Gran tries to keep the mourning at bay. “It’s too early for that,” she says when she sees us frowning off into space. We have movie night with pizza. We have hot cocoa by the fire. Gran even tries to stretch the Christmas spirit into January by playing her old Andy Williams holiday records while we put away the hot-glued ornaments and frayed burlap garland Audrey and I made as kids. Afton bats at the decorations and pounces in and out of the boxes. Claire and I try to be upbeat and positive, but it’s tiring keeping up the act. So after a week of Audrey in the hospital, the attempt to pretend all is well was abandoned. Now we’re keeping to ourselves, and the house is almost silent, save for a few creaks across the floor as we move from room to room like shifting shadows.
I wait for news from Mom and Dad about Audrey. I wait for contact from Porter. And I darken from the inside out, becoming nothing but a shadow myself.
It’s Wednesday afternoon when I get a text, but it’s not from Porter.
outside, yo. prepare 2 b amazed
A smile breaks across my lips. If anyone can distract me from death and destruction and cancer and blood clots and silent soldiers no one realizes we’re fighting, it’s Jensen Peters.
I slip on my Chucks and parka and head outside. I find Jensen in our driveway, wearing a grin, a black winter jacket, and a slouched gray beanie, leaning casually against the most hideous car I’ve ever seen. His ankles are crossed. His smile is infectious. With his honey-blond hair swept across his eyes, he looks like something out of a J. Crew catalog. But the dilapidated hatchback behind him ruins the effect.
“What is that?” I say, eyeing the car.
“A 1980 Toyota Corolla.”
“It’s powder blue, Peters.”
“And pink.” He grins wider and points to the horizontal pink pinstripes along the body.
“And rusty.” I nod at the driver’s-side door. The bottom half is almost completely corroded away.
“Yeah, don’t look at that. Look at this.” He opens the door, slides onto the passenger seat, and twirls a pair of pink fur dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Sexy,” I say, stepping closer and draping an arm on the top of the doorframe.
“Dead sexy.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I’m not sure the kids at school are going to see it our way, though.”
“You think I bought this beauty just to have her rot in some high school parking lot?” He slides out and opens his arms wide. “She’s meant for bigger things, Wayfare.”
I glance at the little hunk of blue and pink and rust again. “Like?”
“Autocross.”
“Autocross?”
He nods. “Autocross.”
OK, I’ll give him this one. Little cars are pretty perfect for an autocross competition. They’re nimble enough to plow through the tight turns of any mapped course without fishtailing out of control and eating a bunch of orange cones. It’s a timed trial, so speed is key. “Is she race ready?”
He squints in the winter sun with a half grin. “I was hoping you could help me out with that.”
A tiny shiver of excitement sparks beneath my skin. What did I say? Jensen’s always good for a distraction, even from events of the catastrophic, world-ending variety. My fingers have been itching to work on something new for weeks, something bigger than replacing the heating element on the toaster and figuring out why Claire’s tablet can’t hold a charge. “You want me to help fix her up?”
“Oh, I want much more than that. I want a commitment, baby.” He drops to one knee, right in the snow, soaking his jeans straight through. He looks up at me, holding the keys out in his palms. “Alex Wayfare, I want to make sweet engine music with you. Will you be my mechanic?”
Two of my neighbors walk by with their dog, staring and grinning, and I yank Jensen to his feet. “Get up before someone thinks you’re proposing, you goof.”
“Is that a yes?”
I take the keys in one hand and slap his arm with the other. “Yes,” I say with a laugh. “Now stop making a scene.” I start up the driveway toward the garage. “Want to leave her here? We’ve got room. And all my tools are inside.”
“Yeah, that would be awesome.” He follows behind me. “If it’s OK with your parents.”
I slide the garage door open and Jensen walks in, looking around, stepping on grease spots. He flashes me an approving smile. “I’ll come by after school when I don’t have practice and help.”
“Sounds good,” I say, because it does sound good. I need a project while I wait for Porter. Maybe getting back under a hood will help ease the raw feeling in my stomach, the feeling that says Porter’s gone, he’s not coming back, he thinks the situation is too much for me, so he’s going to spare me any further pain and burden and take it away.
I want that to be my choice, not his.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out as my heart leaps into my throat, but it’s only Claire asking when I’ll be done with my “makeout sesh.” I stare at the screen, trying to think of a biting reply, but dammit, nothing comes to mind. Not with Jensen standing there watching me.
“Do you need to take that?” he asks, tucking his hands in his jacket pockets, shrugging his shoulders against the cold.
“No. It’s nothing. Just a text.”
“From your boyfriend?”
I let out a laugh. If only things were that simple. “Yeah, right.” I lean a shoulder against the garage door.
Jensen furrows his brow. “He doesn’t text you?”
“Texting isn’t exactly his style.”
“Oh. Old school, huh?”
That’s an understatement. “Something like that.”
Jensen toes at one of the grease spots on the floor. “So, you guys are doing good, huh?”
“Yeah. Good.”
He laughs. “That sounds convincing.”
“It’s just…he’s been sort of…” I pause, looking for the right word. “Distant lately. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
“Why? He’s too busy or something?” Jensen takes a step toward me, frowning. “This guy sounds high maintenance, Wayfare.”
