“Remember when I told you about my pet turtle, Shelly?” I ask. “How my dad accidentally killed him but lied to me about it?” I never told him I had a pet turtle because I never did; I got that from an old sitcom I used to watch at home. But Dr. Franklin nods along as if he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“But let’s talk about Sofía now,” the Doctor says. “I worry that you blame yourself, and you shouldn’t . . .”
He keeps going on, blah, blah, blah, but it’s pointless. This isn’t the Doctor we all know. This Doctor can’t heal—doesn’t know he can heal. This Doctor is treating me like he’s a school counselor, not like an advisor in a school of superpowered kids.
This Doctor has forgotten the way things really are.
Ryan and I really are the only ones left who know the truth.
“I know you don’t fully understand what I’m saying now,” I tell Dr. Franklin, looking him dead in the eye. “But I want you to know that I haven’t given up. Not yet. Not ever.”
The Doctor sighs and sinks into the chair behind his desk. “Is this about Sofía?”
“I can save her,” I say, praying that my words penetrate the fog of illusion that’s clouding the Doctor’s mind. “I can save us all.”
“Bo,” Dr. Franklin says, leaning forward, tears making his eyes watery. “Bo, she’s dead. Sofía is dead. You can’t save her. It’s over.”
All around me, the world stills. The Doctor becomes a motionless statue. The clouds moving in front of the moon freeze. The clock on the Doctor’s desk stops ticking. His words cut me so deeply that I have accidentally stopped time.
I blink, and the clock starts ticking again. But my heart is calm. Even though Dr. Franklin’s not aware of what I’ve just done, I am, and I know that my powers are still real.
I still have a chance.
“I can save her,” I say again.
“No,” he says in a gentle voice. “You can’t.”
CHAPTER 27
I leave Dr. Franklin’s office and walk slowly back to my room. The Doc watches me go, as if he suspects I’ll get lost along the way.
I pause by my door, looking back at him. All up and down the hallway, doors are closed. On the left side of the hall, the heavy wooden doors to the library are locked for the night, as are those to the common room and our classrooms. On the right side of the hall are the dormitory rooms. Harold’s, then mine, then Ryan’s, Gwen’s, and Sofía’s.
And by each of their doors, there’s a keypad.
There’s one by mine too.
They’ve never been there before. I look closer. The keypad is made of metal, but there are dings and nicks in it, and it’s slightly worn from use.
“Is there a problem?” Dr. Franklin asks.
I jump; he’d moved silently down the hall, and he’s waiting for me to go into my room. “How long has that been there?” I ask.
“It’s always been there,” the Doctor says. “Bo, it’s well past lights-out.”
“But—”
“Bo.”
I step inside my room, and Dr. Franklin closes the door behind me. I listen as the Doctor punches in a code, and I can hear the heavy metallic thud of a lock clicking in place.
Lights-out is literal—our overhead lights don’t work from midnight to seven in the morning. But I don’t go to bed. Instead, I cross the room to the window, where moonlight filters through my thin curtains. I sweep them aside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ruins by the marsh, hoping that will give me some inspiration for what to do to next to save Sofía.
But my gaze outside is marred by iron bars on the window.
I try to get a closer look at the bars, but the window is sealed shut. I strain against it, but it’s utterly immovable. I grab my cell phone and use its flashlight to illuminate the bars. They’re painted black, but there are cracks of rust in them, tiny slivers of red leaking through the edges.
These bars have been here for a while.
But at the same time, they’ve never been here before. The locks on the doors, the bars over the windows . . . none of this was here before I went home this weekend.
I turn my cell phone off, letting the darkness wash over the room. For just a moment, I see a glint of something—fire, maybe, or just sparks—in the distance, near the edge of the marsh, near the ruins where I lost Sofía.
But I blink, and it’s gone.
I move to the bed and sit cross-legged in the center.
The video from the USB drive plays through my mind. It wasn’t real, I know that, but it seemed real.
And this does too. The iron bars and the locked doors. It’s ironic; I just came back from a house where I wasn’t even allowed to have a door, and now I’m in a room trapped behind one.
I jump up from the bed and test the door now. It doesn’t budge.
We never used to have locks . . . I think, but then another thought: Yes, we did. We always did.
There have always been locks on the doors, iron bars on the windows.
No, there haven’t.
• • •
I don’t know what’s real anymore.
• • •
Except . . . Sofía. She’s real. I may only ever be able to see her in the past, but I still know that she’s real. I can still taste her kiss on my lips, reminding me of truth.
I grab my calendar from the desk and use my cell phone to illuminate its pages, picking a weekend when Sofía was at Berkshire and I was home. I blindly reach into the timestream, grabbing the strings of that date and practically throwing myself into the past, before everything went pear-shaped. When I open my eyes, I’m in my bedroom, but my calendar confirms that it’s March 15.
I burst out of my room. It’s not yet time for lights-out, so I head straight to the common room. But first I check my door behind me.
No keypad. No locks. No iron bars on the window.
