I'll Stop the World (76)

Noah looks at me, his keys dangling from one finger as the laughter fades from his eyes. He’s still smiling, but the truth couldn’t be plainer if it were tattooed across his face: I’m a third wheel, and he planned for only two. “Actually,” he says, “since you know the way there, Rose, why don’t you two just go and I’ll head home? My mom won’t mind if you drive her car.”

“Are you sure?” Rose asks, and there it is. The dimming.

“Yeah. I told Steph I’d call her when I was done over here anyway,” Noah says, hands in his pockets. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Oh,” Rose says, her expression flickering for just a second before she gives him a tight smile. “Sure, yeah, of course.”

She’s quiet during the drive over. I feel like there’s obviously something going on with her and Noah, but I don’t know the right way to ask about it, or if it’s even any of my business. So I don’t say anything either.

When we pull into the Derrins’ driveway, I get the weirdest sense of déjà vu. The house looks largely the same as it did when I was here last weekend, thirty-eight years in the future. The landscaping is different, of course, and I think some of the trim may be a different color, but otherwise it looks just like it did the last time I watched it shrink in my rearview mirror as I drove away with Alyssa screaming at me to stop.

A few seconds after Rose parks in the wide driveway, the front door opens and a girl emerges from the house. She’s pretty and petite, about our age, with a round face that looks like it should be selling bubble gum, and green eyes frosted in a shocking smear of bright-blue eye shadow. Her peach-colored shirt is about eight sizes too big, with the face of some dude who looks like he just escaped from Jumanji printed across the chest and something unintelligible scrawled in purple script down the sleeve, and her blonde hair is tightly curled into a frizzy halo that makes her look like she shoved her finger in an electric socket.

I have been stuck in 1985 for more than four days now, but I don’t feel any closer to understanding any of its bizarre fashion choices.

“Hey,” she says, looking at both of us and trying to hide her confusion at my presence. Her eyes settle on Rose. “I’m sorry, did we have plans or something?”

“No, Justin just noticed that Karl left his bike by the school, so we came here to drop it off,” Rose says. She gestures toward me as I lift the bike off the rack. “Charlene, this is my friend Justin. My pen pal that I told you about. Justin, this is Charlene, Karl’s sister.”

Charlene sticks out her hand to shake, which seems a little formal, but I go with it. I expect her hand to be soft, given the swankiness of her house and the gentleness of her features, but her fingers are calloused and her grip is firm. Looking at her up close, it finally comes to me where I’ve seen her before: the family portrait, when I went inside to use the bathroom during the bonfire. She was in the one with Dave’s grandparents. Which would make her Dave’s aunt.

Poor girl.

“Is Lisa here?” Rose asks as I wheel the bike over to the garage and lean it against the outside of the house.

Charlene shakes her head. “No. Not today.”

“Oh. Okay,” Rose says. She’s smiling, but something about it feels odd. Like she’s posing.

I want to jump back in the car, away from this decidedly weird vibe. This whole thing is uncomfortable, but since this is my first time meeting Charlene, I’m not sure if I’m the one causing it, or if this is always the dynamic between the two of them.

Rose and Charlene make stilted small talk for another minute or two before Charlene puts us all out of our misery by saying she has to get back to her homework. We say an awkward goodbye and get back in the car, while Charlene returns to the house.

My seat belt somehow gets all twisted, and as I turn in my seat to untangle it, a slight motion at the top of the driveway catches my eye. It’s Karl, his wrist now bandaged, half-hidden in the bushes at the edge of the woods. He startles when he notices me, his eyes going wide. For a second, we just stare at each other, while Rose starts the car. Then he turns and disappears into the trees like he was never there.





Chapter Forty-Five


ROSE

“I’ve met him before.”

“Who?” Rose said, looking over her shoulder as she backed up, turning around in the Derrins’ skating rink–size front drive.

“Karl. In my time.”

Rose blinked at Justin, his words taking a second to fully register. Was he willing to talk about the future now? Despite the risk to the space-time continuum?

Since he was the one bringing it up, she had to admit, she was curious. “Oh yeah?” she said, approaching this new subject carefully, like a deer she hoped to touch before it bounded back into the trees.

He nodded, his eyes far off. “I didn’t recognize him at first, but after seeing his house again . . .” He laughed, a little incredulously. “He kicked me out of that house, the night of the bonfire. That’s actually why I was on the bridge that night. If not for Karl, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Why’d he kick you out?”

“Because his son hates me.”

“Karl has a son?”

Justin nodded. “He’s the worst.” He shook his head, seeming dazed as Rose steered away from the house and down the winding drive. “It’s so weird, you know? You have this idea about why things are the way they are, but you never really think about it. Like, I go to school every day in a building named after my dead grandparents, and I know they died in a fire at the school, but I never actually thought about them as, like, people people, with personalities and responsibilities and, I don’t know, smells and stuff.”