by Pintip Dunn
We stare at each other for a long moment, a moment where—in other worlds—anything could happen. A kiss, a hug, a slap, a shove. More words, meaningful words, hurtful words.
But in this moment, in this world, he turns and walks away. Weaving around the hoverboards, he stops and places a device on the end of one. No, two devices with square bodies and a plethora of outstretched legs. “Here are two spiders. If you attach one to yourself and the other to the end of a hoverboard, you’ll be rendered invisible.” He meets my eyes for one searing moment. “In case you ever need to follow anyone unseen.”
He leaves without another backward glance.
I pick up one of the spiders, rubbing the “legs” against my chin. Huh. It’s just possible I’m not so unimportant, after all.
25
For the next three days, I follow the group of four adults, one teenager, and one toddler, thankful that the fugitive crew has split up, so that there’s fewer of them to track. Mikey always leads the way, with Angela following closely behind, little Remi strapped to her chest. Logan and Callie hike in the middle of the pack, and Ryder brings up the rear.
He can’t see me or hear me—I know that. And yet, he looks over his shoulder at least once every ten minutes, shooting a smile out into the wilderness. Sometimes, he’s staring right at me; other times, he’s off by a few yards. But I know the gesture is meant for me, and that makes my own lips curve.
It’s strange. I never smiled much in isolation. There was no point, since no one was around, and back then, I thought smiles served an entirely social function. But now, I know sometimes you smile just because you want to. Sometimes you smile because you can’t help yourself.
I do my best to stretch my rations, but I quickly run out. I’m not concerned. I used to go for days without food while I was in isolation. Since only a select few people knew my location, my mother herself would bring me a day’s worth of food every morning. Invariably, there were days—and one time, even a week—when she would get busy and forget. So, I’ve gone hungry before, and I can go hungry now.
Turns out, my stomach doesn’t growl once. At every meal, Ryder surreptitiously divides his portion in half—and leaves me the fried meat and scoop of rice on a broad leaf. I tried to give the food back at first, but after a heated game of pushing the rabbit’s leg back and forth, and Angela glancing up and asking Ryder what he was doing, I relented.
Of course, this means Ryder is eating only half of his rations. With every bite that goes into my belly instead of his, I forgive him a little more for killing me in fifteen days.
I don’t know what my next move is. I’m not sure how I’m going to persuade Mikey to bring his family back to civilization. The pathways unfurl before me, but so much depends on other people’s decisions, I can’t predict how—and if—I’ll be successful.
What makes it more difficult is that I no longer have access to Callie’s future. Lately, her pathways have been blurry. Huge chunks of the branches are missing, as though I’m hitting a partial blank wall. In turn, her presence in my traveling companions’ futures is also cloudy, so it’s hard to get a complete picture.
I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe the deteriorating time stream is affecting me, too. Or maybe, this close to my death, I’m beginning to lose key components of my abilities.
In the middle of the third day, the group stops for the night—ostensibly, to replenish their food supply. But even from the rear of the pack, I can see Logan watching Callie with increasing concern. Sweat gleams on her skin, and her breath, while steady and strong the previous two days, now comes quickly and shallowly.
It isn’t any wonder. It’s been over sixty hours since she was injected with the formula. She’s due for another dose—and soon.
At least we’re getting closer to civilization. We hit the river last night, and for the past couple hours, we’ve been traveling up, up, up into the mountains. Now, we’ve stopped at a wide-open ledge, overlooking the roaring river, and the gang is dumping their gear on the field.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were at the grassy area behind the FuMA building, the one open to the public for picnicking and sight-seeing. My mom never took me there, of course. But before I went into isolation, MK took Tanner and me a few times. Once, when I accidentally let go of my sandwich and watched it fall into the cascading white foam, Tanner even gave me half of his. It’s my favorite memory from childhood.
Smiling at the recollection, I retreat farther up the gradual slope. I settle upon a rocky overhang, where I have a good view of everyone, and remove the spider that hangs on the headgear around my forehead.
