TIme After Time

14

Evanston, Illinois

Before I even open my eyes, a cold breeze slaps me in the face. I’m expecting clouds and fog, but when I look up at the sky, I find it bright blue and cloudless. I peek out from behind the side of Maggie’s house and see the sun is shining bright on her tomato garden.

I’ve been stumped about how and where to return. It was one thing when I was living here, coming and going every day, but now it feels weird to show up and just let myself in the front door as if this were my home, even though Maggie gave me a key and told me to use it. I’m not looking forward to telling her who I am and what I can do, but it would sure be nice to come back here without having to worry about my arrival giving my grandmother a heart attack.

There’s no answer when I knock on the door. After a full minute, I let myself in.

“Maggie?” I call out from the foyer. I walk through the house, checking the kitchen and the living room for signs of her, but there’s nothing. She might be in her bedroom, but I’m not about to check there, so I head straight for mine.

My new posters are up on one wall and Anna’s photograph of our beach in La Paz hangs above the bed. I drop my backpack on the chair by the door and head for the closet.

My new T-shirts are folded and stacked on a shelf and the new dress shirt Anna helped me pick out hangs in front. Smashed in the back of the closet are all of the winter clothes I bought during my first visit here. It’s hard to imagine that next month I’ll need those wool button-ups and long-sleeved T-shirts again.

My backpack is full of stuff I need but can’t buy here: more cash, even though the hidden compartment is still sufficiently stocked. The fake State of Illinois driver’s license I paid some guy to make for me, perfectly mimicking the photocopy I gave him of Maggie’s, but with my photo and my birthday stated as March 6, 1978, rather than March 6, 1995. I open the top drawer to stick everything inside and spot a note:

Go look inside the cabinet.

Love,

Anna

I cover my mouth with my hand, hiding the smile that spreads across my face when I see the boom box. Resting against the handle is a postcard with a shot of downtown Evanston. I pick it up and flip it over:

Welcome back. I thought you might want to play those CDs you bought last time you were here.

I have to help Emma set up. I’ll see you at her house at 7:00.

The boom box is heavier than I expected it to be. I set it on top of the desk and sit down so I can study the vintage buttons and knobs, check out the dual tape deck and the radio dial, and press the button marked with the words “Mega Bass.” When I press one of the buttons on top, a door slowly opens. Inside, I find one of the CDs we bought last time I was here.

I barely stifled a laugh when Justin pushed this CD into my hands. I already considered The Bends a classic, but around here they refer to it as the second album from a new band called Radiohead. I press play and the room fills with music—a steady guitar lick and soft drums, then voices and melodies—and I close my eyes, taking it in, feeling a smile spread across my face. I look around the room at the posters, realizing why they helped but felt a little insufficient. Music. That’s what this room needed.

When I’m dressed and ready to go, I head to the kitchen to find something to eat. As I walk down the stairs I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched by photos of my mother, now in reverse-chronological order starting with her wedding at the top and ending with her kindergarten photo near the foyer at the bottom.

Maggie still doesn’t seem to be home. On the desk in the hallway, there’s a stack of bills underneath a Post-it cube, and I sit down and write three notes telling Maggie I’m here. I leave one on the kitchen table, another on the end table where she always sets her tea, and I stick the last one on the end of the banister, just in case she makes it to the stairs without spotting the other two.

I’m still a good six or seven houses away from the Atkinses’ when I hear the music drifting through the neighborhood, but it’s not until I’m standing in front of the house that I begin to understand what Anna meant when she described Emma’s birthday party as “over the top.”

A long line of alternating dark-pink and white balloons line the driveway, creating a colorful path from the sidewalk to the side entrance of the enormous brick Tudor-style mansion. I look around. I think I’m supposed to walk through it.

At the end, I see a woman with short blond hair wearing a bright pink dress. She’s standing next to a small table under a comically large balloon arch.

“Welcome!” she says, beaming. I’m not sure who she is until she asks, “Can I start you off with something to drink?” in a British accent so thick that she must be Emma’s mom. She hands me a glass of pink lemonade and I take it and thank her politely. “Everyone’s in the backyard,” she says.

She turns her attention to the big group coming in behind me. “Welcome!” I hear her say as I turn the corner and walk into the “backyard.” Which is really more like a small park.

Bright pink and purple flowers are bursting out from behind short hedges, and the grass is so green I feel the impulse to reach down and touch it to be sure it’s real. The walkway takes me past smaller patios and hidden sitting areas until it ends at a huge lawn. There’s a DJ parked on the far end.

I look around for Anna. Right in front of the DJ, I spot Alex and Courtney dancing. He’s grabbing her by the hips and pulling her toward him while she shoots him fake smiles and pushes him away. I keep scanning the yard, and finally Danielle pops her head up from the crowd, gives me a wave, and starts walking toward me.

“She’s going to be so happy to see you,” she says, pulling me into a hug. “You’re all she’s talked about for the last few weeks.”

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that, but I’m glad to hear that she’s been thinking about me as much as I’ve been thinking about her. “Where is she?” I take a quick sip of lemonade and I feel my whole face pucker up. I set my glass down on a small table next to a rosebush.

Danielle rises up on her toes but it doesn’t give her much of an advantage. “I saw her earlier, but—oh, wait…there she is.” She points off toward the edge of the garden and I follow her finger but still don’t see Anna. “She’s over by that big tree, talking with Justin.”

I finally spot her. Justin’s leaning against the tree and Anna’s standing in front of him. She’s wearing a short skirt that looks a lot more like something Emma would wear, and I’m pretty sure that means that Anna let Emma dress her for the occasion. Her hair is up on the sides, held in the back by a clip, but the rest of it is long. She’s twirling her curls around her finger.

Justin sees me before she does and I hear him say, “He’s here.”

Anna turns around, and before I can take another step she throws both arms around my neck. Justin glances around the yard like he’s looking for an excuse to leave.

“I’m going to grab a drink,” he says, and then tells me where to find the beer they stashed in the bushes.

“Thanks.” I don’t tell him that I don’t drink. I tried once, at a party my sophomore year, and it was a disaster. After two beers, all I had to do was think about needing to take a leak and I’d wind up back home in my bathroom.

Anna gives me another squeeze. “Did you get my present?”

I nod. “Thank you. It’s perfect. Exactly what the room needed.” I step back and take a closer look at her. “You look amazing.”

Anna looks down at her outfit and shakes her head. “Emma’s doing, of course.” The shirt is lower cut than anything I’ve ever seen on her, but I don’t want to make her self-conscious, so I don’t say anything.

“How was your trip?” she asks, raising her eyebrows jokingly.

“Very short.”

“No little bags of peanuts on board?”

I run my thumb along her cheek. “Nope. No peanuts.”

She fake-pouts. “Bummer. I liked the peanuts.”

“Can you stop talking now so I can kiss you?” I start to move in closer to her but she pulls away, glancing over my shoulder at the party in full swing behind me, and reaches for my hand.

“Not here.” She gives me a peck on the cheek instead. “I have an idea. Follow me.”

She leads me to the other side of the lawn, past the DJ and to the edge of the garden. We’re not exactly out of sight, but this is a little more private.

I think I’m finally going to kiss her, but then she ducks down low and pulls me into a small grove of fruit trees. We push branches and leaves out of our way and when we’re able to stand up straight again, we’re standing at the edge of a hill. A tall, wrought-iron gate hugs the slope, and Anna feels around in the dark for the opening. She finds the latch and the gate swings toward us with a squeak.

It’s dark back here, but the narrow path is illuminated by a series of lights hidden in the surrounding ferns and grasses. Tiny rocks crunch under our feet as we follow the path to a wooden bridge, and once we’re across, I see a cement bench next to a giant Buddha statue. I can still hear the music, but it’s muffled.

Anna stops in front of the bench and steps in close to me, resting her hands on my waist. “So…you were saying something about peanuts,” she says with a smile.

“No, I was saying something about kissing you.” And before she can say another word, my hands settle on the small of her back and I close what’s left of the distance between us. I feel her hands on the back of my neck, her fingers traveling into my hair, pulling me into her, kissing me.

When we stop, she doesn’t open her eyes or move away. I can feel her breath as she speaks. “I missed you.” She runs her thumb along my jawbone and my pulse races. “Tell me about the last few weeks. I want to know everything.”

Everything. I take a deep breath, preparing to launch in. I’ve been waiting for three weeks to tell Anna everything. How many times did I stare at my cell phone, wishing I could call and tell her about the fire, and two kids that are alive today but shouldn’t be, and the look on my dad’s face when I told him what I’d done? Finally, here she is, staring at me with this sweet, expectant look on her face, and my mind is totally blank.

