Time Between Us (18 page)

“Travel plans,
por favor
.” I twist around to take the stack of plans as they’re passed forward to me. One has a laminated cover. Another one is spiral-bound. Mine—which I’d planned to staple—is still handwritten on individual pieces of notebook paper, wedged in a travel book, and stuffed in my backpack. I won’t be turning mine in today, but apparently I’m not the only one who’s blown the assignment.

Bennett’s chair is empty. When he pulled up to my house last night, I got out, slammed the door without saying goodbye, and walked into the house without looking back. Once I was out of sight, I looked through the kitchen window for a minute or so, long enough to watch him lay his head on the steering wheel before smacking it and peeling out of the driveway.

Argotta gives a lecture today but doesn’t make us converse, and when the bell rings at the end of class, I linger and wait for the room to clear. Then I stand up, stop at his desk, and wait for him to look up at me. “How am I going to like your plan, Señorita Greene?” he asks as he pats the stack of travel itineraries.

“You’ll love my plan, señor. But it’s not done.”

I expect him to look at me like I’ve let him down, but instead he gives me an understanding smile, stands up, and walks around to the front of his desk. I tell him about Emma’s accident on Saturday (he’s heard), and I remind him about the robbery last Monday (which makes him look sad), and I emphasize that I’m not one to make excuses, but it’s been one hell of a strange week (he agrees).

“I’d like to announce the winner soon. Do you think you can have it done by Thursday?” he asks. I nod. “If you need more time, just let me know. We can announce the winner next week instead.”

“Gracias,”
I say. I amble out of the room and into The Donut, drop my books off at my locker, and walk into the dining hall. I take one look at our empty table and decide I’m not hungry.

Mom drops me off at the hospital. I lug my backpack into Emma’s room, plant myself in the chair, and start working on my travel plan. Thirty minutes later, the nurse comes in to check Emma’s chart. She looks at me with a sympathetic smile and leaves the room.

I look over at the bed. Emma’s just lying there, looking far away and isolated, so I grab my copy of
Lonely Planet: Yucatán
and settle in next to her on the bed. I open the book and start reading to myself about “sugary beaches” and “scandalous nightlife” and “pork slow-cooked in banana leaves.” And then I get to the shopping. Now, this is something she’d love.

I start talking, just whispering at first. “This place sounds incredible, Em. Listen to this: ‘Shoppers will appreciate the handicrafts found on the peninsula…exquisite silver ornaments that reflect the filigree technique introduced by the Spanish, wonderful models of galleons carved from mahogany, and panama hats so tightly woven that they can hold water.’ Doesn’t that sound amazing?”

I look down at Emma’s still features and wait for a reaction. I speak a little louder. “You know, you look really good in hats. If I win Argotta’s travel challenge, I’m going to go to Mexico and bring you back a hat.” I consult my travel guide again. “Oh, and get this, they make some of the world’s best hammocks, too.” I look down at her. “Maybe I’ll get you a hammock. What do you think? Do you want a hat or a hammock?” I look for a reaction. Any reaction. There’s no movement. “I’ll just get you both.”

I go back to reading, scanning the pages for another section she might like. I’m just about to start telling her about the “famous cuisine” when I notice that there’s a drop of something on the page. Then another. Then another. I bring my hands to my face and find that my cheeks are wet, and the tears are falling in a steady stream, faster than I can stop them—on the pages, on the sheets, on Emma’s hand. I look at her face, at all the tubes, and my chest feels tight.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” I whisper as I lay myself over her right arm, the only part of her that I know isn’t stitched or internally wounded, and I finally let myself cry because she’s not supposed to be here. She made one small mistake. One tiny little move that changed everything. Would we be sitting here like this right now if just
one
thing about her day had been different? What if Emma and Justin had decided to go somewhere else, like the movies or the mall? What if they had left ten minutes earlier? Or ten minutes later? Or if Emma had committed to a single CD before she left the driveway? What if she had come to a full stop at every stop sign, slowing her progress to that intersection? What if the driver of the other car had forgotten something, run back into the house, and left three minutes later? What if I hadn’t insisted that her CDs live in that stupid case? What if, if, if, if,
if
? If any little detail had been different—just one single detail—Emma and I would have spent yesterday in the coffeehouse, sipping lattes and comparing our dates.

He just needs to change
one
little thing. He’s the only one who can make things right, and he’s too afraid to do it.

