I'll Stop the World (38)

Deputy Gibson chewed on his lower lip, narrowing his eyes. “Yin,” he repeated to himself. He peered into her face. “You’re the stepdaughter, aren’t you? Of the woman running for mayor?”

Rose noticed the disdain in his voice, confirming her suspicion that he was likely related to Franklin Gibson, Diane’s opponent. “Yes, sir.”

He snorted, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Rose couldn’t make it all out, but she definitely caught the words these people.

Her face grew warm, but she hoped the officer couldn’t tell in the flashing red lights of his patrol car. In the six years since her dad had married Diane, she’d still never gotten used to the comments. For a while after the wedding, kids would make buzzing noises whenever she or Lisa passed them in the halls. Eventually, she learned it was because their family was half-Black, half-Asian—black and yellow, like a bumblebee.

The buzzing had stopped after a few months, but there were still times when Rose was caught off-guard by a dirty look, a mumbled comment, a mean-spirited laugh. Things that she and her family had never done anything to deserve, except exist.

Which was why they had to be perfect. All the time. No exceptions.

If Diane and her father knew what she was doing right now, they would kill her.

Deputy Gibson sighed and checked his watch, then finally dropped the boy’s arm. “Okay, Miss Yin, if you want to take responsibility for him, be my guest. But he’s gotta get in the car, and you’ve gotta drive the speed limit. I don’t want to see either of you out here again. Understand?”

Rose nodded around the lump in her throat. She just wanted to be back at home, where she could shower this whole night off her.

Gibson strolled back to his car, then paused with his hand on the door. “1985,” he called.

“What?”

“Kid asked the year. It’s 1985,” Gibson said with a grin, his shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter as he climbed into the patrol car.

Rose looked at the boy, whose face was as white as a sheet and oddly waxy in the moonlight. He looked like he might throw up, but she very much hoped he didn’t, since she now had no choice but to give him a ride. “Get in the car,” she hissed through clenched teeth as she climbed back into the driver’s seat.

He nodded, drifting to the other side of the car like a zombie and flopping into his seat without a word. Rose started the engine, glanced in her rearview mirror—the lights were no longer flashing, but Deputy Gibson was still sitting there, watching—and eased her foot onto the accelerator. Once she started moving, so did the police car behind her, matching her pace across the bridge. She fervently hoped that he wasn’t planning to follow her home.

The boy whispered something she couldn’t quite make out.

“What?”

He cleared his throat. “Is it really 1985?” His voice sounded dull, like it was covered in dust.

Rose nodded. For some reason, she wasn’t nervous anymore. Sometime during their encounter with Deputy Gibson, her apprehension had disappeared, replaced by curiosity. “What’s your name?”

“Justin. Justin Warren.”

Rose thought for a second. “You said the school is named Warren. In . . . where you’re from.”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. After my grandparents. They died there. Or I guess . . . they will die there.”

Rose didn’t say anything, but her stomach clenched as her mind made the obvious connections. Veronica, Diane’s campaign manager, was married to Bill Warren, the school guidance counselor. They had a baby—a little girl. Veronica brought her to their house sometimes for campaign meetings. She and Emmie would play together. Rose and Lisa would take turns holding her.

Was Justin really talking about those Warrens? Were Bill and Veronica in danger?

And why on earth did she actually believe any of this? Was she losing her mind?

Justin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Rose’s stomach flipped a second time at the sound of the words she’d just been thinking. Again, she was struck by the sense that they were somehow uniquely aligned with one another. Like the moon passing over the sun. “I don’t think you’re losing your mind,” she said.

“You’re just saying that because you’re trapped in a car with me.”

“No, I’m not. I mean, I am trapped in a car with you, but that’s not why.”

“Why, then?”

She tilted her head, her hands tight on the steering wheel. “I honestly don’t know. It’s just a feeling, I guess.”

“A feeling. Sure. Why not.” He sighed, dropping his head back to thump rhythmically against the back of his seat.

“How’d you get in the middle of the road?”

He shrugged, not pausing his thumping.

“I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

He turned to face her. “You can’t help me anyway.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you’re not real.”

“Yes I am.”

“That’s just what a not-real person would say.”

“Why don’t you think I’m real?”

He twisted around in his seat, pointing back behind them. “Because the last thing I remember that made sense was driving my car off Wilson Bridge. So, as best I can figure, I’m either in a coma, and you’re a product of my subconscious, or I’m dead, and you’re . . . I don’t know. An afterlife fairy or something.”