I’m not ready to go there yet, so I decide to warm up with a few basics. I sit down, straddling the bench, and Anna sits right in front of me. When I talk, she leans in close, as if my class schedule is especially interesting, and when I tell her about my friends and how weird it is to be back with all of them, she scoots forward and takes my hand, lightly tracing the lines in my palm with her fingertip as she listens.

When I’m finished, I ask her about life at Westlake. She tells me about Argotta’s class and how she has a new conversation partner, and that every time she turns around and looks at my old desk, it makes her happy to think that I sat there once but also makes her sad that I no longer do. Last weekend, she got the top time in her cross-country meet.

We’re both quiet for a few minutes and I see my opening. I take a deep breath, preparing to tell her about the fire, but before I can, she squeezes my hand and says, “I have something to tell you.”

I smile at her. “I have something to tell you, too.”

“You first,” she says.

“Yeah? You sure?” I ask, but I’m secretly glad I don’t have to wait any longer. I was nervous at first, but now that we’re all warmed up, I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I tell her what I did.

Anna nods.

I shake my head, looking for the right words to kick off my bizarre story. It’s still kind of hard to believe, let alone say out loud. “I did something really crazy. Or stupid. Or awesome.… I don’t know. It’s sort of hard to categorize.”

She looks at me quizzically.

“My dad and I were watching the news one morning, and there was this story about two kids who were killed in an apartment fire. For the next few days, I—I—” I start stammering, and rake my fingers through my hair as I search for the right words. “I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind.”

I’m careful about what I say next, purposely withholding the future-specific things I can’t tell her about, like the online news article and Google Maps. “It started as pure curiosity. I sat there, scratching equations and time conversions into my notebook, trying to figure out if it would even be possible, but before I knew it, I was combing the house for a fire extinguisher and a smoke detector.”

“No way.…” Her eyes light up and a smile spreads across her face. “You stopped it?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t stop it. I just…readjusted a few things.”

“You…readjusted a few things?”

I tell her how I crept through the dark apartment. I describe the wall of school photos, and I explain how I worked quickly to mount the smoke detector without waking the kids.

“I went back and did nearly three days over again. Until Emma, I’d never gone back more than five or ten minutes, you know? I didn’t even know it was possible. But it worked. When I went into the kitchen that morning, the news story on TV was about a fire that took out an apartment complex, not a fire that killed two kids. And when I told my dad what I did…” My words hang in the air. I look down at a cluster of plants and Anna rests her hands on my hips.

“You changed it.”

I nod slowly. And then I can’t help it. I break into a huge smile. “I don’t know if it was right or not. It doesn’t matter now, it was a one-time thing. Or, I guess, counting Emma, a two-time thing. I just wanted to see if I could do it again.”

“And you did.”

“Yeah.”

Anna brings her hands to my face and kisses me. She pulls away and stares at me for what feels like a really long time, and I assume that she’s trying to think of something to say. Finally I remember that she had something to tell me too.

“Hey, you said you had news too? What did you want to tell me?”

She checks her watch.

“Nothing. It can wait.” She stands up and holds out her hand. “We’ve been gone a long time. Emma is probably starting to look for me.”

I realize that tonight’s supposed to be about Emma, but I’m not ready to go back out there and share Anna with the rest of her friends yet. I wish I knew when we’d get to be alone again.

Before I can say anything, she shrugs and says, “Really. It’s no big deal. I’ll tell you later.”

We wind back up the path and reemerge from the trees. I spot Emma right away, but that’s not saying much. She’s pretty hard to miss, dancing with a big group of girls in her short skirt, tight half-shirt, and a huge fabric hat in the shape of a birthday cake.

When Emma sees us, she bounces over and gives me a big hug. I wish her a happy birthday and she grabs each of us by the arm and leads us back out to the patch of grass that’s become a dance floor. I try not to think about the fact that I’m the only guy out here.

We’ve been dancing for about five minutes, and I’m thinking that’s more than sufficient. I’m just about to leave when Emma throws her arm over my shoulder and pulls me in close to her. “I’ve missed you, Shaggy.” She musses my hair and I can’t help smiling. No one’s called me that in months.

“I’ve missed you too, Em.”

Then she stands up on her tiptoes and gets right in my face. “I hear you’ve turned my sweet little Anna into a big fat liar,” she says, shaking her head.

That’s the last thing I’d want to do. I look at her, genuinely confused. “How so?”

She stares at me like I should know what she’s talking about. “Tonight?” she says, raising her eyebrows, waiting for it to sink in.

I’m starting to feel a little dense because I’m still not sure where she’s going with this. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She pulls away and studies my expression, and I guess she comes to the conclusion that I’m telling the truth. “She didn’t tell you?” she asks, and I shake my head no. Resting a hand on my shoulder, she whispers in my ear, “Her parents don’t know you’re in town.”

When she pulls away, I just look at her. I’m still not getting it.

“She told them she’s spending the night here, at my house. She brought an overnight bag and everything.” She winks.

I turn and look over my shoulder at Anna. She’s dancing with a big group, but she keeps looking over at Emma and me.

“Really?” I say without taking my eyes off Anna.

“Yes, really.” Emma musses my hair again. “I believe somebody owes me one,” she sings.

We have a whole night together. We’ve never had a whole planned night together, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. But right now, I just need to get off this dance floor. I spot Justin over by the tree, talking with a couple of guys I don’t know. “What if I go chat with your ex and see what I can do about getting you two back together again?”

She huffs. “What makes you think I want to get back together with him?”

“The way you’ve been looking over there the entire time I’ve been talking to you.” The corners of her mouth twitch, like she’s fighting back a smile.

She pokes me in the chest four times as she spits out each word: “We. Are. Just. Friends.”

But you’re not supposed to be, I want to say. You’re supposed to be together. You might still be if I hadn’t wiped out the first four hours of your first date. I flash back to the Saturday that Anna and I went back and changed. How we basically created two versions of the same day, one that ended with a horrible accident that left Emma in the ICU and another that ended with Anna, Emma, Justin, and me at the movies together. The first one ended with Justin telling Anna how he and Emma had this incredible morning hanging out at her house, bonding over a conversation that left him surprised and unquestionably interested in her. The second one ended with them breaking up a few months later.

It would be nice not to feel so responsible for the second version, but I am. “So, you don’t want me to talk to him?” I ask.

She looks over at Justin and back at me. I wait her out. “Okay,” she finally says with a heavy sigh. “If you want to.”

I give Anna a small wave, thrilled to be honorably discharged from the dance floor, and squeeze through the crowd toward Justin. On my way, I grab a Coke from a bucket of ice and pop the top.

He introduces me to his friends, two guys he works with at the radio station, and we spend the next ten minutes talking about music. Eventually they take off to find the hidden beer, and I’m standing alone with Justin.

“So,” I say. I take a sip of my drink. “Can I ask you a question?”

Justin nods.

“What happened with you and Emma over the summer?”

He looks in her direction. Emma and Anna are buried somewhere in the crowd of people jumping up and down because the song is telling them to.

“I don’t know,” he says without looking away from the dance floor. He stares into his red Solo cup, like he might find the answer he’s looking for somewhere at the bottom. “At first, I thought we were a good match, you know? But after a while, it seemed like we were both trying too hard or something. Or…maybe I just was.”

We both look back at the dance floor again. The song ends and we see Emma emerge, one arm hooked through Danielle’s and the other around Anna’s shoulders. She’s leading both of them away from the dance floor toward the big bucket of drinks in the corner. She grabs three sodas, passes them around, and pops the top of her own.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Justin says. “She’s funny and gorgeous and I’m sure everyone here thinks I’m crazy for breaking up with her. But honestly, I don’t think I ever really got used to the idea of the two of us together.”

“Maybe you didn’t give her enough of a chance.”

He laughs. “Now you sound like Anna.” He looks away when he says her name, and there’s something in his expression I can’t read.

I think about how many times I sat in San Francisco, remembering the months I spent in this town, and not only missing Anna, but Justin and Emma too. “I know you broke up, but would it be too much to ask for the four of us to go out while I’m in town this weekend?”

“Sure. We still hang out. We’re good friends.”

“But that’s it?” I ask. When I look over at Anna, I see the three of them heading our way.

Justin sees them too, and when he does, he looks down at the grass, suddenly bashful. “Yeah, that’s it. But I like her. A lot,” he says. “I always have.”

I watch as his gaze travels toward them, and for a second I wonder if he’s still talking about Emma.

Emma’s mom sidles up next to Anna and asks her if she’ll come inside and help with the cake, and I finally see my chance to get away from the party. Tracing the route Anna showed me earlier, I sneak past the food table and out toward the edge of the garden, under the fruit trees, through the wrought-iron gate, and deep into the backyard.