Ryan and Harold are still around here somewhere, and there’s a chance I could run into the Doctor or someone else on staff, but I’m too excited to be careful.
I throw open the door of the common room.
“Bo?” Sofía asks when she turns around.
I almost lose it right there.
“Sofía.” I breathe her name.
“I thought you left already.”
“I decided to stay here instead,” I say. “I’d rather be here.” With you.
She smiles. “I was about to watch a movie, but would you rather—”
I stop her. “A movie would be great.” I want a normal date. I just want to remember that she’s real. I don’t need more than that.
The movies in the common room aren’t that great—about a dozen crappy DVDs and Blu-rays that are a decade or more old, most of them for little kids. Ryan has a few newer movies that he brought with him from home, but he doesn’t share. We can only watch them when he feels like it.
“How about this one?” Sofía asks, holding up Titanic.
I laugh. “That was my sister’s favorite movie when she was a kid.”
“Too girly?” Sofía starts to put the DVD back on the console.
“It’s fine,” I say.
I drag two beanbag chairs in front of the television while Sofía loads up the ancient player with the disc. She plops down on the red beanbag beside me, leaning into my shoulder. Her head finds that perfect place on my chest, where my arm and body meet, and she snuggles in, and I’m in absolute heaven.
I watch her more than I watch the movie.
I guess when someone’s gone from your life for a while, all you think about are the big things. The big regrets, the could-have, should-haves. Or the big moments, the memories that are going to be with you forever, those life-changing moments, like first kisses and first confessions and first trusts. And you think about the lasts too: the last kiss, the last words, the last m
oments.
But the firsts and lasts and the big highlights between aren’t a life. They aren’t a person. They aren’t what you love. When you fall in love, you don’t fall in love with the first kiss, you fall in love with every kiss after that. The big moments are great, and it’s obvious why you remember them, but it’s the little things that make a person real: the smell of her hair, the warmth of her head resting on my shoulder, the way her ear curves, how her legs curl under her when she’s relaxed, the little gasps and mutterings she makes when she’s so focused on a movie she forgets that she’s making sounds. The big moments are just photographs in your head; the little things are the memories.
Tomorrow, when this moment is gone, I’m still going to try to hold on to this feeling for as long as I can. I’m going to try to feel her head resting on my shoulder. I breathe deeply, memorizing her scent. This is what I want to remember.
But I know that these will be the first memories to fade, the way they always do. The little things fade, leaving me only with broad sketches that aren’t real at all. I’ll be left with the idea of Sofía, not the reality.
And that will never be enough.
CHAPTER 28
Even though I last saw this movie when I was ten and Phoebe forced me to watch it with her on her birthday, I still remember most of the story: guy, girl, forbidden love, ship sinks. It’s all more than a little predictable, but I still pull Sofía closer to me as Rose tells Jack she’ll never let him go.
“It just sucks so much for her,” Sofía says, and I keep myself from laughing at her glistening eyes.
“For her? He’s the one who dies.”
Sofía shakes her head. “I think death is easier than guilt sometimes.” The movie’s not over, but she leans up on the beanbag, away from me. “You’re not really here, are you?”
I cock my head. “What do you mean?”
“I saw you leave with your dad earlier. You were wearing different clothes. Your hair is a little longer now than it was just a few hours ago.” She grins lopsidedly. “You’re out of time, aren’t you?”
I kiss her nose. “Yeah. I’m from the fuuuuture.” I waggle my fingers at her, and she giggles.
But then her face sobers. “That’s twice now,” she says. “At least twice.” When I don’t answer her, she adds, “Christmas too. You came to see me then. And now you’re here. There’s no reason for you to come back in time just to watch a stupid movie with me. Something’s wrong.”
You’re stuck in the past, and I’m starting to lose track of what’s real and what’s not because there are some shady government officials at the Berk who may be playing with my perception of reality, and I don’t know how to save you, much less the rest of the school.
“Everything’s fine,” I say.
Sofía frowns. “It’s not. Just tell me. Maybe I can help.”
Time doesn’t work that way. My intent matters. If I tell Sofía too much, I’ll get snapped back to the present.
“I just came back to see you.” As soon as I say the words, I know they are the wrong ones.
“Me? What happened to me?”
“Nothing, nothing,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I just . . . I’m still trying to figure out my powers, and I ended up here, and I thought, why not chill for a little?”
Sofía cocks an eyebrow, but she drops the subject. “So how are things going with your powers?” she asks.
I shrug. “Still learning.”
“You can stay put longer,” she says. “It’s been more than two hours, and you’re still here.”
I wish I could stay here forever, but I know I can’t. Lights-out is only a couple of hours away, and every second with Sofía is stolen from a past I don’t really have a right to claim.
“Have you ever jumped to another point in the past from the past?” Sofía asks as the credits begin to roll. She turns the volume down.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, could you take me from here to the Titanic? The ship, I mean.”
