I'll Stop the World (40)

Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Was this why she couldn’t stop thinking of Mrs. Hanley’s fire? Because it was the key to saving two more people? Noah kept telling her to let it go, but she never could. Maybe some part of her had known that it would be important. That she would be important.

After all, was it a coincidence that she was the one who was here right when Justin showed up, even though nearly everyone else in town had crossed this bridge at some point this evening? Or had their paths crossed because they were meant to?

“When does it happen?” she asked, practically breathless as she realized the implications of what Justin was saying. “The fire at the school.”

He kicked at the floorboards. “October fifth.”

Rose’s stomach did a nervous little flutter. That gave them one week.

One week to change the future.





Interlude

AFTER, AND BEFORE

For a long time, he disappeared.

Not literally, much as he’d hoped he might. And not to himself, although he wished he could.

He climbed on a bus as the smell of smoke still lingered in his nostrils, not caring about the destination, and rode until his money ran out, in a place where nothing and no one was familiar. He gave himself a new name, and every person he met got a new story, each one more sensational than the last, until he got tired of keeping up with all the versions of himself.

After that, he stuck to one story, one that was easy for him to remember and easy for everyone else to forget.

For a while he thought someone might come looking for him. He slept fitfully, his eyes never fully closed, twitching awake at the slightest noise. He envisioned federal agents kicking down his door, armed with questions, suspicions, accusations.

But they never came.

Over time, his memories began to fade, their sharp edges dulled like something out of a dream. He didn’t even know why he was running anymore. What sort of life he was trying to protect? Wouldn’t it be better, he sometimes thought, to have it all be over?

He thought about ending it. He spent days, weeks, planning what he’d do, what it would feel like, how he’d be sure to do it right. He thought through every last detail. Assembled everything he’d need. Spent hours staring at the instruments of finality, spread across his bed like he was packing for a trip.

But he couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to do it.

He’d never wanted to die. Just didn’t want to be here, in this world that was not his world, answering to a name that was not his name, living a life that was not his life.

But he didn’t have a choice. Not really.

He spent months working up the courage to do what he knew he had to do. He never wanted to go back there, where the ashes of his failure still hung heavy in the air. But there was nowhere else to go.

By the time he returned, it had been years. No one knew him, although he knew everyone. He walked the familiar streets as a stranger, time dragging on like claws in his skin.

And he waited.





SUNDAY





Chapter Twenty-Four


JUSTIN

I’ve been here for less than a day, and I’m already over 1985.

I slept in Rose’s car last night, tossing fitfully in the back seat, jerking awake at every sound, expecting to open my eyes to a hospital, or a riverbed, or the afterlife, or anything that made more sense than this, but I remained stubbornly here, two decades before I was born. Rose sneaked me food this morning—a foil-wrapped Pop-Tart and a box of Hi-C—and told me that as soon as she and her family arrived back home from church in the afternoon, we’d “figure things out.” As if fixing my accidental time-travel problem is something that can be accomplished in a single Sunday afternoon.

That left me with a few more hours to kill, during which I stupidly walked to my house, just because I had to see for myself. Long before I got there, though, daylight revealed all the things I’d missed in my panicked state the night before. Wooded areas where neighborhoods should be. Storefronts that looked nothing like I remembered them, on the rare occasions when they were at least the same business, which, most often, they weren’t. Houses that were different colors, or missing additions, or had totally different landscaping from what I was used to seeing every day.

By the time I got to my house, it was barely even a shock to find the driveway covered in chalked hopscotch grids, and the lawn littered with brightly colored plastic toys. Of course it was wrong. Everything here was wrong.

I ran back to Rose’s house, tears stinging my eyes. I’m not normally a crier, but it turns out that even when home kind of sucks, it’s still a gut punch to realize it’s actually gone. Or rather, that it’s still there, somewhere, but you may never be able to see it again.

Fortunately, I had composed myself by the time Rose got home and finished lunch with her family. They had pot roast; I had a gas station burger whose best feature was that it cost only fifty cents. Good thing I never returned Stan’s Oreo money to him—twenty bucks goes a long way in 1985.

Afterward, the first words out of Rose’s mouth were “let’s get to work.” I could absolutely not have dealt with that level of group-project-leader intensity if I had still been crying.

The first item of “work” on Rose’s list turned out to be finding me a place to stay, which I assumed would be a massive headache but wound up being no big deal. She arranged for me to crash with an elderly woman named Mrs. Hanley, who was the grandmother of one of Rose’s friends. She told Mrs. Hanley I was her pen pal visiting from out of town, and just like that, I had a room to myself, a key to the back door, and a thick-cut turkey sandwich, due to Mrs. Hanley’s assessment that I was “too skinny.”