Loop (11 page)

Finn lifted himself up on his elbows and grimaced as he touched a raw spot on his cheek. “And you never will again.” He sounded like he’d inhaled as much sand as I had lodged down my bra.

“I’m so sorry. For your car. For … zapping you.”

“Why again did you do that?” He rubbed the back of his skull, feeling for bumps, his movements still stiff.

“All your answers to my questions have been so cryptic. I was trying to get your attention.”
By stunning him?
the little voice shouted in my head. I had just violated every rule of Shifting
ever
. Including the ones that hadn’t been written yet. I suddenly found myself fall-on-my-face grateful that he didn’t exist in any of our data systems. Because this little stunt was beyond review board. Beyond expulsion.

Finn stared at the bubbling spot where his car had been. “You wanted my attention? I’d say you got it.”

“I didn’t mean to turn the stunner up that high. It was supposed to sting you, to make you listen. I can’t believe I wrecked your car. I’m so, so, so, so sorry.” I buried my face in the sand, a bad idea given my wound. “Oww!”

Finn reached over and drew me close.

“Shhh,” he said. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have provoked you earlier.”

“What? Stop it!” I pushed him away. “I drove your blarking car into the blarking ocean. I could have killed us both. Yell at me.
Blame
me.”

An infuriating laugh filled the space between us.

“How is this funny?” I asked.

“It’s not, but you know that thing you said earlier about investing the penny?” He shook sand out of his hair and pulled his shoulders into a sheepish shrug. “It’s kind of true. We’re not hurting.”

One final bubble glugged to the surface where his Porsche had been.

“I guess I could pay you back in stock tips,” I said. A hint of a laugh, more shock than anything, came out. The sun melted toward the horizon. I took off my shoes to shake the sand out.

“You don’t owe me anything.” His hand inched its way toward mine. A wave lapped high on the shore and reached my toes, an excuse to hop up.

“So back to my questions.”

His shoulders shook in a silent chuckle.

“You still won’t answer me?”

“Not won’t, Bree. Can’t.”

“You can’t remember what I said or did a year ago that apparently changed your entire outlook on life?”

“No.” He stood up and brushed sand away. “I
can’t
talk about it, at least not right now.”

“Sounds kind of paranoid,” I said.

“This coming from the girl who attacked me with a freeze ray gun?”

“It’s not a ray gun,” I mumbled. “More a … nerve disrupter.”

“And yet that doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Look, just tell me. Obviously, I’m going to find out soon enough.” So there.

“I can’t.”

“You mean ‘won’t.’”

He tossed his hands in the air. “What I mean is you made me promise I wouldn’t tell you!”

Finn took off walking up the beach toward the road without a syllable of explanation.

“What do you mean by that?” I scrambled after him, stumbling over the tire track mounds. My legs were so much shorter than his, I had to take two steps for every one of his long strides.

“What do you think I mean?” He turned around and looked at me like I was somehow the crazy one. “Future You must know about this trip. She didn’t want me to tell you what she asked me to do.”

“That does
not
sound like me.”

“Y’know what?” he said as he took off again. “I don’t think
you
sound like you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, I’m trying stay positive, but you’re making it really hard.”

“Oh, thank you for reminding me! Everything is Bree’s fault … I almost forgot for all of two minutes.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” His pace slowed, but he didn’t turn to look at me.

“Then what are you saying?” I jogged forward to catch up with him and put my hand on his shoulder.

He flinched away from my touch.

“What I’m saying is, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what could possibly happen in the next however many months or years of your life that sucks some of the shrew out of you.”

My breath turned to cotton in my throat. Snappy comebacks raced to the end of my tongue. Most involved his lack of kissing skills and love of action figures. But they all dissolved on the tip before I could blurt them out. Angry tears brimmed my eyes.

Finn put his fist to his mouth. “I didn’t mean that.”

He reached out to me, and I bristled away.

“I get it.” I’d had enough. I wiped my face with my shirt and strode past him.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes.” Finality pounded in my voice. “I do.”

