My parents and sister are walking out of the towering front doors of the academy when Gwen and I reach the bottom of the steps.
“There you are,” Dr. Franklin says, following behind them.
“I’ll go get my stuff,” I say. I glance at Dad. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were in a rush.”
“No rush,” Dad says. “You’re staying here.”
Gwen bounds up the steps and disappears inside, but I’m frozen in place. “I’m staying?”
Mom nods. “Just this weekend, okay, sweetie? We’ll bring you home next weekend. Is that all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” I say. My mind is already churning. This isn’t just fine, it’s great. I need time to work on saving Sofía, and going home will just get in the way of that. Who knows when I’ll get a chance like this again. Every weekend my parents drive up here to pick me up and take me home for “family time,” something my mother hates to relinquish.
Phoebe walks a pace behind my parents as they head to their car, which is parked in the circular driveway right in front of the academy. As Mom hugs me and Dad grunts goodbye, Phoebe stands to the side, her eyes dancing over the sign in front of the school, made of brick and gleaming bronze: THE BERKSHIRE ACADEMY FOR CHILDREN WITH EXCEPTIONAL NEEDS.
Part of me wants to pull my sister aside and tell her that the sign is just a front. It’s not like we can advertise what the school really is, what all of us can really do. Dr. Franklin and the rest of the unit advisors all have powers too, and they know how important secrecy is. It sort of sucks, though, the way Phoebe thinks I belong on the short bus.
Or maybe she knows the truth. I can’t tell—not with her—and I’m too exhausted to try. Especially today, after watching a memorial service for someone who’s not dead.
After trying to save Sofía again. After failing. Again.
“Next weekend,” my mom whispers, pulling away from her tight hug. “You’re okay staying here until then?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I say.
My parents and sister get into the Buick, and my family is gone before I head back inside.
“Tomorrow I’d like to have an extra session with you,” the Doctor says, holding the door open for me.
“Of course,” I answer. Another session would definitely help. Even though Dr. Franklin can’t control time like me, he says my emotions are causing the block, making it so I always snap back to the present when I try to reach Sofía. So if a “feelings” session with him can help me regain control of my power, I’m all for it.
When I first came to the Berk, I had no idea that so much of learning to control my powers would come from inside my head. Most of the first week was even spent in psychoanalysis. The Doctor assured me that every student goes through such rounds, to make sure they are “suitable for the special environment afforded at Berkshire Academy.”
As I head upstairs, I calculate how much time I can focus on saving Sofía. We had a day off with the fake memorial service, but classes resume Monday. I may be able to negotiate some extra time from some of my teachers, though. Our classes are small and tailored to each of our strengths, paced individually. I’m several lessons behind Ryan in math, but I’m already in a different textbook from everyone else in history. Maybe a little “independent study” during that class would allow me some time to work on saving Sofía.
When we reach my floor, the Doctor tells me goodnight and reminds me of lights-out, even though it’s a few hours away. He heads down a different hallway, going to the back stairs that lead all the way up to the top floor, where the staff live. It’s kind of weird to think that so many people live in this one house. The way the mansion is divided and our schedules are made, I only ever see the other students here in passing. The only people I really talk to are Harold, Gwen, Ryan, Sofía, and our teachers as they rotate from unit to unit. We stay in our one big classroom all day, being served history and math and science, with a sprinkle of how-to-control-your-powers and a dash of try-not-to-explode-everything.
I haven’t had control of my powers . . . ever, really. I’m like someone who never had a real driving lesson but figured out the basics on a flat road on a sunny day. I’ve occasionally been able to steer my time travel, but when it really matters, like with Sofía, I’m behind the wheel in the mountains with ice and fog. I keep skidding off the road, crashing into trees.
It’s not going to stop me from trying, though. I was so close earlier today. Sofía was right there.
As soon as I’m in my room, I grab my notebook off my desk and flip it to the pages I’ve been using to record my efforts to save my girlfriend.
Here’s what I know: Sofía Muniz, a Latina girl with an accent, dressed in modern clothing, is trapped in the very white, very strict, very conservative world of Puritan colonial Massachusetts, 1692. She also has a habit of turning invisible, and she isn’t always able to control when it happens, so I’m sure the Puritans are going to think that’s a swell party trick that has nothing to do with the devil. And I put her there, and I can’t save her. Every time I get close, I get thrown back to the present—without her.
My eyes scan down the list. I’ve tried to go back to 1692. I’ve tried to go back to just before we left. I quickly add a few notes about today—the closest I’ve come to actually seeing her again.
Something was different about today. I didn’t intend to go back to the day she disappeared, but there I was. If I can figure out how I got there, re-create whatever it was I did to end up there . . .
No time like the present to try. I close my eyes, calling up the timestream.
I can feel rather than see all of time stretching out around me. The timestream is made of strings extending out, swirling around as if they’re resting on top of water. There are hard knots at certain points—the points where I am not allowed to go.
Woven through the strings is one bright red thread—Sofía’s life.
My fingers hover over it, careful not to touch it and pull myself into her past. Not yet, anyway. I can pick out the pattern of her past—her home in Austin, her family, her friends, the Berk. Me. Her string twirls around mine like an embrace.
And then it shoots backward, violently and sharply, directly into 1692. That spot in history looks like a black hole, far darker than any other spot in the timestream. The end of Sofía’s string is somewhere in there, disappearing into the void.
