The Backward Season

  Ava could hardly breathe. “Does this mean you’ll do it? You’ll spot me?”

  Tally folded her arms over her chest, and Ava was overcome by a swell of gratitude. She loved that people were always more textured than they first seemed. She loved that there were layers and layers and layers to everyone. She loved that through the murky water, she could see that Tally wore purple toenail polish.

  “But you have to say your wishes out loud,” Tally demanded. “I want to hear for myself that you’re wishing for what you said you’re going to wish for, and I want to hear the specifics and the clauses and whatever.”

  Ava blanched. Making her wishes out loud, in front of Tally . . .

  “I don’t think I can do that. It’s too private.”

  “Ava? You’re asking me to watch over you and make sure you don’t die. I think you can.”

  “Omigosh, I’m not going to die. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Right, because you’d pass out before that,” Tally said. Using her Ava voice and sounding embarrassingly young, she said, “I’ll be fine! Two minutes won’t even give me brain damage!”

  Ava blushed. “It’s the truth.”

  “And here’s another truth: If you want me to watch over you, then I want to watch over you. Literally.” She swished the water around them. “Right here, so I can keep my eyes on you.”

  “Here? It’s, like, one foot deep. How would I stay underwater?”

  Tally rolled her eyes. “I guess we can go out a little farther.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Tally spread her arms. “Hey . . .”

  “No, no. Whatever.” Ava chugged through the water: shin high, waist high, chest high. Tally kept pace with her. They were both nearly soaked by the time Tally grabbed Ava’s arm.

  “Here,” she said.

  Ava scratched her nose.

  She curled her toes into the oozy mud at the bottom of the lake.

  She let her body sway gently as the water rocked her like a baby.

  “Do it or don’t,” Tally warned.

  Ava took a breath and let it out. She was aware of the movement of her lungs, the expansion and contraction of her ribs. She nodded and pulled back her shoulders.

  “First, my impossible wish,” she said aloud. “For my impossible wish, I wish for City Park Lake to be a membrane between different whens.”

  “Membrane?” Tally said.

  Yes, membrane, Ava thought testily. Ava had thought about this and thought about this. She wasn’t about to let Tally derail her.

  “Just to be clear, I wish for City Park Lake to be a membrane between today and the past, when my mom was thirteen. Klara Blok. That’s my mom. Although back then, she would have been Klara Kosrov. And only this part of the lake where I am right now, and only for me.”

  “Are you explaining this to the wish fairy?” Tally asked. “I mean, just to be clear.”

  “For the wish I can make come true myself, I wish to go underwater—right here, right now—and travel backward through time to the last day of the second month of my mom’s thirteenth year.”

  “Sure, because that’s totally within your grasp,” Tally said. “I mean, obviously you can make that come true yourself.”

  “I can make myself dive underwater,” Ava said defiantly. “I can do that. I can choose to do that. And I can choose to stay under for as long as I possibly can, to give the magic time to happen.”

  “Ohhhhhhh,” Tally said. “Well, in that case. Why the last day of the second month?”

  “So that I’ll be there before my mom’s Wishing Day. So I can get the lay of the land and figure out what to do on the third day of the third month after my mom’s thirteenth birthday, since that’s when she’ll make her wishes.”

  “Of course. Yeah. Sure.” Tally gave Ava a sarcastic thumbs-up.

  “And for my third wish, the deepest wish of my most secret heart, I wish to return to this when once I’ve done what I need to do, and I wish to come back as me.”

  “That’s two wishes rolled into one. Can you do that?”

  “I just did, didn’t I?” Ava shot back. She’d tried countless times to phrase it more concisely, but this was the best she’d come up with.

  The breeze picked up, rippling the water and making Tally’s hair fly crazily around her face. Ava’s hair was in a ponytail, but even so, several of the shorter strands came free, lashing her cheeks and eyes. Goose bumps pricked all over her. Something powerful and wild coursed through her veins.

  “My name is Ava Blok,” she said under her breath. “My name is Ava Blok.”

