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I scurry so quickly between my dorm and JJ’s, even if a demon snatcher was on the prowl, it would have to catch lightning. Thankfully, I still have my soccer speed.
I pick up a rock and ping it at his window. I think. The room remains dark and then I notice a dim, flickering light from a window on the backside of the building.
JJ crosses the room and then sits at the desk under the window. Bingo! I toss another pebble. He looks up abruptly. The window slides open.
Surprise flashes across his face. “Did you miss me?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. I look around for a ladder or something to use to get up. Clearly, I didn’t think this through. “We’re breaking several school rules right now.”
“Obviously.” Amusement plays in his eyes.
“Could I have a ladder or sheet or Rapunzel, could you let down your hair?” I say with a giggle.
Without preamble, I lift into the sky and then through the oversized window.
I. Am. Flying.
I catch myself on the chair as my feet hit the floor.
“Still working on landings,” JJ says with a wink.
It melts me. Shows me there’s a side to him that I’m only now seeing. I want to hold on and not let go. But I also can’t help but tease him. That wouldn’t be true to us. “Show off.”
His lips quirk.
“What are you doing awake?” I ask.
“What are you doing here?” he counters.
“I asked first.”
He sits down on the still-made bed and rests his elbows on his knees. “I haven’t slept since my eighteenth birthday. Remember when you said that I’m moody and miserable? Lack of sleep could be why.”
I sit down next to him not sure how much space to leave but bank on not much. “Are you still moody and miserable?”
His fingers twine with mine and rest on the bed between us. “Not so much. Not like this.” Like a lightbulb warming up, he brightens a shade or two.
I pull out the map and rest it across our laps. “I brought this.” I try to explain the oddities to him and then the dream where his brother appeared.
He chuckles lightly. “Sounds exactly like something he’d do.”
“Perhaps these buildings weren’t constructed yet. Or maybe this was an alternative for the architects when they were planning the campus,” I say as possibilities of what it could be and how we can figure it out take shape.
“Yeah, an alternate,” I say. Without letting go of his hand, I get to my feet. “It will make more sense if I show you.” At least I hope.
After he reluctantly agrees, we steal across campus in the night. Every whisper of the wind and every sound in the distance raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Demon snatchers, guards, and Coven Constabulary are on patrol. Chancellor West, Professors, the Marauders, and given the strange, topsy-turvy world it turns out I live in, any manner of other creatures might also prowl the night. Cinderbeasts, dragons, and Snodgrasses just to name a few.
JJ squeezes my hand assuringly. “Don’t get lazy about blocking your thoughts,” he says as though he just read my mind.
“Don’t go poking around in my head.”
He waggles his eyebrows. “I like to know what you’re thinking.”
I give him one quick glimpse of our first kiss before locking the door of my thoughts and memories.
Either he chuckles, or I kicked a pebble. Either way, it’s an unfamiliar sound.
When we reach Hawthorne Hall, I lead him to the lamplight.
“This is one of the significant places on the map that kind of disappears. See how it gets foggy, blurry. Almost like it was erased. I was thinking there might be a portal like at the Jubilee.” I tilt the map, angling to catch the lamplight and the paper shimmers. “Did you see that?” I say too loudly.
JJ raises an eyebrow and takes the map from my hand. He says, “I’ll indulge you. Let’s go have a look around. I can’t imagine the administration would leave a portal lying open in a heavily used building, but—?”
I pull on the heavy wooden door, but it’s locked. JJ gives me a look that says you have a wand. Then like an automatic door at the grocery store, it slides open.
We step inside and our footsteps echo in the dark. “I can’t see, and it’s kind of spooky.”
Too late, I imagine the duh look he gives me. Oh, right. I have a wand.
The tip of his wand sends out little balls of light, one hops over the next as we move forward, illuminating our way.
