TIme After Time

27

Evanston, Illinois

“God, it’s freezing out there!” Brooke pulls her leg inside and slams the car door shut again. She tightens her jacket around her body and shivers.

“Actually, I was going to ask you to wait in the car. Do you mind?”

“Are you kidding? We just drove three hours, the last of it in an electrical storm, and now it’s, like, twenty degrees out there.” It’s actually closer to ten but I decide not to tell her that. “I am more than happy to wait in the car.” Brooke holds out her hand, palm flat. “Keys?”

“What?”

“Keys. Heat. Music.” She points at the ignition. “Keys?”

I hand her the car keys and reach behind me to grab the huge bouquet of flowers I bought on the way here. “I’ll be over there.” I point at the crowd of people gathered in the field surrounded by white pop-up tents. “See the guy in the blue parka? That’s her dad. As soon as you see Anna join us, give me ten minutes and then come over. Got it?”

“Got it.” She turns the key backward in the ignition, cranks the heat up to ninety, and starts spinning the radio dial, looking for a station. She stops in midspin and shoos me away. “Go. I’m fine.”

As I close the door, I hear the gunshot off in the distance and I follow the signs to the starting line. Anna’s dad is still huddled up with the other parents, each of them clutching a matching Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and checking a stopwatch in the other.

I stand in the empty space next to him. “Hi, Mr. Greene,” I say quietly, and he turns to face me. I keep the flowers low at my side, but visible.

He studies my face and says, “You’re here.” Then he looks back at the course and takes a big sip of his coffee.

I shift in place. “Yes, sir. I’m here.”

“Anna told me you would be, but I didn’t believe her.” He looks down at the flowers and brings his cup to his mouth again, tips his head back, and drains it.

“I wanted to tell you personally how sorry I was about homecoming. I would have been there if there was any way, but…I…” I trail off because I can’t find any words that wouldn’t be lies.

He stares at me. “Why didn’t you call?”

I shift nervously. I’m searching for a way to explain this and still tell the truth, but I’m coming up blank.

“Did you know that she stood there for an hour, in that dress, waiting for you? And you didn’t even call. How could you do that to her?” He’s not yelling, but I almost wish he would. That would be easier to take than his calm demeanor and the way his voice is dripping with disgust and disappointment. It’s almost too much to take. It’s almost enough for me to tell him everything, all my secrets, right now, so he can understand why I keep disappearing on his daughter when that’s the last thing in the world I want to do.

“I can’t possibly explain how sorry I am. I know I…let her down.” He must hear the genuine remorse in my voice, because his eyes soften, but only for a second or two. He walks away without saying anything else, and I think that’s the end of it. But then he drops his empty cup in a trash can and heads back toward me.

The hard stare has returned. “My problem, Bennett,” he finally says, “is that you keep letting her down. And for some reason her mother and I can’t comprehend, she keeps letting you do it.” I feel my face contort. I didn’t think I could feel more horrible than I did after I told Anna she was a secret.

The crowd starts moving into formation, standing on opposite sides of the bright yellow tape and making a path between the edge of the forest and the finish line. Mr. Greene checks his watch and says, “She should be here in a few minutes.”

I think he’s going to follow the other parents, but instead he takes a deep breath and turns to look at me. “Look, I’m not going to pretend to understand this thing between you two. She doesn’t seem to care that you live two thousand miles away from each other, or that she only gets to see you every few weeks, but I do. It was fine when you lived in the same town, but this is ridiculous. Do you really think you can keep this up?”

I grip the flowers a little tighter.

He gestures toward the finish line. “Here they come,” he says, and he walks away from me and squeezes in among the other parents. He’s clapping and yelling in a deep, booming voice, even though there are no runners in sight yet. When Anna comes into view, he takes it to a completely different level. I step in to get a better view but keep a safe distance from him.

Three runners emerge at the same time, Anna in third, but tight on the heels of the girl in second. She passes her easily and then kicks it up a notch. Her feet are spinning so fast they’re a blur, her arms are pumping hard by her sides, and she has this look of determination on her face that I’ve never seen before.

“Go, Annie!” Mr. Greene shouts. “Come on! Punch it! Let’s go!”

I can see her eyes now, fixed on that yellow tape. She’s gaining on the leader, but she’s running out of time to close the gap. She’s right on her heels, and the other runner speeds up again. Anna barely overtakes her at the very end. She breaks through the tape first and throws her arms in the air.

Mr. Greene is still hollering, but he suddenly stops and presses a few buttons on his watch. “Yes!” he yells. Anna’s across the field, doubled over, hands on her knees, until she stands up and starts walking in circles, working hard to catch her breath. She stops next to the girl who almost beat her and reaches out to shake her hand.

Her teammates gather around her, bouncing up and down, blocking her from view. But a few minutes later, she emerges from the pack and I see her looking around, presumably for her dad. He spots her right away, and gives her an enthusiastic wave.

She starts running toward us and I watch him, pacing back and forth, as if it’s all he can do to keep from running over to her and picking her up like she was six and not sixteen.

“Did you see that?” she asks. Her dad holds up his hand and she gives him a high five. “Man, I had to turn it on at the end there!” Her shoes are completely covered in mud, and as she gets closer, I can see that everything from her calves on up is speckled with it too.

“That’s my girl!” I hear her dad say as he pulls her into a tight hug. She pecks him on the cheek and he squeezes her again, even tighter, and that’s when she opens her eyes and sees me standing there. She pulls away from him.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” I hold out the flowers and her eyes light up. Then she covers her face with her hands and says, “I was totally kidding about the flowers.”

Mr. Greene clears his throat and Anna looks over at him and nods once, like she’s dismissing him, but he doesn’t budge. “Dad.”

“Fine. I’ll go verify your time,” he says, and he leaves the two of us alone.

“Man, your dad’s pissed at me,” I say as I watch him walk away. My pulse is racing and my hands are still shaking as I hand her the flowers. “I’m afraid these didn’t help much.”

“Thank you anyway. I love them.” She takes the bouquet with one hand and rests the other on my right cheek. “What happened to your face?”

“I scraped it rock climbing.” I cover her hand with mine and kiss her palm. “I brought you something else, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” She looks over my shoulder, like she’s trying to get a glimpse of what’s behind my back. “Where is it?”

“In the car. I was hoping I could drive you back home.” Anna looks confused, so I keep talking. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last time I was here, and you were right. You should know my family. And I want them to know you.” Her forehead crinkles up and she stares at me. “I’m starting with Brooke.”

“Brooke?”

“Yeah. She’s in the car.” I gesture behind me, toward the parking lot. My face breaks into a huge smile, and I expect hers to do the same, but instead she looks horrified.

“In the car? I can’t meet Brooke now. I’m not…I mean…” Her shirt is drenched in sweat and her cheeks are dotted with mud. She pulls her hair out of the ponytail, brushes it back off her face again, and puts it back exactly the way it was, but then her eyes grow wide as she stares over my shoulder.

“What’s the matter?”

“Hi!” I hear Brooke’s voice behind me. I’d forgotten that I told her to wait ten minutes before she got out of the car. I should have told her to wait there until I got her. I should have given Anna more time to get used to this idea. Surprising her with this suddenly feels selfish.

“Hi.” Anna looks down at her clothes and shakes her head. “Wow…I was kind of hoping to meet you when I was…cleaner.”

