Jace McKinnon sat in the driver’s seat of his old hand-me-down Chevy pickup truck, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. He was parked at the end of the road, about a block away from Lilah Quinn’s house, and at present, trying to convince himself not to drive away for the third time that week. Part of him worried that she’d already seen him driving by her house, since the rusted orange paint on the truck wasn’t exactly camouflage against the deep drifts of snow that had covered the entire town since Christmas Eve.
It had been over a week since he’d finally gathered enough courage to wait by her locker after the last school bell rang, signaling the start of winter break. At the time, he wasn’t sure what exactly he was going to say to her – most likely, it would have been some combination of “How are you?” “Can we talk?” and “What the hell happened last Friday night?”. In the end, he didn’t say any of that because Lilah never showed up at her locker. Benny, whose locker was right across from hers, informed Jace that Seth had told him that Katie Price was loudly gossiping to anyone with ears about how Lilah stormed out of Biology the day before. And the next day – the last day of school before break – she didn’t show up to class at all. As far as Jace knew, no one had seen or spoken to Lilah since last Thursday.
What if something happened to her? he thought, worrying at a hangnail. Like what happened at the concert? He shivered, trying to push the discomfiting thought from his mind.
Jace quickly turned off the engine and got out of the truck before he could change his mind yet again. Then he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and made the long, arctic trek towards the end of the cul-de-sac, where Lilah and her father lived in an old ranch-style house. There was no car parked in the shoveled driveway, but that didn’t mean much. Everyone knew that Chief Quinn spent half of his life at the fire station. And Lilah’s father didn’t allow her to drive because of her epilepsy.
When Jace knocked on the Quinns’ front door a few minutes later, his hand was shaking, but not from the cold. Something had happened at that concert, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t from the pill someone had slipped in his drink. At the very least, he knew for damn sure that he’d never jump off a balcony – not willingly. Sober or drunk, he’d never do anything to jeopardize his shot at a baseball scholarship. But how was he going to ask Lilah about it without sounding like a complete mental case?
When she finally answered the door, wide-eyed and obviously caught off-guard, Jace felt as though a golf ball had lodged itself in his throat. She looked absolutely beautiful in her red knitted sweater, with wisps of auburn hair tumbling from the ballpoint pen that held her hair in a wild knot atop her head. She was so pretty, in fact, that Jace momentarily forgot the purpose of his impromptu visit. At the same time, he suddenly realized that he had no reason to know where Lilah lived. He’d gotten her address from Benny, who had gotten it from Seth, but as Jace stood on her front porch, shivering from his nerves and the cold, it occurred to him that he must have looked like a total stalker.
What felt like a full minute passed before either of them spoke. Finally, Lilah cleared her throat.
“Uh… hi?”
“H-Hey, Lilah,” Jace replied, certain that his voice sounded far too cheerful for the occasion. He wanted to kick himself. “Uh, sorry, this is probably a bad time. I can just, uh, talk to you at school later this month—”
“It’s not a bad time,” Lilah blurted out, casting a quick glance at the watch on her wrist. “Do you want to come in?” For some reason, her cheeks flushed almost as red as her sweater when she said that.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Jace replied, taking one last look at the driveway. “Uh, is your dad—?”
“He won’t be back until after dinner,” she interjected, her cheeks flushing even redder.
This is why normal people call first, Jace chastised himself as he stepped inside. You look like an idiot.
“You can set your coat down here,” Lilah said, gesturing to an armchair near the front door. “I just made myself some hot chocolate. Um… Would you like some?”
“Yeah, that’d be great, thanks,” Jace replied, then winced. Geez, you sound like a parrot! He set his jacket down on the chair, careful not to get any snow on the rug. When he looked at Lilah again, she quickly averted her eyes, muttering something about marshmallows.
“I’ll, uh – I’ll be right back,” she said, hurrying into the kitchen. “Have a seat anywhere!” she called over her shoulder.
