“I just wanted us to have something,” he says. “I’ll get another job. Maybe not as good as where I am, but I figured if we had a home of our own, something solid and entirely ours, that it would be enough. We don’t have to get this place. I got a little carried away when I saw the yard, but really I just want to know when push comes to shove that we have a place to raise a family. A place where we can get our life underway.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to temper my response because the sheer stupidity of this plan is mind-boggling, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to say it aloud. There’s this canyon between me and Jeff, and I think it’s always been there. We operate by shouting to each other over it, and it works, the shouting. It’s been fine. But now I’m seeing what it’s like to feel so close to another person I can barely tell where I end and he begins. And my God I want that. I miss it. “Committing to a mortgage we might not be able to cover won’t make any house ours,” I finally tell him. Nick would know this, I think before I can silence it. Nick wouldn’t need to be reminded about my desire to go back to school. Nick wouldn’t discover I only have a few years to live and push me to give up a dream.
“I just need to know that when we say for better or worse in a few weeks, that you mean it. That we’re in this together,” he says, his voice hitching on the last words. “Are we?”
He is so despondent, this man I love and have made a commitment to. And maybe there are other things I want now, things I want badly enough to weep and beg for them. Somehow, I’m just going to have to learn to let those things go.
“Of course we are,” I reply.
* * *
On Monday afternoon, I return to Georgetown for the tests I need prior to my meeting with the oncologist at the end of the week. Nick walks into the waiting room with the sleeves of his Oxford rolled up, his tie loosened, the first hint of five o’clock shadow along his jaw. He draws eyes, and not just mine. The teenage girl and her mother sitting across from me nudge each other as they look him over. I’m tempted to tell them both to grow the fuck up, but I guess I’m no better.
I cross the room toward him and his smile is sudden, and stunning.
“Hi.” I sound as breathless as a tween meeting her favorite boy band.
He looks around. “I assume Jeff’s not coming?” I hear a hint of disdain in his voice.
“He left town this morning. He had a conference he really couldn’t miss, but he’ll be back for the meeting with Dr. Patel.”
His hand presses against the small of my back as we head toward imaging. “And you didn’t sign any contracts this weekend?”
I stiffen a little. “No.” Though it’s true, it’s also kind of a lie. Because all I did, really, is put off the inevitable.
* * *
When my test is complete, I head toward his office, with my brain flitting from Jeff to the house to Nick and back. I round a corner and collide with a teenage girl paying as little attention as I am. We look up at the same moment and for a millisecond she is a stranger. A breathtaking stranger with the most extraordinary gray eyes, going wide at the sight of me. It’s her astonishment that jars my memory: she’s the girl I saw as I floated back to consciousness during my last blackout, looking every bit as shocked to see me as I was to see her.
I stagger backward, still grasping her arm. “I saw you,” I breathe. “I saw you in my dream.” I know it sounds crazy, but I’m past caring about that right now, and something about the guilt in this girl’s face tells me she already knows anyway. And knows she shouldn’t have been there.
She swallows. “Yes, that happens sometimes.”
“How?” I ask. “You’re able to put yourself in someone’s dream?”
“No. We were both just—” She grows still, suddenly, her eyes flashing to mine in alarm. “You don’t know.”
“I don’t know what?”
She stares at her shoes, brown-and-white saddle shoes. The school uniform she’s wearing could come from any time, really, but shoes like that haven’t been popular for decades. It takes her a moment to reply. “You weren’t dreaming,” she says. “You were time traveling.”
A chill slides up my spine. Four days ago, I laughed at the suggestion, but there’s nothing about this girl that screams mad scientist. Her voice is matter-of-fact, reluctant even. And hearing the same information twice in four days is…unsettling. I lean back against the wall. “That can’t be true,” I whisper. “I’d know if I was doing it.”
“Yeah?” she asks. “So if you hurt yourself—maybe got a tattoo in one of those dreams—would you be hurt when you woke?”
I think back to the hickey on my neck that day, the one that couldn’t have come from Jeff. “That doesn’t prove anything. Maybe it happens when I’m asleep.”
Her mouth curves upward. “You’re getting tattoos in your sleep?”
I close my eyes, struggling to make sense of this, create some logical argument. “Of course I’m not, but I think I’d know if I was time traveling.”
“Apparently not,” she says softly. She’s probably 15 years younger than me, but right now she looks at me with sympathy, like a parent explaining death to a child. And as bizarre and difficult to believe as all of this is, I need answers and she might just have them.
“Can I ask you some questions?” I plead. “I’m trying to figure out why all this is happening, and—”
Her shoulders sag. “I need to go,” she whispers, as she turns to walk away.
“Wait!” I cry. “Wait. Please!”
She turns around the corner and I lunge forward, my hand reaching out…and passing through thin air.
Only her clothes remain, in a pile on the floor.
I slide down the wall, staring blankly at the vacant space where she should be standing. Is it possible she really just did it? Is it possible I could do it too?
I think I’m starting to believe.