Brooke flicks her wrist in the air, like she’s swatting Anna’s comment away. “No worries,” she says. But then she stands there awkwardly, crossing and uncrossing her arms, while she tries to think of something else to say. “I’m so excited about this road trip. I lived in Chicago for a few months, but I never saw the rest of Illinois.”

“There’s a good reason for that,” Anna says. She lets out a nervous laugh and goes back to staring at Brooke like she’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’s standing in front of her.

Then Anna’s dad returns and I introduce the two of them.

Brooke is bouncing in place as she holds out her hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Mr. Greene. Bennett’s told me so much about your family,” she says. She’s still shaking his hand, and Anna’s dad looks down, as if he’s wondering if she’s planning to let it go anytime soon.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he says, stealing a quick glance at me. “We’ve heard a lot about you, too. I’m glad to see you in such good health.” Brooke’s whole face contorts and she starts to say something, but then she looks over at me and I stare back at her with this Just go with it look.

She nods and says, “Thanks,” and drops his hand. When he looks away, Brooke shoots me a glare.

“There’s a local reporter interviewing the team,” Anna’s dad says to her. He points off in the distance to a white tent with a sign that bears the Illinois High School Association logo. I recognize her coach and a few of her teammates. “You should probably join them.” His eyes dart in my direction and then back at Anna. Everything, from the expression on his face to the way his arms are crossed, makes it clear that he doesn’t want me here.

“I’ll be right back,” she says to us, and then to her dad, “I’m going to ride back with them, okay? I’ll just go back to the hotel with you so I can shower first.”

“What about the store?” He’s talking to Anna, but he’s staring at me, red-faced and expressionless. I can practically see his blood boiling. He finally looks away and I take a deep breath. “I only need you for an hour,” he says to her. “I can’t close in the middle of the day.”

Then she and her dad exchange a meaningful look, and I have a feeling I’ve been a subject of a number of tense discussions in the Greene house over the last few weeks. After a few more uncomfortable seconds, he looks back at me, his arms still crossed, his forehead still tight. “She needs to be at the bookstore by three o’clock.”

“She will be,” I say.

He returns his attention to Anna, pointing at the flowers in her hand. “Do you want me to bring those back with me and get them in water?” His face relaxes and she gives him a grateful smile as she hands them to him.

When they head off to the tent for her interview, Brooke punches me hard in the arm.

“Ow.” I grimace. “What was that for?”

“Nothing. Just proving that I’m in good health.”

I laugh and rub my arm where she hit me. “Yeah, I’d probably better fill you in on that.”

Brooke and I wait out in the car in front of the hotel, and we finally see Anna walk through the double doors. She climbs into the open passenger seat. Her hair is still damp and she smells likes soap.

“All the places we could go in the world, and you want to drive three hours from Peoria to Evanston.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“Fun?”

“Yes, fun. In fact, Brooke and I have designed a trip that will have all three of us in completely new territory for the next three hours. We’re taking the scenic route.”

“There’s nothing scenic between here and Lake Michigan. Trust me.”

“Now, that’s not true. We’re going to pass eighteen lakes in the next hour.”

“Really?”

I nod proudly. “I bet you’ve never even been to Oglesby.” Anna raises her eyebrows at me. “No, right? How about Starved Rock State Park?” She’s trying not to smile. “Did you even know that rocks could be starved?” I shake my head like it’s an impossible idea.

“How do you even know about these places?”

I can’t tell her that I’ve spent the last week researching this trip online, so I joke instead. “Lonely Planet: Illinois. What, you haven’t heard of that either?”

She just stares at me. “Maybe you should start driving,” she says, and I take off for Route 29.

Anna folds her leg underneath her and twists around to face Brooke in the backseat. “So…tell me everything about you,” she says. For the next hour, they talk nonstop, and I don’t even try to get a word in edgewise.

I spot a diner that overlooks Fox Lake, and the three of us get out and stretch our legs. Inside, the hostess seats us in a booth with a view of the water, and Anna and I take one side while Brooke settles in across from us.

“Coffee?” our waitress asks as she hands each of us our menus. After a round of “Yes, pleases” she returns with three steaming coffee mugs. Brooke and Anna reach for the milk at the same time and I laugh to myself.

We consult our menus and the waitress returns to take our orders.

“I’ll have the special, please,” Anna says. I quickly find it on the menu: eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast. “Eggs scrambled, please.”

“I’ll have the same,” I say.

Brooke lets out a heavy sigh when the waitress asks her what she’d like. “I’ll have the veggie omelet, but can you make it with egg whites only, please. And no bacon or sausage on the side. Just whole wheat toast. No butter, please.”

The waitress stares at her. “Egg whites only?” she asks tentatively, and Brooke nods. “No yolks?” She squints and cocks her head to one side.

“That’s right.”

The waitress shakes her head and writes it down. “I’ll see what the cook can do.” As she walks away, Brooke looks at me and throws her hands up. “It’s like she’s never heard of an egg white omelet.”

“You’re in nineteen ninety-five,” I remind her.

“You’re in the middle of Illinois,” Anna adds.

I put my arm around Anna’s shoulders and she kisses me on the cheek. Our eyes lock on each other’s for a moment, and I try to read her expression. “You okay?” I ask.

She thinks about it for a second. Then she nods. “Definitely.”

“Good.” I give her a small kiss.

“You guys are going to stop that when the food gets here, right?” Brooke says. I reach across the table for a packet of sugar and chuck it at her.

Brooke grabs it in midair and returns it to the container. “So juvenile,” she says, shaking her head. But then she lets out a laugh and presses her palms into the tabletop. “Okay, I can’t stand it anymore. I have news.”

Anna and I look at each other, and then at her.

“I met someone. His name is Logan and he’s from Australia. He has the most adorable accent.” She looks especially proud of that last part.

Anna looks at me sideways and leans forward on the table. “Where did you meet him?” she asks, and Brooke’s whole face brightens again. She bounces in her seat and leans forward, mirroring Anna’s pose. “We met at the Train concert.”

I clear my throat. “Watch yourself…” I say, and Brooke throws her hands in the air and says, “What? They’ve been around forever!”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Not as long as you might think.”

She sighs. “Got it.” She starts again, choosing her words more carefully. “We met at this concert at Red Rocks.” Brooke looks at me for confirmation and I give her an affirmative nod. “He’s there with a bunch of guys and I’m with my roommates, Shona and Caroline. Shona recognizes one of his friends from a class, and so the two of them start talking, and pretty soon we’re all hanging out together, waiting for the show to start. Then one of them asks if we want to sit with them.” She stops to take a breath and a sip of coffee.

“Logan sits next to me and we start chatting.” She beams. “He loves music too.” She leans over toward me. “I was dying to tell him that I’d been to Sydney to see a Maroon 5 concert in two thousand eight.”

“Again,” I remind her.

“Oh, right.” She leans closer to Anna and winks. “The lead singer is hot.”

I kick her under the table and she laughs.

“So we talk off and on throughout the show, and in the middle of the second set, he leans into me and asks—in this totally cute, kind of shy way—if I have a boyfriend. To which I, of course, say that I do not. And I can tell he wants to kiss me, right? But he doesn’t. We keep dancing and brushing up against each other and stuff, but he doesn’t make a move.”

The waitress arrives and slides our plates across the table. Brooke looks down at her omelet, which looks like a totally normal three-egg omelet, and then looks up at the waitress. “Thank you,” she says. She grabs her fork and starts picking all the vegetables out.

