A World Without You (19 page)

He asks how I'm doing.

I lie and say everything is fine. I don't mention the cracks in the timestream. I don't mention seeing Carlos Estrada or any of the other people from the past.

I don't even mention Sofía.

But I do bring up Phoebe. “What were you talking to her about?”

“Just how she's doing. She thinks you're happier here than at home. Is that true?”

It
was
. Before all this shit happened.

“She mentioned that she broke her arm when she was a kid. Do you remember that?”

That seems like an odd thing for her to bring up.

“What'd she tell you?” I ask.

“Just that it was an accident.”

So she didn't spill that I was traveling to the past when I was that young. Phoebe at least can keep my secrets, if nothing else.

“What else were you talking about?”

“Your mom just wanted me to reach out to her.”

“Why?” I shoot back aggressively. “What's wrong with her?” My heart clenches, and I wonder: Am I more concerned that something's wrong, or am I worried that she's going to outshine me in this too—that she also has a power, a better one than mine?

“No, no,” the Doctor says. “Nothing like that. I just wanted to make sure she's okay. She's under a lot of stress.”

“Stress?
Phoebe?
”

“There are different kinds of stress, Bo,” the Doctor says, his voice placating and annoying. “You're dealing with your problems, but that doesn't mean Phoebe doesn't have her own.”

Choosing a college and wondering whether or not she's going to get an
A
, that's her stress. She doesn't have to worry about whether or not her power is driving her crazy, or if she can save her girlfriend from dying in the past while also saving everyone else and the school in the present.

Stress. Okay.

Dr. Franklin tells me how proud he is of me, how much more in control of my emotions I've been lately. If he knew that the timestream was leaking everywhere, I doubt he'd say that.

But I have to remind myself that this isn't the Doctor I know. This is a Doctor under the influence of the officials.

He tells me about the medication he wants me to take during spring break. “Of course, I've spoken with your parents about all this as well.”

That could prove to be a problem. Whatever the Doc's been telling Dad has already made him distrustful of me. If he piles
a bunch of pills in Mom's hands, I'm sure she's going to try to make me take them.

I know this is the officials' doing. They can't alter my perception, so they're trying a different tactic—they want to drug me into submission. I should warn Ryan that they might try to drug him too.

“When you get back,” the Doctor continues, “Dr. Rivers and Mr. Minh will be gone. They've concluded their investigation into Sofía's death and the school's practices.”

“Gone?” I repeat.

Dr. Franklin nods.

“They're just . . . going to go away?” I ask, still not believing it. They have total control of the school. Why just . . . leave?

“Their work is done. They're issuing a report to the board, and the school may change based on that, but it's all pretty much over.” His voice is a little sad.

Outside Dr. Franklin's window, an old-timey ship bobs on the waves in the ocean. When I blink, it's gone.

And so am I.

I've been pulled back into a different time. Snow and frost crust the windows, and the radiator rattles in the corner. No one else is in the Doc's office. I stand up from the blue plastic chair, slowly turning around, looking for a clue. The door starts to open, and I dive behind Dr. Franklin's filing cabinets.

Dr. Franklin walks into his office, but it's the Doctor from sometime in the past. I'm not sure when. Not too long ago.

He goes immediately to his desk and sits down. I stand motionless. How did he not see me? I'm not that well hidden.

A knock at the door, a quiet, hesitant tap.

“Come in,” the Doctor says, and the door to his office widens a little more.

Sofía walks in.

She looks right at me.

But it's clear she doesn't see me. Neither of them do. I may as well be invisible.

This doesn't make sense
, I think. I can travel through time, but it's still me. My body. They should be able to see me.

“Let's talk,” the Doctor says kindly.

Sofía fiddles with her necklace—a silver chain with a dolphin charm.

“What's wrong?” Dr. Franklin says when Sofía doesn't speak. “Can you tell me about it?”

Sofía doesn't say anything. She doesn't shrug or dismiss the Doctor; she's just still and silent.

I creep closer, looking at her, really looking at her. Sofía was very good at going unnoticed even when she wasn't invisible. But I look now, and I see the dark marks under her eyes. I see the way her lips are chapped and dry. I see the way her skin lacks its usual glow.

I see the way she sits on the edge of her seat, her eyes pleading with the Doctor's, begging him to see that something is wrong with her. Hoping he can understand. That he can help.

“You have to talk to me,” Dr. Franklin says, and I notice desperation in his voice. “I want to help, but I can't do it without you.”

I sit down beside Sofía, in the same seat that I was occupying before I slipped back in time. Neither of them acknowledges my existence.