I kiss Emma on the cheek. “I have to leave now, Em,” I whisper in her ear, “but I’ll be back. I’m going to go fix this and make it right, and after I do, you won’t remember any of this.”

Mom shoots me an impressed look as she pulls up in front of Bennett’s house. “Wow. Nice digs.”

“It’s his grandmother’s,” I say, but I’m pretty sure the one his dad bought with their stock market “luck” is equally impressive. “I’ll be home later, okay? Thanks for picking me up. And tell Dad I said thanks for taking my shift today.” I shut the car door and walk across the snowy grass, because the walkway hasn’t been salted and it’s looking a little slippery. I knock.

Bennett opens the door and I blurt out, “I just spent the afternoon with Emma.” He looks nervously back into the house and finally closes the door behind him and joins me on the porch.

“How is she?” At least he has the decency to sound concerned.

“The same. Critical condition. No better than yesterday.”

“Give it some time, Anna. She’ll be better.”

“And you know this how? Because you’ve seen her in the future and know she’s happy without her spleen?”

“Technically, you don’t need a spleen.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

“I know it wasn’t.”

“How can you live with yourself, knowing you could fix this and not even bothering to try?”

He grabs my arm hard and leads me away from the door.

“Ow. You’re hurting me.”

He lets up on the pressure.

“How can I
live
with myself?” he whispers, checking around for eavesdroppers. “Are you kidding? This is killing me, Anna. I want to try—trust me, I do—but what if I can’t change it? What if I make it worse? What if the accident happens anyway, no matter what I do? What if I change the wrong thing and it ends up ruining her whole life? Or mine? Or yours?”

“I don’t know! Nobody knows! But how can you have this gift and not use it to find out? Maybe you try to do it over and the accident happens anyway and Emma lands in the hospital and nothing changes. But at least you’ll know you tried—”

“That’s my point! I’m not
supposed
to try. I’m not saying it’s fair, or right, but what if this was—”

“Don’t you dare say something lame, like ‘supposed to happen,’ because this was
not
supposed to happen. She is
not
supposed to be there.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know that the accident wasn’t supposed to happen?” he asks. I feel my face turn red with fury. “Look, I know no one wanted this to happen, but it did. Maybe she’s
supposed
to be in the hospital and wake up. Maybe she’s
supposed
to heal and go through physical therapy and fight for something important for the first time in her pink-bubblegum life. Maybe she’s
supposed
to get better and learn to drive more slowly.” I glare at him. I head for the stairs, but he grabs my arm again. “Anna, I’m not saying it’s right. Or that I agree with it. I’m just saying that it happened. And whether it was supposed to or not, it’s not my place to change it just because I
can
.”

I’ve heard the words before, but there’s something new in his voice. “Wait. Is that what you saw?” I stare at him. “Did you go see her in the future, Bennett? Does she get better? Is that what happens?”

He shakes his head, and I feel his grip on my arm loosen, and I can’t tell if I’m right or not, because he’s just staring at me, like he doesn’t know what to say next. And neither do I, because whether he saw her future or not, I still can’t let Emma lie on that sterile bed with those loud machines, just because this might be part of some grand plan to make her a safer driver or a better human being.

I try a different tack. “Look, you don’t have to stop the accident itself. You just have to bring us back in time by”—I’m quiet as I do the math in my head—“forty-six hours.” I look at my watch. “Forty-seven if we have to stand here in the cold talking about this for another hour.”

“That’s still playing God.”

I cross my arms. It’s silent while we wait each other out like we’re in a Mexican standoff. Or a third grade staring contest.

“I have homework.” I turn for the stairs and this time he lets me go. I’m almost at the bottom when I hear his voice.

“Anna.”

I stop in midstep and whirl around. “What?”

“That’s not enough.”

“What do you mean? What’s not enough?”

“Forty-six hours. That’s not enough.” I feel a lightness in my chest, like I’m taking the first full breath after being held underwater. He’s been thinking about it. No, he’s not only been thinking about it, he’s been doing the math.

He lets out a groan and I know what it means: he’s about to do something he doesn’t want to do. Minutes pass while I stand there and wait for him to make the next move; then he finally speaks: “Come inside. I want to show you something.”

Bennett’s room looks cleaner than it did the last time I was here. His desk is neat, with nothing but a cup full of pens and a textbook, splayed open. Bennett grabs a tattered red notebook and undoes the rubber band that holds it closed. He flops down on the bed and gestures for me to join him as he opens it to a page near the end. Every available surface is covered with ink. I bend my head closer and take in the dates, times, and mathematical symbols, the complex equations that stretch across both pages.