I follow the winding path that leads to the cement bench at the bottom and make my way over to the tiny gardening shed I noticed earlier. It’s angled into the corner and, while the squeeze is tighter than I expected, it works well enough. I close my eyes. When I open them, I’m back in my room at Maggie’s.

I work quickly. My red backpack is leaning up against my desk, and I fill it with a couple of shirts, a sweater, and a huge stack of cash from the cabinet. I check to be sure that my Illinois ID is in my wallet, and I add a few more bills in there for backup. I find the cardboard box I stuffed deep into the closet and remove the rest of the things Anna and I need: four plastic bottles of water, two bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino, and an unopened sleeve of saltines.

In the bathroom, I find that Maggie has now filled the drawers with me in mind. There’s a new tube of toothpaste, still in its box. Three toothbrushes in sealed plastic packages. A six-pack of disposable razors.

I head downstairs and call out to Maggie a few times, but there’s no reply, so I go to the desk, quickly scratch out new notes, and replace the ones I left earlier. I’m standing in the hallway, about to return to the party, when I have an idea. It’s a huge risk but I’m assuming that by now, everyone’s busy singing “Happy Birthday,” so I close my eyes and open them in a quiet corner of Emma’s bedroom. Right away, I spot Anna’s overnight bag on the floor by the bed. There’s plenty of room in my backpack, so I stuff the whole thing inside.

I close my eyes again picturing the tiny spot behind the shed in Emma’s backyard, and when I open them, I’m standing there. I drop my backpack, peek around the corner, and sneak back to the party.

“Cake?” Anna asks when I return to her side. My face still feels hot and my hands are shaking with nervous energy as I take the plate from her hand, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She sees a group of her cross-country friends and pulls me in their direction, saying that she wants me to get to know them better.

When the temperature begins to drop and the balloon arch has started sagging, the DJ announces his last song. I watch Emma leave the lawn, find Justin, and pull him out to the makeshift dance floor with her. He says something and she throws her head back as she laughs. She stands on her tiptoes, kisses his cheek, and puts her birthday cake hat on his head. He tries to give it back, but she keeps pulling it down over his eyes.

I nudge Anna with my elbow and subtly gesture toward the two of them. “That’s interesting.”

Anna follows my gaze and then looks back at me wearing a huge smile. “Yes it is.”

Now Justin is dancing. Like, actually dancing. He’s jumping up and down and grabbing Emma around the waist, and she’s smiling like this is the best birthday she’s ever had.

When I look over at Anna, she’s still watching her two best friends, and I wonder if she’s thinking about what we did that day. I wonder if she looks at them the same way I do, knowing that they should be together and feeling responsible for the fact that they aren’t. But suddenly, Emma and Justin disappear from my thoughts, and now I’m looking at her and all I can think about is the backpack stuffed behind the gardening shed at the bottom of the hill. Without meaning to, I let a small laugh slip out under my breath.

That gets her attention. “What?” she asks. There’s this lilt in her voice, like she wants to know but at the same time she’s a little bit afraid to.

“You had something to tell me,” I say, fighting a grin.

She presses her lips together and takes a sharp inhale. “I did, yeah, I—” She starts to finish her sentence but I cut her off.

I push her hair back from her face and plant a kiss on her forehead. “Go say good-bye to Emma and meet me in the garden in ten minutes…where we were earlier. Don’t let anyone see you.”

Anna looks puzzled at first, but as she watches me, her mouth turns up at the corners and she nods without asking any questions. I turn and walk away from her, and for the third time tonight I follow the path until I reach the bottom of the garden. I wrestle my backpack out from behind the shed.

I pace the ground. I sit on the bench and stand up again. I examine the Buddha statue. Finally I see Anna’s face peek out from behind the trees. The latch on the wrought-iron gate clicks and I hear it squeak open and closed.

Her feet crunch on the gravel as she winds down the path, and she stops when she finds me in the shadows, leaning up against the shed.

“Why are we down here?” she asks, and without saying a word, I step forward, wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, and kiss her. I can feel her smiling as she lets go of all her questions, parts her lips, and kisses me back. She tastes like cake.

Her hands settle on my hips and as she kisses me harder; her fingers creep under my shirt and up my back. I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever be able to get out of here, when she whispers, “Why are you wearing your backpack?”

I kiss her again. “Give me your hands.”

She’s breathing hard. “Why?” she asks, but doesn’t hesitate for even a second. I can already feel her fingers sliding back down to my waist, feeling for my arms, following the bend in my elbow until they find their home in my hands.

Hers are shaking with anticipation or nerves or a combination of the two, and I take them, the whole time never letting her lips leave mine. All I can think about right now is that I’m so grateful for this crazy gift I possess; that I can take her away with me, just for a little while, disappearing completely into a faraway place where there’s no people or voices in the background, and no one looks even vaguely familiar to either one of us.

Her eyes are already closed. I pull her hands behind my back, our fingers still locked, still connecting us, and I keep her body pressed into mine as I picture our destination.

I close my eyes.

And we disappear.

15

I open my eyes in a secluded area I found a few years ago when Brooke and I came here for a U2 concert in ’97. Anna’s hands are still locked behind my back and she’s smiling, lids tightly shut, waiting for me to speak.

“We’re here,” I say. “Open your eyes.” As soon as I say the words, my heart starts pumping hard.

I take a look around, but there’s not much to see yet. Until we get out from behind this shrub, we could be anywhere. I follow Anna’s gaze as she takes in the chain-link fences and the back windows along a line of similar-looking houses. She runs her toe across the gravel underneath our feet, like she’s trying hard to piece it all together. There’s hardly any light back here, but I can still make out the baffled expression she’s wearing as she turns slowly in place. And then she looks up, beyond the shrubs, and sees the tower, its iron beams lit up with so many lights it looks like it’s made of gold. She covers her mouth with her hand and laughs.

“No way…”

“I told you. You needed to see Paris next.”

She takes a few steps backward, stops when she hits my chest, and without turning around, feels for my hands and wraps them around her waist. She twists her neck so she can see me, and even though we’re nowhere near Emma’s backyard anymore, we pick up right where we left off two minutes ago.

We hop over the short fence that leads to the park. Once we’re out in the open we can see the entire Eiffel Tower, base to top, gleaming in front of us. It’s only nine o’clock and, surprisingly, there aren’t many people back here. Anna and I walk toward the base with our fingers knit together. She keeps looking over at me, smiling and shaking her head.

She suddenly drops my hand. “Race you,” she says, and she takes off. Her speed keeps her well in front of me at first, but she has to keep adjusting her skirt, and that slows her down. I pass her just before we turn the corner that leads under the structure, and that’s where we find everyone. The crowd is thick and the lines are long.

“Come on,” I say as I start walking toward the end of the shortest one, but Anna grabs me by the arm. She tips her head back and looks straight up. Then she looks back at me. “We’re waiting in line?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” She looks up to the top of the tower again, then back at me. “Why?”

I rest my hands on her shoulders and give her a quick kiss. “No cheating.” In the time it’s taken us to have this discussion, at least ten people have stepped into the line. I jump in at the end.

“Why is, you know…that”—she makes this weird gesture with her hand—“cheating?”

“Because it is. It’s like rock climbing. You can’t just magically find yourself on top of a mountain, staring out at an insane view. You’ve got to earn it. Without cheating.” She presses her lips together, like she’s trying not to smile. “Besides, there aren’t a lot of discreet places up there.” She shoots me a confused look and I step closer so I can’t be overheard. “There’s nowhere to arrive without being seen by a bunch of people.”

“Oh.”

“Which, you know, some might find shocking.”

“Yeah, I suppose some might.” She nods and tries to hold a serious expression, but I can see that smile still trying to peek through. “So we’re taking the elevator?” It’s a question, but she says it more like a statement.

“Nope. That’s cheating too.” She starts to say something, but I hold my finger up, and say, “Wait a sec.”

I haven’t exchanged my American dollars for French francs yet, so I’ve been subtly scanning the people in line for the perfect target and I just found him: older guy, jeans and tennis shoes, fanny pack with an American flag pinned to the belt.

When the line snakes around, I hold up three twenty-dollar bills and ask him if he’ll buy us two tickets to the second deck via the stairs in exchange for them. He checks the prices on the board, calculates the profit, and happily takes the money from my hand.

“The stairs?” Anna asks.

I just grin.

“How many stairs?”

“I don’t know. A lot. We can count them if you want to.” She smacks me with the back of her hand. “Trust me, you’ll love this. We can stop and look at the view on the way up.” Fanny-pack Guy hands me our two tickets and we head to the entrance.