  A flock of songbirds erupted from a tree on the water’s edge. Leaves fluttered, wings flashed, trills of music filled the air. Starlings, Ava thought, identifying them by their brilliant blue feathers. A murmuration of starlings; Papa had taught her that.

  “Fascinating birds,” he’d told her. “They mimic the sounds they hear around them—cell phones, car alarms, you name it. Once I met a guy who taught a starling to sing Mozart. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Ava, Ava, Ava!” the starlings cried as they swooped above her in a loose oval.

  “Ava?” Tally said, her eyes enormous. She stepped closer, reaching out.

  Ava raised her arms above her head, pressing her elbows to her ears and bringing her hands together. She ducked her chin, bent her knees, and pushed. Water split at the touch of her fingertips, and the lake swallowed her whole.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ava

  Ava held her breath for as long as she could. She dug through the thick mud at the bottom of the lake and found a root, or maybe a vine, to cling to so that she could keep from rising to the surface. Her feet, though. Her feet were like little helium-filled balloons. They floated up and up and up.

  Get back down here, feet, she told herself, frog kicking to bring them back.

  She thought of the endless tea parties she’d had with her sisters on the bottom of the public pool. On the count of three, Natasha, Darya, and Ava would suck in a big breath of air and sink to the bottom of the pool. They’d sit cross-legged on the bumpy concrete that always left nubbly spots on Ava’s bathing suit bottom. They’d pump furiously with uplifted palms, pushing the water up so that they’d stay down.

  Darya always won. Darya was always too stubborn to lose.

  Ava swiveled her waist and fishtailed her legs in front of her, scissoring them until she was sitting criss-cross applesauce. Yes, that was better. The root—or vine—was in front of her, her legs circling it and her hands gripping tight. The loose threads of her cutoffs fluttered like seaweed against her bare thighs.

  A small wave rocked against her, and she swayed forward, then back. It was probably Tally. She was probably stepping closer, making sure she could still spot Ava.

  Ava made an okay sign with her left thumb and forefinger and lifted her hand high over her shoulder.

  Her lungs weren’t bursting yet, but they were getting there. Come on, come on, she thought. Happen!

  She closed her eyes. She tried as best she could to access any magic that might be waiting for her, but she felt nothing take hold of her. No whirlpool sucked her into another dimension. No gust of air formed a bubble around her and transported her to the “when” she hoped to arrive in.

  Maybe the magic had happened without her feeling it? Maybe, when she opened her eyes, the lake water would be shot through with . . . rainbows, or points of shimmering light. Maybe there’d be a magical current, visible just to her. Or a wormhole! A wormhole in the water would totally fit her needs.

  Please? she begged as she opened her eyes. Please???

  Nothing.

  Just Ava and the lake. The sweet, dear, boring lake she’d dived into.

  A wave of disappointment crashed down on her—and then it was all over, because she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She let go of the root, pushed hard off the bottom of the lake, and emerged from the water.

  Ava gasped in air. Oh, oxygen was good. She pr
essed her fingertips against her eyes, then swept one hand over her nose and pinched off any accidental snot. She sluiced water from her face and wrung out her ponytail. She regulated her breathing. She didn’t turn around, because she didn’t want to face Tally.

  To Tally’s credit, she didn’t even clear her throat in an I told you so way. Tally didn’t say a word—and yet Ava felt enormously ashamed that Tally had witnessed her failure.

  “Fine,” she said. Her sodden T-shirt clung to her body. She’d have to walk home sopping wet, which was great. Tally would be wet, too. They’d return to their respective houses, both dripping, and every so often Tally would shoot her accusatory looks.

  “Seriously, go on and laugh,” Ava said. She turned around. “You win. I lose.” She furrowed her brow. “Tally?” She looked to the right. She looked to the left. “Tally? Omigosh, did you leave me?!”

  Ava sloshed toward the shore. When the water was waist high, she pulled her shirt away from her body so that it didn’t cling to her like a second skin. She flapped it a bit and squeezed what water she could from it.

  “Tally!” she called. The water now reached her shins. She felt sticky, slimy, and dispirited. When she reached the pebble-dusted shore, she found that her shoes and socks were gone. Tally had stolen her socks and shoes, on top of everything else!

