I'll Stop the World (71)

At that, he stopped walking, doubling over with laughter.

“What is so funny?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, his shoulders still shaking. “It’s just . . . this is so messed up. You know? Like, we’re trying to solve a crime based mostly on feelings, because all the actual clues are in the future. So this is already pretty much impossible, right? But now I’m even more screwed, because the only friend I have here got grounded. Grounded. From solving a murder. That hasn’t happened. But we know it’s going to happen, because I’m from the future. All the shows and movies and songs I know, all the technology I’m used to—none of it exists yet. You are old enough to be my grandmother. Isn’t that just . . . just piss-your-pants hilarious?”

He let out another peal of high-pitched laughter. Rose looked around, alarmed. What would any of her neighbors think if they looked out their windows to see her consoling some sort of hysterical boy on the sidewalk? Or worse, what would Diane think? “Justin,” she whispered, shaking his arm slightly. “Justin.”

“What?”

“Get a grip.”

“That’s what she said.” Justin dissolved into another fit of giggles.

Rose looped her arm through his and half coaxed, half dragged him down the sidewalk until finally he stopped howling with laughter and straightened up to walk like a normal person. Rose kept her arm linked through his, just in case.

“What’s going on?” she hissed at him under her breath. She was starting to get worried.

“It’s just . . . I met Veronica and Bill today,” he said, a touch of awe in his voice. “And Millie. The baby. They call her Millie.”

“Yeah,” Rose said softly. “I know.”

“And you know how, what we’re doing, it was all kind of theoretical before? ‘Maybe I’m here for this reason, and here’s how we test it.’ Like a scientific experiment, right?”

She nodded.

“But it’s not an experiment, because if I know something bad is coming and don’t stop it, it’s kind of my fault. Not stopping it is, in a way, like making it happen.”

“I don’t think I’d go that fa—”

“If I don’t save them, they’re going to die. And that baby is going to lose her parents.” His voice cracked as he ran his hands through his hair, causing it to stick out in all directions. “She’s going to grow up to have no one and nothing, except me, and I’m going to leave her when I’m fucking eighteen, which will be my fault, because I couldn’t save her parents. Do you have any idea how messed up that is?”

He laughed again, but less wildly this time, his head dropping back to look up at the gray sky. She was worried he might tumble into fits of hysteria again, but instead his laughter trailed into silence. “What if we can’t do it?”

She shrugged. “We have to.”

“Just because we want something doesn’t mean we can make it happen. Trust me, if that were a thing, I’d know.” He cut his eyes toward her, then down to the ground, running a hand through his hair.

“But this isn’t like winning the lottery or wishing someone would like you. Something in the universe rearranged the very fabric of its being in order for you to be right here, right now. It has to work, because the entire cosmos tied itself into a knot to make it happen.”

“Or maybe it just tripped and fell, and I am just like . . . a cosmic penny that accidentally rolled into the sewer.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then nothing we do matters anyway, so we may as well act as if it does matter, right?” She barely understood what she’d just said, but he seemed to follow along.

“Okay, fine,” he agreed, “but we could still get it wrong. If, by your logic, the cosmos is really invested in making sure this goes right, then that has to mean there’s some chance of getting it wrong. Otherwise the stakes would be nonexistent, in which case, why put in all that effort?”

“I’m not trying to talk hypothetical logic problems here,” she said, coming to a stop and turning to face him with her hands on her hips. “It has to work, because . . . it has to. Okay?”

She couldn’t figure out how to put it into better words, but she knew at her core that the answer was vital to who she was, what she believed. After all, if there was no greater meaning to someone traveling through time, then how was she supposed to believe that there was any sort of meaning to the rest of it? To her mom, to Lisa’s dad, to Mrs. Hanley’s fire. To herself.

Maybe this was what that feeling had been, the night she first met Justin on the bridge. Maybe what she’d thought was certainty was really just a deep longing to matter.

“I’m not talking hypotheticals either,” he said, looking at her with a gaze like icy flames. “I just realized a few minutes ago that in a couple days, I’m either going to succeed or I’m going to murder two people. There’s no other option.” He hung his head. “And I still have no idea how to succeed.”

Moving almost by instinct, she reached out and grabbed his hand. “We’re going to figure it out,” she said. “I promise.”

He didn’t pull away, but instead tightened his fingers around hers. They were thin and lightly calloused in her hand, his skin warm. She resisted the urge to trace her thumb over his knuckles, debating whether it was less awkward to drop his hand or keep holding it. Unbidden, her brain replayed his words from a few minutes ago, when she said no one was interested in being her boyfriend.