by Lisa Mangum
Leo nodded thoughtfully. “It makes sense.”
I shook my head. “Maybe that helps to explain why the copy of the plans didn’t change, but I’m not sure it helps us figure out how to prevent changes from happening in the future. I mean, it’s not like I can go around making copies of everything I want to stay the same. There has to be another way to fix in place what we want to stay in place.”
A light glimmered in Leo’s eyes, turning them the shade of bright sky instead of faded denim, and his half smile widened into a full-fledged grin.
“What? What did I say?”
“There is a way to make a copy of what you want and fix it in place.”
“There is? How?”
Leo tapped the edge of Valerie’s crayon drawing. “You said it yourself. By taking a picture of it.”
My eyebrows drew together in confusion and disbelief. “You think if I take a picture of something, then Zo won’t be able to change it? Could it really be that easy? If it’s true, then I’m willing to try it.” I pulled out my phone and aimed the built-in camera at Leo.
He threw up his hand, shielding his face. “No, wait. Don’t test it on me; there’s no point. Since I’m outside the river, Zo’s changes don’t affect me.” He lowered his hand and met my eyes. “But I think we’re on the right track, though I doubt if it’ll be that simple. I think if you want to fix the image, then it can’t be digital.”
I lowered my phone. “Why not? How else do you take a picture?”
Laughing a little under his breath, Leo shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how young you really are.”
“Hey—”
“I meant no disrespect, Abby. Truly. It’s just that for decades before the advent of digital photography, people took pictures the old-fashioned way—with actual film.”
“I know that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Fine. We can use film. Do you have a camera we can use?”
“Not anymore. But I know where we can get one.”
“Excellent! Let’s go.” I gathered up my binders and put them back in my bag.
“There’s a small problem. It’s not enough to just pick up a camera—we could do that almost anywhere. We’ll need access to a darkroom as well.”
I sat back, feeling the hard edge of disappointment hit me.
Leo continued. “My friend owns a camera shop, and she opens the darkroom on the weekends.”
“What? It’s Monday! I can’t wait all week.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but you may not have a choice.”
I pulled my bag closer to my side, resting a protective hand over the contents. They were safe, which meant Dante was safe—or would be soon—but there were other people in my life who were still in danger, still subject to Zo’s whims of change. The sooner I could fix them in place, the better I would feel. “Promise me you’ll call me the minute you find out about the camera and the darkroom, okay?”
“Prometto,” he said in Italian. “And promise me that you’ll keep that copy of the plans safe.”
I remembered all the times Dante had made promises to me and how he had always kept his word. Now it was my turn to return the favor. I would do what I had to do. Even if it meant waiting.
“Prometto,” I repeated.
Leo nodded, accepting my promise, and smiled tenderly. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, Abby, but go home. You’ve done some amazing work in just a few days. If we have to follow those plans, then we won’t be able to even start building the door until the first day of summer. Try to relax this evening. Go out with your friends. Get a good night’s sleep. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”
Chapter
10
I took Leo’s advice about going out with my friends and called Natalie that evening. After the day’s roller coaster of emotion, I was thrilled to hear that something had actually gone as planned. She was out with Jason. They’d gone to the movies and were on their way to the Sugar Shoppe for some ice cream, and would I like to meet them there?
A chance for a normal night with my friends? Count
me in.
I hadn’t spent much time with Jason since graduation morning, and I wondered how things would be between us. He greeted me with a hug, but I could tell he was still feeling a
little distant. I realized I didn’t mind so much. Letting him go was going to be a lot less painful than breaking his heart.
The three of us shared a triple-decker banana split with five different kinds of ice cream and four different toppings. We talked and laughed and, for a time, I was able to set aside the problems plaguing me. At one point in the evening, I looked across the table at Jason laughing at something Natalie had said. I thought about what Leo had said about photographs and I took a mental picture of the moment, enjoying the way the light turned Jason’s eyes golden as he watched Natalie scoop up a spoonful of whipped cream and chocolate sauce. I recognized the strangeness of the moment, for sure, but it felt like old times. Almost. For that night, at least, it was enough.
