Collide

by Michelle Madow

  Maybe I’d been fighting too hard to resist Annabelle’s life. Maybe the choices she’d made were right for me, too.

  Zac’s door was closed. I reached for it and took a deep breath, my stomach in knots. If I did this, there would be no turning back.

  Which was what Jake should have thought when Marisa kissed him. But he kissed her back. And when Annabelle asked him for a chance, he turned her down.

  If my mom hadn’t gotten in her accident, that would have been my life. I wish it had been my life. Annabelle didn’t have to go through losing Mom, and she didn’t have to learn that Jake had said he loved her when he was keeping something so huge from her.

  Annabelle was happy. I wanted that for myself.

  Maybe Zac could help me get it.

  With that decision, I knocked on his door.

  “Yeah?” he said, so casually that I assumed he must think I was Kara.

  “It’s me.” I cracked open the door and peeked inside. Zac was lying on his bed, his hair still wet from the shower, his physics textbook open in front of him. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.” He closed the textbook, marking his spot, and glanced at his watch. “I thought we weren’t meeting for another two hours?”

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The moment he saw what must have been the mess of my tear stained face, his expression crumpled.

  “It didn’t go well, did it?” He moved aside on the bed, pushed his books out of the way, and motioned for me to sit next to him.

  “No,” I said, walking across the room to join him. “It didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  I caught him up on what Jake had told me, surprised that as much as I’d already cried today, more tears still came. Shouldn’t my tear ducts be dried out by now? But I felt like they might never stop.

  “He told me that he thought the version of himself in my world didn’t tell me about him and Marisa because he ‘didn’t want to lose me,’” I finished up the story. “I was so upset—I told him that was just an excuse. Then I left.”

  “He let you leave?” Zac asked, although he continued before I could answer. “If it were me, I would have run after you.”

  I shrugged, although his comment did make me smile for a second. “I didn’t give him that chance.”

  “He still could have.”

  “But he’s not my Jake,” I reminded him. “This Jake was a close friend, but he never fell in love with me like my Jake did. Well, like my Jake said he did. This Jake just had a crush on me. And then he didn’t believe Annabelle when she said she might return those feelings and asked him for a chance.”

  Zac ran his fingers over his chin, not saying anything. “Annabelle never told me about that,” he finally said.

  “I don’t think she told anyone.” I pulled my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “And I get it. It would have been humiliating. Especially since she couldn’t change what had happened. There wouldn’t have been a point in harping about it.”

  “Always so practical.” Zac smiled, nudging my shoulder. “But you’re here now, talking to me.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “I am.”

  “And you’ve trusted me this entire week.”

  “I know.” I met his eyes, managing a smile through my tears. “You’ve been here for me through everything, even though you miss Annabelle and are worried that you might never get her back. I don’t think I’ve thanked you for that yet.”

  “Annabelle isn’t great with words either, but I could always tell what she meant,” he said. “You’ve come to me with so much this past week, and that showed me that while you might not remember these past few months, you still trust me. You’re more like Annabelle than you realize. And I mean that in only the best way.”

  “Thanks.” I shifted in place, nervous. “When I first got to this world, I didn’t know you. I said some things… well, I probably wasn’t as thoughtful as I should have been, since you lost someone too and aren’t sure if she’ll ever come back. I’m sorry for that. Especially since I’m finally seeing how Annabelle could have fallen for you.”

  He pressed his lips together and studied his hands, saying nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought you would be happy to hear me say that.”

  When he finally looked back up, his eyes flashed with so many conflicting emotions, and I realized how much Zac thought before he spoke. I’d always assumed that because he was a jock and hung out with the partying crowd, he was loud and boisterous. But he wasn’t like that at all. He was kind and thoughtful. Every minute spent with him surprised me with how wrong my assumptions had been.

  “I am happy to hear it,” he finally said. “But Anna… you just came from having a confrontation with someone you were dating for months. Someone you loved.”

  “He lied to me,” I said. “For months. That’s not love. But from what I know about you and me—we were happy. Maybe I’m not here just to stop the shooter. Maybe I’m also here so I’m forced to open my mind and get to know you.”

  “You’re saying that because you’re angry,” he said. “And hurt.”

  “No.” I shook my head, even though he was probably right.

  “You are,” he said. “Anyone would be.”

  “So what?” I stretched out my legs, moving to the end of the bed to stand up. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Of course not.” He rested a hand on my arm, stopping me. Heat passed over my skin. We both looked at where he was touching me, both of us frozen in place.

  Then he pulled his hand back to his side.

  “I’m glad you came here,” he said. “I’m just confused about why you came here.”

  “I wanted to go home,” I said, sinking back into my spot on the bed. “So I could spend time with my mom. These past few days, whenever I haven’t been at school or with you all figuring out what to do about the shooting, I’ve been enjoying every minute I have with her. But she would have seen I’d been crying, and she would have asked questions, and I would have had to lie. I didn’t want to lie to her. I hate not being able to tell her about what’s going on.”

