by Ellen Smith
The door clicked shut softly behind him, leaving Will and Mara alone. “What do you think?” Mara whispered, angling herself toward Will. “Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” Will said. “I want to run away with you. I don’t want to face a life without you. Any life, no matter how good the rest of it is. We can do this. We can start fresh, just the two of us. We never have to come back here.” He held on to her as he said the rest, grounding himself. Grounding her. “But we won’t.”
“What?” Mara asked.
“It’s not right,” Will said. “We can’t give this up. The shooting never should have happened and I’m not going to let it happen to you.”
“I don’t need this time wreck,” Mara whispered. “I was doing this for you. And now you’re doing so much better—you haven’t had nightmares since we started the simulations, and you’re more relaxed now, and I know things aren’t perfect but maybe with some more treatment, it’ll be even better. Let’s just go. Let’s just go and live our lives.”
“But what about you?” Will asked. “You have a chance to finally feel better, and I don’t just mean your shoulder.” He swallowed, forcing out the words he knew he had to say. “It’s one thing for you to be the victim of a crime when there was nothing we could have done to stop it. It just . . . happened, and you survived it. But now that we have a choice—”
“Stop,” Mara said. “Don’t say it.”
“If you choose living with this crime so you can be with me—I can never live up to that. You would resent me and . . . and honestly, I would resent me. I would hate myself for letting you live through that for me.”
“But we can’t guarantee what happens after the time wreck,” Mara said. “What if we don’t find each other again? What if I live out my whole life without ever knowing you?”
“You won’t,” Will said. “I’ll find you.”
Mara started to laugh, even as she buried her face in his chest. “You can’t promise that.”
“Why not?” Will asked. “We’ve felt what it’s like to meet our soul mate. How could we ever be satisfied with anything less?”
Mara wrapped her good arm around him so tight Will could feel her fingers curling through his shirt. “Don’t let me go,” she said. “Please.”
“I have to,” Will said. “So I can find you again.”
* * * * *
The van bumped and jerked down the gravel road toward the highway. The sun was barely peeking up from the horizon. Will knew that he probably ought to be tired—how many hours had he and Mara managed to sleep last night after her father left? One? Two maybe? Instead, Will was oddly alert. He wondered if Congressman Gaines was still out there somewhere, waiting nearby in case they changed their minds. Maybe. His father-in-law clearly wasn’t used to being told no.
And now here they were, being shuttled off to the building complex before it was even fully dawn. They would probably be there before he knew it. Will wished they could slow down instead. Give themselves just a few more minutes together in this life map.
Ken had been the one who rushed them to get ready and out of the motel this morning. Now he was sitting on Will’s left, silent and surly, knees spread far apart and arms crossed so that he took up as much room as possible. Every time Will looked over at him, Ken glowered.
On his other side, Mara was staring out the van window as if she were trying to soak in the view. Her hand was securely tucked in his and they sat hip to hip, knee to knee, foot to foot, hanging on to every inch of each other as long as possible.
Will felt as if dread would swallow him up as they turned onto the highway. The rectification had to be today. Had to be. They’d rehearsed so many times already and if people were really searching for them, surely Nayana and Dr. Hendrix would want to move things along. Every minute they waited before the rectification was another opportunity for someone to find them and put a stop to it.
It felt like they were speeding down the highway, even though they were only going fifty-five miles per hour. Will saw the odometer from the backseat—one of the benefits of being tall. Fifty-five miles per hour wasn’t too fast to jump out of a moving van, was it? They could jump and roll, just like they saw in the movies, and run off to . . . somewhere. Maybe Mara’s dad was still waiting nearby, even after Ken had kicked him out of the motel.
Will gave Ken another sidelong glance. Instead of returning it with a scowl, Ken stayed fixated on a point down the highway. Will strained to see what he was staring at.
It was the building complex and there—Will’s stomach sank—was a throng of people surrounding it. The driver slowed.
“Oh, no,” Mara groaned. “How did they find out where it was?”
“People have a way of finding things out,” Ken said grimly. “Especially if the ones being guarded don’t communicate with their security team.”
That sounded a lot like the twenty-minute lecture Ken had given them last night, when they’d finally dialed the phone and told him that Mara’s father was there. Originally, Will had thought they could ask Congressman Gaines to leave quietly—“Can we not end this life map by calling a security guard on my dad?” Mara had asked—but Congressman Gaines hadn’t expected to be turned down. By the time Ken got involved, it took the motel manager and three policemen to wrestle Mara’s father down the hall.
Maybe it was Congressman Gaines who had told the crowds where to find them. Will weighed the thought and dismissed it. After last night, Congressman Gaines probably wanted to forget all about this life map too.
