Intent matters. As soon as I even thought about warning Sofía, about trying to save her, time pulled me back.
I thump my head against the common room door. The windows outside are dark, far darker than the evening of October 3, and I don’t have to pull out my phone to check that I’m back in the present, but I do anyway.
At least I got to see her. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
I close my eyes and try to picture her in that moment when she saw me and her eyes lit up. I want to hold on to that image forever.
This is progress. My control has been weakening, but I wanted to see Sofía, and I did. Figuring out the intent thing brings me one step closer to saving her.
I turn to go back to my room, but I realize that it would actually be nice to have a distraction from all that’s going on. I push open the common room door. For a moment, I see it the way it was on October 3, with Sofía at the table, and a smile plays at my lips. But I blink, and it’s today, and Sofía’s not here.
Ryan has the chess set out on the table, and as I step inside the room, a white bishop knocks over a black pawn of its own volition. Ryan picks up the fallen pawn, twisting it in his fingers as he stares at the board, and a black rook slides forward to take the bishop. Gwen cranks up the volume of the television across the room, ignoring everyone but the zombies she’s shooting. Harold must be in bed already.
As upset as I am, I still like this place. Berkshire is a far cry from the old, rambling farmhouse where I grew up. Maybe that’s why this room wraps around me like a warm blanket. That house, with its two and a half acres and pond and willow trees, is just a little too . . . provincial for me. Provincial. That’s an SAT word my sister would love. But it fits. Even though the house isn’t in the middle of nowhere, it’s far from all my friends and within walking distance of exactly nothing. Somehow, all that space cages me in. Everything in the Berk is wrapped up in brick and contained together. It’s nice.
As much as I love the academy, though, it’s still a school, and the only place where Sofía and I can really just chill is the common room. It’s where we eat, where we take breaks, where we hang out. Sofía first opened up to me in this room, over by the wing chairs. She was sitting on the floor, behind the chairs, reading a book and sort of fading in and out of visibility. If it hadn’t been for the book, I don’t think I would have noticed her.
I told her that she was reading my favorite book, but that was a lie. I’d never read it—I just wanted to talk to her. She started to tell me what she liked about it, but I was super distracted by the way she slowly turned visible, her hair illuminating gold then copper then rich brown.
I think she suspected that I didn’t know the book. I mean, I knew of the book—it had been an option for ninth-grade reading, something about gangs in the ’50s or whatever—but I’d never read it, which didn’t take her long to realize. “It’s about death,” she said. “And it’s about living after someone you love dies. And . . .” She paused, and in that moment she became completely, 100 percent visible. “And it’s about not being afraid of being alone. Because in the end, we’re all alone.”
“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
Books meant a lot to Sofía, and she was always reading. I didn’t have many books that I liked, and I didn’t really have anything eloquent that I could say to impress her, but I kind of regret not talking to her about the few books I did love. She was showing me a part of her when she told me about what book she was reading. I should have told her about a book that meant something to me the way that book meant something to her, because I can think of no better way to meet a girl than to see her through the eyes of the story she loves best.
I scowl. I don’t like the way I keep thinking about Sofía, in memories and regrets as if she’s gone for good. I step further into the room, torn between playing a video game with Gwen (I’d likely lose) or chess with Ryan (I’d definitely lose). But then I see Harold in the corner. I guess he didn’t go to bed after all.
Harold sits as far away from everyone else as possible, his wing chair shifted so it’s almost completely facing the wall. I can still see his mouth moving, though, and I can tell he’s talking to spirits that only he can see.
When it comes to our powers, no one has it worse than Harold. He sees and speaks to spirits and ghosts, but they tell him what they want to tell him, not anything he wants to hear. He can’t command them. He can’t do anything useful with them. He’s just sort of stuck, forever listening to a bunch of dead people he can’t shut up.
Maybe it’s just the suckiness of this weekend, but a dark fear rises in my throat. I can’t stop thinking about the black-hole feeling of where Sofía was supposed to be in the timestream. I stride across the room, scattering the chess pieces Ryan had floating beside the board. “Hey!” Ryan says indignantly, waving his hand and bringing all the chess pieces back to his side.