He sat on the very edge of an old plaid couch, wringing the bottom of his sweater in his hands. The living room was spacious, but cozy, with wood paneling on the walls and a spindly Christmas tree in the corner that was losing its needles. Just beside that was a small fireplace filled with the glowing remains of recently-burned wood. He squinted his eyes to try and make out the photos on the mantle above. Most of them looked like old school pictures of Lilah, though a few of the frames featured a young Chief Quinn and a pretty, dark-haired woman. In one of the photos, she was beaming widely and cradling an auburn-haired baby. He assumed that was Lilah’s mother, but from that distance, at least, he couldn’t make out much of a resemblance.
“I brought you some cocoa,” Lilah announced, a little too loudly. Jace started. He’d been teetering on the edge of his seat, staring at her baby photos like some weirdo.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the mug she was offering. “It smells really good.”
Lilah gave him a small smile. “I added some cinnamon, an old trick of my dad’s. We don’t have any rum or anything, otherwise I’d offer you some…” she added, settling on the opposite edge of the couch. “I mean, I don’t drink, and – well, okay, my dad might kill us if he came home and saw us drinking – but, um…” She shook her head and laughed, a lovely, clear sound that made Jace immediately break into a wide smile. “I’m sorry, I’m chattering like an idiot.”
“No, it’s great!” Jace said, taking a big sip of hot chocolate. It immediately burned his tongue, but he did his best not to cringe. “Yeah, I don’t really like drinking very much either. Alcohol, I mean.”
“You don’t?” Lilah raised an eyebrow over her mug.
“Well, I mean – that one night I had a beer, but…” He gripped his mug with both hands and sighed. “Look, about the concert – I feel like we might have gotten off on the wrong foot that night. And, well… I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry.”
Lilah’s eyes grew wide as she started coughing.
Jace leaped from the couch. “Oh god, I’m sorry – are you okay?”
Still clearing the hot cocoa from her windpipe, she nodded and held up a hand. “Yeah, sorry, just give me a minute… Did you just say you’re sorry?”
Jace lowered himself back on the edge of the couch, unaware that he’d migrated a few inches towards Lilah’s side of it in the process. “I mean, I know it’s probably not enough to apologize, but—”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she interrupted. “Not you!”
“What do you have to be sorry about?”
“Oh, I don’t know! For being the reason that you fell off the balcony? For putting you in crutches for two weeks?” She was staring into her mug of hot chocolate, eyebrows furrowed, as though some revolting thing was floating atop the whipped cream. “Everything that happened that night was my fault. Everything.”
“Everything”? Jace didn’t know what to say. He’d been grounded for the entire time he’d been on crutches, up until two days before, when the doctor finally gave him the all-clear to walk without a brace. And even then, his stepfather reminded him that if he ever caught him with drugs or alcohol again, he’d be shipped off to military school faster than he could utter the word “underage.” Jace had tried to explain a hundred different times – with varying degrees of success – that he didn’t even know he’d been given drugs that night. He’d just assumed, up until that very moment, that some frat boy had slipped something in his drink for the fun of it. But to hear Lilah say that she did it?
He stood up from the couch. “That’s… wow. That’s really not cool, Lilah. Do you know how much trouble you got me in?”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“At least that explains why I thought the balcony disappeared,” he muttered, setting his mug down on the table angrily. “I can’t believe you did that!”
She gaped at him with wide, hazel eyes. “But I didn’t mean to!”
“So, you just tripped and happened to drop ecstasy in my drink?”
“No! Wait – what?”
Jace was reaching for his jacket. “I’m talking about the drugs they found in my system – what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about making the balcony disappear!”
They stared at each other for a long minute, each absorbing the other’s words. Then, at precisely the same time, they both uttered, “What?”
“Did you just say you made the balcony disappear?”
“Did you just say I spiked your drink with ecstasy?”
Jace raked his hands through his hair. “Didn’t you?”
“No!” Lilah was shaking her head so hard that the pen holding her hair in place flew loose. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Jace sank against the back of the couch, his leg brushing against hers as he did. “But… wait. You said you did make the balcony disappear?”
Lilah ran her fingers through her hair anxiously. “I mean, I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time, but… yes.”
“But… but Sheriff Reid told my mom and Frank that the balcony was totally intact.”
“Yeah… I know.”
“Then, I don’t understand… was it all just a bad trip or not?”
