6

“Don’t say no.”

It wasn’t the usual greeting Corey gave Leila Sharp when they had breakfast at the Mila Café on Columbus Avenue. But Corey hadn’t slept since the clock chimed, and it was already after 9:00. He wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.

Already the place was nearly full. She sipped from a cup of hot chocolate as she sat, giving him a baffled look. “Uh, good morning to you, too. I don’t know what I’m not supposed to say no to. But before you start getting all weird on me, I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For asking you to help me with my German vocabulary flash cards yesterday, just after you’d nearly died rescuing your sister. I didn’t know that until later.”

“Oh, right. You’re welcome,” Corey said. “I mean, thank you. She got hurt, so I had to go back and correct that.”

Leila cocked her head. “Wait. That was a time hop?”

“Yup.” Corey sat forward so he could speak softly. Being a time-hopper too, Leila was the only one he could talk to besides Papou, Catsquatch, and Smig. “And then I did another one, to save Bailey’s life.”

“Two in the same day?”

Corey could see the disapproval on her face. Leila was so easy to read. “Well . . . yeah. I saw my sister get beat up. I saw Bailey die. You’re welcome. Think about what would have happened if I’d done nothing. I mean, what would you do if you were in my shoes?”

“Okay, I get that,” Leila said. “It’s great that you did those things. But I have a creepy feeling about this. I can’t help it. My aunt Flora’s life was ruined because—”

“I know! I spoke to her about this. And also to Smig.” Corey lowered his voice another notch. “Oh. Did you know they’re having a . . . thing?”

“What kind of thing?”

“They’re going out.”

Leila’s lip curled into a sneer. “I just lost my appetite.”

“Anyway, transspeciation doesn’t have any rules, really,” Corey said. “It’s not like I’m allowed ten more times and then, bam, Corey-Beast! I mean, it could be ten times, or three. It could also be hundreds. But the thing is, there are warning signs. Hair growing in weird places, you feel a sudden taste for gross things . . .”

Leila peered into Corey’s hot chocolate cup. “You’re not drinking prune juice, are you?”

“Ha ha. Not yet,” Corey said.

“But at some point, when you feel those weird things happen, you’ll have to stop,” Leila said. “Right?”

“Exactly. So what if I’m one of the people who only has a few times, Leila? I can’t stop thinking about that. I don’t want to waste my gift. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I did everything I could have done. So at about five in the morning I came up with this new plan.”

“No,” Leila snapped.

“I told you not to say that. Give me a chance—”

“Corey, I know you,” Leila said. “You’re going to ask me if you should travel in time and do something really, really stupid.” Leila sipped her hot cocoa, which didn’t look hot anymore. “Maybe you need to go back to sleep. It’s Saturday. No diss, but you look terrible.”

Corey broke off a chunk of chocolate chip muffin but he wasn’t feeling very hungry. He told her all the details about the night—his insomnia, the clock, the photos of his grandmother’s family, his mom’s story about the Nazi abduction and his grandparents’ romance, the creepy Hitler footage. . . .

Leila listened patiently. “I didn’t know the part about your grandma meeting your grandpa. It’s so romantic.”

“Not if you think about the reason she had to leave her country,” Corey said. “Watching her whole family be taken away to die. How could she have lived with that? I mean, when I was a kid, she was always smiling and laughing. But now her dementia is getting worse. She calls out for her dad and mom, and her brothers, Jakub, Stanislaw, and Aleksander. Sometimes she screams in English, sometimes in Polish, sometimes Spanish. It’s like she saved up the pain over her whole life, and now her brain won’t let her hide it anymore. Like she’s facing down a monster.”

Leila sighed and looked out the window. “My grandfather was like that. When Opa Joseph got old, he screamed at his caregivers, warning them about the Nazis. But it was all in German and I had to translate. Did you know his name was Josef Scharfstein, and he changed it to Joseph Sharp at Ellis Island? He lost his mother and two older brothers. One was a doctor and the other was a concert pianist.”

“You get this, Leila. You understand. Your grandpa, my mutti, they swallowed all their bad memories. It was like slow poison. There were so many families like that. All those millions of lives erased—inventors, musicians, writers, doctors. Imagine how much better the world would be if they didn’t die!”

He let his words hang in the air. Leila eyed him carefully. “What are you saying, Corey?”

“You’re going to tell me I’m crazy, and maybe I am,” Corey said. “But just listen. I brought my grandmother back from the dead. I saved the life of a Civil War soldier. I kept my sister from being mugged. I rescued Bailey. Every time I’ve tried to change something in the past, it’s been for a good reason, and it worked. But it’s been for me, Leila, or for someone close to me. And that’s just not fair. I can do so much more. If you have only a limited number of times you can change the past, and you’re the only one who can do it—why not go big?”

“Corey’s there’s big and there’s biiiiig. You’re going to go back and single-handedly defeat the Nazis? Is that it?”

Corey took a deep breath. “Well, yeah, that’s sort of the idea, but—”

“Do you know how insane that sounds? Who do you think you are, Corey Fletcher—a superhero?”

“Superman could fly,” Corey said. “Spider-Man could climb with his web. Thor had his hammer. What do you call what I have? What do you call being a Throwback?”

Leila stared at him, frozen, for a good minute. Then she stood and lifted her cup from the table. “Well, I guess if you’re SuperCorey, you don’t need me. You can do everything yourself—”

Corey took her arm gently. “Leila, you can travel in time. I can change time. You’re fluent in German. I’m not. What if you and I went back together?”

“To when?” Leila said. “And to do what? Drop a bomb on Germany?”

“That’s silly.”

“Assassinate Hitler?”

“Well . . .”

“No. No. And no!” Leila pounded the table, nearly spilling Corey’s hot chocolate. “I can’t believe you’re thinking this. We’re just kids!”

“We wouldn’t do the assassination ourselves,” Corey said. “I did research. There was an attempt. And it was foiled. Maybe we could just . . . unfoil it.”

“That would make us accessories to murder,” Leila said. “And in case you were absent that day in Sunday school, it’s morally wrong to kill.”

“It’s morally right to allow a guy to butcher as many people as the entire population of New York City—including your ancestors and mine? It’s right to allow it when there’s a chance you can prevent it?”

“No!”

“So you’ll do it?”

“No!” Leila turned toward the door. “This is crazy. This is out there. This is absolutely bonkers. Did you even think what would happen if you stopped Hitler? Your grandmother would never be smuggled to South America, and she’d never meet your grandfather, right? So you wouldn’t exist!”

“But I do exist!” Corey pointed out.

“Everything adjusts when you change the past, right?” Leila said. “So wouldn’t you adjust your own self out of existence?”

“Then how could I change the past if I never existed?”

“I don’t know! Do I look like Einstein? How can we figure that out unless it actually happens?”

“Exactly!” Corey said. “Look, first we get Hitler. If we can do that, how hard can anything else be? We make it a project to get Mutti and Papi to meet. That would be the easy part.”

“Easy? You are making me cry, Corey Fletcher.”

“So . . . we just let eleven million people die . . .” Corey said, his heart dropping.

“I—how can I answer that?” Leila swallowed and turned away.

“Just say yes,” Corey insisted.

Leila pulled open the door and turned back toward Corey. “Give me twelve hours. I’ll have an answer for you then.”

As she left, three or four pigeons flew away from the front of the door. Corey felt no desire to eat them. His appetite was just fine. Normal as can be.

He smiled and finished his chocolate chip muffin.