I smile, because he has no idea. “You think?” I nudge my glasses up my nose.
“I mean, it wasn’t that long ago you were pissed at him and thought he was lying to you. Messing with your head.”
I remember. How can I forget the moment that caused me to create this Variant timeline? “It’s complicated,” I say, wondering if Jensen and I would’ve become friends in that alternate universe, the one we’ll never get to see play out.
“You don’t want complicated. Take it from me. Tabitha was complicated.”
I nod just to appease him. Blue isn’t complicated in the way Tabitha is complicated. Jensen doesn’t understand, and that’s OK. He doesn’t have to.
He takes another step forward, closing the gap between us, and suddenly I feel fidgety. Nervous.
“You deserve to be with someone better,” he says.
“Someone who texts me?” I let out a laugh, trying to disperse the tension that’s suddenly wrapped around us, linking us at the ankles.
“I’m serious. You should be with someone easy. Someone you can be yourself around, no strings. Someone you can’t think about without getting a stupid grin on your face. Someone you want to do everything with, try everything with.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Everything, everything?”
He laughs. “Well, yeah. Especially everything, everything.”
I want to tell him I have all that with Blue, except I don’t. I feel like I can be myself around him, but does that count when he doesn’t know the real me? The real Alex? How long am I going to keep pining for him in Base Life, hoping to find him here?
What if I never find him? What would I be passing up?
Jensen’s standing so close now I can see flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, how long his lashes are. A few months ago, I would’ve killed to be standing somewhere, anywhere, alone with him. Close enough
to kiss. I used to think about kissing him all the time.
Maybe I’m thinking a little about it now.
Damn those seeds of doubt about Blue being our enemy. Damn Levi and Micki and Porter for planting them. They’re creeping up now, through the soil, reaching for sunlight.
I need to find Blue. Spend more time with him. Prove Micki and Levi and Porter wrong, prove Jensen wrong. Prove to myself that Blue is the one I want, not just in the past, but in the present.
I’m not wrong about Blue, or my feelings for him. It’s complicated, but I’m not wrong.
“Anyway,” Jensen says, taking a step back and breaking the spell his closeness has over me. Snapping the tension. “James, Tyler, and I are going to hit Chick and Ruth’s later and see if we can slam the Six-Pound Shake. You should come with us.”
My mouth goes dry at the thought. Not at the idea of going somewhere with Jensen. I’ve gotten pretty used to hanging out with him the past few months. But hanging out with him in public, with his friends, is another story. I’m not ready for them to disapprove of me. To make fun of me and make me feel unwelcome. Talk about me when I’m gone. And I don’t want Jensen to have to defend me when they ask him what the hell he’s thinking.
“I can’t,” I say, my voice small.
His hopeful shoulders fall.
I want to tell him that I finally get to visit Audrey tonight, but I don’t want him to know about that yet. I don’t want him to feel bad for coming over, asking me to work on his car, asking to hang out with me, when my sister almost died. He’d feel awful, I know he would. Besides, I don’t think I can form the words without breaking down. And I’m definitely not ready to let Jensen see me like that. “But I’ll see you Sunday at church, yeah? And we can start on the car on Monday.”
“Sure.” He steps past me, hands still in his pockets. “See ya, Wayfare.”
“You need a ride?” I call out as he reaches the sidewalk.
He squints up at me with his half grin. “Nah. I can walk. Have fun, whatever it is you’re doing tonight.” He lifts a hand to wave, then he’s off, his long legs carrying him around the corner and out of sight.
Now and Later
Audrey’s hospital room is dark and shadowy, with only the light from a table lamp spilling across the floor. Her signature black stocking cap is pulled over her ears. Mom must’ve brought it from home, and I’m glad she did. I didn’t like that Audrey’s head was bare. It made her look cold. Always cold.
She’s curled onto her side, hands fisted, clutching the threadbare quilt Gran made her when she was twelve, the well-worn satin edging pressed against her chin. Mom must’ve brought that for her too. As a kid, Audrey used to suck on the corners of her favorite blankets. I can remember how she looked as a toddler, curled up in a ball, her beautiful dark blond mop of hair swept over her sweaty forehead, her blanket tucked between her lips, her eyes squished tight so her dreams wouldn’t escape. I used to climb into her bed and curl up behind her. I always seemed to find sleep easier that way, with her breath keeping pace with mine.
I often wonder what her life might’ve been like if I hadn’t created the Variant. What if in that other reality Audrey never had leukemia, never felt this kind of pain and exhaustion, never missed out on taking the stairs two at a time? And if so, does that make her cancer my fault?
I’m too steeped in those thoughts to notice I’m crawling in behind her like I used to, wanting to curl up next to her. The mattress squeaks. I snap out of it and realize what I’m doing. I shouldn’t disrupt her sleep, I shouldn’t chance hurting her. There are tubes snaking across her arms, held on with tape. But before I can stand, she stirs and turns over.
“You’re back from your trip.” She stretches her arms over her head and coughs.
