Time Between Us (23 page)

“What are you supposed to show me, Bennett?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but the only thing I can think he—
I
—might have been talking about is something I can’t show you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…it’s in my room. My
real
room, in San Francisco. In 2012. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to bring it back here, and I
know
it’s a bad idea to bring you into the future.”

“But at the track,
you
told me about it. That I needed to
see
it, whatever it is. I think you’re
supposed
to show it to me, Bennett.”

He presses his lips together. “I’d rather just tell you about it.”

“You need to
show
me. That’s what you said.” I reach down to the console and grab his hands. “And I want to see your room.”

“No way.” He takes his hands out of mine and grips the steering wheel. Then he looks me in the eye. “I told you, Anna, I’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to go, but never before or after this exact date and time. You can’t see your own future.”

“I’m not—I’m seeing
your
present. I’m observing, just like you do.”

“I’m not supposed to bring you forward.”

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“What if I’m not?”

“You didn’t think you should undo a car accident either, but that turned out pretty well in the end. Look,” I say, “you’re supposed to show me something, and besides, if you do go—if for some reason you really can’t—” The words get stuck on the way out. I can’t say them. “I just need to know where you’ll be.”

He stares at me for a long time. I have no idea what he’s thinking.

“Please,” I beg. “Just a few minutes. Just show me what I need to see, and bring me right back.”

He closes his eyes, and the car is completely silent as I sit and watch him. Minutes pass, and finally he pulls the keys out of the ignition and stuffs them into the pocket of his jeans. I give him my hands.

I close my eyes as I hear him say, “Five minutes.”

“We’re here.”

I open my eyes. It’s dark in the room, but we’re standing at the center of a curved wall of windows that look out upon the city below, and all I can see is lights twinkling across the horizon and stretching to the dark waterline. “Wow. This is your
room
?” I hate to leave the view, but I turn around and take in the rest of my surroundings.

It doesn’t look any more lived in than his room at Maggie’s; it’s far too clean and devoid of personality, but at least I spot a framed piece of art on one of the walls. His bed is neatly made, and on the oversize glass and metal desk in the corner there’s a silver and black screen and a digital clock that reads 11:06.

“What’s the date?”

“May 27, 2012.” I’m seventeen years away, in Bennett’s real bedroom. I walk toward his desk and spot a single framed photo of Bennett with his arm draped over Maggie’s shoulders. The two of them are smiling. The fact that he looks younger throws me for a moment, but it’s the sight of this completely different Maggie that really jars me. She looks so old and frail, gaunt, and nothing like her 1995 self. Bennett takes the picture away from me and puts it facedown on the desk, and I can tell from the look on his face that she must have died shortly after it was taken.

I look around again. I picture my room—its walls plastered with paper race numbers and photos, its shelves lined with CDs and trophies—and realize there’s a lot less of
him
in his room. But then I spot an oversize glass bowl on the nightstand next to his bed, and I know exactly what’s inside. Something that’s uniquely him.

I sit on the edge of his bed and start removing stubs. U2 in Kansas City, 1997. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lollapalooza, 1996. The Pixies at UC–Davis, 2004. Lenny Kravitz at the Paramount in New York, 1998. The Smashing Pumpkins in Osaka, 1996. Van Halen in L.A., 1994. The Ramones at the Palace in Hollywood, 1996. Eric Clapton, Cleveland, 2000. I see a bunch of tickets stamped with band names I’ve never heard of and assume they started playing sometime after 1995. There are hundreds of tickets in here.

I look up and see Bennett at his desk, digging deep in the bottom of the largest drawer, and I watch him remove a wooden box and lift the cover. Then he walks over to me, holding a piece of paper.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“A letter.”

I drop the tickets back into the bowl. “You’re supposed to show me a letter?”

