Time Between Us (17 page)

The elevator takes us to the bottom floor and we follow the signs to the courtyard. We walk around for a few minutes, but it’s windy and freezing and it doesn’t take us long to get the requisite air and decide to go back inside and find Justin’s parents. We locate the registration office easily, and Justin’s parents are still sitting there, waiting for the clerk to finalize his discharge papers. Mrs. Reilly assures us that they’ll be a while, so the two of us go in search of the cafeteria.

When we’re sitting, drinking the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted, and taking turns picking at a stale doughnut, I say, “So…you and Emma.”

Justin looks at me with a guilty smile.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He picks off a piece of the doughnut and stares out the window. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you about us. I don’t like keeping secrets from you, Anna. But I guess the whole thing just seemed a little…weird. I’ve known you my whole life, and—” His voice trails off and he brings the Styrofoam cup to his lips again, takes a sip, and looks right at me. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah. You should have.” I smile so he knows I’m not angry. “Really. It’s okay. Emma told me. And besides, you’re my friend. Emma’s my friend. This is good.”

“So, you’re cool with us going out?”

I decide not to tell him that I still can’t put their two names together in my head without a question mark showing up. “Definitely. I’m definitely cool with it.”

We both look down at the table. He starts tracing the design of the Formica with his fingertip, and I push my doughnut crumbs into a little pile.

“Tell me about your date. It was obviously going well, until—” I immediately wish I could take back that last part, but Justin doesn’t seem affected.

He smiles down at the table. “It was a really good day. We went out to dinner once before, you know, and had coffee one other time, and that was nice, but it was fun to just be together at her house. See her room and her stuff. And just hang.”

He stares out the window behind me. “We had the most amazing talk about…” He trails off, but his mouth turns up in a small smile.

“About?”

He shakes his head and looks at me again. “Never mind.… Anyway. She’s very cool.”

I rest my chin in my hand and smile at him. “You really like her, don’t you?” I ask, and he nods. He leans back and crosses his arms.

“Yeah. I admit, I didn’t expect to, and I wasn’t even totally sure until yesterday. But yeah, I really do. She sort of surprised me, I guess.” I don’t know if Emma feels the same way about him, but for his part, he sure looks hooked. Apparently, some guys really
do
make CDs for girls who are only friends.

“She surprised me too,” I say, and I find myself repeating the words I said to Bennett on the rock yesterday, describing Emma’s cheekbones and braces and how kind she was to the frizzy-haired new kid. And I smile as I picture her now. Or rather, the way she was until yesterday. Same cheekbones, but no more braces. No more awkward stilts for legs. Just gorgeous, funny, charming Emma, who wins over everyone she meets—even a jock-nerd like me and a skeptic like Justin. I suddenly realize we’re looking at each other with matching sad expressions, like we’re both wondering what we’re doing here, talking about her like this.

Justin breaks the awkward silence. “So-o-o-o…” he says, drawing out the word. “Better topic: How was
your
date?”

The question makes me flash back to yesterday, and I feel a grin start to form as I think about Bennett and me, curled up on a rock exchanging questions and stories and kisses and chalk dust. But then I’m overcome with guilt. I can’t smile while Emma lies unconscious six floors above me. “It was good.”

I keep my emotions in check as I tell Justin about rock climbing and how it felt to reach the top and look out at the view. I tell him how Bennett and I talked and talked, about music and running, about traveling and our families. And suddenly it hits me. I’m supposed to be in the coffeehouse right now trading date stories with Emma, not in a sterile hospital cafeteria talking with Justin. I get quiet and start staring past him, fixing my eyes on the vending machine at the far side of the room. “Sounds fun,” I hear him say, but his voice sounds quiet and far away. We both look off in opposite directions, and neither one of us speaks again for a long time.

“What time is your mom coming to get you?” he finally asks.

“Six.” I look down at my watch. It’s only three.

“I should go find my parents, but I can stay here and catch a ride home with you if you want. I don’t want to leave you alone.” He looks sincere but exhausted. It’s clearly taking all his energy just to stay awake.

“I’m okay. It’ll be good for me to have some time alone with her.”

He stares at me. “Okay. As long as you’re sure.” He reaches across the table and grabs my hands to give them a comforting squeeze.

I give him a weak smile. “I’m positive.” I sound so certain, lying to him like this. But I’m doing it for him. If he didn’t look so tired and pained, I’d say what I really want to say. That right now, as we sit here like this, Justin seems exactly like the person he used to be—my comfortable friend who gives me music and makes me laugh and is the one person I can talk to about anything—and all I want is to have him hug me tight and tell me everything’s going to be okay, because if he did, I might just believe him.