“Where should we go?” I ask faintly. I’ve spent a lot of time in this building and have never seen anything resembling the door like at the Jubilee, but then again I didn’t see that at first either. I pause outside Popperwell’s classroom and have a think. “If I were a magic door, where would I be?”
“By Imogen’s statue is too obvious,” JJ says.
“I guess a better question is where do we want to go?”
“Now that is a good question.”
“Are you saying that usually, my questions aren’t any good?”
“I’d never even imply it,” he says sweetly.
“Where do we want to go? What do we want to do?”
“Exceptional questions, as usual,” JJ says, humoring me.
“We want to find the wand. Where did Imogen last have it?”
JJ shrugs.
“Where did she like to spend time?”
In the dim orbs of light from JJ’s wand, I see his eyes widen. “There used to be a history class at Riptivik before they switched to futurism. Let’s see. I’ve read half the books in the library—I guess not being able to sleep has its benefits. I believe it was in the current alchemy classroom.”
“Since alchemy is the study of transformation, it makes sense to create to make a door where there isn’t one.”
When we enter the alchemy classroom, in the dim shadows, several brews bubble behind the professor’s desk. I creep past the long tables, searching for the light switch.
“Maija?” JJ says. “Can you hear me?”
JJ is faint as if he’s talking into a pool of water. I walk toward the sound and then a hand grips my arm. Nope, it wasn’t water. It was Jell-O. I pass through the portal and land in the same room. Only instead of bubbling potions, leather books line the wall behind the teacher’s desk.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Let’s have a look around.”
We walk the halls of Hawthorne, but instead of reaching Imogen’s statue, there’s a water fountain in its place. JJ grunts.
“Strange.”
“There’s only one way to figure out if we’re in a different time or place,” JJ says confidently.
Our footsteps echo in the hall. I worry Derrington is going to glide around the corner at any moment, but not even an errant piece of paper stirs. When we step outside, the campus seems quieter than when we were out here before and somehow more still.
“Where to?” I ask.
He leads me back toward the dorms. The door to Penny House is unlocked when I try it. Usually, it smells like cookies (and perfume), but tonight I detect something else beneath that, mothballs.
“I can’t tell if this is a different version of our campus since it’s night and everything is relatively the same or if—?”
We’re outside my bedroom door. JJ nods for me to open it.
“I’m not asleep in my bed, which isn’t weird because I’m awake. The quilt is purple,” I point out. “Mine is yellow. Bree’s side of the room has posters of cute rumpus players and the lights Yassi strung up aren’t there. It’s my room but it isn’t. Should we check yours?” I ask JJ.
When we step back outside, the sky pales from black to gray. Dawn is coming. The hair on the back of my neck lifts. We rush over to his dorm, but he doesn’t recognize anything overly unusual or belonging to him either. He checks the door to the room next to his and it’s empty.
“Spencer Caughry lives there, but it’s storage space. Odd.”
“JJ, we should go. I don’t like it here. It feels lonely, deserted, forgotten.”
Several of the lantern-lit pathways are missing, namely, the one that goes to the Lake House. I also notice a bench where there’s usually a statue. The tree everyone likes to sit under on sunny days is considerably smaller.
We rush back through Hawthorne just as the first rays of sunlight stream through the stained glass windows, embedded with pieces of mirror. I stop midstride and my mouth falls open. I’m not there at all. No reflection. I swallow hard and grip JJ’s hand, leading him to the bathroom. We stand in front of the mirror.
He reaches his hand to his cheek. JJ is no longer a black and white photograph, at least not here. He’s intense, full color. I lace my fingers through his and his hand isn’t cold at all.
“We should go,” he says.
“But you seem brighter. What if—?”
“No, this isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here.”
The bells in the chapel toll.
We pass through the history classroom toward the door. JJ stops in front of the teacher’s desk. A tidy stack of the Daily Vine newspapers sits in the corner. His voice is low when he says, “We didn’t travel through space but time. This is the year before my mother cursed me.”
He pulls me back through the shimmering door and into the dawn of the time back where we belong.