Lilah was scraping her spoon against the last thick dregs of cocoa at the bottom of her mug, seemingly intent on not making eye contact with him. At that exact moment, the front door burst open.
“A-ha!” Stanley yelled, which sent Jace skittering six feet to the opposite end of the couch.
“Hi, Dad,” Lilah said, barely looking up. “You’re home early.”
Stanley dropped his jacket on the back of the armchair beside Jace’s, then loosened his suspenders. “You’re damn right I am. Good ol’ Jack Petersen called the station to let me know that the owner of that hideous orange truck that’s been lurking around the neighborhood just walked into our house – hi, Jace.”
“Hi, Mr. Quinn,” Jace mumbled.
“That’s Chief Quinn to you,” Stanley remarked breezily. “Anyhoo, I figured I’d come by to check on things.” He plopped into his easy chair, casually knocking Jace’s jacket on the floor as he did. Kicking off his boots, he rested his feet – dirty, hole-ridden socks and all – right next to Jace’s mug. “So, what’s new, kids?”
“I was just apologizing to Jace for making the balcony disappear at the concert,” Lilah replied.
Stanley cast her a pointed side eye. “It’s not nice to make jokes to drug addicts, honey. They might believe you.”
His daughter rolled her eyes. “Dad, I thought we agreed – no more gaslighting.”
“‘Gaslighting’? How the hell can I agree to something if I don’t even know what it means?”
“It means manipulating a person’s beliefs so they question their own sanity. We learned about it in Psychology last month. Remember? You helped me study for the exam.”
Jace cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to cut in here, but… could someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Stanley started to wave him off, but Lilah spoke first. “I inadvertently bend time around me. It’s not something I can control when I’m having a seizure, but I’m starting to think that if I can control time, I can control my seizures.”
She continued to casually draw shapes in the bottom of her hot chocolate with the tip of her spoon, intentionally avoiding the stupefied stares of both her father and the boy she’d had a crush on since fourth grade.
Stanley and Jace exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“What, uh… What made you come up with that theory?” her father stammered.
“I was talking to Mom a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t even have a headache. Which reminds me – would you help me track down my birth mother so I can ask her some questions?”
A protracted moment of silence ensued.
“…Dad?” Lilah asked again, finally looking up from her cup.
Stanley abruptly stood up from his chair, then strode into the kitchen without uttering a word. When he came back, he had a small bottle of scotch in his hand.
“If you’ll excuse me, children, I think I need a drink.”
As Jace stared between the two of them, a look of pure confusion plastered upon his face, he couldn’t help but feel the same way. He raised a tentative finger as Lilah’s father yanked the cork from the dusty bottle. “Could I—”
“No.”
After a protracted moment of heavy silence, during which Stanley had gulped down two large mouthfuls of noxious-smelling liquor straight from the bottle, and Lilah was doing her best to keep the crimson flush from her cheeks, Jace finally found his voice.
“S-So… the other night, at the concert – you were controlling time?”
She nodded meekly, still not quite able to meet his eyes.
“A-And, just now, when you said you spoke to your mother…” He looked up at the mantle, his brow twitching in confusion. “Do you mean…?”
“My adoptive mother, yes. She died when I was a baby.”
All of the color drained from Jace’s face as he looked between Lilah and Stanley, waiting for one of them to burst out laughing. Neither one of them did. He did his best to swallow the growing lump in his throat. This had to be some kind of joke. It had to be… right? But the moment he met Chief Quinn’s hollow stare, he knew it was anything but.
He forced a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. What else could he do? “Well, I’d ask you to prove it, but—”
“No way!” Stanley bellowed, his shout quickly turning into a belch.
Jace held up his hands defensively. “I was going to say, I’d ask you to prove it, but based on my memory of that concert, the only thing that makes sense is that the balcony blinked out of existence as we were standing on it – and then reappeared right after we fell. If you’re telling me that you’re the one who caused that to happen, it means that I’m not crazy after all. And,” he added, shrugging sheepishly, “if you didn’t actually bend time around us – well, I guess we’re both out of our minds. And I’m sort of okay with being insane, as long as I have a friend who’s equally as nuts as I am.”
At that, an ecstatic grin broke across Lilah’s face.