  Really, Tally? she thought. Really?!

  She picked her way toward the path encircling the lake, mocked by every rock she stepped on. Just past the thicket of trees and bushes that separated the lake from the trail, she stopped. Someone was there. Two someones. Two girls around Ava’s age, sitting a couple of yards away on one of the rustic wooden swings.

  Ava blushed so hard it hurt. How long had they been there? What had they seen?

  She waited for the girls to do something, smirk at her or whatever, but the girls did nothing. They didn’t seem to even see her, but please. No one could sit on a swing in front of a lake and not notice when someone emerged from said lake like the creature from the black lagoon, gasping and making pfff noises and shucking water from her hair.

  She studied them, worried that any minute they’d lift their heads and laugh at her. They didn’t. They were just really involved in whatever they were talking about. Really really involved, their heads bowed and their shoulders touching.

  Ava shivered, a full-body twitchy shiver that came out of nowhere. The weather had changed, she realized. The sky was still blue and the sun shone cheerfully, but the temperature had dropped. An hour ago, Ava had been sweating as she tried to keep up with Tally. Now the air was cool on her skin. She needed to move.

  She wiped each muddy foot across the opposing shin to clean them off. She stepped out from the trees and gave up, saying, “I’m weird, I know. It’s a long story.”

  The girls kept murmuring in low voices about whatever it was that was oh-so-important. As mortified as Ava was, their nonreaction felt like a slap.

  “Seriously?” she said. She walked all the way to them and she waved her arms like a roadside traveler beckoning for help.

  “Hello-ooo!” she called. When they did nothing, Ava got right up in their faces, her humiliation bubbling over into near tears. “What you’re doing is mean,” she said, looking from one girl to the other. “It’s called ghosting. You’re ghosting me out.”

  She snapped her fingers in front of the girl on her left, who wore a Dr Pepper shirt. Mama used to like Dr Pepper. These days, she said it hurt her stomach.

  Dr Pepper girl blinked and glanced Ava’s way with a puzzled expression, but almost immediately turned back to her friend. Ava huffed and clapped her hands directly in front of the other girl, who had light brown hair and looked familiar, though Ava couldn’t think from where.

  “I know I’m being silly,” said the familiar-looking girl. She looked down at her lap and not at Ava at all. “But it’ll be over soon one way or the other, right?”

  “Don’t think of it as being over, Emily,” Dr Pepper girl said. Ava’s heart stopped. Emily? “Think of it as a new beginning!”

  The familiar-looking girl—Emily—groaned and put her head on Dr Pepper girl’s shoulder. “I wish I didn’t worry, believe me.”

  “Wish,” Dr Pepper girl said. “Ha!”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Omigosh, Klara. You honestly don’t have a worry in the world, do you?”

  Ava grew light-headed. She’d felt as if her heart stopped when she learned Emily’s name. Now, hearing Emily say Mama’s name—Klara—her heart stopped all over again. When it started back up, it pumped her blood the wrong way through her veins. She felt as if she were in a dream, watching a play unfold before her—and she was part of the play herself, even if the other players didn’t know it.

  The two girls sitting before her on the swing weren’t ghosting her after all. She’d ghosted herself, when she made her Wishing Day wishes. She, Ava, was the ghost.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ava

  She pushed her hands hard against her temples. She was a ghost and as a ghost, she had to find the Bird Lady!

  Only, she had no hands. She realized that only after looking down at her body and seeing that she had . . . well . . . no body. She’d seemed to have shed her physical form as she sloshed through the lake. She’d squeezed the water from her shirt, after all.

  Her now nonexistent shirt.

  She was still herself—still Ava—but in spirit form. Whoa, she thought. It was possible and impossible at the same time, and the contradiction lifted her spirits.

  Spirits! Ha!

  Oh, good heavens, Ava had the same goofy sense of humor as the girl on the swing who’d said, “Wish! Ha!”

  If she wanted that girl—Klara—to grow up to be her mother, she needed to get going. Same for the other girl, Emily. This Emily was the Emily who would grow up to be Tally’s mother, Ava was sure of it. Ava could see the resemblance between thirteen-year-old Emily and the Emily from the picture Tally had drawn.