“At the end of the night we exchange numbers and say good-bye, and everyone starts walking their separate ways across the parking lot, but then I hear him call my name behind me.” She beams. “So I turn around and he’s standing there, and he asks if he can kiss me good night. Isn’t that sweet?”

She leans on the table and Anna does the same. “He’s an unbelievable kisser.” I steal a glimpse at Anna. She’s wearing a shy smile and the flush is already creeping up her chest again. She reaches for a strip of bacon and takes a bite.

“We went out the next night and get this…he lives a block away from me. Can you believe that? We’ve been inseparable ever since. We ride our bikes to campus together and meet for lunch and we’re ridiculously cute.” Brooke stops for a breath and takes a bite of her toast. Then she lets out a sigh. “I miss him already.”

I look at Brooke and I feel a wave of jealousy. Anna and I will never know what it’s like to live a block away from each other. We’ll never plan our class schedules so we can ride to school together, and we’ll never run into each other on campus and feel giddy when we unexpectedly spot the other one heading our way. It hasn’t even been a full day since Brooke last saw this guy; she has no idea what it’s like to miss someone.

But if Anna’s thinking the same thing, she never lets on. “He sounds great.” Then she picks up her fork and says, “I’m starving,” as she starts in on her breakfast.

28

The three of us spend the next few hours on the road. We stop at Starved Rock State Park and wander around the trails, looking at the rock formations and waterfalls. Anna doesn’t say anything, but she looks exhausted, and it hits me that this probably isn’t the ideal time for a hike. After forty-five minutes of sightseeing, I suggest we head back to Evanston and she looks relieved.

When we arrive at the bookstore, it’s only two-thirty, and the downtown area is busy. I don’t find a parking spot until I reach the next block.

“This is perfect,” Anna says as I pull the SUV into a tight space across from the park. “We can stop in the coffeehouse and grab a latte.”

We pile out of the car and I feed some quarters into the meter. Inside, we head over to our couch in the corner and Anna and Brooke plop down facing each other. Anna starts telling Brooke about the bands that play here on Sunday nights while I order drinks from the barista.

The three of us sit together for a little while, and I can tell that Anna’s stalling. She keeps checking her watch, and finally, when she can’t hold off any longer, she says good-bye to Brooke. The two of them hug and exchange a few more words, and Brooke makes me promise to bring her back here again soon.

After Anna’s gone, Brooke and I sit a little longer, sipping our coffees and talking about the day. “Mom and Dad would like her,” Brooke says.

“Yeah.” I let out a huff. “As soon as they get past the part where she lives down the street from our grandmother.” I roll my eyes. “And that she goes to the high school our mother graduated from. And that she and Maggie have become close friends. But yeah, as soon as they get past all of that, I bet they’d love her.” I set my coffee on the table, lean back against the couch, and fix my eyes on the ceiling. “I have to tell them when I get home tomorrow.” My head falls to the side and I look at Brooke. “They’re going to kill me.”

“No, they won’t. They might not get it completely, but what are they going to do? Besides, think about how nice it will be not to have to sneak around.” I try, but I’ve been doing it so long I can’t even imagine it.

Brooke tips her head back and takes another gulp, and then sets her cup on the table next to mine. Neither one of us say anything, but we both know it’s time for her to go.

She follows me past the barista and down the long hallway that leads to the bathrooms, and I check the men’s room while she stands outside waiting. Once I’ve confirmed that it’s empty, I open the door a crack and wave her inside.

I lock the door and without even saying a word, she reaches for my hands. She shakes her arms out hard like she always does and then kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you so much.”

“Any time,” I tell her, which isn’t entirely true but sounds like the right thing to say.

She shuts her eyes and I do the same. When I open them, we’re standing in Brooke’s bedroom, right where I picked her up this morning. “I still want you to meet everyone,” she says, and I tell her I’ll try. Then I close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m standing in the bathroom alone.

I’m not sure what to do with myself for the next hour while Anna’s at work. I head outside and start walking in the general direction of the record store when an ambulance turns the corner and flies past me, siren blaring, lights spinning. I’m just about to cross the street when I see it pull to a stop directly in front of the bookstore.

I take off running.

When I reach the entrance, the EMTs are wheeling a stretcher through the door, parting the crowd that’s already started gathering outside. I follow behind them.

“Anna!” I call out once I’m inside, but I don’t see her anywhere.

I keep following the stretcher as it turns down the Cooking aisle.

And that’s where I find her. She’s sitting on the ground, her hands wrapped around her father, who’s slumped down against the bookcases, his legs bent at an awkward angle. One of the EMTs reaches out to pull Anna away, but she looks at him with terror in her eyes and refuses to budge. “What’s wrong with him?” she cries.

“I don’t know,” I hear him say. “I need you to move away so we can figure it out, okay? Please.”

I can’t get to her side fast enough.

When she sees me, she grips her dad’s arm even tighter, but I kneel down next to her and pull her toward me. “Come here,” I say. My hands are shaking as I reach for hers. “Let them help your dad.”

I look over at Mr. Greene. His eyes are wide open, staring straight ahead. But then his head falls slowly to one side and he looks right at me and blinks in slow motion.

Anna’s head spins toward me, then back to her dad, and back to me again. Finally she releases his arm and lets me leads her a few feet away. The paramedics lower Mr. Greene to the floor and start working to bring him back from wherever he is right now.

“What happened?” I ask her.

“I don’t know. When I got to the store, I didn’t think he was here.” Her voice is trembling, and she’s breathing so hard the words are coming out all choppy. “I walked around for a few minutes and finally found him.” She gestures toward her dad. “I don’t know how long he’s been like this, Bennett. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Justin must have heard the sirens from the record store because he bursts through the door, looking rattled as he scans the room. He’s clearly relieved to see Anna, but his expression changes again when he spots the paramedic team that’s gathered around her dad.

“What happened?” he asks us, but neither one of us knows what to say. “I just found him like this,” Anna says. She’s crying now, and I keep telling her it’s going to be okay, even though I have no idea if that’s true.

One of the EMTs stands up and walks over to us. He looks directly at Anna. “We’re taking him to Northwestern Memorial.”

“My mom works there,” Anna says quietly. “She’s a nurse.” Then she looks at me. “We need to find her,” she whispers, and before I can say a word, Justin says, “I’m on it,” and takes off toward the phone in the back room.

The EMT pulls out a clipboard and dislodges a pen from the plastic holder. “Were you with him earlier today?” Behind him, the other two paramedics are strapping machines to Mr. Greene’s chest and moving him onto a stretcher.

“This morning,” Anna says, her voice quiet and weak. “He was fine.”

He writes it down. “What time did you see him last?”

Anna speaks louder this time. “About ten o’clock.” She looks away, and I don’t know if she’s thinking the same thing, but I have to ask.

“What would have happened if we’d found him earlier?”

The EMT shakes his head. “We don’t know anything yet. I really can’t say.”

“What would have happened?” I repeat.

“I don’t know. You may have seen signs that something was wrong.” He looks straight at me. “Look, let us get him to the hospital first and find out what happened, okay?”

The other two paramedics give him a sign, and he snaps the notebook shut and starts moving toward the door. “You can ride to the hospital with us,” he says to Anna. To me, he says, “Sorry, family only.”

He looks at Anna again and says, “Follow me.”

