Time Between Us (9 page)

I feel sad for him. “You saved my life last night. Tell your parents about that.”

“Last night was fun.” His eyes light up with excitement. “I’ve always worried about doing so many sequential hops, but last night I did a bunch in a row without getting the headache until the very end. I’m thinking it has something to do with the adrenaline—” He stops short. “But it was so stupid. If the migraine had hit me when I moved from the bookcase to your side, that guy could have killed you.”

“But it didn’t happen that way.”

He closes his eyes tight, then opens them and looks at me. His voice is sincere, regretful. “I didn’t think first, Anna. I just saw you in trouble and I reacted. I can’t do that. I have to plan and calculate so I don’t…screw anything up.”

I just grin at him. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to be grateful anyway.”

He smiles and watches me, but I’m not sure what he’s looking for.

“What?” I ask.

“What would you think about taking this conversation somewhere else?”

“You want to go out in that?” I point toward the kitchen window at the snow and hail, still falling hard and adding inches to the thick blanket that buried the lawn during last night’s storm. The driveway is nowhere to be seen.

“I was actually picturing someplace warmer. Someplace…tropical.” My expression must show that I’m still confused, so he just comes right out and asks, “Do you want to try it?”

“I can go with you?” I guess I should have put the pieces together faster; even as I’m saying the words I’m aware of how dense I sound.

He nods and a huge grin spreads across his face. “If it’s too soon, I totally understand.”

“No, no…I’m just—” I stammer. “Will it hurt?”

“My sister gets stomachaches. My mom’s never tried it, but my dad isn’t affected in either direction. Technically, you’ve already been the third person to travel with me.” I flash on the park last night and remember how queasy my stomach felt, but I don’t want him to change his mind, so I keep it to myself. “This will be a bit of an experiment.”

“I can handle that. I think.” I let out a nervous laugh. “How long will we be gone? What if my dad comes home?”

Bennett explains that he plans to return us back to this exact spot, just a minute after we leave. “But while we’re gone,” he tells me, “time will continue as usual for everyone here. You might want to call your dad, just so he doesn’t worry if he comes home before we do.” I’m not sure I fully comprehend it all, but I dial the bookstore anyway and explain that I’m awake and feeling good, and Dad sounds relieved. While I talk, I watch Bennett fluttering around the kitchen, filling and refilling coffee cups and water glasses.

“Ready?” he asks after I hang up, and I smile and nod, mostly to convince myself that I am. Bennett walks over to the kitchen window where I’m standing and takes both of my hands in his. His are warm, strong, and for some inexplicable reason I feel safe, even though I’m completely terrified.

“Close your eyes,” he commands, and I do, smiling in the seconds before my stomach begins to contort. My intestines feel like they’re being twisted, kneaded from the inside, and while it isn’t painful, it certainly isn’t pleasant, either. Just as I feel the nausea, I see a bright light through my eyelids that forces me to shut them more tightly. Then I feel warmth on my face and a hot breeze that lifts my hair away from my forehead.

He squeezes my hands. “You can open your eyes. We’re here.”

We’re standing exactly as we had been back in the kitchen, facing each other and holding both hands. Only, when I look down, my feet are in sand.

I squint against the sunlight and look past him at the bright blue-green water that stretches out as far I can see. The cove is small; I can look in both directions and see its entire length. Giant boulders hold back the tranquil, turquoise bay until it meets the sea, and high, jagged rocks reach for the sky, like bookends holding the white sand between them firmly in place. I turn around and look behind me to find nothing but a dense collection of trees. There is no one here. Not anywhere.

Bennett’s watching me. He’s still holding my hands, which is a good thing, because I’m pretty sure I’ve stopped breathing. “I know, it’s a lame cliché. A secluded beach on a deserted island—” He stops short and looks at me. “Anna? Are you okay?”

I can’t take my eyes off the view. This can’t be real. “Where are we?” I must drop his hands, because now I’m walking away from him, like I’m being pulled by force toward the water.

His voice follows me. “It’s one of my favorite places in the world…Ko Tao. It’s a tiny island in Thailand. You can only get here by boat, and there’s no pier. You actually have to wade through—”

“No way.” I stop and turn around to look at him. “We’re in Thailand? Right now…we’re in Thailand?”

“Welcome to Thailand.” He smiles and spreads his arms wide.

“I’m in Thailand.” Repetition may help it sink in. My feet move toward the water, expansive and sparkling before me. It’s like a mirage in a cartoon that looks refreshing and beautiful until one of the characters leans forward in disbelief, and the moment their fingertip touches the water it’s enveloped in sand and disappears from sight. I’m so prepared for that same phenomenon that I’m surprised when I kneel down, touch my fingertip to the water, and feel the wetness of the ocean.