  As for the initial flicker of familiarity Ava had experienced?

  Oh. Riiiight. Emily, at age thirteen, resembled Ava at thirteen. Or Ava resembled her?

  That’s why Grandma Rose had called her Emily, and Papa, too. She’d given them just enough of a nudge to almost remember the real Emily.

  The Bird Lady, she reminded herself, and with a scattering of light and a whoosh of wind, there the Bird Lady was, in front of Ava.

  Or, wait. The lake, the grassy lawn, the bench swing. Klara and Emily. They were gone, replaced by the shadowy forest that bordered the park. The Bird Lady hadn’t come to Ava; Ava had gone to the Bird Lady.

  “Oh, phew,” Ava said as she landed—if that was the right word—in front of her. The Bird Lady didn’t immediately see her, though. The Bird Lady stood half-hidden by a large maple tree, peering out from behind it and watching something avidly. She held her hand to her mouth, and her eyes sparkled with delight. She looked as if she were enjoying something delicious.

  Ava looked over her shoulder. Yes, yes, she didn’t have a shoulder, but it felt as if she did, and so she decided to go with it. Perhaps some mainframes were too ingrained to shed.

  What she saw made her gasp, though she made no sound. The Bird Lady was spying on Emily and Klara!

  “My pet, my girl, my angel,” the Bird Lady murmured. She clapped and bounced on her toes. “Sweet Klara! I’m here for you, pet. I’m here!”

  She turned and scurried into the forest, and Ava hurried after her.

  “Hey!” she said. “Hey! We have a plan, remember?”

  Only, crud. Ava and the Bird Lady made their plan in the future. At the present, Ava was in the past. Past, present, future . . .

  Omigosh, Ava thought. Too much!

  The Bird Lady reached the oak tree where her hideout was. The great oak, covered in Blue Moon wisteria. The Bird Lady found one particular knobby root and ducked into the hollow, and like a whisper, Ava was there as well.

  She watched as the Bird Lady scribbled words on a scrap of paper, her
tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. Klara Kosrov, she wrote on the top.

  “How to help, how to help,” she muttered. She tapped her lip with the pen, then scribbled some more.

  “No, no, no,” said Ava. She tried to maneuver in front of the Bird Lady. The Bird Lady wrote through her.

  Yick.

  “This is not the plan,” Ava said. She tried to take the pen from the Bird Lady. Her efforts were wisps of air against metal and ink. “Why can’t you hear me? Aren’t you supposed to be able to hear me? You hear the thoughts of thirteen-year-old girls, remember?”

  The Bird Lady hummed and fussed, writing the words Nate and Olympiad and a mother with three daughters.

  Ava would have sworn if swearing was something she did. Since she didn’t, she stomped around and kicked at the soil. Her actions yielded no results.

  Okay, breathe, she told herself. What am I forgetting?

  Oh! The Bird Lady could hear the thoughts of thirteen-year-olds! Was that the cause of the mix-up?

  Pushing on her words with fierce intensity, she thought, Look at me. See me. Stop writing stuff down about my mom!

  The Bird Lady hummed and rolled up the scrap of paper. She dug through a crate of glass soda bottles and pulled out one that was a murky shade of green.

  “Not one of your stupid scrolls!” Ava cried. The idea of her mother’s dreams being rolled up and stuffed into a bottle made her feel nearly hysterical. She tried pulling the Bird Lady’s hair, but found no purchase.

  You are supposed to HEAR me! she yell-thought with all her might. You hear thirteen-year-old girls, you dumb old Bird Lady!

  Then Ava remembered . . . and the air was sucked from her lungs, the hope from her heart.

  Ava wasn’t Ava, yet. She was, well, the potential of Ava. The Bird Lady couldn’t look into Ava’s eyes and see Ava’s soul, because Ava hadn’t been born yet, which meant that Ava didn’t have eyes yet, not eyes that the Bird Lady could see. Ava’s soul was still her soul—Ava was convinced of that—but the Bird Lady couldn’t access it, so to speak.