Anna starts to move but I tighten my hold on her. “Ride with me. We’ll be right behind him.”

The EMT’s eyes narrow as he addresses Anna. “You’re going to let your father ride alone?”

“We’ll be right behind you,” I say. The other paramedics pass us wheeling the stretcher to the ambulance, and he gives me a disgusted shake of his head before he follows them.

I push a few gawkers out the door, and the little bundle of bells rings hard as I slam it closed. I snap the deadbolt into place.

As the sirens blare away and the spinning red lights disappear from view, I grab Anna’s hand and lead her to the other side of the bookstore. We walk by the front desk, and I spot the flowers I bought her this morning. They’re in a vase. In water. Exactly as promised. I take a deep breath.

“We’re going back to this morning.” Justin’s in the back room but I keep my voice low anyway. “Listen to me, okay? We have to go all the way back to this morning—back to the hotel. That’s the only time we weren’t moving or in plain sight today. I can’t time it right otherwise.”

Anna doesn’t move or say a word.

“We’re going back to ten fifteen, right before you left your dad at the hotel. You’re going to ride home with him instead and that’ll give you three hours to watch him for…whatever…some kind of sign that something’s wrong.”

She blinks a few times. “What if we get all the way back and nothing’s happened?”

“I don’t know, then tell him something’s wrong with you. Tell him you’re having trouble breathing, or come up with an excuse to stop by the hospital and see your mom. Do whatever you have to do to be sure he goes straight to a hospital.”

Anna nods.

“Do you remember where he parked the car?” She thinks about it for a minute. “Yeah,” she whispers.

She’s ghost-white and trembling. “You have to pull yourself together now, okay? Don’t worry. We’ll fix it.” A vision of my battered self, lying in a puddle of blood, stuck who knows where or when, flashes in my mind. I push it away. The side effects don’t matter. All that matters is getting Anna back to this morning.

I rest my forehead against hers. I don’t even have to tell her to close her eyes. Before I close mine, I think back to this morning and try to lock in a mental image of the hotel and a precise moment I can let the other “me” disappear without disruption. I picture the circular driveway leading up to the hotel where Brooke and I picked Anna up this morning and—

“Brooke.” I didn’t mean to say it aloud, but I must have, because I open my eyes to find Anna staring at me. I drop her hands and rub my temples with my fingertips. “What will happen to Brooke?” I hear myself say.

She was with me the entire time. If Anna and I go back without her, what happens? Does Brooke disappear too? If she’s in the car when I get back, what do I do with her? If she’s not in the car, where has she gone?

I have to go back even earlier. I have to go back to this morning, before I picked Brooke up. I take Anna’s hands again, but this time, it’s not because we have a destination. Without thinking, I start voicing everything that’s going through my head aloud. “I’m not sure how to do this. It’s not clean, like the others were. It just…messes with so many things.” I barely have time to get the words out when Justin peeks around the corner and flies down the aisle toward us.

“There you are. I found your mom,” he says to Anna. “She’s still at the hospital. I’m supposed to take you.” Anna untangles her fingers from mine and follows Justin out the door. As he puts his arm over her shoulders, she stops and turns around. I’m still standing exactly where she left me.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I stuff my hands in my pockets and follow them, still thinking through the morning in my mind, desperately looking for a loophole.

Justin’s car is parked across the street, around the corner from the record store. He opens the door for Anna and she climbs in while I slump down in back. I’ve never felt so powerless.

When we pull up to a stoplight, Anna points out the window as she looks at Justin. “Would you pull over, please?” Justin drives through the intersection and stops on the next block, and Anna gets out of the car, pulls the bucket seat forward, and climbs in back next to me. She rests her head on my shoulder and whispers in my ear, “I can’t let you go back.”

I look up at the rearview mirror and my eyes meet Justin’s. He stares at me for a moment, and then hits the gas.

29

Mrs. Greene spots us the second we round the corner and step into the ICU waiting room, and all three of us freeze in place as she bolts from her chair and speeds across the room toward us. She’s still wearing her uniform.

She hugs Anna hard and then leads her away from us, returning to the chairs in the corner, where she fires questions at her. Anna sounds calm as she fills her mom in on everything that happened, from the moment she and her dad left the house the night before to the series of events that led to her finding him on the bookstore floor.

Justin gives me a look and I give him one back, silently confirming that neither one of us knows what to do with ourselves. He glances awkwardly around the room and I point at a couple of chairs a polite distance away. We spend the next twenty minutes in silence.

Then Justin’s parents burst through the door, and that sends the energy level soaring again. “Where is she?” Mrs. Reilly asks as she heads straight for us. Justin hugs her and then points over toward the corner. I wish I didn’t have to overhear Anna’s mom repeat the same horrible details, but I’m close enough to pick up every word she says and every gasp that leaves Mrs. Reilly’s mouth.

I lean over, resting my elbows on my knees so I can cover my ears and at least muffle the sound. I’m just about to go outside and get some fresh air when I hear Anna’s voice.

“Do you have a quarter?” she asks as she collapses into the chair next to me. She kicks her legs out straight and lets her head fall back against the wall while Justin and I dig around in our pockets.

“Here,” Justin says.

Anna reaches across me to take it and stands up. “I’m going to find a pay phone and call Emma. I’ll be right back.”

Anna’s gone for a full ten minutes, and Justin and I return to our silent state. But then the doctor enters the waiting room and calls out, looking for Mrs. Greene. She stands up and crosses the room. The two of them speak in hushed tones for a moment.

Her mom’s head spins in my direction. “Bennett, would you go find Anna?”

I move quickly, out of the waiting room and into the sterile halls, but I don’t have the slightest idea where she is. I turn down corridors and double back when they look like dead ends, and I finally spot her at the far end of a hallway, leaning against the wall and playing with the steel phone cord as she fills her best friend in on what happened.

She sees me coming.

Doctor, I mouth, and Anna says something I can’t hear before she slams the phone down hard. The two of us speed back to the waiting room.

As soon as she’s within arm’s reach, Anna’s mom takes her by the shoulders and pulls her closer, then waves the rest of us over to her. “Go ahead.”

The six of us stand in a semicircle while the doctor explains far too matter-of-factly that Mr. Greene has had a stroke. She goes into detail about the battery of tests they’re running to determine exactly what time it occurred and the extent of the damage.

She looks right at Anna’s mom, addressing her more like a peer than the wife of a patient. “Strokes are tricky at first, as you probably know. Everything hinges on how long he was out before your daughter found him. When the medical team arrived on the scene, they administered medication that dissolved the clot, but…” The doctor trails off and Anna starts twirling her hair around her finger. “Until we can pinpoint exactly where in the brain the stroke occurred and how long ago it happened, we won’t know about his chances for recovery.”

Anna takes a few steps back, as if that’s too much for her to take, and I ask her mom if I can take her outside to get some air.

We take the elevator down to the first floor and I steer her toward the entrance. The wind outside blows our hair back, but we huddle close to each other on a cement bench next to a tall ashtray. It smells like fresh rain and stale cigarettes.

“I want to go back.” I don’t wait for her to answer; I just start running her through the plan I’ve been concocting since we left the bookstore. “I’ll go back to this morning. I’ll get Brooke and bring her to your meet, and then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen with your dad, okay? It’ll be fine.”

