35

When Corey’s eyes opened, he was in a room.

Somehow he knew where this place was. But everything looked weird. Elongated. Too clear. It was as if his eyes had expanded to include the views from either side of his head.

It was Leila’s room. Or some fun-house-mirror version of it.

Corey tried to sit up, but he couldn’t. He was facedown, and all he could manage was a kind of modified push-up.

“Leila!” he called out. But his voice sounded muffled and odd, and about an octave too low.

He took a deep breath and called her again, louder.

He heard footsteps padding in the hall. He backed away from the door and looked up. The door unlatched and slowly opened. For a moment he saw Ms. Sharp’s friendly smile, and it made him feel warm and welcome after the crazy trip.

“Is Leila here?” Corey asked.

But she looked down, startled. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped. It was pretty exaggerated, like a scene from a horror movie, and for a moment Corey wondered if he was supposed to laugh.

But her shriek was loud. And real.

She slammed the door. Corey could hear her racing down the hallway, screaming about 911.

Corey walked to the door, but before he could try the knob, it opened again and Leila rushed in.

“Oh. Dear. God,” she said, putting her hand to her heart.

“Hey,” Corey said. “What’s up with your mom?”

She came into room and slammed the door behind her. “Corey. Don’t say anything. We need to go, before Mom has a heart attack.”

Before Corey could reply, Leila grabbed the blanket off her bed and threw it around him. Corey felt himself rising off the floor. She was lifting him—completely lifting him into her arms. “How are you doing this?” he cried out. “Put me down!”

He tried to shake loose, but Leila cried out, “Stop that!”

“Will you please explain what’s happening?” Corey asked.

“For God’s sake, Corey,” she replied. “Look!”

She flung the blanket off Corey’s head, enough so that he could see the mirror on the back of Leila’s door.

At first he thought it was a trick. Leila was cradling what looked like a real gray wolf.

A memory jammed its way into his brain. His mom’s story about Corey’s grandmother:

“She lost all her family . . . when they were taken by the Nazis. . . . She was smuggled away by the Resistance . . . out of Europe entirely, to South America . . . and then eventually to Puerto Rico. That’s where she met Papi, where he was stationed in San Juan. It was love at first sight.”

But Mutti hadn’t lost all her family! Her brother Stanislaw had survived. He was there to take care of her, at a small Resistance village near the Austrian border. A village that was supposed to be destroyed shortly after they sent her away.

The breath caught in Corey’s throat.

Of course. Stanislaw was there to protect her. Which meant she never had to sail across the Atlantic with total strangers.

Which meant she never went to San Juan.

Never met the handsome, heroic Puerto Rican soldier named Luis Velez.

And never had a daughter.

Who never married a Greek-American man named Vlechos, aka Fletcher.

Who had never given birth to a son named Corey.

When the genes are confused by time travel, Papou had said, they shift.

Corey’s face was covered again. He felt himself moving in Leila’s arms, down the wood floor of the Sharps’ apartment. He heard earsplitting, panicked screams from Leila’s mom. He felt himself bumping downstairs, and then the cold of the New York City night.

As the sounds of the street gave way to the quiet of Central Park, Corey began to squirm. “Hold still,” Leila demanded. “This is weirding me out.”

“You? How do you think I feel?” Corey asked.

“Look, I’m not supposed to know you,” Leila said. “I mean, to me, you should be a stray wolf in New York City. I should be scared like my mom. But I know that you are Corey, who lives around the corner from me. Even though technically you weren’t born and I never met you.”

“Your memory . . .” Corey grunted. “It didn’t adjust.”

“Exactly,” Leila said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” Leila said. “So I’m taking you to Smig. And Auntie Flora. They are much smarter than me. They’ve been through this. I will make them solve this problem. I will get back to you if I die doing it.”

Corey saw the trees and the grass. His eyes focused on the dogs at the end of their leashes, the mother raccoon and her cubs in the hollow of a tree, a family of rats scurrying into a hole in the road.

He threw back his head and let out a loud, pitiful howl.