“I have to be really precise.” How long has he been working on this? All night? All day? “I have to find the perfect moment for us to arrive.”

He points down at the calculations. “Like I said, forty-six hours isn’t enough—that would bring us to two o’clock on Saturday, and we were in Wisconsin, almost three hours away.” He points to a timeline that stretches across the page. “We have to be together, and it can’t be while we were in the car, because we can’t be moving. So we would have to go back to the morning, right about the time I picked you up.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” I sit up and open my hands on my lap, but he doesn’t take them.

“Slow down, Speedy, there’s more.” He turns the page. “Here’s the thing: As soon as we get within range of our other selves, they’ll disappear. So we need to go back to the exact moment we were in the car, in your driveway, but before I put the car in reverse.” I think back to the morning. How long did we sit there? It must have been just seconds. Just long enough for us to put our seat belts on and for me to ask where we were going. Then we left. He points down at the page. “I think we need to land at about seven minutes after eight.”

“Okay.” I don’t rush him this time.

“But I can’t screw this up.” He sits up next to me. “I want to test it first. We’re going to go back five minutes and land in the hallway just outside my bedroom. By the time I open the door, the two of us will be gone, and we’ll replace them.” He walks over to his desk and returns with a little sandwich bag of saltines. He leaves them on the bed. “Those are for you, in case you need them when we get back.”

“Thanks.” I stand up and hold my hands out to him. This time he takes them.

“Just because we’re testing this doesn’t mean we’re going to do it for real,” he says. “I’m still not sure I can go through with this.”

“Okay.”

“You ready?”

I nod.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

I do. And when I open them, I’m in the hall, staring at his mother’s high school graduation photo. I look to my left and find him there, nervously watching for Maggie. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.” My stomach’s churning, but before I think too much about it, Bennett grabs my hand with one of his and twists the knob of his bedroom door with the other. He peeks in, then opens the door wide and pulls me inside. It’s empty.

I grab my stomach and head straight for the bed, but the saltine-filled Baggie isn’t there. “Where are the crackers?”

“Shoot. I forgot.” Bennett crosses the room, reaches into his backpack, and returns, holding the bag. “Well, at least we know it worked.”

I don’t get it. “You do? How?”

“The crackers aren’t on the bed because I hadn’t put them there yet.”

“Okay, wow.” I grab the crackers and start nibbling slowly, again hoping I don’t throw up in his bedroom.

Bennett recrosses the room and grabs the two red backpacks off the floor—the same ones that just yesterday were decorated with ropes and carabiners, and held shoes and sandwiches and plastic bottles of Gatorade. Today, they look much lighter.

“Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.” He leaves the room and returns a few minutes later with heavier-looking packs.

Another full bag of saltines.

Two Starbucks Frappuccinos.

Two bottled waters.

He goes to his desk, takes something from the top drawer, and walks over to the armoire. Removing everything inside, he makes a tall pile of photo albums, scrapbooks, old Westlake yearbooks, and several boxes of loose photographs. When it’s empty, he reaches inside and pulls out a wad of bills.

“How much cash is that?” I ask.

He’s all business. “A thousand dollars each, in case we get separated. Here.” The bundle lands in my backpack with a thud.

While he puts everything back in the armoire, I think about Brooke and her backpack of cash. “Have you and Brooke ever done a do-over?”

He shakes his head. “No. Not that Brooke hasn’t tried.” He talks while he puts the books and photos back where they belong. “There was the time she failed her History final and almost didn’t graduate. The time my dad caught her smoking. A really bad prom date named Steve.” He closes the door and walks back to his desk. “Man, now that I think about it, you two have far too much in common. I’m terrified for the day you finally meet.”

I feel my face brighten at the thought. “I’ll get to meet her?”

He shrugs. “Sure. Once she’s home I’ll bring her back here to meet you. We always come back to see Maggie anyway.”

“Really? You come back here to see Maggie?”

“Yeah. All the time.” He nudges me with his shoulder. “I don’t mean to be rude, but any chance I can tell you about it later? After I’m done changing the course of history and all?” He gives me a teasing smile.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Thanks.” Then he’s back to business. “We’re going to land at 8:07, just next to the shrubs on the side of your house. Wait for my signal; then run to the car.”

“Got it.”

He offers me my backpack and I throw it over my shoulders while he does the same with his.

