I'll Stop the World (83)

Rose accepts it, turning it over in her hand, looking confused. “I don’t get it.”

“Mrs. Hanley found this on her lawn the night of the fire,” I say, keeping my voice low since I don’t know if anyone else is home. “She didn’t tell the police about it because—”

“Because she didn’t want to get a kid in trouble,” she says, realization dawning in her eyes.

I nod, trying to hold in my excitement. “If we can figure out whose it is, even if he didn’t have anything to do with the fire—”

“What makes you so sure it’s a he?”

I frown at the toy in her hand. “I mean, I just assumed—”

“Girls can like Star Wars, too.”

“I know that,” I say, fighting the exasperation that tries to creep into my voice. “I just meant that it seemed most likely that it’s a boy.”

Rose shrugs. “I just think it doesn’t do us any good to jump to conclusions.”

“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But anyway, even if he—or she—didn’t have anything to do with the fire, maybe they saw something we can use.”

Rose’s head bobs slowly in agreement. “We can start with the kids who live on that street.”

“Do you think it could really be a kid who sets the school fire?” I ask. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around that idea since last night, that a kid might be the one responsible for murdering two people.

Rose looks at the figurine in her hand. “I don’t know,” she says, “but we’ve got two days to figure it out.”





Chapter Forty-Nine


ROSE

The last door swung closed with a definitive click.

Sighing, Rose crossed the final name off her list, the thick black ink slashing away a bit more of her hope that Justin’s discovery of the action figure actually meant something.

They’d spent the whole afternoon knocking on doors, working off a neighborhood directory that Mrs. Hanley kept in a kitchen drawer. Any house with kids went on their list, which turned out to be a lot of houses. They’d had to split up in order to get to them all, but their methods were the same.

Claiming they were working on a school project, they started out by asking whether anyone in the house liked Star Wars, and then whether they had any Star Wars action figures. After that, Rose had caught a few breaks, learning that a birthday party accounted for a bunch of the Star Wars–loving kids’ whereabouts. There had also been a Girl Scouts meeting that day, along with a soccer game, which knocked another big chunk of names off her list.

Of the remaining kids, though, none of the alibis stuck out as being particularly suspect.

And the payoff for all her labor was . . . nothing. Even if they were right and the owner of the action figure had been there the day of the fire, there was no way to figure out who it was, unless Justin had had better luck than she did—which she doubted, since if he’d uncovered a lead, she assumed he would’ve found her and told her. Otherwise, with no additional ideas about where to look for the kid, they’d never identify them in time.

Shielding her eyes with one hand, Rose squinted toward the setting sun. Another day, nearly gone. When Justin had first shown up in her life, a week had seemed like plenty of time to change something. Now time was almost up, and they were no closer to solving the mystery of what was going to happen to Bill and Veronica Warren than they had been at the beginning.

I could quit, she thought. Walk away and never look back. She hadn’t asked for any of this, and Justin certainly didn’t deserve her help. He’d apologized for the way he treated her the day before only because he needed something from her. And while at first she’d been convinced that her path had intersected with Justin’s for a reason—that they were somehow destined to solve this problem together, saving lives and changing the future for the better—now she wondered if she’d just been fooling herself this whole time.

Maybe Justin was right. Maybe they couldn’t actually change anything. Maybe this whole thing had been a waste of time.

Or maybe he was wrong about everything, including—especially—the time travel. Maybe there wasn’t going to be a fire at all. Maybe he was just delusional.

Her mind kept churning over maybes as she walked slowly back to Mrs. Hanley’s house, where they’d agreed to meet after they’d finished up their lists. If Justin was wrong about everything, then there was no point to any of this. She could just walk away, and it wouldn’t matter.

She tried to make herself believe it. A big part of her wanted him to be wrong, so that this could all be over. He could disappear, and she’d never have to think about him again.

The problem was, she didn’t think he was wrong. Despite everything, she was sure that if they didn’t succeed in their mission, in two days, two innocent people would die. If anything, that feeling had only grown stronger since he’d first told her his unbelievable story.

Once she was standing in Mrs. Hanley’s driveway, she decided to walk around the garage yet again, as if this time, she’d suddenly spot something she’d missed the first dozen times she’d done this.

She was crouching behind the garage, examining a smear of soot underneath the windowsill, when she heard the back door of the house creak open, then smack shut. Rose turned to see Mrs. Hanley picking her way through the grass in her house slippers, a tall glass filled nearly to the brim clutched in one hand.