donât
want
to live in the past. Just give me the future, and SofÃa, and a second chance.
I turn away from the ocean and plod back to the academy. Sand sticks to my feet, and I make a halfhearted effort to wipe it off before going inside the mansion. As I head up the stairs, I pass a group of students from another unit. They look a little younger than me, two guys and a girl. I wonder what their powers are. They stick together, moving to the other banister as I climb up the steps. I try to give them a friendly smile, but they hurry away. So. My reputation has preceded me. Maybe itâs a good thing that the units are so self-contained and we donât interact with other students. Or maybe, if we did, they would know Iâm not a monster. That losing SofÃa was an accident.
I close my bedroom door and sit in the middle of my room, alone.
I blink, and the timestream stretches out around me, abeautiful mix of opalescent light and strings. Itâs a chaotic mess, but it still makes a pattern I think I can almost understand.
There are the knotted places, tangles I cannot penetrate. The knots are places Iâve been to before. I scrutinize them, trying to see the path of my life in the scheme of time and the universe.
Here
is where I was born,
here
is where my sister broke her arm,
here
is where I got an award for history in middle school,
here
is where I discovered my powers.
And
here
 . . . my fingers run over the knotted mess of where SofÃa is trapped in the past. Ever since I lost her, Iâve been trying to find a way to reach her again. And then yesterday, I got there as easy as blinking. At least until I tried to warn her.
Time has a way of keeping itself safe and balanced. Whenever I try to alter something that has to be, whether itâs punching Hitler in the face or changing my own timeline, time has kept me out. It snaps me back. It reminds me that itâs in charge. So . . . maybe the reason I was able to go back to just before the moment SofÃa got stuck in the past was
because
I didnât really have the intent to try to change anything.
Intent matters with time.
The real importance of this dawns on me slowly, but itâs actually starting to make a lot of sense. When Iâve tried to go back lately, Iâve been focused on saving SofÃa. But time doesnât
want
me to save her. Itâs preventing me from saving her. It knows from the start thatâs what I want to do.
Intent matters. If I go to the past not with the intent to change anything, but with the intent of just
seeing
SofÃa . . .
I could.
I could do that.
Holy hell, I could do that.
I reach for my calendar. Itâs the kind that has a different page for each day. SofÃa used to make fun of me all the time for using a paper calendar rather than my phone, like a normal person, but when you have the ability to slip through time, itâs important to keep track of the days, and paper is more reliable.
Iâm meticulous about my calendar; every day I make a special mark on it using a code that I developed. I keep track of whether or not I slipped in time that day, whether it was accidental or on purpose, where I went and when.
Now I flip through the pages, looking at the dates before I left SofÃa stuck in the past. I need to find a time when she and I werenât together so I know thereâs no chance Iâll run into my past self.
Intent matters.
I just want to see her. I just need to find a time where the me from now can go back and see her . . .
I drop the calendar on my bed, focusing on the timestream, blinking as it flows in front of me like a river of threads floating on the surface of a bubble. Strings of time and place radiate around me, blue and gold and gray and brown, each linking me to a different person, a different place, a different time. But the one tying me to SofÃa is bright red and easy to find. I follow the red string with my
Lisa Black
Margaret Duffy
Erin Bowman
Kate Christensen
Steve Kluger
Jake Bible
Jan Irving
G.L. Snodgrass
Chris Taylor
Jax