Anna shakes her head. “What about the side effects? Last time you ended up with twenty-two hours you could never account for. What if you try, and instead, we all get knocked back somewhere? Or what if we lose those hours and I don’t find my dad when I did? You can’t mess with this one, Bennett.”

I hear her, but that doesn’t stop me from running through the easier scenarios again. If we went back to the bookstore, I don’t know what would happen to Anna. If we went back to this morning at the race, I don’t know what would happen to Brooke.

“Stop,” she says, as if she can tell that I’m still trying to figure out a way to make it work. “Listen. You promised me you’d tell me if you ever lost control. But apparently I need to be the one to tell you.” Anna locks her eyes on mine. “You’re not in control. You cannot fix this.”

My stomach sinks. God, if she only knew how much I want to. That I’d do anything to fix it. But she’s right. I can’t. There’s too much at stake this time. I’m not in control anymore. Not unless I stick to the rules.

Anna presses her lips tightly together and runs her thumb along my cheek. “You aren’t supposed to change things, remember?” Then she rests her head on my shoulder. The two of us sit like that for a long time, listening to the sound of the automatic doors sliding open and snapping shut as people pass us on their way in and out of the building.

I tell her I’m sorry a few more times, and she tells me not to be. But I don’t tell her what I’m really thinking: If I hadn’t come here today, she would have driven home with her dad instead of Brooke and me. She would have had three hours in the car with him. Three hours to notice that something was wrong.

Those three hours should have been his, and I took them away.

Today, after we found her dad in the bookstore, we both went straight to one question: What if we could do it over? We never once thought: What if we hadn’t changed anything in the first place?

As Justin and I leave the hospital, the wind slaps us hard in the face. We pull our coats tighter around us as we march, heads down, plowing toward the car. He climbs in first and unlocks my door for me.

“You okay to drive in this?”

His shoots me a look and turns the key in the ignition. “Yeah.”

And that’s the last thing he says for the next twenty miles. Every time I look over at him, he has this strange look on his face and his fingers are white-knuckled from gripping the steering wheel so hard. We’re traveling down Lake Shore Drive, at or just under the speed limit, but the wind packs a wallop. Each time it slams into the side of the car it feels like it’s about to wrap its fingers around this lightweight Honda Civic and hurl it straight into Lake Michigan.

I try to make small talk. “I didn’t know you had a car.”

“I got it over the summer.” He turns onto a side street. “It’s nice, but it’s light. When it starts snowing, I’m going to have to load the trunk with sandbags so I don’t skid.”

Now that we’re off Lake Shore and heading into the wind, the car feels a little less squirrelly. I see Justin’s shoulders relax slightly and his fingers uncurl. He takes one hand off the wheel and squeezes the back of his neck.

“I’ve known him since I was a little kid,” Justin says, his voice deeper than usual. “Our parents have played bridge together every other Saturday night for as long as I can remember.” He takes a deep breath. “He’s so healthy, you know? Healthier than my parents. God, he’s been trying to get my dad to go running with him for years.”

“I know,” I say. Of course, I don’t know. I’ve never heard any of this. But I have no idea what to tell him right now.

“This whole thing is just so weird…” Justin trails off as he takes another turn, and I resist the urge to say that I’m sure Mr. Greene will be okay, because I have no way of knowing this, and he may not be. The air in the car is thick with tension, and Justin keeps looking at me like it’s my turn to talk.

I haven’t known Mr. Greene very long. I don’t have years of collected stories that substantiate his impact on my life or anything. I just know that I like him, that he’s a nice person and a good dad, and that he doesn’t deserve to be hooked up to machines right now.

Justin blows a mouthful of air at the windshield. “They say he could be totally fine, and make a full recovery, but I can’t help but wonder.” When he pulls up to the stoplight, he turns to me. “I mean, I don’t know anything about strokes, but it seems pretty far-fetched that there wouldn’t be any damage to his brain. He had to have been out for at least…what did the doctor think? Twenty…twenty-five minutes?”

This is the part I can’t think about, let alone talk about. Anna and I were just down the street during those twenty minutes. What if there had been a parking space in front of the bookstore? What if we hadn’t stopped for coffee? What if I hadn’t come here today?

“I guess we’ll know more tomorrow when the test results are back.”

“I guess. But man, doesn’t it make you wish you had future sight or something? I mean, if we could just know, right?”

As the light turns green, he looks away from me, shaking his head as if it’s a ridiculous thought.

The deadbolt clicks open with a loud thunk. I tiptoe inside and shut the door behind me, grateful to find the house is silent and dark, save for the glow of the light that Maggie always keeps on over the desk.

My feet drag across the hardwood floor and it takes far too much effort to lug myself up the stairs. My brain is working overtime, but my body can’t wait to fall into bed.

I head straight for the bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face and check out my reflection. My skin is pale and my eyes are bloodshot, lids half closed despite the cold jolt I just gave them. I flick off the light and head back to my room.

I should have insisted on staying with Anna at the hospital, even though the look on her mom’s face made it pretty clear that she didn’t want me there. For the hundredth time tonight, I picture Anna’s expression when she told me I couldn’t go back, and I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by not even trying. Especially when I remember how Mr. Greene blinked at me.

But of all the things that happened tonight—of all the things that were said—Justin’s words are the ones haunting me and keeping me awake.

He said he wished he could see into the future, with absolutely no idea that I can.

I can’t fight it anymore, so against my better judgment, I dig my heavy boots out from the back of the closet and step into them, and then I zip myself into my black parka and pull my wool cap low to my brow. I fill my backpack with bottled water and a wad of cash.

I’m not changing anything. I’m not manipulating the clock, and I’m not doing anything over. I’m observing, just like I’ve always done. This time, I’m not breaking the rules, and when it’s over, no one ever has to know what I did.

The doctor said it would take time and patience; that even if he made a full recovery, it would probably take a year or two. With her words in mind, I stand in the center of my room and close my eyes.

I visualize the yellow paint that’s chipping and peeling on the side of the Greenes’ house, and clear my head of everything but today’s date: November 15.

I pick a time I know he’ll be home: six thirty A.M.

And I choose a year in my past, but in Anna’s future: 1997.

30

I arrive on the side of Anna’s house, exactly where I planned to, and slowly peer around the corner. It must have snowed last night, but not hard. I can still see tiny tips of grass poking up through the thin layer of ice covering the lawn. I feel overdressed in my heavy winter gear.

Peering in the window, I find that the kitchen looks exactly the same—same appliances, same bar stools. I can see the coffeepot perfectly, in the same spot it’s always been. I look around, waiting for someone to appear and preparing to duck down fast when they do.

By now, Anna must be away at college, but this is a good time to catch Mr. Greene making the morning coffee.

I hear the front door open and peek around the corner just as footsteps land on the porch. The feet look like they belong to a man, but the door is blocking my view and I can’t be sure. The newspaper disappears and the door closes again. I race back to my spot at the window.

Mr. Greene steps into the kitchen and walks straight for the counter. He unfolds the newspaper, removes a section, and tosses the bulk of it onto the kitchen table.

As he steps away from the counter, I notice the slight limp on his right side. Over at the coffeepot, he treats his right hand like it’s cumbersome and in his way, and when he tries to use it to open the bag of coffee he quickly gives up and uses his left hand and his teeth instead.

As the coffee brews, he reaches up into the high cabinet above him and pulls down two mugs. He shuffles over to the refrigerator and returns with a carton of milk.

