Chapter 16

With every step Finn took he expected to see more sunlight filtering through the trees. He waited for the clearing. Down couldn’t be the right direction, it had to be up. He quickened his pace—he had to cover as much ground as possible before Gabi made him turn around.

“I know what you’re doing,” Gabi panted behind him. “Just because you’re going faster doesn’t make it the right trail.”

“I’m sorry. I just need to see around this bend in the path ahead. We can stop here and take a breather if you want.”

Gabi plopped down right in the middle of the path and put her head between her knees. “I wish we had water.”

“I know.” He agreed even though he wasn’t all that thirsty. He was done feeling hopeless. He was ready to keep on climbing. In fact, he was sure he could do it for days if he had to. Nothing was going to stop him now that he was here. His legs itched to keep going. It was clear hers needed a rest though. She began rubbing her calves with her hands.

She gestured for him to go. “Hurry up ahead. I’ll wait here. If there’s no clearing we have to go back to the fork and go my way.”

That was all the permission he needed. Finn bolted up the trail, the leaves crackling beneath his feet and his thigh muscles burning as the trail became steeper and steeper. As he turned the corner, he saw it. Dark leaves parted to show a flash of bright green ferns.

It was there.

A clearing.

He rushed ahead and let the morning sun hit his face full force. The field was full of new growth. It was like he had found a patch of newborn spring hiding away from autumn.

Below him, he could hear Gabi’s phone alarm ring out faintly. He smiled and turned back to the trail.

“Finn? Are you there?” There was fear in her voice. “Please say you’re there.” She was trudging back up the trail looking for him.

He ran back around the corner and beamed a smile at her.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really. It’s the right trail.”

°°°

“I will never again doubt the Mighty Finn!” Gabi twirled in the sun, arms out and laughing.

“Yeah, don’t make promises you can’t keep!” Finn laughed. They weren’t lost. This moment of victory felt good, and he was grateful to her for acknowledging it. It also meant he could trust his instincts. It meant the cards weren’t all stacked against them.

“It’s too pretty not to stop.” She waded into the ferns and proceeded to sit cross-legged in the middle of the clearing. Her head barely cleared the green fronds. She motioned for him to come sit next to him. “The ground here is dry.”

As welcoming as the image was, he did not want to stop again.

“Just for a minute. Consider it a vitamin D break.” She tilted her face up to the sun.

“Now I know you’re spending too much time in Mr. Schuman’s outdoors club.”

He followed the path of bent ferns she had made and sat down. The sun did feel good on his face.

“So what would you change?” he asked.

“Change?”

“In time. History. What if we could change anything—everything!—once we find the tree?”

“I’d pack water,” Gabi deadpanned.

“Okay, obviously that. But seriously, what big things?” Finn asked.

“Oh. I don’t know.” She sounded like she did know.

“You could stop your brother from going overseas,” he suggested.

Gabi grabbed a handful of ferns in her right hand and began to grind them into a pile of light green mulch. “Maybe. I mean—I miss Xavi like crazy. Of course I do. I would want him back in a heartbeat. It’s just, well, it doesn’t seem like it’s all that simple, that’s all.”

“Of course it is. It would just take some planning. Figuring out what the key moments were. We could do it!”

“You’re not getting it.”

If there was anything Finn hated being accused of, it was being dense. “But—”

“Think, Finn! We wouldn’t be who we are now! I might never leave New York. I’d never move here. Bringing him back would change everything.”

Finn didn’t have a rebuttal for that. She was right. They might end up not knowing each other.

He didn’t like to imagine a world where he didn’t know Gabi. His whole life would be different. He would be different.

Every single action has consequences. He could imagine some of them, but there were probably a million others he couldn’t even guess at. Finn felt like he needed some complex software to figure it all out. It made his head hurt.

“I don’t know how they live like this. Mom, Gran, my aunts . . . having to think about every possible outcome before they do anything. It could make you lose your mind.”

“But that’s what they were stopping. Aunt Ev said ISTA is all about keeping the timeline safe from changes, right?”

“Still, it’s a nearly impossible task. Anything you do, back in time, could change something.” He stretched out his legs, realizing how sore they were from all the walking. “Do you remember when I tried to teach you chess?”

Gabi laughed. “Yes! Don’t say try like I didn’t get it. I got it. I just hated it.” She went back to massaging the blood flow back into her legs.

“Do you remember why you hated it? What you said to me?” Finn knelt down on the ground in front of her.

“Yeah. It all got too annoying when you told me entire games are predestined by opening moves.” She put on her special Finn-mocking voice. Somehow she always made him sound British. “I forgot what you called them.”

“Gambits. People make a specific first move, and then the rest of the game plays out in a certain way. The same games have been replayed over centuries.”

“There is no point in playing a game where I can’t be original.” She smiled at the memory and then the smile disappeared. She seemed to forget about her sore legs. “Oh—you think this is like a chess game, being played over and over?”

“If we go with my theory, then yes. Each time Gran or Mom, or whoever, tries to change the timeline, they open with a different gambit and watch how the chain of events plays out. Except the chessboard has limits. It’s a finite square. The other player can only do a few different things with their pieces. In real life, people can do way too many unpredictable things. Every decision we make will change the course of the timeline.” He placed the heel of his palms over both eyes as if to give his senses a break. “There are too many permutations to even consider. There’s no point.”

“I don’t know. Some people are very predictable.” She lay down in the ferns, cradling her head in her arms. “Maybe with those people, you could bank on them doing the same thing each time, staying inside the square.”

Finn lay down on his back next to her. “I can’t think of anybody who would do the same wrong thing, not if they knew the consequences.”

“I think some people would. Even if they had the chance to do better they still wouldn’t take it. I can also think of a few people who would always do the right thing.”

She didn’t say who. She was staring at a hawk lazily circling high overhead, riding those invisible air spirals they somehow know how to find.

“Maybe this isn’t really all that weird,” she said. “I mean on some level, everyone is a product of choices that were made before they could remember, before they were even born. We are who we are because we live here, but we didn’t choose that. Our parents did, and in your case your parents’ parents and so on. Our lives are built on the decisions of others.”

He couldn’t argue with that, though it seemed unfair that so much of his own identity was outside his control. “Maybe if your brother didn’t die, then—”

“Finn, not now. Okay? I’ve played that game lots of times. I know you have, too. It’s not like we don’t have lots of practice at this.”

“Practice?”

“Well, in a way, we’ve both been time travelers for a long time already. Haven’t we? I mean, that’s all you do after you lose someone. You keep going back, over and over again.”

Finn nodded slowly. “Or you bring the ghost of them forward—Travel them to now. So you can just talk to them, show them things.”

“Yes.” She looked at him in surprise, like she couldn’t believe someone else understood. They were connected again, by something deep and ancient. It felt like the beginning of a universe. She turned away first and it was almost a relief.

“It certainly is a safer way to time travel,” he offered.

“I don’t know about that. You can’t build a future, or even a present, by talking to the past all the time,” she said. “Let’s take thirty more seconds to watch the sky and feel the sun. We won’t see it again for a while.”

As they lay there, backbones against the hard earth, the sunlight glowing amber behind their closed eyelids, he was filled with gratitude that Gabi was there. She made him feel solid. When he was with her he wasn’t floating around without edges. He was grounded.