As it turns out, there are six hundred and seventy steps, and we don’t even have to count them, because every tenth one is conveniently painted with a number. The higher we go, the more frequently Anna stops, saying she has to catch her breath. But I notice she’s refusing to look around, and whenever I point out the sites, she just nods and keeps climbing. She looks relieved when we finally reach the second platform.

Down on the ground, it was already much colder here in Paris than it was in Evanston, but up on the tower, it feels like the middle of winter. Anna’s trying to play it off like she isn’t cold, but I can see her shivering as we stand here, leaning against the railing, staring out over the city. I suddenly remember that I brought my sweater, so I take it out of my backpack and hand it to her. She pulls it over her head. It hangs almost to the edge of her skirt and the sleeves go past her fingers and she looks completely adorable.

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around to find a woman grinning wide and holding a camera out in my direction. She says something in a language that’s not English or French as she gestures between herself and the man standing to her right. I take the camera from her and hand it to Anna.

“You’re the photographer,” I say, and Anna looks grateful as she brings the camera to her face. She snaps a few pictures and hands it back to them.

“I hope one of those pictures turns out,” Anna says when they’re out of earshot. “They probably won’t have another night on the Eiffel Tower again.” I’m about to tell her that they’re probably checking the pictures right now when I remember that cameras don’t work that way yet. Then I realize that Anna’s staring out at the view and not talking. I wish I’d thought to go to her house and get her camera for her.

“Stay here,” I say, and without giving her any time to reply, I double back toward the elevator bank, past the people in line, and into the crowded gift shop. Right behind the counter, I find what I’m looking for. I convince the cashier to accept an American twenty in exchange for a ten-franc item, and less than ten minutes later I’m heading back to Anna with a plastic bag swinging by my side.

But when I return to the spot where I left her, she’s gone. I walk all the way around the deck, but she’s nowhere to be found. I head back toward the center of the platform and see her there, pacing back and forth in front of the elevators.

“Hey.” I come up behind her and grab her by the waist. She jumps. “You okay?”

She flips around, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “You left me on the Eiffel Tower?”

“Just for a minute,” I say, and her eyes grow wide. I’m clearly not supposed to find this amusing, but I can’t help it. She’s just standing there, looking small and pissed off and adorable in my sweater.

“You’re laughing at me?” Her eyes grow even wider and I think she’s going to start yelling at me or something, but instead she steps forward and takes my face in her hands. “What if something happened to you? What if you got knocked back?” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know what date it is,” she practically whispers.

I’m still finding this amusing, even though I’m clearly not supposed to. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I kiss her and I’m relieved when she lets me. “I’m not going to get knocked back. And besides, you know I never take you out of your time. Never. You’re always a really awkward phone call and an outrageously expensive plane ride away from your parents, but that’s it. Okay?”

She presses her lips together and nods.

“I just wanted to get you this.” I hand her the plastic gift-shop bag, and she peeks inside. Her whole expression relaxes as the grin spreads across her face.

“You bought a disposable camera?”

I shrug. “You looked a little sad about taking that couple’s picture.” I guide her over to the railing. “Smile,” I say, holding the camera out in front of us. I press the button and the shutter snaps, but when I press it again, nothing happens. I’m turning it around in my hands, looking at it from all angles and trying to figure out what to do next, when Anna takes it from me, chuckling as she runs her thumb along a little wheel that must advance the film. She holds her arm out and presses the button.

After she’s taken four or five shots, she stops and looks at the camera. I can tell by the way she’s staring at it, running her finger along its edges, that this small cardboard box contains so much more than a few images of the two of us on an undeveloped strip of film. It’s not a memory or a postcard, it’s more than she’s ever had—tangible proof that we exist together, outside both her world and mine.

“Bennett?” she says, still looking down at the camera.

“Yeah.”

“Are we going back home tonight?” When her eyes find mine, I shake my head no.

Her gaze travels up to the brightly lit iron beams above us, and a grin spreads across her face. “I never thought I’d be standing on the Eiffel Tower and saying this but…can we get out of here?”

16

Clouds are filtering the morning sun but it’s still bright enough to stir me from sleep. I rub my eyes as I take in the unfamiliar room, remembering little by little where I am right now. In Paris. With Anna.

She’s sitting in the window ledge, her bare legs bent and visible below the hem of one of my T-shirts. Her chin is resting on her knees and she’s staring out the window at the city below.

I kick off the covers and cross the room. “What are you doing way over here?” I pull her hair to one side and kiss the back of her neck.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She’s quiet for a few seconds, and then she says, “I keep having to remind myself that this is all happening. That I’m actually here.”

“Then we should get going. We have a whole day in Paris and we still won’t come close to seeing everything.”

Anna turns her head and gives me the biggest smile. And then she sits up straighter and spins in place, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. “I didn’t mean Paris. I meant here, with you.”

We grab coffees at the café downstairs and make a game plan. We decide to skip the obvious sights, the museums and cathedrals and monuments, but agree that we can’t miss the Seine, so we order our pain au chocolat to go and head toward the river. We find a place to sit on the bank, and Anna pops a chunk of bread into her mouth. She closes her eyes, letting the dough and chocolate melt on her tongue.

“God, that’s incredible. Why can’t we make bread that tastes like this?”

“You and me?” I joke and she stares at me.

“Americans.”

“Oh. Because we aren’t French,” I say matter-of-factly.

She tears off another chunk of bread and pops it into my mouth, presumably to shut me up.

We spend the rest of the morning wandering around aimlessly, meandering down the smallest alleys we can find, popping into bakeries when they smell too good to simply walk past. Anna stops at a corner store that appears to sell everything from drinks to cheesy Parisian trinkets, and heads for the cooler. She grabs two bottles of water and tosses one to me.

The clerk is ringing us up when Anna sees a display on the counter. “Ah, here you go.” She hands me a laminated map. “This is what we need,” she says, tapping the surface.

I take it from her hand and slip it back into the rack where it was. “We don’t need a map.”

“Why not?” She looks confused at first, but then her face falls. “How many times have you been to Paris?”

“Twice. Both times for concerts, and I barely even walked around the city.” Anna waits patiently for a better explanation. “I just prefer to get lost.”

She raises her eyebrows and stares at me. “You want to get lost? In Paris?”

“It’ll be fun.”

She looks unconvinced. She might also look a bit terrified. So I grab the map from the rack and set it down on the counter. “Fine. We’ll get a map. But it’s purely for backup.”

The cashier gives us the total but I hold my hand up in the air and tell her to wait. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Anna cocks her head to the side, and gives me a Haven’t we already covered this? expression, but I laugh under my breath and take off anyway.

I have to snake around a few aisles, but I finally find a small section of bike accessories, and that’s where I find the padlocks. I return to the counter, using a little sleight of hand to keep it hidden from her view.

“Here,” I say as I take my backpack off and hand it to Anna, along with the map. “Find an extremely inconvenient pocket for that, would you?” While she’s busy with the zipper, I remove the padlock and its key from their packaging, and slip them into the front pocket of my jeans.

I look at her and say, “Now we have a destination.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. I want to show you something.”

“Do you need the map?” She smiles.

I look at her and shake my head. “No, I do not need the map.”

I may need the map. We’ve been walking along the banks of the river for a good forty minutes, and we keep passing bridges, but so far, I haven’t seen the sign that marks the one I need. I give myself one more bridge before I fold. Then I spot it: a dark green sign with white type that reads PONT DES ARTS.

The pedestrian-only footbridge is more crowded than I expected it to be. Couples are sitting on the benches in the center and people are clustered in groups along the railings. Everyone seems to be speaking French.

I find a spot against the railing and sit down. I lean back against a post and Anna sits between my legs. Just as she’s reclining against my chest, a police siren blares by and fades away. “I love how even the most common sounds remind you that you’re somewhere else,” she says.

We’re quiet for a long time, looking out over the water, until Anna twists her neck and looks up at me. “I’ve been dying to ask you something,” she says. I must be wearing an affirmative expression because she suddenly spins around to face me and looks me right in the eye. “When you stopped the fire, did you feel the same way you did after we changed things with Emma?”

Her question catches me off guard and I react by dodging it. “I didn’t stop the fire. I changed a few things leading up to the fire. Big difference.” But Anna stares at me, not letting me off the hook.

I look at her, remembering how I sat in my room that night, picturing the look on Anna’s face when she first saw Emma, unbroken. “Before, during, or after?” I ask.

“All of the above.” She reaches out for the hem of my shirt and plays with it, running her finger back and forth along the edge.

I start to fall back on the things I say when I don’t want to let people in: simple words like “fine” and “good” that slip so easily off my tongue. But instead, I feel myself lean in a little closer, like I’m ready to tell her everything.