He’s about to bring it back where it belongs when Anna comes around the corner. She rests one hand on his shoulder, takes the carton from him, and puts it away. Then she gives him a quick peck on the cheek, and heads over to the counter for her mug.

Her hair is shorter, hanging loose and just brushing her shoulders. She’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. It takes me a minute to realize that it reads NORTHWESTERN CROSS COUNTRY and to put the pieces together. Anna still lives here.

Mr. Greene starts off for the pile of newspaper again, and Anna speeds past him and grabs it first. She hands him a section and he folds it in half and uses it to smack her on the arm. She laughs, but I can hear him through the glass as he tells her to stop helping him.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rings, and I look around the corner and find Justin standing on the porch. He’s wearing a baseball cap and his backpack is slung over one shoulder. The door opens and Anna yells, “Bye, Dad,” before stepping out and shutting it behind her. The two of them head down the walkway toward campus.

I’ve seen all I needed to see. I close my eyes and bring myself back to my room at Maggie’s.

My temples are throbbing. I sit down on the floor next to my bed and reach into my backpack for the water. I down both bottles without stopping, and reach for a room-temperature Frappuccino. When the bottle is empty, I let my head fall back onto the bed and I wait to recover.

I’m in pain, but the symptoms feel more like what I’m used to—a fierce headache and a dry mouth—but no nosebleeds, no piercing sounds, and most important, no losing control of my place on the timeline. I’ve managed to stay in 1995, successfully go to 1997, and return to 1995 unscathed.

I lie there, picturing Mr. Greene moving around the kitchen, the way Anna helped him, and the way he scolded her for doing so. He’s okay. He’s not back to normal, but he’s alive, capable, and obviously in good hands. And while I know that part of him is relieved that Anna’s still living at home, I’m sure that a larger part feels guilty, knowing that Northwestern was never her first choice.

My eyelids are heavy and I can’t wait to let them close and drift off to sleep. But just as I start to doze off, something the doctor said tonight jolts me awake again. She said it would be a slow recovery. That it might take years. Her comment makes me wonder what I might have seen if I’d gone forward even farther. Maybe I’d have more solid news for Anna tomorrow.

I stand up and return to the center of the room. I stomp hard until the last of the snow has fallen from my boots. I close my eyes and picture a date in the future when I know Anna will no longer live at home, but will certainly be visiting: Christmas Eve, 2005.

31

I’m at the wrong house.

The driveway is in the right spot. The kitchen window is where it’s supposed to be. I walk around to the front of the house and look up toward Anna’s window. I’m in the right place, but the house is no longer covered in yellow, peeling paint. It’s now painted deep gray with white trim. It looks nice.

It must have been snowing just hours ago because my feet are buried deep in this light, white powder that doesn’t look or feel at all like the snow I remember. It covers my jeans, up to my shins, and I can feel my toes turn cold inside my winter boots.

I look through the window. The kitchen looks different too, with fresh paint and new cabinets, new granite countertops and a bunch of new appliances. It could be the work of new owners. But then I notice that the bar stools are exactly the same, and I smile when I think back to the first time I came to Anna’s house and perched myself there, carefully studying her for signs of fear as I disappeared before her eyes.

Anna’s mom walks in and I duck back down under the windowsill and count to five. Then I peek inside again, studying her as she reaches into the oven and removes a roasting pan. She scurries around the kitchen, stirring pots on the stove and putting rolls in the oven.

I’m starting to get concerned about Anna’s dad, when he breezes into the room and sticks his finger into one of the pots. Mrs. Greene slaps his hand with the wooden spoon she just took out of the gravy, and I can practically hear her chide him from here. I can’t hear his response, but it makes her throw her head back and laugh.

I watch him walk through the kitchen and into the dining room and notice a slight limp. When he returns he’s carrying a silver platter, and he rests it on the countertop. It’s hard to see from this vantage point, but his hands appear to be working like they’re supposed to.

Then I hear tires slowly crunching their way through the snow. Lights reflect off the snow on the front yard, and I stand still and watch as a car pulls into the driveway. I come out from behind the house and hide behind the large oak tree so I can get a better look. I’m just in time to see Anna step out.

The driver’s-side door opens, and someone else comes around the front of the car. The house lights are illuminating Anna’s face perfectly, and I’m close enough to see every detail, but he’s in shadow, and all I can see is the back of his head. He casually grabs her hand, like he’s done it a million times before. Then he kisses her. He says something that makes her smile at him. My chest constricts and I suck in a breath.

It’s a smile I know well. I thought it was the one she reserved for me, but here in 2005, it seems to belong to him.

The two of them walk toward the porch, holding hands. Before they’ve even hit the first step, Mr. Greene flings the door open wide and scoops Anna up in his arms. She laughs and says, “Hi, Daddy,” as she regains her footing.

Mr. Greene turns to the guy and says something I can’t hear from this distance. He pulls him in for a fatherly hug, patting him on the back. He releases him but keeps one arm over his shoulder, leading the two of them into the house. The door closes behind them.

I head across the lawn, over to the driveway, and look inside the car for anything that will tell me who he is and where they came from, but the interior is completely clean. I walk around the back of the car and look at the license plate, and spot a sticker from the rental car company in the corner. They flew in from someplace. Or at least he did.

I retrace my footsteps until I’ve returned to my position under the kitchen window. I must be a glutton for punishment because once I pull myself up into the corner and peek inside, I find myself stuck there. I want to stop watching them, but I can’t.

The guy is nowhere to be seen, but I have a perfect view of Anna as she stands in the center of the kitchen, her parents buzzing happily around her. God, she looks incredible. Her hair is long again, and tonight it’s pulled back in a clip at the nape of her neck. I can’t stop staring.

She’s fluttering around the kitchen like she used to, breaking off pieces of bread and dipping her finger into sauces and closing her eyes as the tastes fill her mouth. She turns and says something to her dad, and he starts cracking up.

Suddenly, Anna pivots toward the window and looks right at me. I duck down quickly, out of sight, and everything’s quiet for a moment except the sound of my heartbeat, which I’m pretty sure they can hear from inside. I wait for a full minute to pass before I look through the corner of the window again.

Anna’s now sitting on the bar stool with her back to me. Mrs. Greene sets a drink on the counter in front of her and I watch Anna bring the glass to her lips.

He’s back. The guy she brought home with her returns to the kitchen and walks straight to the refrigerator. Anna’s blocking my view of him and I adjust my position, trying to get a better look, but I accidentally tap the windowpane. Anna spins in her seat and I flatten my back against the side of the house.

“I saw it again, Dad.” She’s far away and muffled, but I can make out her words, and her voice grows louder, clearer, as she cups her hand to the window and speaks. “There’s something out there, I swear.”

My heart is pounding hard against my rib cage and it takes every ounce of control to remain silent and motionless. She’s right there. I want to say something. I want to stand up and look at her face and see how she reacts. There must be something I can say that will make her come outside, put her hands in mine, and let me take her away to a warmer place so we can sit in sand and talk. I need to know who this guy is and what he’s doing in her house and why she’s looking at him like that. I need to know what happened to us and how we stop it.

I hear her dad’s voice, low and clear. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but I swear, I keep seeing something move out there.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he says. “Stay here. I’ll go outside and check it out.”

I spin in place looking for somewhere to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. I hear the front door open and slam closed, followed by soft footsteps on the wooden porch.

I panic and close my eyes.

