A World Without You

“They sneak, and they pry, and they’re trying to drive us apart.”

  I think Harold’s on to something, actually. There’s coldness in the air now that has nothing to do with the weather. This unit used to be a family, and now no one talks. The Doctor is distant. We all just shuffle from room to room, waiting for the officials to leave so that life can return to normal.

  “I don’t like them at all,” Harold continues. “They’re trying to take you away from me.”

  And that’s when I realize that Harold isn’t talking to us at all. He’s talking to his ghosts.

  “Still no Sofía in the ghost world?” I ask in a low voice, my heart skipping a beat.

  Harold turns to me, his clear, pale eyes eerily wide. “There is no Sofía. Nothing. Just a blank space where she once was.”

  I breathe again. Harold can see the dead, but not the past.

  Ryan rolls his eyes at Harold. “Anyway,” he says, turning back to me, “they need to go, like, yesterday. They’ve been here almost a month.”

  “Dude, it’s only been a little over a week.”

  Ryan gives me a weird look. “Okay, whatever, time-man.”

  “No, but seriously. A week and some days. Not a month.”

  “You may want to check your math on that.”

  I turn on my heels.

  “Dr. Franklin’s going to start our session soon!” Gwen calls as I stride back toward my room.

  I don’t care. Ryan’s a jerk, but I don’t think he’d play me like that. By my count, the officials have been here just thirteen days. But Ryan looked at me like I was clueless.

  I travel through time. I don’t lose it.

  I slam open my bedroom door and head straight to my calendar. I stare at the date.

  It’s been a month.

  How the hell did I lose a month?

  Did the officials do this? Dr. Rivers could tell that her regular mind games weren’t working on me. Did she find a way to make me lose time?

  I shake my head. Ryan’s just being a jerk. He’s playing a joke. He must have snuck in my room and altered my calendar. I flip through the pages, but each is marked with my special code.

  Gwen shows up at my door. “Dr. Franklin told me to get you. Session’s starting.”

  I follow her, but my mind’s focused on my lost time. This has to be a joke. Ryan’s messing with me.

  “Hey,” Gwen says as she leads me down the hall. “Maybe try not to be too crazy. In front of the officials, I mean. I think they’re going to go soon. I don’t want to give them an excuse to stick around.”

  I nod my head tightly. So don’t blow up at Ryan for messing with me. Got it.

  We all sit around Dr. Franklin’s desk, and Ryan pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. The date flashes on the screen—the same date that’s on my calendar, the one that’s several weeks off. How did he do that? I didn’t even know you could change the date on a cell phone.

  “Ryan, put that away. You’re only allowed to use your phone after class.”

  Ryan crams the phone back in his pocket, but there’s a smirk on his face. If he wanted to rattle me, it worked. I just don’t get why he’s doing this now.

  I can’t even pay attention to what the Doctor’s talking about, and within fifteen minutes, he dismisses us. I stand up to leave.

  “Bo,” he says, “I just asked you to stay.” He gives me a weird look. I sit back down. The officials are busy recording everything that’s happening.

  Once Gwen, Harold, and Ryan leave, the Doctor pulls up a chair and sits across from me. “I want to say again,” he says, “Dr. Rivers and Mr. Minh are observers, but it’s your right to ask them to leave if you’re uncomfortable with them sitting in.”

  He’s nervous, that much is clear. His eyes widen slightly, glancing to his left, where the officials are sitting. Maybe he knows, subconsciously, that they’re doing something to mess with his head.

  “It’s okay,” I mutter. They’ll just find another way to spy on me if I kick them out, and I’d rather have them where I can see them.

  “Before we go on, I want to know: Do you have any questions for me?”

  I sit up straighter. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “What—uh, what day is it?”

  The Doctor shoots me a strange look but tells me the date. The same as the date on my calendar, on Ryan’s phone.

  It wasn’t a joke.

