Twist (3 page)

But easy or no, each assault of the timeline felt like a personal attack against me.

“Do you want to stay here and enjoy the beach for a little while?” asked Finn.

“I just want to go home.”

*   *   *

“I vote we pitch a tent and stay here forever.” Finn had stretched out on his usual cool, mossy boulder in a hidden corner of the greenhouse at the Institute. He said that every time he came to the twenty-third century.

“Forever's a long time.” I scratched at a patch of lichen on the base of the rock. I loved this place. My school really was my second home.

“Well, I'm glad I get to share it with you.” He grinned. He had this amazing blind faith that everything would work out, even as I constantly discovered ways to disprove him.

I didn't deserve him.

Hush
. I silenced the nagging fear that cropped up every time I thought about Finn's and my future. It was difficult enough keeping up with our past.

“How's your arm?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Like it never happened.”

Because, technically, it hadn't.

I didn't understand how the reverter worked or why, but it completely erased Dr. Canavan's change to the timeline. Well, not
completely
.

Canavan would be haunted by a vague patchwork of memories of what he had done and what his life would have been like if he'd succeeded in making that change. For lack of a better word, I had started calling those false memories “flashes.” I didn't understand that part either, but I knew they would torment him.

“So I don't get it,” said Finn.

“Get what?”

“I thought they were going to be careful, screen all the people who wanted to make changes, to make sure something like this didn't happen. How could they approve a leading immunologist to play fast and loose with the space-time continuum?”

They,
of course, referred to the Initiative for Chronogeological Equality. ICE. And the answer to Finn's question was …

“I don't know.”

“If you hadn't stopped him, a lot of people could have gotten sick, right?”

“And died.”

“Why would ICE allow that? I don't get it.”

“Maybe they're not in as much control as they think they are,” I said. “Maybe I'm not either.”

I brushed my finger against the fading gash that had almost altered my life forever, but that I'd been able to seal in a matter of seconds when I got back to the twenty-third century. Finn tried to understand the weight of responsibility that now pressed on me every second of every day with this reverter, but he couldn't really.

“Do you have plans later?” he asked.

“I don't think so,” I said after having to give it some thought. It was hard to say. Trying to keep up with my schedule had become a full-contact sport. It's not that I was a social butterfly like my best friend, Mimi, and it was Spring Break, so almost all the students were gone from the Institute, but I felt like there was something I had wanted to do.

“Not planning on seeing someone, are you?” Finn sounded the teensiest bit suspicious.

“Who would I be seeing?” He couldn't be thinking about my ex-friend Wyck. It had been six months since Wyck's future self had tried to kill me by throwing me off the Washington Monument. His
future self,
not the Wyck that I had been friends with—the Wyck that had stuck by me when I was a pariah because of my mother's coma last year or helped me with my class assignments or laughed through stupid movies with me. But I still couldn't wrap my head around the fact that he could become that person.

I'd only seen Wyck once in the last six months, and that was when the reverter went off and I had caught him trying to change his past, just a couple weeks after our encounter at the Monument. He went back and tried to talk the admissions council at the Institute into letting him back into the Transport Program after he was expelled for pushing Mimi down the stairs. Again, the guilty party was actually his future self, but Mimi hadn't been able to tell the difference, and I certainly wasn't going to stick up for him. I jabbed that reverter into Wyck so fast he never saw it coming.

Part of me wanted to go talk to him. I had so many questions I still needed answered.

But there was no way I'd do that behind Finn's back.

“Oh, I remember what I wanted to go do,” I said. It was a movie I thought Finn would like. “
Death Rumpus IV
is out today. You'll like it. All you need to know is the main character always gets killed off at least twelve times in each movie. He has a revivapaddle strapped to his chest, and it brings him back, and he keeps going.”

“Sounds horrible … ly awesome!”

“We can grab dinner beforehand.”

“As long as you don't Shift away in the middle.” The hint of jealousy was back.

“What are you talking about? Who am I going to go see?” I started to laugh.

“Me,” he said glumly.

Oh. This again? I snapped my mouth shut but had to stifle a giggle.

Thankfully, my trips back to spend time with his past self had grown less and less frequent. In fact, as far as I knew, there was only one trip back that I hadn't taken. My final one. The one where I asked him to protect me, the one where I lied to him and told him I'd never see him again.

“You do remember that he's
you
,” I said.

“I know. I just wasn't expecting this to be so hard. To know that you spend time with him, that you kiss him. That you … love him, too.”

“But he. Is. You.”

“I realize it makes no sense,” he said.

“Well”—I wrapped my arms around his waist—“today I'm all yours.”

“Okay.” He returned the embrace and gestured to my pocket. “Now let's just pray we can make it through a whole meal without that stupid green thing going off again.”

And there it was. That stab in my gut, wondering what life would be like for him if he wasn't with a girl who was so chronologically complicated.

“Let me go change,” I said. I reeked of smoke.

We crawled through the old abandoned air ducts and emerged in the dorm room I shared with Mimi. Finn lowered me to the ground before hopping down after me. I grabbed a change of clothes and was about to step into the bathroom when the door whished open. Mimi and I both let out a shriek of surprise.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you went skiing with your family.”

“We got back yesterday. My brothers are still in town so I decided to get some peace and quiet. Oh, hey, Finn.” She gave him a little wave. I was thankful that Mimi knew of Finn's existence. It made things easier not having to hide him. Of course, she just thought he was my loving boyfriend (true) from the archaic but picturesque area of Old New Mexico (which I completely made up in a moment of panic). Finn and I had made up a bogus internship that kept him traveling a lot. Mimi didn't know he was from the past or that he was a Shifter, much less an unchipped Shifter. Then again, I also hadn't figured out how to break the news to her that
I
was an unchipped Shifter.