*   *   *

Finn knew a shortcut back, and he kept his yap shut on the walk home. The silence, awkward as it was, gave me a chance to mentally sift through the bizarre situation I’d somehow gotten myself into. What I knew: Apparently, at some point in the future I would return to visit the Masterson family. I would, umm, become friendly with Finn for some reason that would surely make sense at the time. It certainly didn’t now. I’d take Leto’s delivery with me. And I would ask for Finn’s help with something. What I didn’t know: everything else.

As we neared Finn’s house, a headache started pounding across my temples. It wasn’t the usual spot as the Buzz. Probably a result of the crash mixed with wanting to cry.

I rubbed at my silver locket bracelet, wishing, wanting, needing my mom in that moment. The last sliver of sun glinted off the topmost windows of the Masterson home as we reached their driveway. A lace of clouds melted from orange to red to pink. The view would have been magnificent if I were able to focus on anything but the increasing pain that pummeled my head. It was a strange sensation, like a gnawing from the inside out.

“See? Not far at all.” Finn turned to look at me. A paper-thin smile strained his lips.

Charlotte was pacing on the porch with her cell phone. As we crunched down the gravel driveway, Finn waved to get his mom’s attention. I caught the tail end of the phone conversation.

“Never mind. He’s here.” She ran down the front steps and called, “Where’s your car?”

“Bay,” said Finn.

“What?”

“In the bay.”

“You mean the
water
? Why is your car in the—?” She stopped when Finn coughed and shook his head from side to side, pausing on my side with an extra cough.

“Was Bree driving?”

“No. It’s a long story, Mom.”

“Are you two all right?”

Finn nodded. I started to, but a new wave of agony seized the base of my skull. Jagged shards sealed my eyes shut. I couldn’t escape it. This was no Buzz.

I reached out and grabbed Finn’s shoulder. “Hurts … hurts.” The words came out in a choke and seemed distant, like someone else had spoken them. Even my tongue wasn’t immune to the pain.

“Is Dad back?” asked Finn. He cradled me against his shoulder. My limbs went stiff, then limp.

“He’s in the house.”

“Get him!”

Finn’s dad came running out the door a few moments later. But it was too late. I was being pulled inside out. Pulled with a ferocity I’d never experienced before in Shifting.

The tips of my fingers tingled. I reached for my QuantCom but couldn’t make out the screen. The world around me darkened by the second. In the distance, John shouted something. I couldn’t understand him.

I was dying. Was already dead. This must have been what had happened to my mom.

Wait.

No.

It hit me. I wasn’t dying, though in that moment I wished I were. This was a forced fade.

I was in so much trouble when I got back.

But then I became aware of another sensation, that of being held. Finn lowered me to the ground. Warm, strong arms wrapped around my cold and lifeless ones. He held me against his chest slowly rising and falling, so different from my own panicked panting.

“No!” I pushed Finn as hard as I could, but he only held tighter. I had to get him off me. He’d never survive the Shift.

“Trust me,” he said quietly.

Trust him?

“Let go of me.” I tried in vain to get away from him. “Get him off of me!” I shouted to Finn’s parents.

Charlotte struggled to reach out to Finn a few yards away, sobbing. “Not like this. John, can’t you—?”

“Not yet, Char.” John held her back. “It has to happen.”

I thrashed like a salmon who thought it could escape the bear. It was no good. Finn was a persistent bear.

I rolled over. I would squirm off of him, push him away from a death sentence. As the pressure became unbearable, I gave up and let myself fade. My last coherent thought was,
This must have been the mess Finn’s father was referring to.

Killing his son.

chapter 9

THE FIRST TIME
I ever witnessed my mother Shift, I was six. Our neighbor Mrs. Jacobs had to back out of babysitting at the last minute, so Mom lugged me along to her lab at the National Gallery of Art. She’d discovered a potential ink discrepancy in one of the early Impressionists’ signatures—or something like that—and she needed to run back to 1864 and check it. Settled into a corner of the room with a bag full of be-good-or-else bribes and the other Art Historians fawning over me, I was in heaven. Until my mom stepped onto the Shift Pad and disappeared. Just like that. Gone. She’d told me it would happen that way, but to see it—to see
her
vanish—was too much for my six-year-old brain.

