Rewind (Vanish Book Three) (5 page)

She sighed as she looked
over at a picture of him hanging on her wall. Then she flipped open
a sketch pad and started scribbling—or so it seemed until I got
closer. It was a picture of us, me and Dante, holding hands and
walking into… a lake?

She flipped through the
pages, and page after page was Dante and me. They were all
different, sometimes we were in the forest, sometimes our favorite
spot. In others, we were kissing and a few looked as though we were
underwater.

“
I wish I knew what all of
this meant,” she sighed to herself. “Why is this all I see when I
close my eyes?” She wondered aloud.

I could see the pain in his
eyes as he watched a single tear stream down her cheek. When she
flipped another page, I almost screamed out for her to stop.
Thankfully, her eyes rested on it for a moment. No matter what was
happening in this drawing, it seemed to be a welcome change from
the previous few. I recognized the girl in the picture
instantly—Grace.

“
Who are you?” she whispered
to herself.

I felt horrible. I didn’t
particularly want to stay here, but I had a strong feeling that
this girl was a major piece to this puzzle. I needed her sketch
pad.

She closed her eyes again
and started drawing a new picture. It took her almost an hour to
complete. I didn’t look; I just sat in the corner waiting as he
watched over her shoulder.

Once she was finished, she
walked over to her bed and lay down. It took her a while to fall
asleep, but once she did, I grabbed the sketch pad and walked over
to Dante.

“
We need to leave,” I
said.

“
I—I can’t,” he
stuttered.

“
Come on Dante, we need to
go,” I protested. I grabbed his hand, but he refused. “We’ll come
back to return this,” I promised.

“
Why are you taking that?”
he wondered.

“
I think it will help, but I
don’t know for sure,” I admitted.

“
Fine,” he agreed. He took
my hand in his and closed his eyes. “There is nowhere I’d rather be
than here.” The words broke my heart, but soon we were standing in
front of the house.

“
Can we go back to your
house or—”

“
I guess,” he sighed as he
grabbed my hand again, and soon we were back on the couch in his
basement.

“
You’re really getting the
hang of this,” I complimented, but he shrugged me off.

I looked through the sketch pad, taking
in every detail. I ran my fingers across the page, and soon I was
sucked into a vision, only it wasn’t my vision—it was Allison’s.
Unlike my visions, hers seemed to only be a single moment. It was
like a slide show—snapshot after snapshot— some were happy, and
some sad.

The first picture was of her
and Dante. There were words written across the top of the page ‘our
first date.’ They were smiling, and they looked in each other’s
eyes the same way Dante and I used to.

The second was of me and
Dante. There was no happiness in our eyes only fear and
disappointment. I threw down the sketchpad and pushed it away from
me. I had two options, the first, get away from Dante and leave him
alone—forever. The second option, do what I was going to do anyway,
get closer to him and hope there are no consequences. I chose the
latter; I would try to get Dante back, but I needed to move
slowly.

I was selfish; I couldn’t
deny that. But when you love someone so much that you
feel
your heart sinking
when you think about them, they’re not something you should just
let go like that. I could feel my heart breaking every second I
thought about him. I thought about the time we spent in the
beautiful forest that glowed. I needed to go find Elizabeth and
George, but before that, I had bigger problems, ones that had to be
dealt with promptly. I had all but forgotten what day it was
today—two days before Grace disappeared. That meant today was the
day she was murdered and someone took over her body.

“
Look,” I began. “I know
this is going to sound crazy, and I really should have started
looking days ago, but there is a girl named Grace. I have a feeling
something really bad is going to happen to her.”

“…
Grace?” he said as he
moved a little closer. “I don’t know anyone named Grace. I do
remember you saying something about her though.”

“
Will you help me?” I
asked.

“
How am I supposed to know
this girl even exists, that you’re not lying?”

I thought for a moment. I
had no pictures of her. No way to prove that she existed in the
past, but I knew she did—and then I remembered. I grabbed the
sketchpad again and flipped through the pages. There had to of been
at least forty pictures. Some Dante and I did look happy in,
happier than I’d ever seen two people. I felt the pain return.
Then, I found the picture of Grace, and I turned the drawing toward
him.

“
This is Grace.”

“
So Allison knows her?” he
asked.

“
No, I don’t think so, when
she was staring at the picture, I heard her mumble, ‘who are
you?’.”

“
This is insane, you know
that, right?”

“
I know…” I stopped, at a
loss for words. “I know how it seems to you, but you have to
believe me. I came back from the future. I spent six months in a
mental hospital and do you know why?”

“
No, I don’t.”

“
I was accused of killing
her,” I choked; I felt a tear stream down to my chin. “And you know
what? I didn’t do anything to her, but it could have been my
fault.”

“
But you don’t actually know
her?”

“
Not here, no, but we were
best friends, just like you and I were best friends…” I
sighed.

“
I’m going to try to believe
you. I’ll try to help, but you better believe that this is real,
because if you’re lying, I’ll never talk to you again.”

“
I believe it, I know it.” I
looked down, trying to hide the tears that had escaped. “And trust
me; I would never take that chance.”