The Doctor waits a long time for Sofía to talk, but she remains silent.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper, even though I know she can't see me. “I didn't realize.” I still don't realize. I just know that something is wrong, something important, and I didn't see it before. She needed me, and I didn't see it.

“Everything's okay now,” Sofía tells the Doctor in a soft voice that still holds a note of steely determination. She sounds as if she's made a decision.

And then she turns to look at me. Her irises are invisible. They always were the first things to go.

“You need to wake up,” she says, staring at me.

“Can you see me?” I say. “What's going on? Why can't Dr. Franklin see me? And what do you mean?”

“Wake up!”
she shouts, the last word drowning into a scream.

I jerk back, stumbling out of my chair.

“Bo?” the Doctor asks.

I'm back in the present.

“Is something wrong?”

I stare at the empty chair beside me. “No,” I say slowly. “No, everything's okay now.”

I sit cross-legged
on the cool sandy soil in front of the ruined remains of the chimney at the edge of the marsh. I'm so still that an observer might think I'm meditating.

But I'm not. I'm waiting.

I stare at the timestream, concentrating on the areas that are leaking around me. Not all of the times and places breaking through are connected to the island, but most are. The Native American tribes I catch glimpses of look like the ones that lived here before the first European settlers, and the Pilgrims I see could be from any of the colonies, but it seems likely that they live nearby. The kids from the sick camp are obviously from around here.

It takes me a while to realize that the people who are showing up from different
places
—people like Carlos Estrada, or a Mexican family speaking Spanish rapidly, or a group of giggling girls around fifteen years old dressed in fluffy dresses—they're all coming from different places, but they all link back to her.

All the leaks in time are centered on either the island or Sofía. Somehow, they're connected. And if I can figure out that connection, maybe I can figure out how to stop the leaks, control the timestream, and save Sofía.

So I'm waiting, watching, trying to piece together all the different bits of time swirling in and around this place.

Trying to forget the way Sofía's eyes turned invisible as she screamed at me.

I am perfectly still as the timestream creaks and groans like the deck of a wooden ship. I turn my head slightly to see a group of kids rushing by, running and laughing, one of them waving a long, colorfully decorated stick. Something from Sofía's past—some childhood birthday party or similar. I consider jumping up and chasing them back into their time, where I could see Sofía when she was eight or nine years old. Maybe I could warn her to stay away from the boy who can control time.

But she'd be too young. And I'd be too out of place.

A fire crackles in the ruins' hearth. The fire spreads, both creating and destroying the house as it burns. I can feel the heat of it on my skin, and its smoke blinds me. I start coughing and stumble back, moving away from the flames. This is how the house was destroyed in the 1700s. It wasn't people who slipped through the timestream this time, it was the whole damn house.

And then I hear a scream.

“Sofía?” I gasp, choking on the smoke.

No. That's impossible. Sofía was sent back a hundred years before the fire started. There's no way—

And then I see her. In the second story of the burning building. She's screaming, beating her arms on the glass panes. She's trapped. She's burning alive.

“SOFÍA!” I roar, rushing toward the flaming house.

It disappears.

The sound and the smoke disappear too, leaving me gasping, my head spinning.

She was there.

But . . . how?

Maybe . . . maybe the cracks in time are all linked to Sofía and this island not because she's trapped in the 1600s, during the Salem Witch Trials, but because Sofía's trapped in the cracks, falling through time, and the only thing linking her to reality is this island.

As I stand there, trying to figure out what's going on, the house reappears. It doesn't smell of acrid burning; it smells of freshly sawn wood and new paint. The stone steps leading to the front door grow up under my feet, and I turn, slowly, my back to the house.

I see Sofía again.

This time, she's crying. Silently but violently, her shoulders shake and her teeth chatter in fear.

There's a rope around her neck.

Four men—two of whom I had seen before on horseback in the marsh—stand over Sofía's body. She's gotten her hands on some time-appropriate clothes; she looks like a Pilgrim. Except for her too-dark skin.

Another woman is there, a teenaged girl with blonde hair and dark eyes. She points at Sofía and yells, “Witch!”

The girl starts moving as if she's having a seizure, but her motions are too planned, too repetitive. The men standing over Sofía take action. One leaves the group to comfort the girl. The others throw the end of the rope over a heavy branch of
a nearby oak tree, and they use a horse to drag Sofía's protesting body up and up and up. She claws at the noose around her neck, her eyes wide and popping.

“Stop!” I shout, striding forward.

But before I can do anything, they all disappear.