  I’ve lost several weeks of time. The last thing I remember is going to bed the day I texted Phoebe. I stayed up until lights-out reading that book assigned to us in English. And then I woke up, just like normal, but somehow time has zoomed past me. What the hell happened? The officials are still here, everyone’s acting like everything’s normal . . . but I’ve lost weeks.

  Weeks when I could have been saving Sofía.

  Is that it? Is this time’s way of punishing me for finding a loophole to see her again? I stole time with her, so time stole some back.

  Or maybe the officials did.

  “I’m holding you back to discuss your medication,” Dr. Franklin says.

  “Medication?”

  “I’d like to add a few different scripts,” the Doctor continues. “First, something for your insomnia.”

  “I don’t have a sleeping problem.”

  The Doctor smiles sadly and writes something in his notebook. I lean forward, trying to see it, but I can’t.

  “It’s a neuroleptic,” Dr. Franklin continues, as if I hadn’t spoken. “And it’s stronger than your previous medication, but still a bit mild compared to others on the market. I need you to keep track of how you feel when you take it, okay? And I want you to continue taking it when you go home for the weekends. Family Day is coming up, and then spring break, and I need you to be responsible and keep up with your medication even when you’re at home.”

  I nod dumbly. This isn’t the first time the Doctor has prescribed pills. Everyone in the group was put on mild antidepressants when they first arrived at the Berk. “To temper your powers until you can control them a little more,” the Doctor had said. And there was other medication: a fever reducer for Gwen, some little green pills for Ryan, an entire handful of stuff for Harold—though Harold gobbled up the pills eagerly, as if they were candy.

  Dr. Rivers stands up and moves behind the Doctor, reading the notes he’s written in his book. “I agree, Dr. Franklin,” she says. “These should help Bo considerably.”

  I grit my teeth. So. That’s what’s happened. The officials know that I’m not duped by their illusions, so they’re going to drug me.

  CHAPTER 33

  I stare at the pages of my calendar.

  I lost so much time.

  Time that I could have spent working to save Sofía.

  But I was selfish. I stole my night with her, and somehow time’s been stealing itself back.

  My mind feels like it’s splintering. Save Sofía. Stop the officials. Can Dr. Franklin be trusted? What is happening?

  I clutch my head, bending over my bed and pressing my face against my cool pillow. Too much time has passed. The officials aren’t just going away. Sofía isn’t just coming back.

  It’s all falling apart.

  An abrupt, violent feeling cracks inside me, at my core, the way cold glass shatters when boiling water is thrown on it. The timestream flashes in front of me, stuttering in and out of existence, the threads ripped up like grass being whirled around in a hurricane. I reach for it—hoping to calm it, maybe, or just find a way to calm myself in it—and a noise like radio static vibrates all the way into my bones. Reality feels jagged in my hand. I stumble off my bed, staggering to find steady ground, and—

  I fall into a different time.

  I haven’t gone somewhere I had zero control over in ages, and this is the first time the timestream has ever acted like this, like it was made of sound and fury and little els
e. It felt like a television turned on to a scrambled channel inside my head.

  I blink in the bright daylight, trying to figure out where I am. When I am. It’s definitely not Berkshire, and it’s sometime in the afternoon, I think . . . and I know this place. It’s not somewhere I’d elect to go, but at least it’s familiar. I’m on the grassy lawn just in front of my parents’ house. Judging from the temperature, I’d guess it’s springtime—although I can’t tell the year. The sweet scent of Mom’s cherry tree fills the air, and a few pale petals float by.

  The front door opens. I drop immediately to the ground, crouching between the bushes and the bricks of the front porch. Girls’ voices fill the space, one of them definitely my sister’s. I’m not sure where in time I am. Is this the past or the future? The house doesn’t look much different, and Phoebe sounds like herself, so it’s possible that this is today. Or a month ago. Or next year. It’s impossible to tell.