The driver had slowed all the way down to forty miles per hour now. The closer they came, the more people Will could see crammed in the parking lot around the buildings. There had to be hundreds, at least. Ken unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and flicked it on. “ETA two minutes. What’s the plan?”
Dr. Hendrix’s voice crackled through the other end. “Get as close to the door as you can. Make sure they get inside.”
Every muscle in Mara’s body tensed. They were close enough to see that plenty of people in the crowd were holding signs—Will thought he could see his and Mara’s faces on some of them. The van slowed down further and pulled into the office park. Even though Will knew the windows were tinted, he pulled closer to Mara, trying to shield them both from the hawk-like eyes watching the van.
There were police holding the crowd back. “This is government property,” one policeman said into the megaphone. “Be advised that you are trespassing and you can and will be removed.”
“Circle once around,” Ken told the driver. “See if we can get to the back entrance.”
The van moved slowly through the crowd, which only reluctantly moved back. Something large hit the window inches from Mara’s head. A shoe. Will’s pulse quickened even as he tried to reassure himself. It was only a shoe.
“So how do you think we’ll meet in our next life map?” Mara asked suddenly, squeezing his hand.
Will tried to think. His heart was hammering along with the chants of “One life, one time,” that pulsated through the crowd.
“Maybe we’ll meet each other in the library,” Mara said. She was looking intently into his eyes. “We both like to read. That’s kind of how we bonded that day in the hospital, isn’t it?”
“Um,” Will said. “I guess.”
“Will,” Mara said, reaching up and pulling his face closer to hers. “Look at me.”
Once he started looking in her eyes, he couldn’t stop. She knew that. How long before these deep-brown wells would be unfamiliar to him? How many minutes did they have left together?
“Stay with me,” Mara said. “I think we’re going to be at that little café across from campus that had the gritty coffee and the weekly poetry slams.”
“And you’re going to be reading some dark poetry about finding your one true love.”
“I hate poetry. That’s never going to change. No, I’m going to be in the little corner by the window, trying to read m
y book while I eat their imitation biscotti and chew on chocolate-covered espresso beans.”
Looking into Mara’s eyes, Will could almost completely tune out the chant from the crowd outside. “And then I’m going to come up to you and ask if anyone is sitting in the chair across from yours.”
“Which Robyn totally was, but she’ll be a good friend and find a seat at the little coffee bar so I can talk to the cute guy who’s flirting with me.”
“Right. And then I’ll say, ‘So what are you reading?’”
“Because that’s such a great pickup line . . .”
“It worked in this life map.”
Mara was still looking intensely into his eyes, pulling him along with her into the first meeting she imagined. “And I’ll say, ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ because I’ll still be eighteen and I’ll only have read it half a dozen times by that point.”
“How many times are you going to re-read that book?”
“Forty-two. And you’ll say that you don’t read science fiction, which I won’t immediately hold against you because you do have a pretty cute smile.”
“And I’ll say I like reading thrillers and true crime because we won’t have lived through one yet. Or ever, hopefully.” Thinking that made Will start to panic a little. The crowds were only separated from them by inches, really. How secure was this van? Was it bulletproof?
Sweat dripped down Will’s neck.
Mara squeezed his hand with her good left one. “And by the end of the afternoon, I’ll give you my email because I hate giving out my phone number.”
“And I’ll write and rewrite the perfect email to ask you out and then as soon as I hit send, I’ll be positive that it’s the dorkiest, most idiotic email written to a beautiful girl in the history of time.”
“But I’ll answer it and we’ll meet up again and we’ll talk even longer this time.”
Yes. That was what was going to happen. They only had to make it out of the van, out of this life map, and into the next. “And we’ll fall in love and get married and have children,” Will said.
“And we’ll live happily ever after.”
The van pulled to a stop. Will watched the police officers pushing the crowds farther back, making a narrow aisle between the van and the door of the building.
“Here we go, kids,” said Ken. Was it Will’s imagination, or did he seem gentler now? Ken wasn’t scowling at them anymore, that was for sure. He looked almost kind. “Wait for my signal, okay?”
Ken opened the van door and the crowd erupted in screams and camera flashes. Ken swept left, then right, and nodded for them to follow him.
Will and Mara laced their fingers together and ran, hand in hand, matching strides, holding each other up against the angry chants that thundered all around them.
“One life, one time. One life, one time.”
“Do the crime, do the time.”
“Time wreckers!”
No, Will thought. Rectifiers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ellen Smith is a freelance education writer and speculative fiction author. When she isn’t busy writing, Ellen can usually be found reading, crafting, or playing piano. No matter what she is doing, Ellen is always wondering, “What if?” Ellen lives with her family near Washington, DC.
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Mara and Will’s story continues in Book 2 of the Time Wrecker Trilogy: Any Second Chance. Keep in touch to stay updated on the next book in the series!
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