Chapter 5:
Greenview

I woke up in his arms on
the couch. We had both fallen asleep, and I knew he would
be angry if he woke up and found us like this. I
moved away, and grabbed the sketch pad. I went through every last
page. When I came to the picture of Grace, I stopped. I sat there
staring at her face, and then I shifted my eyes to the background.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the backgrounds of the
pictures, only the people and their facial expressions. In the
background of this picture, was a house. It was so detailed, right
down to the address. I couldn’t be sure that it was her house, but
it would point us in the right direction. The only problem? I
didn’t know what city she lived in, or what street she lived on. I
touched the picture and like Allison had the other night, I
couldn’t help but talk to it.

“
Where are you
Grace?”

It was harder to find her when she
wasn’t imprisoned.

I was sucked into the vision, again
Allison’s, not mine. I could stay in the picture as long as I
wanted, but it stayed still. It felt wrong being there; I couldn’t
quite put my finger on it. I walked to the mail box—it looked just
like it did in the picture. I grabbed a letter out of the box, but
before I could look, I was back in Dante’s basement.

“
What’s wrong?” he
demanded.

“
Huh?”

“
I’ve been talking to you
for like two minutes, and you’ve been ignoring me.” He looked down
at my hand. “Where did that come from?” he asked, almost
frightened.

When I looked down I
couldn’t help but gasp—
the letter.
I had somehow taken it with me.

“
I think we found
Grace.”

She lived two towns over in
Greenview. It would take about an hour to get there. I had to
convince Dante to go with me, otherwise I would have to try and
borrow Rose’s car—which she went out of her way to explain the
difficulty of such a situation.

“
So what do we do?” He
asked.

“
Look, I know this isn’t the
best thing to do—and if you don’t want to I won’t force you—but I
need to go find Grace, today.”

“
So you’re asking me if I
would skip school?”

“
Yeah, I guess that’s what
I’m asking, but if you say no, it’s alright. I wasn’t planning on
returning to school anyway,” I mumbled.

“
What happened yesterday?”
he asked.

“
I can’t control my powers
anymore; I disappeared in front of an entire classroom of
people.”

“
There has to be some way
you could explain it….”

“
Right, if you think of
something that would explain that, let me know. Until then, I don’t
know if I can even go home. They must have called home,
right?”

“
It’s possible.”

“
So, are you in?”

He stopped for a moment. He
was deep in thought. “I’m in.”

We got in the car and sped
off, heading for Greenview. Dante kept his eyes focused on the
road, and I’m sure his mind was focused on Allison.

“
So… how long have you and
Allison been together?” I wondered.

“
A long time,” he
answered.

“
So, you’re happy with her,
I assume.”

“
Sometimes, I care a lot
about her, but sometimes I think it’s more the idea of her that I
love.”

“
You seemed… I don’t know.
You were very upset at her house last night.”

“
She’s the only girlfriend
I’ve had, ever.”

Being this close to him was
hard. I wasn’t the kind of person who would go after someone else’s
boyfriend. He was my boyfriend, but I lost him. This wasn’t real to
me; this wasn’t my home, but it was his and my Dante was
dead.

“
Are we close?” I asked
him.

“
Yeah we should be there in
about fifteen minutes,” he replied. “So, in the future… we
were—”

“
It doesn’t matter… this
place is completely different; nothing is the same.”

“
Oh, it’s alright if you
don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“
There really isn’t much to
say, unless I want to make a fool of myself.”

When we made it to the
house, I recognized it instantly. This was the house from the
drawing. Grace would be at school, so we decided to check and see
if anyone was home. I knocked on the door—no answer. I checked the
windows, and one was unlocked. I went to go lift it up, but Dante
grabbed my arm.

“
Are you crazy?” Dante
almost screamed. “I am not breaking into someone’s
house.”

“
We’ll be fine,” I promised.
“We’re not here to steal anything; we’re here to possibly save
someone’s life.”

I climbed through the window
and motioned for him to follow; I walked away before I knew for
sure that he would. I walked down the hall and found a bedroom that
looked like it could have belonged to a teenage girl—to
Grace.

I walked in, taking in
everything around me. The walls were electric purple. Unlike
Grace’s old room, she had no pictures on the walls. I found it
strange because there was hardly any room for anything else on the
old Grace’s walls. I sat down on the bed and opened a drawer. There
was nothing unusual, a couple of books, some chap stick, a few CDs,
and a tin of mints.

I closed the drawer and fell
back onto her bed crying; I missed her so much. I couldn’t help but
wonder if she was in any danger, or if me being here could cause
the events to be pushed into motion. I couldn’t tell what the
answer was, what the right thing to do would be, but I figured she
would be safer with us.

I walked back out into the
living room. Dante was sitting on the couch.

“
You know you’re a bad
influence, right?” He said without a hint of humor.

“
You know there are far
worse things going on at this very moment, right?” I
retorted.

“
We just broke into
someone’s house.”

“
They’ll never know and it’s
not like we’re here to steal, or write graffiti on the walls.” I
turned around, then looked back at him. “Come on.”

He followed me into the kitchen. I
didn’t know what I was looking for, but it was better to check
everywhere and find nothing, than to check only one place and miss
everything. There was a note on the counter.

Grace,

I’ll be home late tonight.
I’ll call if anything changes. Oh, and your dad can’t come pick you
up this weekend.

Love, Mom

“
Her parents are divorced?”
I said aloud. “Well I guess this is a good thing, for us
anyway.”

“
What are you planning to
do?”

“
She needs to come with
us.”

“
Scarlett,” he protested.
“Where do you expect us to stay or just you two, for that matter?
You said you couldn’t go home, yet you want us to take her with
us?”