  As the girls—two of them, plus Phoebe—settle onto the porch, I move carefully under the steps, out of sight. I can hear them walking across the wooden planks, the squeak of the front porch swing, and I pray they stay where they are. If they come down to the yard and look directly at the steps, they’ll definitely see me.

  If I’m seen, it might cause trouble, so it’s best if I figure out what’s going on first. The timestream won’t let me create a paradox or conflict with my own timeline—that’s been made abundantly clear—but the static-filled stutter that brought me here was not normal.

  Maybe something’s wrong with time. I can’t afford to screw things up until I know what’s going on.

  The dirt under the porch is cool and damp, and spiders creep along the undersides of the wooden boards, but I ignore them, my heart racing. Whatever’s happening now, I shouldn’t be here. But time has put me here for a reason.

  The girls start chatting, and I finally recognize them. Jenny and Rosemarie, two of Phoebe’s best friends, are occupying the big porch swing that my father brought home from our grandmother’s house after she died. They’re barely skimming their toes along the wooden planks of the porch, just moving the bench seat of the swing enough for the chain to squeal in protest.

  Phoebe sits down at the top step, her bright pink socks parallel with my eyes.

  “I think I’m going to try to do a foreign-exchange program,” Phoebe says suddenly.

  “You mean, like, some kid from Africa or China or some other country is going to share a room with you?” Rosemarie asks.

  “You do realize that Africa is not a country, right?” Jenny tells her, leaning over the swing so that Rosemarie can see her arched brow.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “It’s a continent.”

  “No,” Phoebe says. “I mean I think I’m going to be the one to go to Africa or China or something.”

  Rosemarie and Jenny both stop swinging. “What?!” Jenny says at the same time Rosemarie exclaims, “Why?”

  “I just . . . I want to get away.” Phoebe says in a distant voice, as if she can already envision herself in Africa or China or something.

  I feel like I’m spying, and I hate it. But why does Pheebs want to leave? Is something wrong? I scoot around under the porch, trying to see her better, but her face is hidden from me.

  Phoebe leans back over the porch, looking toward her friends. “I mean, I want to explore. See the world. All that stuff.”

  “There’s the class trip to Europe,” Jenny points out.

  “Yeah, I know,” Phoebe says. “That’s a backup plan. I don’t care where I go, really—I just want to go.”

  “I don’t.” Rosemarie kicks her feet, making the swing go higher. Jenny wasn’t ready and nearly falls off.

  “I might one day. In college, maybe.” Jenny grabs the chain, stilling the swing. Rosemarie glares at her.

  Phoebe wraps her arms around her knees. She looks very small from my vantage point, like a wounded animal or a forgotten child.

  “What did your parents say?” Jenny asks quietly. Rosemarie puts her feet down, making the swing stop completely.

  After a moment, Phoebe says, “I haven’t told them.”

  “With your brother already gone—”

  “He’s not dead.” Phoebe cuts Jenny off. “And besides, they probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone.”

  “Well, I think it’s brave,” Rosemarie says when Jenny opens her mouth again. “You’re really brave, Pheebs. You’re not scared of anything.”

  “Everyone’s scared of spiders,” Jenny says, trying to make a joke.

  But Phoebe’s not. I remember when we first moved into this house, when I was seven and Phoebe was five. It’s a really old house, and our parents had to practically gut it to remodel it, but they were too poor to do it all at the same time, so they went room by room. Phoebe and I had to take turns sharing a room while each of our bedrooms was remodeled. One day, just as we were going to bed, a giant spider—a huge furry thing that made my heart race and my stomach churn—landed directly on Phoebe’s head, its legs dancing across the fine strands of her hair.

  I had grinned, expecting my sister to freak out when I told her there was a spider on her, but instead she just dipped her head, shook her hair out, and looked at the thing when it fell from her to her pillow. She reached out and poked it with one stubby finger, and the spider scurried away.

  “I’m not scared of spiders,” Phoebe says, but there is no triumph in her voice.