Once I got home, however, I ignored Leo’s advice about getting a good night’s sleep. I wanted to see Dante again. So I climbed into bed, slowed my breathing, and thought about the points and curves of Dante’s name. I thought about the sweep of his dark hair falling over his gray eyes. I conjured up his smile, the way a shadow would appear along his collarbone when he tilted his head. I traced in my mind the arch of his eyebrows, the line of his jaw, the tapering ends of his fingers. I welcomed the darkness of sleep that enveloped me, still listening for the echo of his voice.
***
I opened my eyes to darkness. The clock on my bedside table shimmered 3:40 a.m. What was I doing awake? I remembered dreaming—something about a ferret? a Ferris wheel? Certainly not Dante, which frustrated me.
And then . . . something woke me up.
I stretched my toes to the edges of my bed and held my breath as though that would help me hear better. The darkness blanketed me, weighted down with silence. I heard the quiet creaks as the house settled and sighed. I propped myself up on my elbows, listening. Straining to see through the shadows in my room, I peered at the curtains shrouding my window. Had they moved? Or was it simply a trick of the moonlight?
I leaned against my headboard, pulling my knees to my chest. The logical part of my brain coolly observed that no one could get into my room from the window; I was on the second floor. But such solid logic seemed paper-thin against the onslaught of instinctive panic that covered me as completely as my blankets did.
There. It had happened again. I was sure of it. Moonlight didn’t breathe. And I was positive I could hear someone breathing. Someone besides me.
I pulled my sheet to my neck, the material as taut as my nerves. What should I do? Should I scream? Grab my phone and call 911? Call Leo? Pretend to go back to sleep and hope that whoever it was would just go away?
I told my brain to tell my hand to reach for the phone, but it didn’t seem like any part of me was willing to do anything but freeze in unexpected fear. All my focus was pinpointed on the spot where the curtains split, and my imagination shifted into high gear. Any second now, whoever was behind those curtains would slip a hand between the panels, curl his bone-white fingers around the fabric, and then, with a menacing nonchalance, he would pull back the curtain and step into my room, right next to my bed.
Against my better judgment, I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see whatever it was that was going to happen next. And yet, I could already see it happening, could already hear his breathing quicken the closer he got to me, could already hear his voice as he said my name—
“Abby.”
I bit down on a scream. I pushed myself as far back against my headboard as I could go. My eyes flew open.
But no one was there. No creepy killer stood over me, razor-sharp teeth bared in a snarl. No annoying little sister crouched by my bed, laughing at a hysterical practical joke. Nothing moved. The curtains hung still and heavy. Even the shadows seem
ed to have paused in their nightly wanderings.
I was alone in my room. And everything was just as it was supposed to be.
No, not quite everything.
With my senses heightened by the adrenaline shot, I saw that on the corner of my desk there was a square-shaped box that hadn’t been there before. I spent a good long time studying my room, making sure that the curtains had stopped breathing and were behaving again, before I slipped out from beneath the covers.
Slowly, as though crossing a minefield, I tiptoed across the floor to my desk. I reached out a hand and switched on the desk lamp, blinking in the sudden flood of light. Spinning around, I looked again in every corner of the room, only daring to breathe when I confirmed that yes, I was alone.
Alone with a mysterious, brightly wrapped box, complete with a bow.
Smaller than a shoe box, the package was covered in a thick material—a brocade of shimmering yellow and gold—instead of traditional wrapping paper. Patterns had been woven into the fabric with gold thread, thin spirals connecting to nodes that were scattered in a haphazard fashion across the entire surface. The box was almost a perfect cube, a little wider than it was tall, but with the gold bow on top, the measurements just about evened out.