After Justin leaves, Danielle stops by, and the two of us get caught trying to sneak back into Emma’s room. The nurse is just about to kick us out when Emma’s mom shows up and convinces her to let us stay. But Danielle can’t take it for long; ten minutes later, she still can’t bring herself to walk all the way back into the room and Mrs. Atkins finally wraps her arm around her shoulder and suggests she come back tomorrow instead. Danielle says she will be back in the morning, since she has no intention of going to school anyway.

Emma’s mom and I spend the next three hours making small talk and staring out the window, and when the clock finally strikes six, I can’t help feeling relieved. I give Emma an exhausted kiss on the forehead and hug her mom good-bye.

I’m heading to the waiting room to meet Mom when I hear the faraway
ding
of the elevator. I round the corner and literally collide with someone, and we both step back, muttering apologies until we each realize who the other is.

“There you are,” he says at the exact same time I say, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” Bennett’s face is all scrunched up with concern. “Why didn’t you tell me about Emma?”

I don’t have an answer. It probably should have occurred to me to call him and tell him, but it just didn’t. I can only shrug as he pulls me to him and asks me if I’m okay. I nod against his chest.

I think at this point I’m supposed to cry. If there were ever a good time, this would be it—with me all nestled into him like this, his head resting on mine and his hand on my back—but I can’t. Instead I tell him about the tubes and the machines and the stitches, the doctors and the rehabilitation she’ll have to endure when she comes to. That she looks awful, like someone I don’t know. And that I feel horrible for saying so.

The elevator dings again, and this time Mom steps out. She looks surprised to see me curled in the arms of a boy she’s seen exactly one time and whom I’ve never mentioned on a Tuesday family-dinner night. “Well, hi.”

“Hi, Mom,” I say nervously. “You remember Bennett…from that night…at the bookstore.”

She nods and extends her hand. “Yes. Hi, Bennett.” She keeps shaking his hand and staring at him. I’m waiting for her to give him her signature smile—her nurse smile—the one that makes people warm up to her so quickly, but she doesn’t. Even though there’s nothing cold about the look on her face, there’s no warmth there, either, and when she finally drops his hand, Bennett looks a little relieved. She turns away from him and looks at me. “How’s Emma?”

I shrug. “The same. Her mom’s with her now.”

“I’m going to go check on her and see if I can do anything to help. Do you want to come?”

I can’t even imagine walking into that room again. “I’ve been here all day, Mom. Do you mind if maybe…Bennett takes me home?”

She whirls around to face him again, her expression full of worry as she looks him up and down. “How’s your driving?”

“Good. I’m very careful.” She still seems concerned, so he adds, “I’ll be
especially
careful.”

“It’s really windy.”

“I’ll drive slowly, Mrs. Greene.”

“Okay, then.” She pulls me to her and gives me a big hug and a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll see you at home, Anna.” But instead of heading toward Emma’s room, she lingers for another moment. “You know, Bennett, Anna’s father told me that she was supposed to have you over for dinner so we could get to know you a bit. Has she invited you yet?”

He looks at me, then back at her. “Not yet, Mrs. Greene. But I’m sure—”

“How’s Tuesday?”

“Tuesday?” Bennett looks at me. I cover my face with my hand. “Tuesday’s great,” I hear him say.

“Excellent. We’ll see you then.” Mom kisses me on the forehead again before turning and disappearing down the hall.

In the elevator, Bennett looks at me. “Dinner.” He nods. “Tuesday.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No. It’s good. I like family dinners.” The elevator stops and we hold hands and walk toward the lot. “Actually, I can’t remember the last time I had a family dinner. We’re not too big on them.”

“We just have Tuesday. We close the store early so Dad and I can get home, and Mom never takes a shift. She insists on one night a week, and that’s Tuesday.”

Bennett opens the door on my side of the car, and I slide in. We’re alone again, back in the Jeep, just like we were at this exact same time last night. But now we’re driving in the opposite direction and there’s no laughing or punching each other across the console. No question-and-answer game.

“You okay?” Bennett keeps asking in a whisper and I keep nodding, untruthfully.

The streetlights and traffic signals pass by in a slow-motion blur, like Bennett’s driving far below the speed limit. Mom must have terrified him. Or perhaps it’s me—maybe everything is moving in slow motion.

“They were alone.” I finally say to the passenger-side window. “Justin was alone for four hours before his parents got there. Emma was alone for two.” I run my finger across the glass and stare out into the dark. “I don’t know why that part’s bothering me so much, but I just keep picturing them in separate parts of the hospital, surrounded by total strangers. Maybe that’s what happens, you know—maybe your parents have to wait outside—but how could they just leave them all alone like that?”