21
QUINN
When Nick finds me, I’m still on the floor, slumped against the wall. “Quinn,” he says, dropping to his knees and gripping my shoulders. “What happened?”
“I just watched a teenage girl disappear in front of my eyes,” I whisper. “She was there, and then she wasn’t.” I nod at the clothes in my lap. “These are hers.”
I wait for him to smirk, to look at me the same way he did Dr. Grosbaum, but it doesn’t happen. His eyes meet mine and in them I see faith. His belief in me makes my throat tighten. There’s been too little of that in my life. “Do you have any idea who she was?”
I shake my head. “None. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but…I think it’s possible Dr. Grosbaum wasn’t quite as crazy as we thought.”
“Did she say where she was going?” he asks. “What about her clothes? Did you check them?” He reaches for the clothes in my lap, digging into the skirt’s deep pockets and pulling a handful of paper out. Candy wrappers, a few dollars, and something else. He holds it aloft after he’s examined it. “It’s a concert ticket for tonight. It’s in Baltimore, but we could make it if we left right now.”
“If she doesn’t have her ticket, is she still going to go?”
A small smile cracks his face. “Are you really under the impression that a teenager capable of vanishing in midair is going to find a missing concert ticket an obstacle?”
I laugh, the sound slightly unhinged. I can’t believe we’re discussing this, and I can’t believe it really may be true. “I guess not.”
He pulls me to my feet. “Then let’s go to a concert.”
* * *
By the time we’ve made it through the tangle of traffic and construction on 95, found the club, and bought our tickets, the opening band—who I’ve never heard of—is done, and the crowd is chanting for the headliner, who I’ve also never heard of. Fortunately, the show is pretty loosely attended so we are able to push all the way to the front of the stage with ease. We get there and then walk all the way back, but she is nowhere to be found. She was probably my only chance to
understand this and it just slipped through my fingers. My shoulders drop. “She’s not here.”
“We could wait…” Nick urges. “Maybe…”
“It’s over,” I tell him.
His jaw shifts. “I feel like you’re giving up.”
“There’s nothing to give up. You can’t possibly believe that—” I come to such a quick halt that he walks right into me. “She’s here,” I whisper.
She’s ditched the sweatshirt in favor of a half-shirt and is wearing a plaid school skirt just like earlier…only now she’s got it rolled up well above mid-thigh. And she’s sitting at the bar surrounded by men I recognize from the posters and T-shirts being sold at a table near the entrance. The opening act, I assume. Each of them at least a decade older than her.
“That’s our lead?” he asks with obvious skepticism.
“Does she look any less reliable than Dr. Grosbaum?” I counter.
“You have a point,” he says, placing his hand at the small of my back. “After you.”
I hustle through the crowd more easily than Nick because of my size. When I arrive, I lean against the corner so I can make eye contact with one time-traveling teenager and the four losers currently focused on her—one of whom is now holding a shot glass to her glossy lips.
“You guys know she’s in high school, right?” I demand. Five faces turn to me, and the girl narrows her eyes. It’s perhaps not the greatest idea to make an enemy of the only person who can help me, but so be it. “And I don’t know where you’re from, but statutory rape is kind of frowned upon around here.”
The one beside her sets the shot glass down. “She said she was eighteen.”
I roll my eyes. For fuck’s sake. The girl barely looks like she’s out of middle school. “Look at her. She’s fourteen, if that.”
The girl scowls at me. “I’m not fourteen. And you’re being a total buzzkill.”
“We’d be happy to drink with you instead,” the guy closest to me says, his tongue sweeping his upper lip as his eyes slide over me. His hand shoots out to pull me by the belt of my dress, and suddenly Nick is between us, gripping the guy’s wrist.
“Remove your hand,” he growls.
I blink in surprise. Nick sounds pissed. And possessive. It’s a new side of him. I can’t claim to dislike it.
The guy takes one look at Nick and releases my belt. “Sorry, mate. Didn’t know she was with you.”
“Well, now you know,” Nick snaps, “so keep your fucking hands to yourself.”
The girl jumps off her barstool, but before I can lunge forward to grab her, one of the band members does it for me. “Let’s at least get a picture,” he says, wrapping an arm around her waist and raising his phone.
For a second, panic flashes across her face, and then she actually ducks her head to avoid being in the shot. “I don’t like having my picture taken,” she says, darting away.
I step around them and cut her off, grabbing her arm, not that it will do any good if she decides to disappear in midair. Her eyes raise to mine. “I can’t help you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I really can’t.”
“Please,” I plead. “You don’t have to do anything. We just need someone to explain this.”
Nick comes up behind me, pulling me to his chest and wrapping his hand around my hip. Proprietary, the way I remember from so many of those dreams. The gesture would have shocked me a few days ago, but now it just feels right. All the more reason to figure this out as soon as humanly possible. “Please,” he says. “We’re desperate.”
Her face softens when she looks up at him, in a way it did not for me. She sighs heavily. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
* * *
The bar is no place for a delinquent teenager, but neither is the back of Nick’s Jeep, so we walk to a diner across the street, where, under the bright lights, she suddenly looks painfully young, and fragile.