It was beautiful and carried the unmistakable aura of a homemade gift. But it still made me uneasy. The yellow wasn’t the sunlit sheen of summer; it was the pale shade of thick pus. The woven gold strands looked more like tiny chains binding the box closed than the sparkling trail of falling stars I suspected they were meant to represent. And for some reason, the bow made me think of a hangman’s noose.
I sat down at the desk, my eyes never leaving the box. Where had it come from? Had Mom left it here earlier today and I’d missed seeing it when I fell into bed after my ice-cream feast? Or had a mysterious stranger really managed to slip into my second-story window in order to leave me . . . what? A present? A threat?
I leaned close, but the box didn’t seem to be ticking. Then again, I supposed real-life bombs weren’t like in the movies with their loud ticking clocks, counting down on a large LED readout nestled in a snarl of multicolored wires. There was a strange, faint odor—a sharp, bitter smell that made my nose itch.
Did I dare open it? I rested my hand on the desk next to the box, pressing my palm against the wood and feeling the clammy cold of my sweat pressing back.
Tucked into one of the curves of the bow was a small note about the size of a business card. I carefully extracted it from the curls, tweezing it between my fingernails, and let it fall
to the desk. The card, too, appeared homemade, one edge
tapering off as though the person had been in a hurry to cut it to size and misjudged the dimensions. But what demanded my attention were the three small letters written on the card:
A. B. E.
It seemed so obvious that the gift was for me—it was in my room, after all—but somehow seeing my initials on the card made it real in a way it hadn’t been before.
I touched the edge of the card and pushed it away from me. I wanted whoever had made the box appear to make it disappear so I didn’t have to make the decision of whether or not to open it. I didn’t want this gift—whatever it was. I knew, deep down in my bones and my belly, that whatever the box held was bad. And yet I kept sitting at the desk, staring at my initials on the card. I knew I should leave it alone, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from reaching out and brushing a finger along the tail end of the ribbon.
The gift was for me. Given to me by someone who knew my name. My whole name, including my middle name. That narrowed the list down dramatically. Obviously my parents hadn’t left me this. Dad couldn’t tie a fancy bow to save his life, and Mom always seemed to use an entire roll of tape to get the edges squared up. And just as obviously it wasn’t from Jason or Natalie or Valerie.
So who else knew my middle name?
Dante did.
But he had more pressing matters on his mind than sending me presents. He was suffocating in darkness somewhere on the far side of the bank.
Was it possible Zo had left this for me? He was traveling through time, and I had no idea what the rules were about that. Could he have dropped into the river—into my room—left the box, and then dropped out again?
My eyes flicked to the curtains, which were thankfully still not breathing. Had it been a dream? Or had it been real? Did it matter? The memory of my name echoed in my mind—someone had said it. Thinking back, I tried to recall exactly what I’d heard.
“Abby.” A deep voice—masculine? Yes. A hint of an Italian accent? Maybe.
I didn’t want a gift from Zo, but what other explanation could there be? I picked at my curiosity like the rough edges of a scab, at once awful and irresistible. There was only one way to find out for sure.
I pulled on a curl, and the bow deflated into a mass of golden material spooling around the lid and dripping down the sides.
I told myself I could still stop, still leave the lid closed, but I knew I wouldn’t. I had made my choice to see what was inside.
Taking a deep breath, I swept the bow aside and lifted the lid of the box. The brocade was as thick as it had looked and the fabric felt soft under my fingers, soft and a little spongy, the texture of bruised flesh. My stomach turned thinking of the comparison and I almost dropped the lid.
Then I looked inside the box and I did drop the lid.
In the bottom of the box lay a severed rag doll’s head on a bed of black velvet. Her brown hair tumbled around her painted face, which was still smiling, unaware of the violence that had been done to her. Where her painted brown eyes should have been, two coal-black button eyes had been inexpertly sewn on instead; one looked askance to the left while the other looked directly at me. Directly into me.
A note was pinned to her torn throat: I’m watching over you, Abby. Always.