Below me, the gang divvies up the equipment and splits—Logan, Callie, and Ryder to hunt and Mikey and Angela to gather berries.
I close my eyes, tilting my face to the sky. The sun sinks into my bones, and a slight breeze lifts the hair off my sweat-soaked skin. I take the moment to just be. No visions of the future, blurry or otherwise, no thoughts of the past. Just here, now. Crumbling rocks jab into my thighs, and the scent of dust and bird fike surrounds me.
Alive. For fifteen more days.
My stomach churns at the thought. I don’t want to die. I don’t. I may not have had much as a life, as sheltered as I am, but it’s my life. And I want it to continue. There’s so much I haven’t experienced, so many emotions I haven’t felt. So much life left to live.
Presently, I hear singing below me and open my eyes. It’s Angela, with a roughly woven bag filled with what I assume are berries. She drops the bag and loosens the wrap around her torso, letting Remi onto the ground. Mikey’s nowhere to be seen.
Angela settles herself next to Remi, and my eyes start to close again, lulled by her singing.
All of a sudden, they pop back open. Faint bells ring in my head. Something’s…not right. This scene is somehow…wrong. But how?
I dart my eyes from the mother-daughter pair to the open clearing that dead-ends in a cliff. Father of Time. That’s the problem. Angela’s let Remi down too close to the cliff. According to Jessa, she’s way too protective to ever do that, especially since her daughter crawling over a cliff is precisely the future memory she’s trying to avoid. She’d slit her own wrists first.
What’s going on? Is Angela just tired? Not thinking clearly?
I look back at the pair. Remi’s tracing her fingers through the dirt, and Angela’s hands are manipulating something. What? Squinting, I lean forward, trying to see. She’s pulling, twisting, stuffing…nothing at all.
I shake my head, trying to clear it. Either Angela is fiddling with an invisible juice box, or…or…
Oh Fates. She must be lost in an episode from another time. She must think she’s put Remi down in a safe, enclosed space, far, far, away from any cliffs. That’s the only thing that explains her carelessness.
I should do something. What? I’m thirty feet above them. If I shout something, I’ll give away my presence.
Oh, Remi, please keep playing in the dirt. Please have no interest in the wide open spaces beyond.
As soon as I have the thought, a moth flutters through the air and lands on Remi’s nose. She bats at the winged insect and laughs delightedly.
Angela doesn’t turn, but of course she wouldn’t. She’s somewhere else. She doesn’t hear her child. Alarms aren’t sounding in her brain.
The little girl waves her hands in the air, trying to catch the moth and just missing. The moth flits around her, as though inviting her to play, and then flies away…in the direction of the cliff.
Remi starts crawling after the moth.
Oh Fates, oh Fates, oh Fates. I can’t just hope for the best anymore.
“Angela!” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Remi’s on the move. She’s heading toward the cliff. Angela!” I yell so loudly my throat’s scraped raw. She has to hear me. She’s got to.
But her hands continue moving the invisible straw, and the little girl is now twenty feet from the edge of the cliff.
Limbo. T
here’s no way I’ll be able to scamper down there in time. I grab a rock and throw it at Angela. She can’t hear me, but she should be able to feel, right?
Wrong. The rock hits her squarely in the back. She doesn’t turn; she doesn’t even flinch.
Ten feet. Sweat pours down my face. I don’t flash forward to the future; I don’t have time. I look wildly around, and my gaze lands on the hoverboard. Of course. I jump on and as soon as I’m positioned, I zoom down the slope to the open field. Five feet.
“Remi!” Angela screams, her voice so shrill it winds into my heart and shatters it. “Stop! What are you doing? Remi!”
She takes off running, but she’ll never make it. Remi’s already at the edge. In slow motion, I watch as the little girl puts one hand into empty space and then the other. And then…she tumbles over.
It’s too late. It’s too late.
“Noooooo!!!!!” Angela’s cry splits my body, splits my world. Splits my very soul. “No, Remi, no! Noooooo!!!”