“I . . . I don’t see why I couldn’t,” I say. Usually when I’m in another time, I start to feel the pull of my own timeline, like a rubber band tugging to bring me back home. But I don’t feel that here. Sofía’s more my home than any point in time. With her, I could go anywhere.
A wicked grin smears across her face. “Let’s do it, then,” she says. “Let’s go to the ship. Just for a second. Let’s see what it’s like.”
“I think we’d stick out a bit,” I say, looking down at my T-shirt and jeans.
“I’ll make us invisible,” Sofía responds. “I don’t care if they can see us, I just want to see the ship.”
I nod. “Give me a second,” I say, closing my eyes and focusing on the timestream.
I’ve tried to go to the Titanic before. Phoebe used to make me play with her while I pushed her on the tire swing and she screamed out that she was king of the world. I didn’t get my powers until high school, but I remembered playing pretend with her so vividly that it felt real. So of course one of the first places I tried to go after I got my powers was to the ship. I had gone with the intention of warning people about the icebergs, though, so time pulled me back. I was blocked from there, never able to return.
But my intentions are different now. I just want to see the ship, to stand on the deck and see the stars over the frigid sea and maybe spot the iceberg but say nothing. I know now that this is a moment in time that cannot be changed.
I scan the timestream, looking for the moment in April 1912 when the vast ship disappeared in a sea that was far vaster than it.
“Ready?” I say, reaching blindly for Sofía’s hand.
Sofía’s fingers slip through mine, and she grips me tightly. “Ready,” she whispers.
I glance at her and watch the timestream wrap around her the way it does me. The strings move like ripples in water, easily gliding over her body. It’s clear she can’t see what I can, but I wonder if she feels the threads of her own present and future and past wrapping around her, if she can feel the red thread that connects us together, or the way it cuts off abruptly in 1692.
She turns and smiles at me.
I squeeze her hand and reach out with my other one for the dark spot in the timestream indicating the night the Titanic sank. The strings are so cold they burn my skin, but I don’t let go, feeling the familiar tug at my navel as I’m pulled into the past.
At first I see only darkness and pinpricks of lights—stars, I think, but no, it’s more than that, it’s the lights of the ship, glittering in the lonely sea. Sofía’s grip on my hand tightens as the sound of the hull slicing through the waves fills our ears and the wooden boards of the ship’s deck solidify under our feet.
As soon as the cold air hits our skin, Sofía turns us both invisible. I hadn’t realized that her powers had grown so much stronger—it’s not like we talked about our powers on dates—but it gives me some comfort to know that she probably has the strength to stay hidden and safe in Salem.
I feel her body scoot closer to mine. I want to let go of her hand so that I can wrap my arm around her shoulders, but I settle with dropping my chin on the top of her head.
“It’s freezing out here!” she whispers.
“That’s the only thing you can think of?” I ask, smiling. I pull her across the smooth wooden deck of the ship, turning her around so that, rather than the dark waves of the ocean, Sofía can see the lit-up, glorious ship we’re on. She gasps, and I can feel her head tilting back, leaning as far as she can to drink in the exterior of the ship.
“It’s gorgeous,” she breathes.
“Come on,” I say, pulling her to the railing.
With the bright lights behind us, we can see the endless sky and stars. There are few people out here this late at night, just some well-dressed men talking in low voices and a few workers. I reach out for the timestream and
feel that it’s close to midnight.
Close to the moment we’ll hit the iceberg.
Sofía’s twisted around, holding my hand awkwardly to keep us invisible, her back to the railing and her eyes still on the enormous ship. But I face the other way, squinting into the dark, trying to find the iceberg. The sky is moonless, and I can see nothing but the sparkle of stars and reflected lights from the ship on the waves immediately in front of us. A bell rings, and the ship changes course, enough to make us lose our footing. Sofía’s hand clutches mine in a death grip.
The men who’d been talking stand up, shake each other’s hands, and then walk together away from the deck, toward the cabins. As soon as they’re out of sight, Sofía lets go of my hand.
“Someone could see,” I say as we both become visible again.
“Anyone who sees us now won’t be able to tell,” Sofía replies.
It takes a moment for her words to sink in. Anyone who sees us now would be a worker, someone low on the totem pole, someone who wouldn’t merit a spot in the lifeboats.
In the distance, we can still hear signs of life—voices carrying over the still night air, children laughing and running on the promenade—but we’re alone on the deck, entirely alone with the stars and the smell of wood oil and the cold, crisp air.
Sofía rubs her hands up and down her arms. “I knew it would be cold,” she says, “but this is ridiculous.”
“Want to go inside?” I ask. Invisible, we could slip into the beautiful rooms, stare at the opulence that’s about to sink into oblivion.
She shakes her head. “I thought I wanted to see it all, but those men . . . I don’t want to see any people,” she says.
I pull her close and wrap my arms around her. “Want to go?” I ask, already bringing up the timestream.
The sound of children playing and running grows louder, and Sofía’s distracted, turning out of my embrace. “Why are there children out here this late at night?” she asks.
“They’re coming this way,” I say, grabbing her arm. “Quick—”