“I think so.” He looks at me and inhales like he needs a deep breath of courage. “Last year, I was hanging out in the park with my friends when a woman walked up to me.” He hesitates but I keep looking at him, and suddenly his face relaxes into the smile I know so well by now. “She was beautiful. She had these big brown eyes and a headful of dark curls. She asked if she could talk to me in private, and she handed me this.” He smooths it flat and pushes it toward me.

“What does it say?”

“You need to read it.”

“I don’t want to read it.” I push it back and look away from the words. I begged him to bring me here, to show this to me, but now that I’m here, I know this isn’t what I want. I want to go back to Evanston. I want to go back to pretending that everything is normal.

He pushes the letter toward me again. “I need you to know everything now.”

I feel my face contort. “I thought I already knew everything. Bennett?”

“You don’t. Please.”

I look down and read:

October 4, 2011

Dear Bennett,

I’m worried about saying too much and breaking any of the rules you once taught me. I hope I’ve chosen my
words carefully enough. Someday, my visit and this letter will make a lot more sense. For now, you’ll just have to trust me.

The last seventeen years have given me a good, solid life. It hasn’t been the daring adventure I’d hoped it would be, but I’ve been happy. Still, I’ve never forgotten that you once gave me a choice between two paths and somehow, against my will—and I think against yours, too—I got stuck on the wrong one. The one I didn’t choose. Giving you this letter is the riskiest, scariest thing I’ve done in my whole life, but I just have to know where the path I chose would have led.

Someday soon, we will meet. And then you will leave for good. But I think I can fix it—I just need to make a different decision this time. Tell me to live my life for myself, and not for you. Tell me not to wait for you to come back. I think that will change everything.

Love,

Anna

I’ve always signed my name with a capital
A
that looks more like a large lowercase
a
—rounded instead of sharp. Apparently, in 2011 I still do.

“This is from…me?”

He nods.

“What, like, a future…me?” Those words would sound bizarre to anyone but Bennett Cooper, but he just nods like it makes perfect sense.

“How long have you had this?” I ask, as I remind myself to inhale.

He rests his finger on the date. “Since last October.” At least his voice sounds guilty when he says it.

“So you read this…before you came to Evanston.”

“Many times.” I watch him nod and think back to that first day in the dining hall, when I told him my name and the color left his face. He knew me. He’d already met me. Five months earlier. Sixteen years later.

He grips my arms with both hands, which is a good thing, since I’m not feeling very steady. “You have to understand, Anna. I went to Evanston to find Brooke. Honestly. I figured I’d find her and be home in a matter of days. I only went to Westlake because I promised I would. Can you imagine how it felt for me that day in the lunchroom? To hear your name and see your hair and your eyes and
know
it was you? That you were
Anna
.” He gestures to the letter. “
This
Anna. That you were the person I’d met five months earlier on a random day in a random park in 2011. And there you were, in a high school lunchroom in 1995 in a town I had no desire to even
be
in.” His voice cracks.

“I tried to avoid you at first. I probably should have just avoided you. These words were just rattling around in my head those first weeks, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to create this life for you,” he says, looking down at the letter. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

And suddenly it hits me. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but now it’s there and completely unavoidable. He doesn’t come back. He doesn’t stay. We lose each other for seventeen years, or longer; maybe forever.

Someday soon, we will meet. And then you will leave for good.
And he’s known all along.

“How could you not tell me?”

He just looks down at the floor, not speaking. “I don’t know; I thought I could stop it,” he finally says. “When I kept getting knocked back here, and returning to Evanston, it felt like I was building up strength or something. Like I was teaching myself how to stay somewhere for a long time. The letter never says how long I was there—it just says I
left for good
. I figured if I came back and stayed—if I didn’t leave…” His voice trails off, and when he looks up at me his eyes are full of remorse. “It wasn’t until you saw the
other
me at the track last week that I realized I hadn’t fixed it after all.”