  “It’s not spiders for me; it’s snakes,” Rosemarie says with a shudder. “My daddy ran over one when he was taking me to band practice today, and ohmahgah, it was so gross. Its body was still—” Rosemarie twists up her arms, her face scrunched in disgust.

  “I’m not scared of snakes either.”

  Rosemarie leans over, the porch swing squeaking. “Then what are you scared of, show-off?”

  I lean forward too, curious as to what my little sister is frightened of. Probably something stupid—if she’s not scared of spiders or snakes, maybe she hates butterflies.

  Or maybe it’s me. I’m the freak of the family, I’m the one who’s not in control. I’d forgotten all about taking her to see the Titanic and getting her injured. Maybe I’ve done that before. Maybe she’s scared of me showing up in her life, dragging her off to a different time and place and leaving her there.

  Like I did with Sofía.

  “I’m scared of Capgras delusion,” Phoebe says.

  “What?” Jenny asks.

  Phoebe turns around, leaning her back against one of the wooden columns of the porch. “Capgras delusion. It’s when you wake up one day and you think someone you love isn’t real. Like, maybe you think that person is actually a robot, not a human. Or a doppelgänger. Or whatever. But you look at this person that you love, that you have always loved, and instead of seeing him, you see someone else. Something snaps inside of you, and what you thought was real doesn’t feel real anymore. So you look at this person you love and you feel like he’s just . . . gone, replaced by this weak imitation.”

  “That’s crazy,” Rosemarie says.

  “That’s the point,” Phoebe says, her voice rising. “And it can just happen one day, to anyone. No one knows the cause. There’s no cure. One day everything’s fine, and the next day everything you thought was true feels fake. You spend the rest of your life believing—really believing—that the person you were in love with is gone and you’re stuck with this replacement.”

  “I’d leave him,” Jenny says. “Maybe he was a doppelgänger. Maybe I fell into a horror movie or something.”

  “Some people do. Some people just walk away from their families and never go back. And some people live with it, basically faking their love for the rest of their lives. And then some people start to think that the only way to get back the person they loved is to kill the fake person.”

  All three girls are silent f
or a moment.

  Phoebe stands suddenly, her footsteps clattering down the stairs to the front yard. I scurry into the shadows, but it will do no good—there isn’t enough darkness here to hide me. Pheebs turns, her eyes scanning high, looking for her friends still on the porch, but then she hesitates, her gaze drifting toward me—

  And then the timestream violently yanks me back to my own world, my own bedroom, my own time.

  CHAPTER 34

  More time has passed. I checked the calendar. Each sheet marked in my own special code.

  I’ve lost three days.

  Three days gone, replaced by just a moment of time at my parents’ house, spying on my little sister.

  Three more days gone, and Sofía’s not back. I’m getting worse. I’m way, way out of control.

  But if I can’t control the timestream, I can’t control anything. I can’t save Sofía. I can’t even save myself. Is this what a supernova feels like? Melting down from the core, destroying everything close to it.

  I have never felt so helpless in my life. It feels like the entire world is crumbling around me, and no one even notices me trying to save it.

  This all reminds me of something Sofía once told me. About the first time she saw someone die. She was at a pool party for a friend’s quinceañera. Everything was loud: the music, the conversations, the kids splashing in the water.

  Everything was loud, except for Carlos Estrada.

  No one noticed. There was a large group there, playing and shouting, and the soccer team was on one side of the pool having a water fight. And Carlos—he just sort of bobbed there in the deep end for a bit, and then he went under the water. And he didn’t come back up. Not until his mother dove into the water with all her clothes on and dragged his body from the pool.

  “That’s the thing that stayed with me,” Sofía said quietly, after she described his blue lips and his skin that was cold to the touch. “You always think that drowning is loud. In the movies, if someone drowns they scream, they churn the water. Everyone notices a drowning person in the movies.”

  Sofía looked down, and I thought she was crying, but when she looked up at me again, I realized her eyes were dry.