“Before? Scared,” I say flatly. “When you asked me to go back and help Emma, I honestly didn’t think I could do over that many days, and even if I could, I had no idea if it would work. Anything could have happened. We could have been knocked back right away. Or we could have changed the sequence of events, but the car accident might have happened a few hours later regardless. The number of things that could have gone wrong were just…” I trail off, shaking my head.

“I thought Emma would be the first and last time I’d ever do anything like that. But when I heard what happened to those kids, I guess I just wanted to try it again. I mean, if could go back two days, why not three? And if it did work, if I could change it… Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified the entire time.”

Anna doesn’t say anything, but she’s tracing tiny circles in my palms again, just like she did in Emma’s backyard last night. I think that means I’m supposed to keep talking.

“During, I didn’t think about anything else. I just hoped it would work.” I’m hit with a vision of the school pictures that lined the hallway of apartment 3C.

“And after…” I stop. I don’t know what to say about the after. After I installed the smoke detector and came home, I waited to see the news, and discovered that the do-over had worked. My dad looked proud and shocked at the same time, like I’d hit that inexplicable home run in a tied game, bottom of the ninth.

“After,” I repeat. “It was like being in one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books and I chose a different ending. Those two kids were alive and safe, and I knew they shouldn’t have been. And that was…strange…to know that they died.”

Anna brings my hand to her lips and kisses it. “And what about the side effects?”

“Nothing,” I whisper. “No migraine. No dehydration. No side effects at all. I felt like I could have run around the block.” Another tour boat goes by and we stop to listen to the guide rattle off the interesting facts about this bridge that we’ve heard twice now.

“Do you think—” Anna begins. She stops, waiting for a group of kids in matching soccer uniforms to walk past us. “Do you think it’s possible that do-overs aren’t such a bad thing?”

I shake my head. “What do you mean? That I’m supposed to change things? No way. I did it once for you. I guess I did it this second time for my dad. But those were isolated incidents that I chose to do. It’s not like I’m now on a mission to stop the world’s tragedies. Besides, I still don’t know if there are ramifications or not.” I can’t even say it aloud, but part of me is still wondering if the people whose lives I’ve altered are affected by their changed pasts. Does Emma know at some unconscious level that she was in a massive car accident? Will those two kids…I can’t think about it. “Look, nothing’s changed. I’m purely an observer. I’m not supposed to alter the future.”

“I’m not saying you’re supposed to, just that it felt good when you did. I mean, Emma and Justin are fine, right? Nothing horrible happened to them, they just…got a second chance. And because of you, so did those kids.”

I look past her, staring out over the water. A second chance. I sort of like the idea of that. Not that it matters, since I’m not doing it again.

“Hey,” I say, as I lean back and reach into my front pocket. “I almost forgot why I brought you here in the first place.”

She looks at me with a curious grin. I open her hand and rest the brass padlock in her palm. She takes her eyes off me to look down at it. “Why am I holding a padlock?” The sunlight bounces off the surface as she twists it around, examining it from all sides as if that will enlighten her.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this—it involves a few future details—but I heard this story and thought it was cool.” I shift in place and take a deep breath. “No one really knows when it started exactly, but by the end of two thousand nine, all of the railings on this bridge will be covered with padlocks. Couples who came to Paris from all over the world started writing their names on them, clipping them to this railing, and tossing the key into the river as a symbol…” Anna’s wearing an expression I can’t read, and I suddenly realize how lame I sound. “…of, like, their… Oh, never mind.” I reach for the padlock, but she snaps her hand closed.

“Stop it. You’re not taking our lock.”

“Yes, I am.” I reach for it again but she laughs and pulls her hand behind her back.

She looks me in the eyes. “Go on.”

“No. I heard that story and thought it was kind of romantic, but now that I say it out loud it sounds so cheesy.”

“No, it doesn’t.” I lean back against the post. Once she can tell I’m not going to try to take it away again, she brings her hand back to her lap and opens her palm. “I love it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She turns the padlock over in her palm again, this time as if she’s admiring it. “We don’t have anything to write with.”

I lean back and pull a black Sharpie from my jeans pocket. When I hand it to her, she laughs. “Typical. Here,” she says, handing me the lock. “You should write it. It was your idea.”

I shake my head. We’re in 1995, in her world, and it seems like something she’s supposed to do. When I tell her this, she uncaps the pen and brings the felt tip to the metal.

“What should I say?”

“Whatever you want to say.”

She thinks about it for a moment and writes ANNA ♥ BENNETT across the surface. “That’s not very inspired, is it?” She stops and looks out over the water like she’s trying to decide how to finish what she started. She brings the pen back to the lock and writes ’95/’12. She stares at it.

“I like it,” I say. “Now it’s both cheesy and mysterious.”

“Aww. Just like us.”

“Nah, nothing like us,” I say. “We’re not at all mysterious.”

I hand her the key and she slips it inside. The latch opens with a tiny click, and she threads the lock through the chain-link fence and snaps it closed. She runs her fingertip across the surface and lets out a little laugh. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we’re the ones that start the whole lock thing?”

“Maybe we do.”

“I like that,” she says.

I don’t have the heart to tell her that in 2010, all the locks will be removed. Or that, in 2011, they’ll start reappearing, and by 2012, there will be very few spaces left on the railing again. They can cut our lock off. We’ll just come back here together—in 1998 and 2008 and 2018—and replace it every time it gets removed. I stare at the key in Anna’s hand, wondering if it’s realistic to think that we will still be together years from now, living this way.

I never even wished for her, but right now, all I want is for this person who gets me so completely to be part of my present and my future. As long as I don’t think about the logistics, it seems possible.

Anna kisses me. Then we both kiss the key and she tosses it into the river.

17

Anna and I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around. We don’t have a destination in mind, so we turn when we feel like turning and stop when we feel like stopping and poke our heads into shops that look interesting. We pop into record stores so we can buy CD imports that would cost a fortune back in the States. We pick out postcards.

We stop at a bakery for a baguette, and then, without even discussing it, we head through a set of wrought iron gates and into a park. It’s alive with activity, and as we meander down the path, people jog past us and in-line skaters roll by. Anna surprises me when she pulls me off the walkway and behind a dense cluster of trees to kiss me.

We spot a soccer game and sit on the grass to watch. The whole thing is nonstop action, but we both find it difficult to take our eyes off this one guy in a bright green shirt. He’s the shortest one out there, and he’s so quick, but it’s more than that—he’s just fun to watch. His face is completely serious until he takes a shot, but then he throws his hands up in the air in victory and lets out a yell, even when he misses.

A half hour later, we’re still glued to the game, and it’s now tied, two-two. Green-shirt Guy kicks the ball and takes off running toward the goal. Then he’s open, waving his arms in the air, and the ball comes sailing back in his direction. But just as he’s about to kick it, another player comes running at him from the opposite direction. The two of them collide hard, and Green-shirt Guy falls to the ground, clutching his leg. Everyone gathers around him, so it’s impossible to see what’s going on.

A few minutes later, he emerges from the crowd with his arms draped over two of his teammates’ shoulders. His face is full of agony as he hops on one leg to the closest bench. He sits down and buries his face into his hands while they remove his shoe.

“I wonder if it’s broken,” Anna says.

All I can think to say is, “They hit hard.”

“Bennett,” she says quietly.

I look over at her. “Yeah?”

Her eyes are still glued to the guy in the green shirt and she’s wearing the strangest expression. “What if you gave him a second chance?”

I shake my head. Hard.

She looks at me. “You could test yourself. See if the side effects kick in or not. And if they do, I can help you.”

It’s a ridiculous idea. I don’t even know what time it is or how long we’ve been here, but I do know that we’ve been completely out in the open, in full view of everyone. We’d need a safe point we could return to without being seen, and we don’t have one. But then I remember how Anna pulled me behind the bushes to kiss me.

“There was a clock in the bakery,” she says. “It was 2:10. We got to the park and walked around and it was, what do you think, 2:30 when we sat down here?” She’s talking fast, thinking too much, and getting way too excited about this. But before I can say anything, she stands up, heads back to the path, and returns less than a minute later. “It’s 3:05 right now.”

I look back over at the guy in the green shirt. His face is pinched and his leg is stretched out in front of him, and I still can’t tell if it’s broken or not, but he’s definitely in a lot of pain. I think through the times Anna just rattled off to me and before I know it, I’m grabbing her hand and steering her back to that spot behind the bushes.

“This is crazy,” I say.

When we arrive, she pivots to face me. When were we here last? 2:20? 2:23? I can’t be sure, and I have to be sure, or the Anna and Bennett back on that part of the timeline will disappear into thin air in the middle of the street, or at the entrance to the park, or from the front of the bakery line.

