each talked about our biggest problems, our biggest triggers and worries. And I told you about myself. Remember?”

Vaguely. He told us that he could heal, and he showed us the scars to prove it.

“I discussed my drug addiction when I was a kid,” Dr. Franklin says. “I said that was the reason I took this job, why I wanted to help kids with problems.”

There’s a roaring ocean in my ears, but I push it down, so my head’s above the water and I can hear. My heart can drown, but I need my mind.

“I keep going back to that time now,” the Doctor continues, his voice contemplative. “I keep reminding myself that not everyone can be saved.”

That’s not true, I want to say.

“Sometimes people don’t want to be saved,” he says. “And that’s frustrating.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“You understand, don’t you?”

I nod. It’s not something I could put into words, but yeah. I understand.

It’s complicated.

Life is like the timestream, all knotted and twisted and convoluted. And maybe if we could all see exactly where the threads of our fate lead, we’d be able to make the right choices all the time, but we can’t. Not even me. Especially not me. Because I never saw this. There are possibilities we can’t imagine, futures we could never envision. And there are spots of darkness we cannot see past.

“I wanted to save Sofía,” Dr. Franklin says. “And I truly believe she wanted to be saved.”

“But you can’t save everyone,” I say in a low voice.

Beyond the Doctor, Carlos Estrada, dripping wet and slowly turning blue, nods.

I remember the day Sofía told me about Carlos’s death. The way no one noticed. Everyone was playing and splashing in the pool, everyone but him. He sank quietly underwater. He never came back up.

Real drowning is quiet, Sofía had said. It doesn’t announce itself.

It just happens.

And then you’re gone. She’s gone.

Carlos Estrada nods again, and then he disappears.

? ? ?

I understand why she told me about Carlos Estrada now.

? ? ?

“You wanted to change the past so much that you believed you could,” Dr. Franklin says.

I stare at the empty place where Carlos Estrada was.

I’m not even sure I know what the past is anymore. The past is Sofía in 1692. The past is yesterday, and realizing how much power Ryan has. The past is my sister’s bedroom door locking. The past is a deer in an empty field, a camp for sick kids, two men riding on horseback in the marsh.

I remember the way she tasted on my lips the first time I kissed her, with a rocket soaring into the stars behind us. I remember the way she held my hand, as if it were a secret. I remember the sound of her voice, the faraway look in her eyes, the sweep of her hair over the side of her face.