“You should have told me.” I can barely get the words out. He’s still too confident in his own ability, still lying to me, thinking
that
will protect me from pain. But he can’t protect me. Not when I’m the one who needs to make a different decision—when I’m the one who supposedly knows how to fix it. “What am I supposed to do differently?” I ask, and I wait through the silence for him to speak up and educate me on some finer point of time travel that I’ve missed somewhere along the way—something that makes all of this logical. To tell me exactly what happens next and reassure me that everything is fine.

But he brings his gaze to the rug again and says, “I don’t know.”

The last time he let me down, it took everything I had not to cry in front of him, but this time I don’t care. This time, I can’t hold back, and I let those hot, angry tears fall without even trying to stop them.

I’m crying because he really has lost control and because he’s actually admitting it, because he’s been carrying this around with him all along, still keeping secrets he swore he wasn’t keeping, all to protect me. But mostly I’m crying for her, the thirty-one-year-old me who spent nearly two decades missing a shaggy-haired boy with smoky blue eyes that changed her life one snowy day in Evanston, Illinois.

How could he not tell me about a letter that spelled out our fate and made it clear he could never stay? And that he’d known all along? “How could you—” I start to say, but I can’t finish my sentence. But I need to, because if I don’t, I know exactly what he’ll think. That he’s ruined my life. That he shouldn’t have stayed with me in the first place. That he should have left when he first had the chance. That he should do these last months all over again. And I love him far too much let him think that.

I wipe my tears, and before either of us can say another word, my stomach muscles clench and I double over, reaching down to grab fistfuls of his comforter. It feels like my insides are on fire. I can’t move or speak, but I can hear Bennett yelling my name and feel him reaching for me. Everything seems far away and muffled. His face is fuzzy and distorted, like I’m looking at him through a camera lens that’s out of focus. My stomach twists and curls with a force that makes me double over again, and I hear myself scream. Loud.

Then it’s dark and silent.

My face is wet and all I smell is leather, and when I uncurl my legs and reach down to steady myself in the seat, all I
feel
is leather. I open my eyes.

I’m in the dark parking lot, back in Evanston and completely alone in Bennett’s Jeep. “No…” I have no other words, so I repeat the only one I can get out. “No. No. No!” I look around and feel panic traveling through my limbs. I keep looking over at the driver’s seat, waiting for Bennett to magically appear like he does, but he never materializes, and neither do the keys, which should be in the ignition but aren’t. I remember Bennett leaning back in this seat and stuffing them in his jeans pocket.

The digital clock on the dashboard reads 11:11. I have only been gone for five minutes after all.

Now I know what Bennett was feeling in the park that night—getting knocked back against your will is nothing like traveling. I can’t sit up straight or draw a real breath; all I can do is pant and try not to panic. My stomach churns again, even more violently this time, and I look around the too-clean car, but there’s nothing I can throw up into—not even a stray coffee cup—so I cover my mouth and lean back against the seat.

Breathe.

Hold it in.

Breathe.

Hold it in.

I need to throw up.

And then I need a giant glass of water.

Breathe.

Hold it in.

I reach for the latch, but just as I start to pull it toward me, a small flashing light on the dash catches my eye. The alarm is set. As soon as I open the door, it will go off. But I feel a metallic taste in my mouth again as my stomach cramps into a tight ball, and when I throw the door open the alarm yells in the background, covering the sound of my retching over the cement.

When there’s nothing left in me, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and look around while the car alarm continues to remind me that I don’t have the keys. I see a light go on in the house across the street and I know I need to get out of here before someone calls the police. I scour the car one last time for keys I keep hoping will magically appear.

I’m nowhere near home, but I take off running, heading for my neighborhood at the fastest pace I can manage in this outfit. If I could run at my usual speed, I would be home in fifteen minutes, but it’s closer to a thirty-minute walk, thanks to Emma’s tight skirt and chunky heels. And because I keep stopping to look for Bennett’s Jeep. There’s a small part of me that thinks he’ll pull up to the curb at any moment now and we’ll stand here in the dark, fighting about the letter, and eventually I’ll forgive him, because I’m just so happy to have him back. But his Jeep never comes.