I can feel him watching me as I look around, spinning slowly in place, taking in every square inch of this island. Every palm tree. Every boulder. Every wave. Every shell. I can feel the expression on my face. My eyes are wide and my mouth is open and my forehead’s all scrunched up, and I think I must look ridiculous, until I look over at Bennett. He’s got a smile on his face, this look of wonder, like he’s the one who’s awestruck. I close my eyes and inhale…everything.

“You okay?”

I nod.

“Good. Come on.” Bennett takes my hand and we walk along the shore. The water runs over our feet and washes back out again, and we squish through the sand until we pass the giant boulders. Bennett leads me up a slope to a secluded patch of sand that’s warm and dry, and I take my sweater off so there’s nothing between my skin and the hot sand but my T-shirt. I lie back and melt.

“This is much better than my kitchen,” I say to the sky, and then I look over at him.

He’s stretched out in the sand, propped up on his elbow and watching me with a satisfied grin, and I roll onto my side and mirror his pose. We each have one hand occupied, holding up our heads, but neither one of us seem to know what to do with the other one. I don’t know if it’s the physical warmth of the sand or how good he looks in his thin T-shirt and jeans, but all I want to do is reach over and rest my free hand on the small bit of skin peeking out between the two. I picture him pulling me into a kiss and rolling around in the sand like we’ve just been dropped into a photo shoot for some cheesy designer cologne. But then I remember the night he walked me home after coffee and I summoned up the nerve to grab the lapels of his coat, only to find myself standing alone and rejected in the snow. I can’t bring myself to touch him, so I bring my fingertip to the sand and start making little circles there instead. “So…” I say, “Thailand.”

He shoots me a confident smile.

I watch him for a moment, wondering why he was so worried about bringing me here. Who wouldn’t want to have a small part in something so impossible? So magical? “I don’t get it. What’s not to like?”

When he smiles at me I can tell I’ve just passed whatever test I’m supposed to pass to get to the next level, like he’s got a mental list with an empty box next to the words
teleported to deserted island / didn’t freak out
. Check.

But I know he still has more to tell me. Two more things, in fact. I should probably just sit here in the sand and enjoy the view, but I can’t. I need answers.

“How did you know I needed help last night?”

“I didn’t. I came by to get a book on Mexico. For Argotta’s travel assignment.”

I’m confused about a lot of things that happened last night, but I’m certain I was alone when the thug with the knife came in. “No way. You weren’t in the store.”

He reaches forward and my heart starts racing with the idea of him touching me, but instead he grabs a fistful of sand and lets it fall through his fingers. “Are you sure you want to hear this part?”

I stare at him, and finally I nod.

“The robbery didn’t happen exactly the way you remember it.” When all the sand has fallen from his grasp, he brushes his palm against his jeans and looks at me to gauge my reaction.

I just raise my eyebrows and wait.

“I came into the bookstore. You and I talked about Mexico. Then the guy burst through the door.”

“No way. I remember that. I was definitely alone—”

He cuts me off. “Let me explain. The way you remember it, you
were
alone. But that’s not the way it was the first time.”

“The
first
time?”

“The first time I was in the bookstore. We were talking about our travel plans. When the door blew open, you got up off the floor to help the man you thought was a customer, and he grabbed you. But he didn’t see me. I had time to disappear.”

I flash on the trick Bennett just showed me—God, how long ago was that? Fifteen minutes or so?—where he was sitting on my bar stool one second, vanishing into thin air the next, and reappearing right where he left a minute later. Even if he disappeared last night, that doesn’t explain how I went from having a knife to my throat to standing underneath an elm tree during a blizzard.

“I disappeared from the bookstore, went back five minutes earlier, reappeared in the back room, and called nine-one-one from your phone.”

The voice. The sound from the back of the store. “I heard you.…” The details are coming back in bits and pieces, but they still don’t make any sense. What does he mean by
the first time
? “Wait a minute. Did you just say you went back? Five minutes earlier?”

He nods. “Yeah. I went back.”

“In
time
?”

He tilts his head up and smiles shyly. “I…do that too.”

“You went
back
in time. And
changed
what happened?”

He’s wearing a sheepish grin, like he’s sorry, but he just can’t help it. “It’s, like, a do-over.”

“So, why didn’t you just tell me someone was about to rob the store? Or, like, lock the dead bolt before he came in?” I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I can’t help thinking it would have been nice not to have a knife to my neck in the first place.