I charge forward, straight off the side of the cliff, without pause, without hesitation. Ryder said I would break my neck. Ryder said going down this cliff was suicide. I don’t care. All I care about is a little girl falling through space.
Down, down, down, I plunge. The wind blasts me head on, my skin rippling under its force like bedsheets. My stomach falls along with my feet, and it’s all I can do to grit my teeth and stay on.
The river rushes up at me at an alarming rate. I ignore it and search for Remi. There! Her limbs flail in the air, so tiny, so helpless. I barrel toward her, my arms outstretched. Almost there, almost there. I grasp at her and get a corner of her shirt, which immediately slides out of my grip.
Fate fike it, Olivia. You can do this. So do it.
I try again. The wind whistles over my arms, but my hands close around a bigger swatch of her shirt…and then her warm, solid torso. I bring the little girl to my chest, hugging her tight, just as I pull up the board at the last second.
The front of the board skids along the water, and the platform trembles violently. I rock wildly, about to fall off.
I can stick any landing, remember? Tanner used to say I had adhesive on my feet. I can stick any landing. I can stick any landing…
The board skims the river, more surf than hover, and finally, I reach the shore.
I touch down and stumble off. My knees have turned as boneless as sea anemone, and my heart’s about to punch a hole through my chest. But I have the little girl. I have Remi.
Spent, I collapse on the ground. Remi climbs on top of me, her little hands pounding on my chest. I open my eyes, and she’s smiling, shrieking. And safe.
That’s all that matters. She’s safe.
26
I don’t know how long I lie there, minutes or seconds. Probably seconds, since I don’t think Remi’s patience would last that long. When I sit up, I see small figures on the cliff above us, watching me, watching Remi. They must’ve all come running when they heard Angela’s screams. I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard her cries all the way back in Eden City.
Giving them a wave, I get to my feet, hauling Remi up with me. My movements are shaky, and my bones feel like they’re made of gelatin—and not the firm kind, either. I can’t quite catch a full breath, no matter how deeply I inhale. Before I can relax, however, I need to get Remi back to her parents.
I mount my board, tucking the little girl inside my zippered jacket. It’s not quite as secure as a baby sling, but it’ll have to do. Carefully, I make my way back across the river and find a gradual slope to follow up to the ledge. After everything we’ve been through, it would be a shame to drop Remi now.
After a winding and arduous ten minutes, I finally reach the top, and the fugitives converge on me.
“Oh, my darling.” Angela snatches her daughter from me, her voice as tear-stained as her cheeks. “Oh, my dear, sweet baby. You’re safe. You’re okay.”
With a wary glance at the cliff’s edge, she retreats ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet before collapsing to her knees. The rest of us follow, and Mikey drops to the ground beside his wife and daughter.
“I’m so sorry, dear heart. So sorry,” Angela whispers against Remi’s hair. “I should’ve known better. I’ve spent my life dreading this moment, preparing for it, doing everything in my power to prevent it. And still, I failed you. If it weren’t for Olivia…I would’ve…you would’ve…” She trails off and rocks Remi back and forth.
Mikey wraps his arms around both his wife and daughter. “This wasn’t your fault, Ange.”
“But it was,” she says despairingly. “I was in another time. I could’ve sworn we were in the eating area of a residential unit. I set her down in a playpen while I fiddled with her juice box. That’s what I thought. That’s what I saw.”
He strokes her hair. “So, you see? You couldn’t have known.”
“It didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t I wonder why we were in a unit? Why didn’t I ask myself how we got there from the middle of the woods?” She’s not asking us, but berating herself. Which means these questions won’t go away. No matter what answer we give, they’ll chase her until the end of time.
“That’s the nature of these episodes,” Callie says. “When you’re in the middle of one, you have no idea. You don’t think to question it. You just feel like you’re living your life.”
“I should’ve known,” Angela repeats woodenly.
“What’s important is that she’s safe. You’re safe. We’re all together.” Mikey drops kisses on both of their heads, tears streaming openly down his face.
I stare. I’ve never see him like this. More than that, in all his futures, he’s this emotional in only one particular pathway. This one.