I spin around wildly, looking for whatever break in the timestream is going to happen next. The chimney is a ruin; the tree they were stringing Sofía up on is nothing but a stump. I sink to my knees. Is this Sofía's hell? To be found and killed throughout time?

I hear laughing.

I stand back up, my legs weak, but I force myself to walk toward the sound, toward the abandoned camp for sick kids.

When I get there, it's . . . strange. The buildings are old and empty, abandoned as always. But there are more than a dozen kids in shirts that look like they come from the '70s. Some of the kids are obviously sick, in wheelchairs or braces or helmets, but some are not. Two are in the pool, splashing around. Or . . . I stare, my mouth dropping open. The pool is dry and dirty with weeds growing in the bottom. But the two kids are standing in the shallow end, laughing and flailing their arms around as if the pool is full of water. One of the kids dives backward, and I almost cry out, expecting him to smash his head into the cracked cement, but he floats in water he can feel but I cannot see.

Two other kids nearby are throwing a ball. I can see the ball when it touches one of the kids' hands, but as soon as it flies in the air toward the other kid, it's invisible again.

“Where's Sofía?” I mutter, looking around. In my past two visions, she was there. She needed me. She must need me now. She must be at this camp.

I run up to the buildings, throwing open the doors and peering inside. They are empty, abandoned, decrepit. Sunlight leaks through the spaces between the warped boards of the walls, exposing rat droppings and a dead cockroach in the corner. But outside I can still hear the sounds of people laughing and talking, moving and shuffling through the buildings, including the ones I just left.

It's
creepy
.

But no Sofía.

I return to the center of the camp. The only people I see are the kids playing. No adults, no counselors, or whoever else is supposed to be here. I grab the nearest kid, a little girl with Down syndrome. “Do you know Sofía?” I shout at her.

She starts crying. All around me, the camp becomes more and more present. Water fills the pool, the grass is greener, the buildings are brighter. More people appear in the background, including some adults who are starting my way. By touching the little girl, I've pulled myself into her time.

I shake her shoulders urgently. “Can you see me? Do you know Sofía?”

Her sobs turn louder.

“Bo?”

I turn just in time for my eyes to connect with Sofía's. But before I can say anything, she points at something behind me and screams,
“Run!”

I turn—

And then I'm ripped away. Not by a person, but by a force. By time.

I'm thrown back into a place I don't recognize. There is no sick kids' camp. There is no Berkshire. There's not a chimney
from the 1600s . . . or even a house. There's only the island, bare, swampy, and loud with the sounds of waves crashing on the shore. A greenhead fly buzzes past me.

There's a rustling in the tall grass. I stand completely still as a young deer creeps forward, her nose in the air, sniffing for danger. She turns and sees me. We stare at each other for a moment, then she darts around, her tail high and white, bounding away from me.

I feel the pull of time in my navel first, and before I even have a chance to call for Sofía, I'm dragged back and back again.

I'm at the camp again, but back when it first opened, when it was just for kids with polio. Then I'm at the Berk just as it was being built, before I'm thrown again to a time that may be the far future, the academy nothing but a crumbling foundation of brick, and the camp completely hidden by weeds and trees. I'm whipped around, backward and forward through time, spun across the island, a witness to its every incarnation.

And hidden in every moment of time . . . Sofía.

I see glimpses of dark hair, whispers of her pleading voice, or screams ripped from her mouth. Sometimes she's invisible. Sometimes I can see her in the distance: running from something unknown, being held down by men from other times, walking silently into the ocean on her own, weighed down with stones. At one point I see nothing but a freshly dug, unmarked grave, but I know it's hers. Every time I see,
every time
, she's just out of my reach, just far enough away that I cannot save her.

I try to call up the timestream. I try to find the strings that will pull me to my own time or just anchor me to
any
time. I whirl faster and faster, coming apart at the seams. The island and its contents meld together, trees and grass and dirt and
buildings nothing more than a green-and-brown blur. But the occasional faces I see in each time are sharp and unique, standing out against the whirl, but each one is unrecognizable. No Sofía. No Dr. Franklin or Ryan or Gwen or Harold. Not even one of the officials.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a ponytail that's familiar. I reach for it blindly, my fingers barely able to entwine into the girl's hair.

Into my sister Phoebe's hair.

When I open my eyes next, I'm in my old bedroom at my parents' house. It looks exactly the same as when I was last at home, a sheet over the door, my notebook and the USB drive on my desk, but I search for some indication of how much time has passed . . . or has yet to pass.

The curtain blocking my door is swept to the side. Phoebe stands in the doorway, illuminated by the hallway light.

“About time you're awake,” she says.