I start to drag another chair across from Harold, but it’s heavy and loud, so I just plop down on the floor at his feet instead.
“Hello,” Harold whispers, his eyes at a spot about a foot above my head. I’m not sure if he is talking to me or to a spirit I can’t see. When I don’t answer, Harold’s gaze drifts down to mine, an expectant and curious glint to his eyes.
“Hi,” I say.
Harold usually sticks to himself and spends far more time talking to his ghosts than to any of us.
“So.” I press my lips together, my hands twitching with nervous energy. “I mean, so. Sofía, right? It’s my fault she’s gone, and obviously I need to go back and get her, but . . . I can’t. I mean, I’ve tried. I’ve tried a lot. But for some reason, I can’t save her, no matter what I do. And . . .” I swallow, almost unable to continue. “And I’m worried that maybe the reason why I can’t save Sofía is because she’s already too far gone, that I can’t save her because it’s impossible.”
Harold looks at me as if I’m crazy.
“It’s just that, I should be able to go back to exactly where she got stuck in time and pull her out. But . . . I can’t. So maybe the reason why I can’t find her in the timestream anymore is because . . . maybe she’s . . .”
No. Those words can’t be spoken.
“You talk to ghosts, right?” I say finally.
Harold’s eyes shift, unfocused, gazing at something . . . someone . . . only he can see. “The voices speak to me,” he says softly.
Creepy stuff like that is exactly the reason Harold got beat up so much at his old school.
He lets silence fall around us.
“I guess I just wanted to ask . . .”
Harold stares at me intently. Waiting.
“Do you see Sofía?”
There. I said it.
“I don’t always see,” Harold says, his eyes losing focus. “Often, I just hear. Whispers. Regrets. Whispers.”
I lean up on my knees. I want to grab Harold, force him to give me his full attention. “But do you see or hear Sofía?” I ask, my voice rising. “Maybe she’s gone, maybe what I did—” I swallow. “Maybe what I did killed her. And if it did, I know she’d come back. Here. To me. To all of us. Has she . . . do you see her? Do you hear her?”
Harold cocks his head like a cat about to pounce on a bird rustling in the grass. When he speaks, his voice is almost inaudible. “No. She is silent. She is not in the voices. She is just . . . gone.”
I sag in relief. Gone—but not so far gone that I can’t still reach her. She’s not dead. She’s okay. She’s stuck in the past behind some sort of block that’s stopping me from saving her, but she’s still alive.
“Thanks, man,” I say, standing up and smacking Harold on the knee. Harold jerks as if startled out of deep sleep by the touch. I’ll leave him to his ghosts, then. I wander over to the cushions where Gwen is sitting, using a flamethrower on the horde approaching her character on the screen.
“You should be careful what you say,” Gwen mutters, not taking her eyes off the TV.
“Huh?”
Gwen shoots me a look. “The Doctor’s not here, but he is, you know?” Her voice drops an octave. “Watching.” Her eyes flick to the corner where I had just been sitting, talking to Harold.
“I don’t under—”
“There.” Gwen’s eyes linger on the ceiling, on the almost invisible black camera lens that points at exactly the spot where I had just been sitting.
“Why is the Doctor spying on us?” I ask, shifting closer to Gwen. I scan the room and notice at least three more cameras, one in each corner, pointing down on us.
Gwen shrugs. “Don’t know. But he is.”
“It’s been like this for two weeks,” Ryan calls from the table in the center of the room, his attention still on the chess game. “They installed them after the last episode.” His eyes flick to Harold.
Three weeks ago, Harold was possessed by a malevolent spirit he’d been trying to talk into leaving him alone. He attacked Dr. Franklin. The Doc wasn’t hurt, of course—he healed himself in seconds—but I guess the director decided to add more security after that.
To be honest, I’m just relieved that the cameras weren’t installed because of my screw-up.
“It’s probably just a precaution,” I say. I can’t help but wonder, though, how the director expects cameras to keep us safe.
“Sure,” Ryan says, his tone flat. “Yeah, that’s probably all it is.”