I think through every step we made, and then I grab her hands and shut my eyes. When I open them, we’re standing a few feet from where we started, back on the path, and in plain sight. We both speed back behind the bushes and hide there for a minute or two, until I’m certain that no one saw us.

We rush back to the soccer game in progress and sit in the same spot, watching the same game. The guy in the bright green shirt is perfectly fine, speeding toward the ball, making solid kicks, and throwing his arms up in delight with every attempt. Anna’s sitting closer to me this time, her legs folded in front of her and one leg resting on mine. She tightens her grip on my hand and we come up with a plan.

The score reaches two-two, and they’re all lined up, about to make that last play. Before the ball gets thrown out, Anna looks at me, stands up, and races down the edge of the field near the goal. The play goes the same way. He kicks it and takes off running, but this time, just as he’s about to throw his arms up, Anna yells, “Stop!” at the top of her lungs.

Most of the guys ignore her, but Green-shirt Guy turns around, just for a second, and looks at her. By the time he returns his attention to the game, it’s too late. The other guy has the ball and he’s taking it to the goal at the opposite end. He kicks it hard, scores, and the game is over. Green-shirt Guy throws his hands up in Anna’s direction, and yells at her in French.

She takes off toward me, running and laughing, grabbing my hand as she speeds by. We spot a bench out of sight and collapse on it. My hands are shaking and my heart is pounding so hard I feel like it’s about to burst out of my chest.

“I have no idea why I let you talk me into these things,” I say, breathing fast. “You and Brooke.” I shake my head. “You have far too much in common.” I look over at her and she’s sitting there, catching her breath, beaming and obviously quite proud of herself. “You look adorable when stopping tragedies, by the way.”

She brings her hands to my face and kisses me, even though there are people everywhere.

I’ve spent all these years trying not to alter the slightest event, and now, in the seven months since I met Anna, I’ve purposely changed things four times. And none of them seems to have thrown the universe off-kilter or anything.

“How do you feel?” she asks as she pulls away.

“Good.” I look at her and smile. “Really good.”

By the time the sun starts to set, our legs are rubbery from climbing so many stairs and hills, and now we’re standing in a secluded corner of a dead-end street, holding hands, smiling at each other and stalling.

“You ready?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Not even close.”

But we can’t stay away any longer. I tell her to close her eyes and she does, but before I do the same, I take a glance around this Parisian street one more time. Then I let my eyes fall shut.

When I open them, we’re in the exact same position, back in my room at Maggie’s, and it’s Saturday morning. I check the clock. Ten A.M.

Almost instantly, Anna lets out a quiet groan and her hands find her stomach. She slumps down on the floor and pulls her knees to her chest. I slide down next to her, and even though my head is throbbing and my vision is blurry, I remove my backpack and grope around inside, searching for the sleeve of saltines. When I find them, I tear into the package and hand it to her. Anna mumbles a thank-you as she starts in on a corner of the cracker, and I search for the water bottles.

We sit like that for a good twenty minutes, me downing waters and Frappuccinos, Anna nibbling crackers and trying not to hurl. “Now this is romantic,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder.

I let out a weak laugh and let my head fall against hers.

Anna finally declares herself strong enough to stand. But when I try to say, “I’ll walk you home,” my words slur, and when I stand up, my legs wobble. I lean on the bed, resting my hand on the surface for stability. I’m utterly exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I felt this tired.

“Lie down,” Anna insists as she pushes me gently toward the bed and lifts my feet off the floor. I hear her tell me to scoot up a little. I feel her adjust my pillow under my head. I think she takes off my shoes. “Close your eyes,” I hear her say, quiet and soothing, as she sits on the edge of the bed and runs her thumbs back and forth along my forehead.

I don’t remember anything after that.

18

The faint sound of knocking wakes me up from a deep sleep. I sit up in bed and rub my head with both hands. The next knock is louder.

“Come in.” I feel like my eyes have been glued shut, but I force them open when the door creaks and Maggie pokes her head inside. She looks surprised to see me twisted and disheveled on top of my comforter.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were sleeping. I just wanted to know if you were going to be here for dinner.”

I press my fingertips into my temples and glance over at the clock radio on the nightstand. Is it really 6:12? Have I been out all afternoon? The last thing I remember was Anna helping me lie down. Was that really almost eight hours ago?

“I’m making a pot roast.” Maggie smiles as she says it, like I might need convincing. But I don’t. I take a big whiff of something that smells delicious. I’m just about to tell her that I’ll be down in a minute when she crosses her arms and her expression turns serious. “Are you okay, Bennett?”

I force myself to sit up and throw my feet to the floor. “I’m okay. Just really tired.”

“Jet lag,” she says plainly, and closes the door behind her. If only she knew that I’ve never been on a jet.

I pull on a clean pair of jeans and reach into the chest of drawers for a shirt. I still feel shaky and a bit cold, so I throw on a flannel.

Downstairs, I find Maggie setting the table for two. She glances up at me and returns to folding the cloth napkins into triangles. I slip right into my old role here, reaching into the cabinet for two glasses and filling them with milk.

Maggie and I politely take our seats like I’m a guest in her home. I try to come up with topics for small talk, but all I can think about is Anna and our day in Paris. I block it from my mind as I dig into the pot roast, I tell her all about Emma’s party, right down to the details of the balloon arch and the DJ in the backyard. Maggie gives me encouraging laughs and asks a lot of questions about the people I know here. Then there’s a pause in the discussion and she looks at me pointedly.

“It sounds like you made a lot of friends at Westlake,” she says without looking at me. I start to respond, but I freeze instead. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged knowing that I lied to her about being a student at Northwestern last year, but she throws it out there and goes back to eating like it’s no big deal. “My daughter loved it there too.”

This would be a great time to apologize for lying to her. It would also be a great time to tell her that her daughter and my mom are the same person. While both are true, I feel a little bit sick the moment I have these two thoughts, so I ignore them and try to go back to my dinner as if Maggie’s statement doesn’t require a response. But then I hear Anna’s words in my head: It would be nice to have one person in my life that I can talk to about you—one person I don’t have to keep your secret from. That, I can’t ignore.

My stomach is turning and what I really want to do right now is bolt out the back door, run past the tomato garden, and find an empty spot to disappear from. I could be back in San Francisco in less than a minute.

Before I let my feet dictate my next steps, I force out the words, “Maggie, I need to tell you something.” And there it is. Now I don’t have a choice. There’s nothing else I need to tell her.

“Sure.” I think she’s trying not to look at me now. And I’m definitely trying not to look at her.

I’m pushing mashed potatoes around with my fork like the words I need to find are buried somewhere underneath. “I’m not quite sure how to explain this. Thre’s something about me that’s…unusual.” I cringe as I hear the words come out of my mouth. She’s looking at me, waiting for me to continue, and I suddenly wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just show her. After all, it worked with Anna. I push my chair away from the table and stand over by the counter.

I blow out a breath. Here we go.

Maggie sets her fork down and wipes her face with her napkin.

“Watch,” I say. And I close my eyes, but before I let myself disappear, I add the words “Please don’t freak out.”

Seconds after I picture my room upstairs, I’m standing in the center of it. Downstairs, I hear Maggie scream. I count to ten and close my eyes again, returning to the exact same spot in the kitchen. She’s standing right in front of me and when she goes to move away, she smacks me hard on the shoulder. She mutters something that might be an apology and reaches for the counter to steady herself. Perhaps this wasn’t the best way to break the news.

I reach forward and grip her arms. “It’s okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She stares at me, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide. I lead her over to the chair, and she sits down, forearms pressed into the Formica, staring at her half-eaten plate of food.

I sit down next to her. “I want you to know who I am, Maggie.”

She doesn’t look up at me but I see her head nod.

“There’s a lot you already know about me. My name is Bennett. I live in San Francisco. I think you know I’m seventeen and that I never went to Northwestern, and I’m sorry I lied and told you that I did.”

This whole thing sounded so much better in my head. It isn’t coming out at all the way I wanted it to. Maggie gives me a slight nod, but I don’t know if she’s following me or if she just wants me to continue in hopes that I’ll eventually get to the point. “There’s also a lot you don’t know about me. Like…that…my mom is your daughter. Her pictures are all over your house.” My hands feel clammy so I rub them on my jeans and keep talking. I can’t stop now. “There aren’t many of your grandson because he’s only seven months old right now. And…” I pause to take a deep breath, but it seems pointless. I should just spit it out. “This is going to sound really weird, but…that’s the reason your grandson and I have the same name.”

This time, her head doesn’t move at all.

“I’m…” I stop. Breathe. Go again. “I’m your grandson and I’m seventeen”—I stammer—“in two thousand twelve. Not in nineteen ninety-five.”