He looks up and gestures for Ryder to join them, and Callie and Logan, too. Pretty soon, they’re all laughing and hugging and crying, this family that I’m not a part of, related by blood and bonds and love.
Quietly, I set the hoverboard down and lean against the rock wall of the slope. I don’t feel excluded, exactly. I don’t feel anything. I mean, sure, there’s this thickness in my throat; there’s this pressure at the pit of my stomach. But those things don’t mean anything. How can they?
I’ve always been the outsider. I’ve always been the observer. Angela and Mikey and the rest don’t mean to exclude me. They simply don’t remember me. To feel anything, now, would be like a mouse bemoaning the fact that it scurries on all fours, like a fire lamenting the heat of its flame.
There’s nothing to feel. It simply is. I simply am.
And then Ryder looks up, glances around, and finds me. He detaches himself from the group and crosses to me, taking both my hands into the warm cavern of his palms.
“Thank you.” The words are low, his voice rumbling. “Thank you for saving my sister’s life. It was way too risky. You could’ve splintered every bone in your body. But I’m so glad you did.”
He kisses my forehead, one cheek, the other cheek…and then his lips hover inches above mine. “I don’t want to ignore your wishes,” he says huskily. “I heard every word, loud and clear. You don’t want anything to do with me. I get that. I’ll honor that. But I want…I need…” He dips his head, which brings his mouth even closer.
Somewhere between the kisses and his words, my brain short-circuits, because my head nods of its own volition. And then his lips brush against mine.
His mouth moves over my mouth, my tongue, my teeth. But it also reaches further inside me, soothing aches I didn’t know existed, smoothing out hurts I’d buried long ago. In his kiss, I feel the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I feel like I’m not alone.
Too soon, he pulls back, searching for something inside my eyes. His mouth opens, that perfect, beautiful mouth I’d love to sketch, if I’d taken the pathway of an artist. Before he can say anything, however, a pair of soft arms encircles me.
Ryder lets go, and I’m looking into Angela’s eyes, Remi squeezed in between us.
“Thank you,�
�� she says quietly. “From the depth of my heart, from the bottom of my soul. You are my angel.”
From there, I’m passed on to Callie’s fierce hug and to Logan’s heartfelt one. And then, to Mikey. To my utter shock, he embraces me, too.
“I owe you,” he says gruffly. “Even though I don’t know why you’re here.”
He glances at the spider still attached to my hoverboard, useless without its twin on my forehead. “I have a pretty good idea, though. Care to explain?”
“Mikey.” Angela’s voice slices through the air. “She risked her own life in order to save your daughter. You will not interrogate her, do you hear me? I don’t care why she’s here. I would give my life a thousand times over for her to be here.”
She stops, her breath coming faster than her words. “She’s given me…everything. Every gulp of air I take, every drop of blood in my veins. So whatever she says, whatever she wants, I’ll do it. I’ll go back to civilization with her. Do you understand?”
She crosses over to stand next to me, with Remi pulling at her hair.
“Me, too.” Callie winks at me, as though she’s been waiting for just the right moment to defy Mikey.
Logan slings an arm around her shoulder. “Me, three.”
Mikey turns to Ryder. “What about you?”
“I told you I’d stand in for her.” Ryder’s voice is quiet, but his gaze is directed at me, questioning…and something else. Something I don’t understand.
Mikey studies his family members, one by one. By the time his scrutiny reaches me, he’s smiling. “I’m surprised you could think that I would feel any differently. Prepare yourself, everyone. Guess we’re going back to civilization.”
27
I’m back where I started a week ago. Potts’s cabin. The same log building, the same chain link kennel. The grass grows in random patches here and there, like the hair of a balding man, and the musty smell of wet dog surrounds me.
I don’t know why I expected the property to look any different. Only seven days have passed. And yet, I’m different, and not just because the pathways have gotten blurry. Not just because I have only thirteen days left to live. In ways I can’t precisely define, the girl whose feet are sinking into the mud now is not the same person who trudged through this muck a week ago.