When I open them, I’m back in my room at Maggie’s. I’m sitting on my bed with my head pounding and my stomach sinking, knowing that Mr. Greene found all my footprints, and wondering what happened when he did.

32

The hospital is busier today. I step out of the elevator and into the waiting room, and it takes a full minute for me to spot Anna. I finally see her, sitting in a chair against the far wall, her mom on one side and Justin on the other, holding her hand. Emma is sitting next to him, arms folded across her chest and staring up at the ceiling.

There isn’t anywhere for me to sit, but I walk over to them anyway. As soon as I arrive, Justin stands up. “Hey.” He gestures toward the seat. “Take mine. I was just leaving anyway.” Anna stands up next to him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, and Justin hugs her tightly, eyes closed as he rubs her back. “Call me later, okay? Or even better, come by the store. I’ll be there late.”

Anna kisses him on the cheek.

“Mrs. Greene?” I hear the voice behind me, and when I turn around I find the doctor from yesterday standing there. “You and your daughter can see him, but let’s keep this visit short.”

Anna grabs my hand as she walks past and gives it a squeeze. She and her mom follow the doctor out of the room and I flop down next to Emma. I let my head fall back against the wall. “How’s he doing today?”

“Better, it seems. He regained consciousness in the middle of the night. The test results are promising, but he doesn’t have any function on his right side.” I picture Mr. Greene using his teeth to open a bag of coffee beans. Emma rubs her forehead with her fingertips. “But they think he’ll make a full recovery, eventually.”

This is good news, but Emma’s lower lips quivers and I can tell she’s fighting back tears. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

“Me?” She takes a deep breath and brushes her fingers across her cheeks. “I should be asking you that question, Shaggy. You look like hell.”

I thought I looked pretty good considering everything I’ve been through in the last fifteen hours, but then I bring my hands to my face and feel the thick stubble and realize I’m still wearing the same clothes I was wearing yesterday. “I’m okay,” I lie.

She takes a deep breath and sits up straight in her chair, looking around the crowded waiting room like she’s taking in the ugly furniture and the stacks of magazines piled up on the end tables for the first time. “This is so weird. I’ve never been in a hospital before. Have you?”

I picture Anna and me sitting in a different waiting room in a different hospital—one closer to Chicago and the scene of Emma and Justin’s car accident—but similarly ugly and equally devoid of anything even remotely cheerful. “Yeah, I’ve been in a few.”

“It’s so strange… I have this feeling, you know, like I must have been inside a hospital at least once, aside from being born in one, but I don’t think I ever have. No one in my family has ever been sick and I’ve never broken a bone or anything… Knock wood,” she says, bringing her knuckles to the chair’s wooden arm. Then she shudders. “This place gives me the creeps.”

I never saw Emma after the accident, but Anna told me everything. It’s impossible to look at her right now without picturing her in that sterile hospital room, scratched up and stitched together on the outside, broken and still bleeding out on the inside. Emma will never know what I did for her and I’ll never want her to.

Emma’s eyes dart around the room again and she leans in close. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

She comes in even closer, resting her forearms on my chair. “Do you think Justin has a thing for Anna?”

“Anna?” I don’t mean it to come out in such a “my Anna” tone of voice, but I think it does. “No. I mean, they’re friends. They’ve known each other all their lives. Anna thinks of him like a brother.”

“Oh, yeah…of course. I’m not talking about Anna’s feelings for him—it’s all you in that department—I’m just referring to his feelings for her.” She looks around the waiting room. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have even mentioned anything. I’ve just been curious about your opinion and we’re here, just the two of us, stuck in this crappy hospital.” She taps her bright pink painted fingernails on her jeans. “It was just the way he hugged her a few minutes ago looked a little bit ‘more than friends.’” She says the last part with air quotes. “That, you know, combined with the whole near-kiss thing…”

My head falls to the side and I look at her. “What ‘near-kiss thing’?”

Her eyebrows furrow as she chooses her words more carefully now. “You know. After you left town last spring.” She must be able to tell from the look on my face that I’m hearing this for the first time, because she covers her mouth with her hand and pulls away from me fast. “Anna told me you knew. She made it seem like it was no big deal.”

She never told me. And it might not have been a big deal. If this conversation were happening yesterday, I might have just laughed it off, but coming in on the heels of what I saw last night, I might be feeling a little too raw for this.

“Justin got a little bit drunk at my birthday party, and I might have been taking advantage of the situation, because I finally decided to come right out and ask him how he felt about her, you know? Just to see what he’d say.” I’m not sure I want to hear this, but she keeps talking and I don’t stop her. “At first he swore they were just friends, but then he told me that after you left last spring, they were hanging out at the record store together one day and they almost kissed.” She shrugs, as if that will make it seem like she isn’t bothered by the whole incident, but I can tell by the look on her face that she is.

“But don’t get mad. It wasn’t Anna at all. Justin tried to kiss her—he made that part crystal clear. I mean, if you weren’t in the picture, who knows, but…”

I flash back on what I saw last night when I went to 1997. How Justin met Anna at her house, and the two of them walked to school together. And then I think about the guy I saw her with eight years later. The guy she kissed in her driveway. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it could have been Justin, but now I can’t get the idea out of my mind. I don’t think the guy had red hair, but I never got a very good look either. I remember how Mr. Greene wrapped him up in a fatherly hug and led him into the house.

“The whole thing is totally one-sided…” She stops and lets out a cynical laugh. “Which should have been my first clue, right?” She matches my posture, her head against the wall, her legs kicked out in front of her. “I’m not quite sure why I’m waiting around as if I’m perfectly content with being his consolation prize.”

She starts to say more. I wish she wouldn’t. I don’t have the energy to think about any of this right now and I have much bigger things on my mind. Before Emma can speak again, Anna and her mom return to the waiting room and sit down in the chairs across from us.

“Nothing new, I’m afraid,” Anna’s mom says as she twists her hair around her finger and lets out a heavy breath. Then, without prompting, she launches into a story about a stroke patient she worked with a few years ago. I pretend to listen before I shoot Anna a look and thankfully, she understands.

“We’ll be right back, Mom,” she says, and she grabs my hand and leads me down the hall toward the vending machines. She digs around in her jeans pocket for change. “Want to split a bag of Doritos?”

She’s about to slip a quarter into the slot but I stop her. “Wait. There’s a coffee shop across the street.”

“Yeah?” She covers her mouth as she yawns. “Actually, that sounds good.” She tells me to wait by the elevator while she tells her mom where she’s going, and she comes back holding her coat. I help her into it.

The coffeehouse is nothing like the one we’re used to, far more institutional than cozy, with metal tables and matching chairs. Anna finds a spot in the corner window while I go to the counter to order. A few minutes later, I return with a bowl of soup, a chunk of bread, and a latte.

Anna picks up the bread and turns it over in her hands. “This reminds me of Paris,” she says. She gives me a tired smile before she takes a bite. “Sadly, this tastes nothing like that baguette.” She stares down at the bread, looking disappointed. “I’m convinced I’ll never taste anything that delicious again.”

I don’t respond. In fact, I hardly say a word as she finishes off her soup. But as she’s balling her napkin up and stuffing it into the empty soup container, I can’t hold it in any longer.

“I have to tell you something,” I practically blurt out, and she looks up at me. I probably should have planned out what I was going to say, but I didn’t. Now I’m just making it up as I go along and hoping it will make sense. “Remember last night, when we were sitting outside and you told me I couldn’t fix this?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I thought of something else I could do.”