Beyond my reach.
I extend my hand toward that spot anyway, hoping that my fingers can feel what my eyes cannot see. I strain to get closer, and sharp pains shoot across my skin like electric bursts. I grit my teeth, ball my hand into a fist, and punch at the inky black vortex.
Bright, vivid flashes erupt into my mind’s eye, speeding from one image to the next so violently that I cannot retain anything more than fragments: an ear with a diamond earring, a tree with new green leaves, the sound of crashing waves, the taste of vomit, the roofline of a house, the smell of smoke, a horse’s whinnying, the feel of another hand in mine, the fingers slipping from my grasp. I cry out in frustration, groping blindly into the darkness, but the timestream repels my presence, pushing against me.
Time is fighting me, and I pull back before I lose what little control over the timestream I have. My arms flail wildly, and my fingers brush a thick string, red and blue and green and brown all wrapped together, and I see a flash of another moment in time, one I didn’t intend to revisit.
My first lesson with Dr. Franklin.
Even though we all have different powers, the Doctor guides us in the basics of controlling them. The same principles apply. This has always been the point of Berkshire: to give students the control they need to blend with society. He’s not training us to be superheroes or anything like that. We’re not going out into the world to wear capes and masks. The Doctor just wants us to go out into the world without breaking it.
When I travel in time, I physically go into the past, but I didn’t pull myself into this moment, I just brushed against it. Rather than inserting myself into the past, I see it like a movie playing in my mind.
We all sit in blue plastic chairs around the Doc’s desk. Each of us is wearing a nametag, the kind that are stickers that say: HELLO, MY NAME IS . . . Harold has printed his name in such small letters that I can’t read them. Gwen, on the other hand, used a glitter pen to make her name sparkle. Sofía wrote with a Sharpie, careful to add the accent mark over the í. She lifted the pen up with a flourish of her wrist, then looked around guiltily, as if such extravagance was something to be ashamed of.
“Now that we know each other’s names,” the Doctor says, “let’s introduce our powers. Harold?”
Dr. Franklin turns to Harold first. Later, he would learn not to do that, to let others’ voices fill the room before seeking out Harold’s quiet words. Even so, Harold rises to the occasion. “I speak to ghosts.” His voice is almost a whisper.
“And do they speak back?” Ryan says in a mocking voice. The Doctor shoots him a look.
“Yes,” Harold says simply.
“Well, I can do something useful,” Ryan says. He flicks his hand up, and the blue plastic chairs we’re all sitting in start to float. Harold squeaks and grips the sides of his chair to keep from toppling off. Gwen kicks her feet out, swinging around.
“Thank you,” Dr. Franklin says, and from the tone of his voice, it’s clear he means That’s enough. Ryan casually waves his hand, and the chairs crash back down. Sofía’s off balance and almost falls; the past-me grabs her arm and catches her.
She goes completely invisible.
I jerk my arm back, shocked, but the Doc just gives her a nod and a smile. I wait for her to return to visibility, but she doesn’t.
“My turn,” Gwen says, and she lights her hair on fire, shaking the sparks out like glitter.
Everyone turns to look at me.
“I can move through time,” I say lamely. “I mean, back in time. To the past.”
Everyone waits for me to show my power. “Come on,” Ryan says impatiently.
I close my eyes. I try to do something cool.
Nothing happens.
From my vantage point in the timestream, I cringe. I wanted so much to impress everyone else, but I had even less control of my powers then than I do now. So it’s little wonder that when Dr. Franklin says, “We’ll work on it” in that patronizing tone, I flipped from nervous to angry. I saw red—literally, I saw the world as if there were a red film over everything, and it reminded me of the bloody pond. My brain was spinning, and suddenly I was in the past, back at my grandmother’s house in the mountains. It was run-down, with asbestos tiles on the outside walls and threadbare carpet inside that smelled of dust and old cigarette smoke, and it was my most favorite place in the whole world. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in her front yard, under the pecan tree, with snow falling all around. I could hear the crunch of the snow shifting under my feet, and when I stepped forward, I could taste the coldness in the air.
Now, as an observer of this moment, I see what everyone else saw. One moment I was there, the next I was gone. Ryan gets up and waves his hand in the empty space where I had been sitting. “This is cooler than your trick,” he tells Sofía, who had finally returned to visibility.
“Go back to your chair,” Dr. Franklin says. “You don’t know when he’ll—”
I burst back into existence, my arms swinging. “I’m sorry!” I shout as the Doctor steps back. The slip in time was fast and disorientating, and I hadn’t meant to land a punch on Dr. Franklin’s face when I returned.
The Doctor just rubs his cheek, though, and suddenly the redness disappears.
“This is something we’ll all work on,” he says. “Control.”
I can feel the timestream slipping away from me, the moment fading. My eyes shoot to Sofía, and I beg time to let me have one last glimpse of her. Even though I know she can’t see me in this memory, her face tilts just as I turn to her, giving the illusion that she’s looking right at me. Her lips part to say something, and my heart surges; it feels as if she’s speaking to me, impossibly, through time and space.
I blink, and all I see is my desk and the open notebook in front of me.
But I cannot get the vision of Sofía’s desperate eyes out of my mind.