Mom’s transporter, Jex, was one of the old-old-old-timers. He had fuzzy white tufts growing out of his ears, and when I asked him about the hair he said it was to filter out the whiners. Mom had told me to give him a wide berth when I visited her in the lab. She needn’t have bothered. He smelled like pickles and cheap cologne.

As soon as my mother Shifted, I started whimpering. Then crying. Then wailing. Jex was not what one would call sympathetic.

“She’s only gone back a few hundred years. Stop yer bellyaching.”

“But … but … but…” Each sob turned to a painful burr in my throat.

“Do you want me to force her fade?”

The way he said it, even at that age, I knew there was only one answer to that question. But still, I couldn’t stop the tears. Mom’s assistant Amelia had to scoop me up and rush me out of the room until I calmed down.

“Did I get Mommy in trouble?”

“With Jex?” Amelia planted me on a bench in front of a portrait of a girl sitting quietly with stockinged feet hanging off the edge of a bed. Maybe Amelia hoped to inspire me. “You don’t need to worry about him. He snarls, but he doesn’t have any teeth.”

“He doesn’t have any—?”

Amelia sighed. “I mean, he would never follow through on that threat, a forced fade.”

“Is a forced fade bad?”

“Very.”

“Does it hurt?”

“You’ll never need to worry about something like that.”

“But does it?”

Another sigh, this one without looking at me. “Yes.”

I thought she’d elaborate, but she didn’t.

*   *   *

Amelia had told the truth.

“Hurt” didn’t cover it. I gasped for breath. My lungs had been crushed into a tiny ball.
Everything
had been crushed into a tiny ball. My head had somehow simultaneously caved in and cracked open. And my stomach …

Oh, blark.

I turned my head and heaved, but nothing came up. I forced my eyelids open.

White stone loomed overhead. I curled my fingers into the ground, and they met grass, but not the cool, soft green I’d tromped through in Chincoteague. It prickled, scratching against my wrists. I blinked and willed my eyes to focus. The Jefferson Memorial stretched out above me, fuzzy, then sharp, fuzzy, then sharp.

There was no denying the “forced” in the forced fade. So different from the normal synch sensation, that of a taut rubber band slackening. My band had snapped. I brushed my trembling palm across my face, and when I pulled it away a streak of red stained it. I pressed my fingers to my nose. Blood. Gushing out. Oozing down my wrist. This couldn’t be happening. I pinched my nostrils shut and fought back another dry heave.

When I reached my arms out to push myself up, my right hand brushed against something soft. I looked over to see what it was, and vomit crawled back up my throat.

Finn.

No. This couldn’t be real. He was a hallucination. But when I touched his cheek it was solid.

“Finn.” My voice was hoarse and hysterical. It built to a scream. “Finn!” I shook his shoulders. He didn’t move.

Panicked, I pressed my lips to his. Still warm. Soft. But motionless.

I buried my ear in his chest, listening for breath, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my own head. What had I done? Future Me knew about this.
Knew
about this! I should have found a way to stop him.

“Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead.” I rocked back and forth.

Help. I had to go for help. I stood, like a marionette pulled upright. But I had no one I could turn to. Not for this.

My QuantCom vibrated and started beeping. I threw it as far away as I could with a roar. Given how worn-out I was, it wasn’t far. Fury spread to my core, but there was nothing to pummel, no one to scream at. I alone had caused this.

I gulped a mouthful of air but couldn’t draw it down my throat.
This
. This was what drowning felt like. Finn’s hair had fallen into his eyes. I knelt down next to him and brushed it away. And then the sobs started, plump tears splashing across his chest, his arm.
No,
I thought bitterly.
His corpse.

The corpse sat up and rubbed its head.

“Aiggh!” I flung myself backward against the cold stone of the memorial.

“That hurt like a—” muttered Finn before he spotted me. “How long have I been out?”

“You’re alive.”

“Barely.”

“You. Are. Alive.” I dug my thumb into a crack in the marble beneath me. Something real, something solid.

Finn looked at me as if he was walking into a trap. “Yes…”