The Love That Split the World(48)

“Forward?”

His hazel eyes flash up to mine. “In time.”

“That’s impossible,” I say, breathless.

He laughs. “It’s all impossible, Natalie.”

“Good point,” I say, massaging my forehead. “So are there two futures?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. When I’m going forward, I can’t slow it down. It’s like . . .” He thinks for a second. “It’s like I’m standing in one place and makin’ the world go past me, but as soon as I try to freeze it, live in it, I fall back into now, either my version or yours.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” he admits. “That’s why I didn’t tell anyone about it. There’s no visible proof. It doesn’t matter if other people are around when time starts moving; when it stops, I return right back into the present. For them it’s like nothing happened, like I just blanked out for a second, no matter how long it felt like to me. I managed to take Mason’s hamster with me once when I was a kid, but that didn’t do me any good, and I could never replicate that with actual people, so I gave up. I’d go to the school at night to play piano, and I’d pass over to your version of the world, and then when the janitor came running in, I’d stop playing and let myself fall back into my version.”

“The Band Room Ghost,” I say.

He shrugs his shoulders. “The night I met you, I tried to go back to my version, but I couldn’t. I thought it was just like it was with everyone else—like I was tuning in to where you were supposed to be, and that was what grounded me in your world. But then, after that night, you kept seeing flickers of my version of things. You saw the church with the extra wing, and you saw me and Rachel at the mall today.”

I stare down at the carpet. “Your version of Rachel, though,” I say, trying to sound natural.

He nods. “Rachel’s pretty much Rachel, no matter where she is.”

“She’s your . . .”

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head.

“Your ex?” I guess.

He looks at me for a long moment. “Something like that.”

“What about that night on the football field? Was she your ex then?”

His eyes dart sideways toward the window then back down to the ground. “Not quite.” My stomach turns, and I cover my face, massaging my temples. “Natalie,” he says.

I shake my head and let my hands fall. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “There are more important things to worry about.”

He stares at me, eyes heavy, as if he’s asking me for something, and the inside of my chest feels like tearing paper. “That’s why I didn’t show up,” he says finally. “When we first met I didn’t even know who you were, where you fit in. But when you saw all that stuff—my version of stuff—the way you acted, I didn’t know what to think about it at first. Then your phone number didn’t work in my world, and I started putting it together. So I got this.” He holds up a crappy flip phone.

“What, is that a burner for calling drug dealers?” I say dryly.

He gives me a mock-reproachful look. “Sort of,” he says. “It’s to call you. I bought it in your version, so when you called my number, it’d actually go through. The other night I wanted to see you. Thought you’d be at Schwartz’s Fourth of July party, so I went, but I couldn’t get to your version. Happens once in a while. Drank too much, and I still couldn’t get through. Still couldn’t the next day. Anyway, after I saw you today, I decided to try again.”

I pull anxiously at the carpet. “Alcohol really helps you pass between them?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe. I thought so, anyway.”

“Seems like a pretty convenient excuse for alcoholism. Takes the concept of social lubrication to a whole new level.”

When I look up, Beau gives me one of those heavy smiles: summer in mouth form. “Well, Natalie Cleary, how ’bout you figure out how to pass back and forth, and then I won’t have to drink to find you.”

I laugh. “If you stop drinking beer, then what are you going to pour over your cereal?”

“Beer doesn’t count as drinking.”

I laugh again. “Oh, another convenient view.”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll cut out beer too, get into scrambled eggs or something. You just figure out how to get to my Union, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, fighting a smile. Then something important occurs to me. “I think I’m looking for someone in your version. Or maybe she’s in both versions, or in a third altogether. I’m not really sure. She’s an old woman with gray hair and dark skin, and she calls herself Grandmother. Have you seen anyone like that?”

He hesitates, pushing his hair back and down his neck. “Natalie.”

“What?”

“As far as I know, we have all the same people you have,” he says. “There’s two of everyone.”

“Everyone?” I say.

He holds my eyes for a long moment. “Except us.”

“Seriously?”

He nods. “I’d never seen you before that night in the school.”