“I don’t do that,” he says. “I don’t
stop
events from happening, but I’ll change smaller things, little details that might affect the outcome. If I’d stopped the robbery entirely—and I’ve never done anything like that, so I’m not even sure I could have—something even more horrible could have happened. That guy might have robbed someone else at knifepoint but not gotten caught. He might have seen you walking home a couple of hours later and…” His voice trails off and he’s silent for a moment. “Anyway, I just make it a rule not to change the big stuff.”

“So you couldn’t
stop
the robbery. But you could go back five minutes
earlier
?”

He nods. “Technically, I shouldn’t have even done that, but yeah.”

“And call nine-one-one from the phone in the back room.”

He nods again.

“Why didn’t the police come?”

“They did, just not fast enough. After I called, I snuck out and hid behind a bookcase. By the time he got you back to the safe, I decided I couldn’t wait for the cops anymore. I had to get you out of there on my own. Just in case.”

Suddenly everything hits me: Bennett doesn’t just disappear and reappear in different places, he can travel backward through
time
? I want to appear brave, unflappable, and worthy of hearing the next thing, but I can’t quite wrap my head around it all.

“I take it this is the second thing?”

He nods. “Part of it.”

“
Part
of it?” My eyes widen. I lie back in the sand and stare up at the sky.

“You okay?” he asks. I feel my head make a little divot in the sand when I nod. But he’s right—this is a lot to process. I throw my arm over my eyes to block out the sun, and we just lie there in silence for a few minutes. One arm is over my eyes, and the other is resting in the sand between us. Suddenly I feel the tickle of warm granules slipping across the surface of my arm and slowly piling into my open palm, and I look up to find Bennett leaning over me, watching the sand trickle from his hand into mine. “See,” he says with a grin, “I told you I could freak you out.”

“I’m not freaked out.”

“Yeah,” he says with a nervous laugh, “you are
definitely
freaked out.”

I prop myself up on my elbows, ruining his little sand-pile, and look at him. Then I look around at this beautiful setting—palm trees and white sand and turquoise water—this postcard he’s just magically inserted the two of us into, and I start to understand how implausible the whole thing really is. It should have taken at least two planes, a boat, and more than thirty hours to get here from Chicago. I should be many time zones away, and it should be dark. I should be complaining about the windchill factor, not enjoying this warm little breeze on my skin. Above all, I should be in AP World History. I look back at Bennett and give him a sincere smile. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

He looks relieved. “You’re welcome.”

“What you can do is…” Every word that comes to mind sounds inadequate, but I finally settle on
amazing
.

“Thanks.” I haven’t heard the rest of the second thing, but I can tell I’m baby-stepping my way toward it.

“Look, I know I can’t give you all the answers you want, but at least for today, I can give you that daring adventure.” He stands up and brushes the sand off his jeans, then holds his hand out to me.

“You know, I’ve never been in an ocean before.” I try to make my voice light and flirty, like this isn’t weird at all.

“I know. You told me last night. You were trying to figure out which beaches to add to your travel plan so you could do your morning run on the sand and swim in the ocean.”

Okay, that’s weird. “And I assume you had a suggestion.”

“La Paz,” he says matter-of-factly. Yes, this
is
weird. And I’m not crazy about the fact that we’ve had a conversation I can’t remember. But I don’t have time to be irritated, because he wraps his arms across his chest, grabs the bottom of his T-shirt, and lifts it over his head. His arms are more muscular than I’d pictured them and his chest is perfect and I think my jaw just dropped.

He reaches his leg forward and, with his big toe, draws a line in the sand in front of us.

“It’s not La Paz, but there’s sand and water.” He beams and leans forward in a racing stance. “Take your mark, Greene.”

I’m not sure if he expects me to strip down to my bra and underwear, but the thought alone brings heat to my face that has nothing to do with the temperature here. I look down at my bare feet, my jeans. I wonder how transparent my gray T-shirt will become. But when I look out to the water and squeeze the sand between my toes, I decide I don’t care. Laughing, I lean into my lunge.

“Get set.” He turns to me with a sly smile. “Go!” he yells, and we bolt forward, running as fast as we can until the sand turns darker and colder and wetter and eventually the waves carry us away from the warm beach.

I swim out into the current. I dive under. I feel the waves lap against my body as I push myself against them. When I look to my side, I find Bennett there, his arms cutting through the water as he starts to dive again, and I follow him under, letting the water burn my eyes. Letting the taste of salt fill my mouth. Enjoying every minute of every stinging sensation. And wanting it never to end.