“I love skiing,” said Finn. “Where did you go?”

Oh, no no no. This always happened when Finn tried to have a pleasant conversation with anyone from the twenty-third century, which I tried to keep at a minimum. His definition of skiing would be something bizarre like going to a snow-covered mountain and hurtling himself down it with slabs of wood strapped to his feet.

“Did Charlie have a good time?” I asked. He'd gone with them. Charlie was also the one topic of conversation sure to steer Mimi off course.

“Yes.” Mimi got that blissful vacant look she reserved for her shmoopiepants, then snapped back with it. “Did you end up staying in town?”

“Pretty much.” That had been my original plan. I really needed to catch up in some classes. Between spontaneously Shifting somewhere almost every day and keeping up with reversions to the timeline, my grades had slipped. It wasn't like Mom could ground me; however, she could make my free time miserable. But I hated lying to Mimi. And I felt like that was all I ever did anymore. I decided to dip my toe in the truth. “Finn and I took a quick jaunt to London.”

“Ooh! Fun. Did you do anything exciting?”

“Not really,” I said while Finn mumbled, “Nothing much.”

I twisted the compufilm clue around in my pocket nervously. So much for the truth.

As Finn and I were leaving the Institute, we passed Headmaster Bergin in the hall. Finn stiffened by my side, but I nodded politely and kept walking. Bergin smiled at me from underneath his thick white moustache.

When we reached the sidewalk, Finn said, “How can you stand to be in the same building with that man?”

“He doesn't remember what he did.”

Right after I'd gotten back from having my chip removed, I'd gone to Bergin's office to confront him. One minute he was there talking to me, packing up, ready to resign. The next minute, the office was empty. Turned out ICE had sent someone back to change the past and vote him off their advisory board before he ever got tangled up in all this. It was my first mission with the reverter, and I had no idea what I was doing. Needless to say, I failed to change things back to the way they were. But this was one change I wasn't all that sorry about.

“Why do you think ICE did that?” asked Finn. “I mean, wouldn't it make more sense to keep Bergin in the loop so he could spy on you?”

“I bet they thought they were killing two birds with one pebble.”

“Stone,” said Finn. “How would you kill a bird with one pebble, much less two?”

“Stone, whatever. Why would someone kill birds, period?” I had a habit of picking up obsolete sayings from the past, especially from the twentieth century. Maybe it was because half of my genes were from that time that I had such an affinity to that period's truisms, even if I didn't grasp the full meaning. Finn thought it was hilarious when I mangled them.

“Touch
é
,” he said, stifling a snort.

“I think they thought that by taking Bergin out, the change would take me out of the know as well. They didn't understand how activating the reverter back in your time must have made it impervious to their timeline changes. And as far as I know, they still don't realize that I've deactivated my chip and am aware of the changes at all.”

“Are
they
aware of the changes?” Finn asked.

“You remember what Bergin said in his office. NonShifters' quantum tendrils adjust seamlessly to the timeline, so in theory, they shouldn't be. I mean, it's not like there are any Shifters working for ICE.”

“And yet, somehow they are aware of the fact that it's possible to make changes. I thought only unchipped Shifters could detect the alterations.”

“I did, too. But maybe they retain the knowledge that they can make changes even if they can't detect the changes themselves?”

“That makes my brain hurt.”

“Me, too.” I leaned in toward him. “Maybe we need something to take our minds off it.”

“What did you have in mind?”

I ran my hand around his waist and pulled him in close. He lifted me up so he could kiss me properly. And then … not so properly.

“That's better,” I murmured.

And as Finn put me down and wrapped his arm around my shoulder in one of those simple, sweet ways, I realized that, changes or not, this timeline was pretty dang good.

 

chapter 3

“SPEAKING OF PEGAMOOS,”
said Finn.

“No one was speaking of pegamoos.” We'd been looking over the menu, which was kind of pointless as Finn always ordered the same thing—chocolate chip waffles with bananas on top and a side of endive—and I had the whole thing memorized. We sat at our usual table out on the terrace of the sidewalk caf
é
just around the corner from my house in Old Georgetown.

“No one?” Finn held the endive up in the air. And sure enough, Ed, the tiny, winged cow, flitted down the street toward us. Mom had gotten him a couple of months ago, swearing up and down he was just a new family pet, but we both knew who she really got him for. I mean, I'd begged for a pegamoo every day for an entire year when I was eight. Nothing. Finn mentions once how cute he thinks they are. Welcome to the family, Ed.

The miniature bovine munched on the endive contentedly, mooing every so often for Finn to scratch his ears. I checked Ed's collar. Mom had left it on roam for some reason.

“Oh, my gosh, look at him.” A tall girl with beautiful brown corkscrew curls cascading down her back cooed at Ed as she passed. At first, I thought she would keep walking. Ed gets that a lot because, annoying as he can be, he really is adorable.

She paused, though. Ed flitted over to her and lifted his chin for her to scratch it.

“Ed!” I started to shoo him away from her, but when I looked back over at the girl, she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at me.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

Umm. “I'm sorry. Should I?” I took a closer look at her. The girl did look vaguely familiar. She was right around my age. Her skin was the shade of velvety cocoa. She wore a short skirt that flaunted her longer-than-should-be-legal legs. But nope. I didn't recognize her.

“It's okay,” she said, but her countenance betrayed her disappointment. “It was a long shot. It's been years, and I was only there one semester, and—”

“Jafney,” I said. The name burst in my head like a first kernel of popcorn, then—
pop, pop, pop
—the memories came back. I did recognize her. She was my friend Pennedy's roommate from our first year at the Institute. And she held the dubious honor of being the only student other than me to ever have been force faded from a mission. She'd been odd, and kind of overly friendly for my taste, if memory served me well.