“Oh, and don’t let go of my hands—even though it will be hard to move quickly that way. No matter what happens, we need to be sure we stay together.” His command reminds me of our rock climbing date, when he introduced the belay device and told me it kept me connected to him.

He grabs my hands. I look right into his eyes. I’ve never seen him look scared before.

“Bennett?”

“Yeah?”

“Will I…remember everything from Saturday?” I don’t want to forget the anticipation of our drive, the exhilaration of climbing, or the view from the top. I want to remember the moment when we pulled into the driveway back home and I felt like I finally knew him.

“You’ll remember both days—”

I interrupt him. “But how? I don’t remember anything at the bookstore before you left and came back.”

“That’s because you weren’t with me. This time you’ll remember both versions, just like I do. Now, close your eyes.”

But I can’t. I’m getting nervous now, and I’m sure he can feel my hands shaking in his. “Are you sure we should do this?” I ask.

“You’re kidding, right?” He humphs and looks at me with a puzzled expression. “No, I’m not
sure
. I’m testing fate. I’m messing around with
time
.”

I bite my lip, picture Emma, and feel my conviction return. “Thank you,” I say. It’s not enough, but it’s all I’ve got.

His grip is tighter than usual. “Close your eyes.”

I open them to the somewhat familiar sight of our side yard. It’s not like I’m over here much, but the chipping yellow paint verifies that we’ve landed at Bennett’s intended location. On the other side of the window above us, Dad has probably just sat down to finish his coffee and read the
Sun-Times
.

“Ready?” Bennett asks.

I nod.

“Go!”

We race from the shrubs into the driveway, pulling each other along like we’re in some strange Fourth of July event wedged in between the three-legged race and the egg toss.

The car is empty. We’ve done it. I start to let out a relieved laugh until I realize the car is moving backward down the driveway, picking up speed. Bennett pulls me toward his side of the car; we work together to lift the door handle, and it rises, but nothing else happens.

He swears under his breath. “It’s locked!”

I look up at the kitchen window, my heart racing at the thought of Dad’s seeing this, but thankfully, no one’s there.

Bennett and I run alongside the car until it reaches the end of the driveway, then watch as it rolls across the street, slows when it reaches a snowbank, and comes to rest against a tree. The wheels spin on the ice.

This time when I look up at the window, I see Dad standing there, watching us. He disappears from sight and reappears when the front door flies open.

“What the hell—?” He runs across the lawn and stops when he reaches us. Bennett and I drop our hands. “What the hell?” he repeats.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Annie?” He’s looking back and forth from me to Bennett and I have to remind myself that this moment is completely different from the one in his mind. As far as Dad’s concerned, the three of us were just standing in our foyer, and he has just shaken Bennett’s hand and told me to invite him over for dinner. And now we’re standing in the middle of the street.

“Dad, Bennett’s coming over for dinner on Tuesday, okay?” I say, and then I just start laughing, loud and hard, and I can’t seem to stop. Dad’s looking at me like I’ve lost it completely.

Bennett’s trying not to look at me at all. “Any chance you have a slim jim, Mr. Greene?”

This gets me laughing even harder, and I can tell Bennett’s trying to keep a straight face.

Dad cups his hands against the glass and looks into the driver’s window. “How on earth did you lock your keys in a car that’s in
reverse
?”

I have no idea how Bennett’s going to answer this, but at least the mystery is keeping Dad from noticing that we’re wearing backpacks and completely different clothes. I start laughing again.

“I was starting the car and…I thought I felt a flat tire, so I—we went to check it out, and I guess the car was in reverse, and when the doors shut I guess they…locked automatically.” He leans over to Dad. “I think I’m a little nervous today, sir.”

Dad stares at Bennett, and then shoots me a questioning look.

Now I’m laughing so hard I have to walk around to the back of the car so I don’t make Bennett lose it too. He’s doing so much better than I am. I lean against the back of the SUV, trying to breathe, but when I peek in through the back window, I let out a gasp.

When Bennett opened the hatch in the parking lot at Devil’s Lake, I saw two red backpacks overstuffed with climbing gear. Now those same packs are on our backs, and when I peer through the window, I see piles of ropes and colorful metal climbing equipment. Two harnesses. The new shoes Bennett bought me, lying on top of the heap next to the plastic bags of food and four bottles of Gatorade. We went back, but all the gear has stayed right where it was fifty-two hours ago.

Some things may remain the same, but this whole day is clearly about to change.