Still no response. I have no idea what to do, so I keep going even though I’m stumbling over every word.

“When I was ten, I sort of…accidentally…discovered that I could…travel. I can go back in time—five seconds, ten minutes, four months, several years…all the way back to the day I was born. March 6, 1995. That’s as far back as I can go.”

Maggie’s shoulders rise and fall.

“I’d never tried to stay anywhere in the past before, not until the last time I was here. Do you remember when I arrived last March…how I was so sick?”

Slight nod.

“I wasn’t really sick. I kept…disappearing. I was trying to stay here but I kept getting knocked back to my bedroom in two thousand twelve. See, that’s how it works. When I try to push the limits of what I can do, I get sent back where I belong. It’s like time’s way of saying that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. It’s the only time I don’t have control. And then it hurts. Sometimes a lot. I finally…trained myself, I guess, to stay here.”

Maggie brings her hand to her mouth but still keeps her back to me.

“I was only here because I lost my sister, Brooke. She wanted to go to this concert in Chicago in nineteen ninety-four. Neither one of us thought I’d be able to do it or anything, but it worked. We made it. But a couple of minutes later, I was knocked back to my present and Brooke wasn’t. She was stuck back in nineteen ninety-four. So I came here, to your house, here in nineteen ninety-five, trying to get as close to her as I could.”

It’s silent for a minute or so. “Did you find her?” I’m relieved to hear the sound of Maggie’s voice, low and calm. She’s taking in facts and I figure that’s a good sign.

“Yeah. She got knocked back home after a few months. And I think that’s why I couldn’t come back here. Once she was home I couldn’t really go anywhere for a while.” I picture myself returning to the same day, over and over again, to watch Anna at the track. I start to tell Maggie, but decide that might be more information than she needs to know.

I pour myself a glass of water, not because I’m dehydrated, but because I’m eager to have something to do with my hands. I fill another glass and slide it across the table to Maggie. She picks it up right away.

“Do your parents know?” she asks.

“I was twelve when they, sort of, found out by accident.”

Now Maggie’s hands are trembling. She looks at me. “Do they know you’re here right now?”

I shake my head. “They knew I was here last spring, but they don’t know I came back. Brooke does, but my parents…” I trail off, but Maggie looks at me like she’s waiting for me to continue. I shake my head again. “They wouldn’t understand this.”

Maggie leans forward. The color seems to have returned to her cheeks. “Where do they think you are right now?”

“Rock climbing and camping with my friend Sam.”

“Sam?”

“Yeah, Sam.”

“So you’re not…in…two thousand twelve San Francisco right now?”

“No, when I leave I’m gone. I disappear from there and come here. This time, I’ve been gone since Friday night.” I rest my arms on the table, and tell her how it works. She listens intently but doesn’t ask any more questions. “If I wanted to, I could return to San Francisco right now and arrive back on Friday, just five minutes after I left. And even though I’d been gone for two days, my parents would never even know it. But then they’d be doing those two days all over again and that seems like a pretty horrible thing to do to them. So I just, you know…say I’m camping.”

Maggie looks confused. “Yeah, I guess that’s probably best then.” She takes another sip of her water. “Or you could…tell them you’re coming here?”

I laugh. “I don’t think that would go over so well.” I push my plate to the middle of the table. “Mom wants a normal seventeen-year-old kid who skateboards and takes tests and applies to college, and doesn’t rock climb in Thailand or travel to see his grandmother back in nineteen ninety-five whenever he wants to.”

That finally gets a smile. “And your dad?”

“Dad wants me to do more with my ‘gift,’ as he calls it. He thinks I’m special and that I should be righting wrongs, fixing things, being heroic or something.” I pick up my glass and swirl the water inside, thinking about the fire back in San Francisco and what Anna and I did in Paris and how, over the last few days, I’ve been starting to think he could be right. “I don’t know. Until recently, I’ve pretty much used this thing I can do for my own benefit.” I don’t tell her that it’s also been for hers. She doesn’t need to know what Brooke and I will do for her years from now, when the Alzheimer’s sets in and starts taking control of her mind and her life.

Maggie looks more relaxed now. She shifts in her chair and reaches for the glass of water. “That sounds like your dad.”

“Really?”

She nods. “He’s always been a bit intense. Far more so than your mom is.” Maggie looks past me, over my shoulder, and when I turn my head to follow her gaze, I see that she’s staring at the stained glass image that hangs in her kitchen window above the sink—the one my mom made when she was a kid. “But he’s a good man, I think. She definitely loves him.” She looks back at me again, and leans in closer. “And you…my goodness. I was only there for a short time, but from what I could tell, their whole world revolves around you and your sister.”

“That might be true now, but everything will change once she discovers that she doesn’t have a normal kid who keeps her busy with Little League games or school plays.” I stop short of telling Maggie what I’m really thinking. Her daughter’s stuck with me, a freak show who sneaks around behind her back and lies to her, all to keep doing the one thing she so desperately wants him to stop.

Maggie lets out a sigh and shakes her head. “I bet she thinks you’re pretty remarkable.” I have no idea how to respond to that, and it’s quiet for a long time. Finally, she looks at me wearing a huge smile as she reaches across the table. She covers my hand with hers. “I’ll go back after all. I’ll see what I can do. Now that I know who you are, maybe I can use my trips to San Francisco to help your mom understand you a little bit better.”

My stomach sinks as I think about the photo of the three of us at the zoo, and how Maggie would never have come that weekend if Anna hadn’t told her to. I don’t know what happened before that visit, but I know what happened afterward—Maggie never came back.

“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” I say. She doesn’t seem to grasp Anna’s involvement in the whole thing and I don’t want to ruin the one memory she has by telling her that it never should have happened. “You came to visit us once, and that was it.”

“Once?” She pulls her hand away from mine, and I watch her face fall as the information sinks in. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her expression says everything. That can’t be possible.

I feel compelled to tell her everything, but I can’t. And now I have to choose my words wisely and use them sparingly, because the more she knows about the future, the greater the risk of her inadvertently changing it. Who knows what could happen if she does.

“The two of you didn’t speak for a long time. I don’t know why, my mom never talks about it, but Brooke and I never knew you.” I trip on the last two words and immediately wish I could pull them back in, but it’s too late. Maggie heard me. Knew. Past tense.

She stares at me like she wants to ask the question but doesn’t know how to voice it or if she should. I answer it silently. You died without knowing us.

I remember those weeks far too vividly. I’d never seen Mom cry before, but the day she found out that her mother had passed away—all alone in this great big house—she became hysterical. Brooke and I didn’t know what to do, so we hid in her room, wrapped in each other’s arms and crying together without really understanding why. The next day, Mom and Dad got on a plane, but they couldn’t afford to bring Brooke and me along. Besides, they’d said, we were too young for funerals. I was eight. I didn’t know what I could do back then; if I had, things might have been different.

Maggie looks away from me and her gaze wanders around the room before it settles on the table. “Are we both that hardheaded?” she asks herself, and I hear the disbelief in her voice. She slowly raises her head and looks at me. “But now that I know, I can change it. I can be the one who makes the effort, makes it better. Right?”

I press my lips tightly together and shake my head. “You can’t change it, Maggie. You weren’t part of our lives the first time, so you can’t be part of them now. Who knows what might happen if you were?”

She gives me a stubborn stare, like she’s considering doing it anyway.

“You have to promise me you won’t go back there again.”

She takes a deep breath and her eyes lock on mine. “I don’t know if I can make that promise, Bennett.”

I don’t have a choice but to give her an ultimatum. “Then I’ll go back in time, right after you came into my room tonight. That Bennett—the one who’s thirty minutes younger than me—will disapper the instant I come back, and I’ll take his place. I’ll come downstairs, and you and I will have a nice chat and eat this delicious dinner. And then I’ll get up from the table, help you with the dishes, and this whole conversation we’re having right now,” I gesture back and forth between the two of us, “will never happen.”

She rests her elbows on the table and buries her face in her hands. The two of us sit like that for a long time, Maggie thinking about the future and me feeling horrible and helpless because we’re all stuck with it.

“Fine,” she says, her voice cracking. “I won’t go back.” Suddenly she sits back in her chair and crosses her arms. “You said earlier that it hurt when you traveled. What did you mean by that?” I’m surprised by the question but grateful for the subject change.

“It doesn’t hurt when I travel to another destination—like when I come here from home—but when I return, I get hit with these terrible migraines and I’m completely dehydrated. I drink coffee because the caffeine helps the headache and I down a bunch of water for the dehydration, and after a half hour or so, it goes away.”

“So did you have a headache when you returned earlier…from wherever you went?”