She takes a sip of her coffee and waits for me.

“I went forward.”

She yawns again. Then she says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I went forward…into your future. To see what happens to him.”

Her head springs up and she goes to set her coffee cup on the table but she loses her grip and it crashes to the table. Some of the coffee splashes over the side, and Anna reaches for her napkin to wipe up the mess. She suddenly stops and stares at me.

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

I nod my head. “You do. It’s good news. He’s going to be okay.”

She lets the napkin drop as she puts her elbows on the table and buries her face in her hands. I can’t tell if she’s crying or laughing or so overwhelmed, she’s doing a combination of the two.

“It will take a while. In a couple of years, he’ll still walk with a limp and he won’t have full use of his right hand, but eventually, he’ll be fine.”

“Eventually when?”

I look at her. “I’m sorry, Anna. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.”

“No, of course you can’t. Okay.” She shakes her head hard, like she’s scolding herself for asking in the first place. She comes in even closer. “I still can’t believe you did this,” she says excitedly. “What else will you tell me?”

She takes a big sip of coffee and licks the froth from her lips and I take a deep breath. “I saw enough to know that my coming here is a mistake.” There. I’ve said it. “I’m not supposed to be here, Anna. It’s changing your whole life.”

She presses her palms into the table to steady herself. “For the better.”

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

She looks out the window and doesn’t say anything. “What aren’t you telling me, Bennett? What did you see?” She gives me a hard look.

“I saw you and your family with a happy future. And if I tell you any more about it, it might not happen that way.” That’s enough. That’s all she gets to know. Anything else and I might change what I saw, and I can’t do that.

“Well, it’s my future. I want you in it.” Her eyebrows pinch together. “Don’t you want to be in it?”

I nod. “But think about it,” I say, shaking my head. “If you’d been in the car with your dad yesterday you would have known something was wrong. You would have seen the signs and gotten him to a hospital faster. He might not even be here right now.”

“Oh, come on…he had a stroke. That would have happened no matter what. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I was here, Anna. With you. And I shouldn’t have been. If I hadn’t been here you would have been with your dad.”

I didn’t expect to feel this way, but the more I talk to her, the more anger I feel building up inside me. I seem to be livid with everyone right now. With Emma, for telling me about Justin and Anna’s near-kiss, because I didn’t want to know that, especially today. With Anna, for making me think that do-overs were okay, simply because her best friend’s life was at stake. With my dad, for letting me believe I was more powerful than I really am. And with myself, for going forward and opening up a view into a future I never should have seen and certainly don’t want to exist.

And it’s selfish, but I’m angry because it’s starting to seem like every time I do something good for someone else, I’m the one who pays the price.

I take a deep breath and steady myself for my next words, the ones that have been rattling around in my head ever since I returned from her house on Christmas Eve 2005. This is it. If I’m going to guarantee the life I saw for Anna, where she’s happy without me, I have say it.

“I’m not coming back anymore.”

“What?”

I start to reach for her hands but before I can, she pulls them away and stands up. The metal chair tips over behind her and crashes to the floor, and she looks over her shoulder like she’s considering righting it, but she doesn’t. She turns on her heel and heads for the door, out into the cold.

By the time I catch up to her she’s standing at the edge of the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic. “Anna. Please.”

She stops and turns around, arms crossed, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You cannot do this!” she yells as the cars speed past us. “You cannot do this to me. You promised you wouldn’t leave…” Her whole face is bright red and the tears are coming fast now. She tries to wipe her face dry but she can’t keep up.

I grab her by the arm, but she pulls it away. “Go!” she yells. “If that’s what you want, just go!”

I feel something in me snap.

“What I want?” I yell back at her. “What do you mean what I want? When is this ever about what I want? I don’t have anything—not one single thing—that I want. Don’t you get it?” In my mind’s eye I see Anna, standing in her driveway, smiling up at this guy who isn’t me, and I feel the blood coursing hot through my veins.

“See, I get to have this tiny little taste of all these incredible things but I don’t get to keep any of them. I get to meet you and be part of your life, and I get to know your family and your friends, but I don’t get to hold on to any of it. I can’t stay here. This isn’t my home. And every time I have go to back, it kills me. Every. Single. Time. And it always will.”

“Bennett…” Anna steps back onto the sidewalk and pushes me away from the edge.

“No, wait. It gets even better.” I let out a sarcastic laugh and bring my hand to my chest. “I finally find something that makes me feel good about this thing I can do. I figure out how to save people’s lives. I get to give a few deserving people a second chance. And that feels really incredible for, like, twenty minutes…right up until the second it starts beating the shit out of me.”

I let out another laugh. “Oh wait, and here’s the best part. The more good things I do, the more I lose the one thing I promised you I wouldn’t lose—control. It’s like this infinite, totally screwed up loop,” I say, spinning my finger in the air.

Anna takes a deep breath and presses her lips tightly together. She’s crying even harder now, which should make me feel horrible but for some reason doesn’t.

“Check it out,” I say, bringing my hand to my chest. “I don’t get to have what I want. Not ever. Because the one thing I want is a normal life. I don’t want to be special and different, I just want to wake up and go to school and do homework and ride my skateboard in the park with my friends. I want my dad to be proud of me because I got an A on some stupid paper, not because I saved some kids’ lives. I want to stare out a window and think about how cool it would be to be able to travel back in time, but I don’t want to actually be able to do it. And I want to be in love with a girl I can see every day, not every three weeks.”

I’ve been gesturing wildly with my hands but now that I’m done ranting, I don’t know what to do with them. I run my fingers through my hair.

“I have to go. I’m sorry.” I head back toward the coffee shop, but before I can reach the door, I feel Anna’s grasp, tight on my arm.

“Bennett, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean—”

“What? Didn’t mean to talk me into all of this?” The words just slip out, even though I know they’re not true, and I turn around in time to see her face fall. That should be enough to stop me from talking, but it isn’t. “If you hadn’t made me help Emma, I never would have known what I could do. I could have spent the rest of my life going to concerts and climbing rocks in exotic locations, never caring that I was being selfish with my ability, because you know what, it’s mine. Not yours. Not my dad’s. Mine.” I slap my chest.

“I know that…I never meant…”

“I structured my life around a set of rules, and then I broke them for you. And for what? So I could be a better person?” I huff in exasperation. “How is my life better because a stranger never broke his leg and five people are alive who probably shouldn’t be?”

“What you did was really good. And if you were a normal person, we never would have met.”

“Yeah…well I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

She pulls away and looks at me. “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

As hard as it is to do, I nod.

Tears are streaming down her face and I can’t look at her. I need to get away from here.

“I need to think, Anna. You need to think.”

“I don’t need to think.”

“Well you should, because this is crazy.” I remember the words Mr. Greene said to me at the meet the other day. This is ridiculous. Do you really think you can keep this up? “Come on, what were we thinking? We can’t do this forever.”

She wipes her face dry and stares at me.

“I’m going to go back to my real life for a while, okay? I’ll come back at Christmas,” I say, as if this will make it better. “Your dad’s going to be okay,” I say, as if this justifies my leaving.

She finds her voice, but it’s low and quiet and I have to strain to hear her. “Please stay.”

Before she can say another word, I take two steps back until I feel the corner of the building behind me, and without even caring who might be watching, I close my eyes and disappear.