We slide into a red vinyl booth and Nick hands her a menu. “Order something,” he says. “If you’ve been drinking, you need food.”
She asks the waitress for a cheeseburger and a Coke. Despite the outfit and the fact that we just caught her doing shots with a rock band in the back of a seedy bar, she is polite as she gives her order, and there’s an air of privilege about her somehow. I’m guessing she’s a trust-fund kid, the kind with wealthy parents who’ve handed over the child-rearing to their staff.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
There’s a split-second of hesitation. “Rose.”
She’s lying, but it hardly matters. “And how old are you really?”
“Sixteen.”
Another lie, but I’m not sure that really matters either. “What on earth were you thinking tonight?” I ask. I know I shouldn’t be wasting precious seconds lecturing this girl, but I can’t stand the idea of her putting herself in a situation like tonight’s. “Do you have any idea how poorly things could have gone if you’d left with those guys?”
She smirks. “You watched me disappear. An entire army of rock stars couldn’t do anything I didn’t want them to do.”
Nick flinches at the suggestion that she might be a willing party to whatever an army of rock stars want to do. “Do your parents know where you are?” he demands.
She laughs to herself, but the sound is not a happy one. “Sort of.”
“What does sort of mean?”
She looks away. “It means my father knows he can’t do anything to stop me and my mother is dead, so if there’s a heaven, she’s watching my antics from there.”
“Dead?” I whisper, my stomach dropping. “But you’re so…young.”
“A lot of us die,” she replies, carefully aligning her flatware and avoiding my gaze. “There are so many ways a human can die, but for a time traveler, there are twice as many.”
I think, fleetingly, of Dr. Grosbaum. I assumed he was lying to himself about his wife’s disappearance, but what if he wasn’t? How awful would it be to have the love of your life disappear somewhere, leaving you behind, wondering what happened?
“So you’re in this alone,” I say. “With the time traveling.”
“My younger sister can do it, but she was born early and has some…problems. It’s too great a risk.”
“So how do you do it?” I ask.
She laughs. “Why are you asking me? You do it too. I saw you that day.”
I sink back into the booth. “That wasn’t time travel. It was just a dream.”
“Right,” she says, smirking again. “You just chose to go somewhere, then tumbled through darkness to get there, seeing me on the way, but you want to call it a dream.”
I cross my arms, my voice hard. “I’m not choosing to go anywhere.”
“Of course you are,” she says. “You just don’t know you’re choosing it. You’re attaching to a memory that exists. But maybe it’s not one you consciously remember.”
Nick buries his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, but I’m really struggling to believe this. I know Quinn saw you disappear, but it must have been some kind of trick.”
She sighs, appearing exasperated by us both. “Look, I could go back a year and meet you, and you’d suddenly remember me now, but I don’t really have time to prove it to you because it would take too much planning. But”—she turns to me—“in about twenty seconds, I’ll need you to bring my clothes to the bathroom.”
“Wha—” I haven’t even completed the word before she slides under the table. And seconds later, she is gone, leaving only a pile of clothes behind.
Nick looks like he’s seen a ghost. “What the fuck?” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s a trick. It’s just a very, very good trick. We’ve apparently met the next David Blaine.”
I laugh weakly. “How? Did she build a tunnel beneath the restaurant? Her clothes are under the table, and I’m fairly certain we’d have seen a naked kid running across the room. Everyone would have.”
He rubs a hand over his eyes. “This isn’t happening.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” I reply, giving him a small smile as I grab her clothes. “I’m going to find our naked friend.”
* * *
I glimpse bare feet under the closed door of a stall and hand her clothes over the top of it.
“Told you,” she sings.
“The whole losing-your-clothes part must make all this jumping pretty difficult.”
“You just have to plan.”
She makes it all sound so easy, and so controllable, when I doubt it can be. “So the uniform you were wearing today…was that even yours?”
“My grandma lives near the school. I went to her house first, but she intentionally keeps the worst clothes to discourage us from jumping here, like housecoats and orange jumpsuits. So, I borrow from the school’s lost and found.”
She emerges from the stall with a wide smile and walks back to the table, where her Coke and cheeseburger now wait. “The one thing about jumping is that you’re starving when you get back, and sleepy if you’ve gone far. You’ll see.”
She digs into her food and Nick watches, looking deeply unsettled. In a different world, I’d lay my head on his shoulder and pull his hand into mine. It feels like the action I’m supposed to take. I twist my engagement ring on my finger again and again instead.
“Okay, how does this whole thing work, theoretically?” he asks. “How are you able to do it?”
She takes a polite sip of her drink and looks up at him. “Every time traveler has this thing we call the spark. Time traveling’s just part of it. Like, once we reach adulthood, the aging process slows for us as well. But, anyway, it’s a genetic mutation, I guess. The only reason I have it is because both of my parents carry it. So both of Quinn’s parents must have carried it too.”
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