An ice-cold wave washed through me, followed immediately by a tsunami of hot nausea that flooded my stomach with acid. My peripheral vision shimmered like white lightning in the desert and I staggered out of the desk chair, stumbling to the bathroom.
Not bothering with the lights, I collapsed to my knees in front of the toilet and felt the sour sting of vomit surging up my throat. I retched until nothing was left. Dizzy, I lay on the bathroom floor, wrapping my arms around my knees and trying to force my uneven breathing into stability.
My thoughts were in as much turmoil as my stomach was.
The doll in the box—it had been my doll.
Immediately, in my memory, I was four years old again, tucked into bed with the blankets drawn all the way up to my chin. Dad sat on the edge of my bed, brushing back my hair, telling me a nonsense story about a dancing rabbit, trying to convince me that it was okay to go to sleep.
But I knew better. We had recently moved into a new house in a new town, and my four-year-old self knew there were creatures in the night, terrible creatures with flat, staring eyes and too many fingers and toes and elbows. Creatures that were waiting for me to close my eyes so they could slither out of the cracks like smoke and perch on the rail of my bed to stare at me while I slept. They were just scouts, after all. Spies for the real monsters that had started haunting my dreams.
That night, Mom had come in with a special surprise. She had made a rag doll for me—beautiful brown hair, soft brown eyes, a red smile, and real blush on the cheeks. The doll wore a pink jumpsuit and had a silver cape attached to her shoulders. On her chest was a shield with the letters L and A intertwined in black ink.
Mom sat next to Dad and gave me the doll.
“She looks like me!” I said, hugging her to my chest.
“She should,” Mom said. “She’s a superhero like you. Her name is Little Abby and she’s here to help protect you while you sleep.”
“I don’t know. She’s so little. What if she gets hurt?” I frowned, unwilling to subject my new doll to the terrors in the night.
“She’s only little when you’re awake,” Mom said, w
inking at Dad. “When you are asleep, she grows to be ten feet tall. Plus, she is as fast as lightning. And she can’t get hurt—see this cape? It protects her like a shield. And you know the best part?”
I shook my head, already feeling calmer just holding the doll in my hands.
Mom leaned down to whisper, “She can see in the dark. So it’s okay to fall asleep, sweetie. Little Abby is watching over you. Always.”
That night was the first time in a long time that I had fallen asleep without any trouble. And as long as I had Little Abby with me, the nightmares stayed away.
Always. Always. Always.
My four-year-old self drifted away until just my seventeen-year-old self was left, lying on the floor of my bathroom, crying in the dark.
Little Abby had always protected me, just like my mom had promised. At least, until I was nine years old and we had gone camping with the Kimballs. Of course, my nightmares had long since ceased, but I still secretly slept with Little Abby, and I still secretly felt braver when she was with me at night. It was on that trip that somehow Little Abby had gone missing, vanishing into thin air. That was the same trip when Jason had taught me to be brave all by myself with a simple counting trick that always seemed to work. Still, I missed Little Abby and mourned her loss for weeks.
I hadn’t seen her since I was nine years old—until tonight.
Until I lifted the lid on that horrible box and saw her face looking back at me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the image from my mind, but all I managed to do was squeeze more tears out and down my cheeks. Well, at least I knew for sure who had sent the box to me. This was Zo’s work through and through. And the implications of that made me shiver uncontrollably. With Dante trapped, Zo was free to impose his will on the river of time. And the fragment of my childhood tucked into that box made it perfectly clear that Zo was interested in imposing his will on my past.
I’m watching you, Abby. Always.
A torch of hate flared to life, blinding me. Zo had waded into my past and stolen part of me, only to taunt me with it, laughing at me from beyond the bank. How dare he? He thought he knew me, but he had no idea what I was capable of. Burning with sudden purpose, I pushed myself to my feet, unwilling to let Zo’s threat remain in my room, my house, my life for one more moment.