I shake my head no. “I really only get the major side effects when I…leave the timeline, if you will. Earlier, I just went upstairs, counted to ten, and came back. I used to get a little headache when I returned after doing those short hops, too, but that doesn’t happen so much anymore.”

Maggie nods and it looks like she’s following me. But then she leans in closer and her forehead wrinkles up with confusion and concern. “I don’t understand. If it hurts, why do you do it?”

At first, I think about all the places I’ve been—all the things I never would have seen and experiences I never would have had if I’d let twenty or thirty minutes of pain stop me from traveling. But then I look at her, and I don’t think that’s what she means. I think she wants to know why I come back here.

My eyes scan Maggie’s kitchen until they stop on that same stained glass oranament my mom made. I think of the photos of my family that line the walls of the living room and the hallways, and how happy we all look. I remember how I opened the front door last Friday, stepped inside, and felt this invisible weight lift from my shoulders.

“I feel at home here,” I say. I watch Maggie’s eyes well up.

The phone rings and she stands, leaving me alone at the table, and I’m relieved to have a few seconds to catch my breath. After she answers it, she glances over at me. “Yes, he’s right here.”

She returns to the table and hands me the cordless phone.

“Hello?” I say.

“It’s me.” The second I hear Anna’s voice my whole body seems to relax.

“Hey, you.” I can hear her smiling on the other end of the line.

“It’s nice to talk to you on the phone,” she whispers. “I don’t think I ever have.”

“How do I sound?”

It’s quiet for a second or two, and then she says, “Close.”

I smile but don’t say anything.

“So,” she says. “Emma and I are going to a movie. We thought you and Justin might want to come along?”

I look over at Maggie and find her buzzing around, gathering up pots, filling the sink with hot water. “Hold on,” I say before I cover the receiver with my hand. “Do you mind if I go to the movies?”

“Of course not.” Even though we were in the middle of a pretty big discussion here, Maggie looks like she means it.

I return to Anna. “Sure. What’s the movie?” I ask. Not that it matters.

“Emma wants to go to some sneak preview of Empire Records,” she says. “I haven’t even heard of it. Have you?”

The words “cult classic” start to leave my mouth but I stop them. “Yeah,” I say instead. “I hear it’s good.”

“Great. We’ll pick you up in twenty.”

I press the end call button and return the phone to its home on the wall. When I reach for my plate to clear it from the table, Maggie swats my hand away. “Stop it. I’ve got the dishes. You go have fun.”

“You sure?” I ask. Her hands still look a little shaky.

“Positive.” She turns her back on me and continues collecting the rest of the dishes in the sink. She turns the water on, and I’m about to leave the room, when I hear it stop. “Bennett?”

I look back as she wipes her hand on a dish towel.

Then she crosses the room and surprises me when she pulls me into a hug. “Thank you. I’m glad you told me,” she says. I close my eyes as I wrap my arms around her. She feels small in my arms, and when she rubs my back, I squeeze her even tighter. I’ve spent all these years sneaking around, helping her secretly and always from a distance, and I’m filled with relief that I don’t have to do that anymore. She knows who I am. And it suddenly hits me that I’m hugging my grandmother for the first time. I squeeze her even tighter and she does the same.

“I’m glad I get to know you now,” she says.

I choke out the words “Me too.”

She takes a deep breath and gives me a hard pat on the back. “Okay, scoot. You have a date.” Then she takes two steps away from me and stops. “Bennett?” The tone of her voice is careful and questioning, the wrinkles on her forehead more pronounced as she asks, “How long has Anna known?”

I close my eyes, thinking back to the day I stood in Anna’s kitchen and showed her what I could do. Then I let my memory take me back even further, to the day she handed me that letter in the park.

I open my eyes, feeling this overwhelming sense of relief as a smile slowly spreads across my face. “Anna’s known from the beginning.”

19

Anna and I spend most of Sunday hanging out in my room, listening to music and talking about the next time I’ll be back: three weeks from now. Homecoming. Anna tells me that I’ll finally get to see her in the dress she bought for the auction party last May and reminds me to get here in time to pick up a tux.

The room is getting darker, and when I glance over at the clock and tell her I should be getting back, I feel a pit form deep in my gut. It’s followed by a rush of guilt for feeling that way about my own home.

“I have something for you.” Anna says as she crosses the room and flips on the light. She pulls something out of her bag and hides it behind her back. “Pick a hand.”

I point to her right side and she opens her hand, shows me it’s empty, and pulls it behind her back again. She must switch hands, because when I point to her left side and she opens her other hand, it’s empty too. She looks up at me with a mischievous grin, so, on impulse, I grab her wrists and kiss her while she twists in my arms, laughing and trying to keep whatever she has behind her back out of my grasp.

“Fine!” she says, cracking up as she squirms away and holds me at arm’s length. “Here.” She hands me a three-by-five-inch album with geometric designs and the word PHOTOS in block letters across the front.

I turn it over in my hands and Anna gives me a proud grin as she opens the cover for me. The first picture is the two of us, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Her arms are wrapped tight around my waist, the inky black Parisian sky in the background, and we’re beaming at the camera like there’s no place in the world either one of us would rather be.

I flip page after page, looking at the photos we took as we walked around Paris that night and the following day. Me standing in front of the Fontaine du Cirque. Anna in front of the wrought iron gates that led to the park, holding a baguette like a baseball bat. Me at the base of The Thinker, mimicking the pose. Her on the bridge, standing next to our lock. God, was that only yesterday? I look through the pictures, feeling grateful for a talent that allows me to take her to Paris at the drop of a hat. I feel equally grateful that it allows me to buy a whole extra day with her.

“This is incredible,” I say as I flip through the plastic pages.

And then I get to the last one. It’s not from our Paris trip yesterday, but I remember the night we took it in vivid detail. She’d just come back from La Paz. We were sprawled out on her rug in her bedroom and she held her arm high in the air, balancing her brand-new camera in one hand. She’d planted a kiss on my cheek as the shutter snapped. I study the expression on my face. I look happy.

“I love it.” I stare at the picture, and then look over at her again. I think I’m supposed to tell her how nice it will be to have something to look at when I’m home and missing her, because I’m pretty sure that’s what she wants to hear right now, but the truth is, when I’m seventeen years away from her and wishing I weren’t, subjecting myself to these photos will be the last thing I’ll want to do. Still, I’ll probably do it anyway.

“See.” She taps on the cover of the book. “And now you have something to show your family.” Her smile looks sweet and hopeful, but it’s her words that snap me back to reality. “I figured since I’ll never be able to go home with you and meet them, at least you could show them these pictures.” She lets out a laugh. “You know, so they don’t think I’m a figment of your imagination or anything.” My stomach knots up into a tight fist.

She waits for my reply, and when nothing comes she continues talking.

“I made a photo album for myself, too, but of course I have to keep mine hidden from my parents. I’ve convinced them that the pins in my map are just wishful thinking, but I’m not sure how I’d explain photos of you and me on the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

I look down at the pictures in my hands, thinking back on our weekend. Talking with her under a canopy of trees during Emma’s birthday party. The look of anticipation on her face when I took her hands in mine and told her to close her eyes, and the sheer awe I saw when she opened them. Falling asleep with her in Paris. Waking up to her in Paris.

I shove the photo album into my backpack, avoiding her eyes. “Good idea.” I wonder if she hears the guilt in my voice. I wish she hadn’t brought this up now, when I’m minutes away from leaving and I won’t see her again for three more weeks. “Speaking of my parents, I’d better get going.” I zip my pack closed and feed my arms through the straps, and Anna looks down at the carpet.

I step closer to her and rub her arms. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nods without looking at me. I take her chin and tip her head up. “Go downstairs and talk to Maggie.” Anna closes her eyes, presses her lips tightly together, and nods.

I muster a valiant smile, but inside, I’m thinking how I’d give anything to stay here another day, another week…another three months. This whole being strong for someone else thing is a lot harder than I expected it to be. I can tell she’s trying to keep it together for my sake as well. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I say, and clench my jaw the minute the words leave my mouth.

“I know.” She takes a gulp of air and lets it out in a sigh. “That was the most incredible weekend.” She buries her face in my chest and wraps her arms around me. We stand like that for a long time, listening to the music in the background, trying to ignore the inevitable.

Out of nowhere, it hits me: this is how it’s going to be for the next year. Every few weeks, this is how it will feel to say good-bye to her. What’s worse, every few weeks for as long as we’re together, this is how it’s going to feel. Will we ever get used to this?

I block out the thoughts as I plant kisses in her hair and on her cheeks, which are now wet and salty. I kiss her forehead and then her lips. It takes everything I have to let go of her and step backward, but I do.

I close my eyes and fade away.