I frown at the sound, wishing I hadn’t woken her. “Go back to sleep,” I whisper, moving to leave, but her slim fingers find my wrist, and she pulls me down onto my back so I’m lying next to her.
“No, I was hoping you’d come see me.” She smiles, her soft gray eyes creased at the edges, her lids heavy with sleep. “Tell me everything.”
I shake my head before images of the last week resurface. I don’t want to think about my trip, and I especially don’t want to think about the hand she’s holding, and how it helped bury two dead bodies. “Later,” I say, staring up at the sphere of soft lamplight on the ceiling tiles. “Tell me about your week. What did you do while I was gone?”
“Besides almost dying?”
The ghostly red ambulance lights. The snow. My frozen feet. I press her hand between both of mine, holding on tight. “Besides that.”
She sends a short, low laugh floating above us. “It was fraught with drama, my dear, let me tell you.” She uses a smoky, dark voice, like an old Hollywood starlet’s. “Let’s see. Gran found raccoons sneaking into her greenhouse and declared war. Pops lost his pipe and found it in the dishwasher, of all places. It’s still a mystery how it got there, but I suspect the Anti-Tobacco League had something to do with it. Hmmmm. What else? Claire lost a tooth so she got dibs on picking the flick for movie night.”
I roll my eyes. “How fun for you.”
“Wasn’t that bad. Some new Cinderella retelling with a lot of twirling and singing. The main guy was hot and made me forget the crushing agony flowing through my veins for an hour, so there’s that.”
I smile to myself, knowing full well the healing powers of Hot Guy Distraction. “What about you? What did you do?”
“Me?” Audrey looks down at her blanket, rubbing the satin edge between her fingers. “Same old. Napped. Puked. Napped some more. Oh, and I decided to quit school.”
I sit up. “What?”
She sits up too and folds her legs. Our knees touch. “I quit the homebound program. Mom said I could. I couldn’t keep up, what with all the napping and puking, so I quit.”
“But,” I say, my mind whirring as the circuits scramble to connect, “you can’t quit high school.”
“Yes I can. It’s one of the universal perks of having cancer, you know. I can do anything. Quit school. Have ice cream for breakfast. Cancel our Scotland trip.”
“Wait, what?” She hands me all this new, huge information so casually, like it’s nothing, and it feels like she jumped onto a moving train and I’m running alongside, reaching, stretching, unable to catch up. “Why would you cancel? It’s your dream to go to Scotland.”
She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t go with this stupid clot. Too risky. I have to take it easy.”
“OK. The trip can wait. We can postpone it until you’re better. But what about school? Will you pick back up in the fall?”
She tilts her head to the side with the same expression Levi gave me when he told me Blue was a traitor. Half sympathy, half pity. Like I’m missing the huge, glaring point, but I’m not. I know the point. I just don’t want to face it yet.
Facing things makes them real.
“There’s no guarantee I’ll get a fall,” Audrey says. “I’ve got what I’ve got now, and that’s what matters. I want to make the most of my now. There may not be a later.”
And there it is. Making things real.
My throat tightens. I’m shaking my head, trying not to hear her words, trying to hold back a sudden threat of tears.
How can she say that? That she may not have a fall? Like she has an expiration date stamped across her forehead. Like, hurry up and do everything now because Audrey won’t last until August.
She takes my hands. “I’m all right, Allie. I’ve been preparing for this. Everything’s going to be all right. All right?”
I nod because I’m a liar. I pat her hands and turn away, sliding my feet to the floor, because I can’t have this conversation right now. “Get some sleep.” The words scrape against the knot in my throat. “I’ll come by and see you in the morning.” I don’t look at her because I can’t start crying.
I may never stop.
I try my best to push the sobs down, keep them si
lent and trembling beneath the surface. I need to disappear, go to a place where I can let all these emotions out, or else I might self-destruct.
Most people—when their worst fear comes crashing into their lives like a freight train, ripping their entire world from their hands—have to face those tragedies head on. Excruciating minute by excruciating minute.
Or die trying.
But I’m not most people.
I have an escape. I can travel to other worlds, slip into another pair of shoes. Time travel, as much hell as it’s given me, provides some relief. It gives me time to regroup, recharge, and resurface once I’ve processed things. And when I return to Base Life? The present day? No time will have passed at all. I get to disappear for a while without anyone noticing I was gone.
I’m thankful for this gift, this power, because as crazy as time travel may seem, it’s the only thing keeping me sane anymore. The only thing keeping me from falling to pieces and scattering across the floor.
I want to talk to Blue, tell him what I’m going through, have him wrap his arms around me, but I can’t risk going back in time without Porter there to make sure I don’t mess up. I’m still new at this. Still green.
But there is one thing I can do. I can disappear into the Black. I can ascend to Limbo and rest there, for as long as it takes, before I come back down and face what’s before me.
Death and more death, everywhere I turn.
In the pocket of my jeans, my fingers close around my Polygon stone, my little piece of déjà vu that helps me ascend. My soul crawls out of my skin and reaches for Limbo. The billowy, familiar ribbons of the Black slink and roll into Audrey’s room. It swirls and wraps around me, taking me as its prisoner. It pulls me into its arms, and I am gone.
The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare Page 6