When I finally arrive at home, I trudge up the front steps and let myself in; I try to sneak past the kitchen, but Dad spots me.

“How was the movie?” He peeks out the window, looking for the car. “Where’s Bennett? Why didn’t he drive you home?”

I don’t even want to imagine what I look like right now. Tearstained and puffy, sweaty and frazzled. “We were at the coffeehouse,” I lie.

Dad looks down at my little skirt, up at my frizzy hair, and then he stares at me with a hardened expression I’ve never seen on his face before. He squints at me. “You look like hell. What happened, Anna? And you’d better tell me the truth.”

The truth. I was at the movies. Then I was in San Francisco. I was looking at concert stubs, and I was happy for a second, and suddenly I was furious. I threw up in a parking lot, and now I’m home. I say the first thing that pops into my head. “We got into a fight. Bennett doesn’t know where I am. I’m sorry.” I feel the tears stream down my cheeks again. “It’s been a really horrible evening.”

“Are you okay?” Dad’s face softens as he asks, and I try to say no, but nothing comes out. He pulls me toward him and holds me tight while I sob into his shoulder. Eventually, the tears stop. “Next time, go to the bookstore and call me to come get you, okay?”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I bet everything will be better in the morning.” He pats my back, and I head for the stairs. “Annie.” I turn to look at him. “If it’s
not
better, come find me. Okay?”

I smile and trudge up the stairs. My room looks just like it did when I left it. I was supposed to wash that pile of clothes this morning before I went shopping. My textbooks and notebooks are stacked haphazardly on the desk. My bed is still unmade.

This can’t be it.
I walk to the window and look down, hoping to see Bennett’s car pull into the driveway. I picture him sitting on his bed, holding the letter, and the helpless look on his face when—for the first time ever—he watched someone disappear before
his
eyes.

The letter.

That day he heard my name in the dining hall, he knew exactly who I was. He knew we were together here. And he knew he would leave and not come back. He knew it all, and I knew nothing.

And suddenly, everything about his first month in Evanston makes sense. He didn’t want to meet anyone because he didn’t plan to stay, and he didn’t want to know me because he knew eventually we’d be separated. But he gave me the choice. I remember exactly what he said that day, when we sat on the top of the rock we had just climbed.
You exist in 2012, just like I do, in a future that doesn’t include me. Just knowing me…will change your whole life.
He wasn’t only letting me choose to be with him while he was here. He was letting me choose whether or not I wanted to be
that
Anna. The girl he left heartbroken at sixteen, who grew up and hadn’t forgotten about him.

I remember her words. My words.

I got stuck on the wrong path.

You will leave for good.

I just need to make a different decision this time.

I think that will change everything.

I have no idea what those words mean. What different decision am I supposed to make? What’s supposed to change?

The street is quiet and dark, lit by a full moon and a cloudless sky full of stars. I cross the room until I’m standing in front of my map, and I touch my finger to Evanston, Illinois. I run it all the way to the left until it stops on the spot marked
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
. If only we were separated by this distance. But we’re not. We’re separated by this distance plus seventeen years.

I take a pin out of the box and stare at it. I spin it between my fingertips. Maybe if I just picture it, maybe if I want it enough, I can take myself somewhere else too. I bring the red plastic tip to my lips and close my eyes, as if
I
have Bennett’s gift, and I will myself to disappear from this room and reappear in his. I picture the view from the window and the bowl full of ticket stubs and the desk and the bed, and I close my eyes tighter and let the vision of the space fill my head as I repeat the words “May 21, 2012. May 21, 2012” aloud, over and over again, in a whisper.

When I open my eyes, I’m still here, holding my pitiful little pin and standing in front of my map of the world with tears streaming down my face.

I look at the dot marked
SAN FRANCISCO
. The pin makes a sad little pop as it pierces the surface.