“They knew everyone was on the way.”

“Did they?” I ask, and Bennett reaches over the console and grabs my hand.

We’re silent for a few moments, until I finally say what I’m really thinking. “I wasn’t there.”

He looks over at me.

“It took me
eight hours
to get there.”

“It’s okay, Anna. You got there as fast as you could.”

He squeezes my hand in his, and even though there’s really nothing he can say to make me feel better, his grip is somehow reassuring. I look down at our fingers intertwined, resting on the console—his nails still a little dirty from yesterday’s climb—and remember how I traced the grooves in his palm while I happily reclined against his chest. His hands feel so normal that sometimes it’s easy to forget how extraordinary they are.

“Oh, my God.” I recoil from him. “Pull over.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Pull. Over.” I’m shaking and feeling stupid and having a hard time believing I didn’t think of this earlier.

Bennett turns in to a residential street and puts the car in park. He stares out the windshield, and that’s the moment I realize that I might not have thought of it before, but he certainly did. He knows exactly what I’m about to ask, because even if I’ve briefly forgotten about the ability Bennett Cooper possesses, he never does.

“Do it over.” I twist in the seat to face him. “Bennett. Please. Do it over. Do the day over.”

“I can’t.” He won’t look at me.

“You can. You can fix this. Take us back before the accident. We’ll stop her from driving. We’ll fix it! Bennett?”

He gets out of the car and slams the door, leaving me trembling in the passenger seat. The headlights illuminate the fury on his face as he slams his fists hard on the hood, and I jump. He paces back and forth, then turns his back to me and leans against the front of the car. I watch his shoulders rise and fall. I think I’m supposed to regret asking, but I don’t.

After a while he comes back to the car, opens the door, and gets in. He’s calmer now, but he’s still shaking with rage. He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white.

“Please don’t ever ask me to do that again.”

“Look, I understand all your rules.” I stress the word
your
and hope he hears my point. “I get your butterfly-effect thing and your superstition about affecting the future—”

“It’s not
my
butterfly-effect thing. It’s
the
butterfly effect, and it’s a major concept in chaos theory, which has
nothing
to do with superstition. A small change in one part of a complex system can have large effects somewhere else—I didn’t come up with this stuff, Anna.”

“Okay, I get it. But you can make little changes, right? Affect small details? How is this any different from what you do for your parents? What you did last Friday before Spanish? What you did that night in the bookstore, when you changed what could have been a
horrible
future for me—it might have been the
end
of me—but it wasn’t, because you intervened. And look…” I put my arms out to my sides and gesture around the car. “Nothing terrible happened. We’re still here. No butterfly mayhem.”

“It’s not that simple. Eventually
something
has to backfire. I just
can’t
do it over.”

I stare at him, willing him to look at me, and he finally does. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I shouldn’t have done either of those do-overs, Anna, but they were different. I went back five minutes, an hour, I didn’t go back a whole
day
. I didn’t stop the guy from holding you at knifepoint or attempting to rob the store, I just got you out and got the cops there sooner. And that day in school, we still went to class, and it was like that hour just never happened. They were minor little changes. But stopping the car accident entirely? That’s erasing a major event.”

“Sorry, I don’t get the difference.”

“Yeah? Well, neither does my dad.” He bites his lip hard and turns to look out the window. “Look, it’s a slippery slope—I affect one bad thing that happened to one innocent person, and suddenly it’s up to me to keep every plane that’s ever crashed from taking off and be the one-man-early-warning-system for every natural disaster. Until something even more catastrophic happens
because
of what I did to prevent the last tragedy. This is
my
ability, and
I
don’t think that’s what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m supposed to observe.
Not
change the future. Period. I’m already breaking all the rules just by being here.”

“They’re not
the
rules, they’re
your
rules. And how do you know your rules are right? Maybe you’re
supposed
to test them.”

“I’m not.” He stares me down. “And if you recall, Anna, the last time I tested the rules for a girl, it didn’t turn out so well. For
her
.”

He has a point, but still, I’m not giving up. I can’t. Not when my best friend has spent the past day being sliced open and reconstructed, with parts of her missing, other parts now held together by string. She may be a crappy driver, but she deserves a future. “Well, this isn’t about me. And it shouldn’t be about you.”

He looks at me with sad eyes, and I know he wants to help her. To help me. To be the hero, even though he doesn’t think he’s supposed to be. “It’s not about me, Anna. It’s about…everyone involved. I can’t. I’m sorry, but it’s just too dangerous.”

“Will you at least think about it?” I give him a small smile and hope he’ll smile back, but he doesn’t. He just puts the car in drive and makes a U-turn.

“No. Don’t ask again.”