  “Understandable.” He played with his lower lip. “But Claire’s been there for you too. You could have gone to her house.”

  “I could have,” I said. “But there’s something I want you to do that Claire can’t.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked.

  “I want you to help me get Annabelle’s memories of you back.”

  Thursday, October 30

  “You what?” His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “I want you to help me remember our relationship,” I said, slower this time. “Isn’t that what you wanted ever since finding out that I’m not Annabelle?”

  “Well, yeah.” He ran his fingers through his hair, perplexed. “But you said it’s not possible. Didn’t you try to do that with Jake—to help him remember his relationship with you? And it didn’t work?”

  “Maybe it didn’t work because Jake and I aren’t supposed to be together.” Saying it felt like taking a knife to my heart, but I had to face that it might be true.

  “And now you think that you and I are supposed to be together?”

  “I’m not sure about anything anymore,” I said. “But isn’t it worth a try? Don’t you want Annabelle back?”

  “Of course I do.” He sat back, as if surprised I had to ask. “But it sounds like you want to do more than get back Annabelle’s memories. It sounds like you’re giving up—like you would let yourself disappear. And you can’t disappear. Because we still have to stop the shooter. And we need you to help us do that.”

  “I don’t want to disappear,” I said, although it didn’t come out as strongly as I’d meant it to. “I just want to remember our relationship. Please.” I reached for his hand, but he pulled away, not letting me take it. “I thought this was what you wanted?” I asked.

  “It is,” he said, his voice ho
llow. “But not like this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You only want to remember our relationship so you won’t be as hurt about Jake,” he said. “This isn’t about me. It’s about him.”

  My cheeks heated, because once again, Zac was right. “Maybe,” I said. “But is it too much to ask you to try?”

  “I thought you said it didn’t work that way.”

  “I’m not an expert on any of this,” I reminded him. “None of us are. But when I talked to Jake the other night and tried to get him to remember our relationship, I swear it sparked a feeling in him that hadn’t been there before.”

  “So you think you were getting your Jake back?”

  “Not exactly.” I turned my eyes down, staring at my hands. “I don’t think my Jake could come here. I mean, I guess anything’s possible, since I ended up here. But it seems like the chance of that happening would be rare.”

  “That’s an understatement,” he said. “What brought you here is unheard of. Or maybe it happens all the time, and when Friday night is over, everything will go back to the way it was and none of us will remember anything. Or maybe we’ll think this was all a dream. Maybe this is a dream. There’s no way to know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But when I was telling Jake about our relationship, it seemed to bring out my Jake in him. I was hoping you could try doing that for me.”

  “So you want me to do what, exactly?”

  “Remind me about your relationship with Annabelle.” I scooted closer to him, not allowing my gaze to leave his. “Tell me something important. You already told me that we kissed for the first time during your Memorial Day boat party, and that’s when you asked me out. Now… tell me about our first date.”

  “Our first date.” He laughed and shook his head, as if it were a private joke. Seeing him smile like that made me want to be in on it too. “I spent forever researching the perfect restaurant—I wanted it to be somewhere nice but not too fancy, and someplace different so you would know I put thought into it. I didn’t tell you where we were going so it would be a surprise.”

  “Where did you pick?” I asked.

  “Blue Wave Thai.”

  “Yuck.” I crinkled my nose. “I hate Thai food.”

  “I know that now.” He chuckled. “But I didn’t then.”

  “So what did I do?” I asked. “Say something, or suffer through it?”

  “On the way there you kept asking for hints about where we were going, because you said you hated surprises,” he said, smiling at the memory. “I didn’t tell you anything except for how I hadn’t been to this place before, but that it had great reviews online. Once we pulled up to the restaurant, it took one glance at your expression for me to see that you were… less than enthused.”

  “I can imagine.” I laughed, since I’d always been told that I was terrible at hiding my emotions. They were always splayed across my face without my realizing it.

  “I asked what was wrong, and you admitted that you didn’t like Thai food,” he said. “So I told you the truth—that I’d never had it before and that I just thought the restaurant sounded impressive. You laughed and asked me where my favorite place was to go to eat, and you told me not to worry about it sounding impressive or not. I blurted out the first place that came to mind—Mellow Mushroom.”

  “I love Mellow Mushroom!” I brought my hands together, brightening. “Their pizza is the best.”

  “That’s exactly what you said then.” He smiled. “And I was so glad to hear it, since most of the girls on the dance team think that pizza is the ultimate enemy that will make them fat and must therefore be avoided at all cost.”

  “I’m not ‘most of the girls on the dance team,’” I reminded him.

  “Trust me,” he said. “I know. So we didn’t even step foot inside the Thai restaurant. Instead I drove us to Mellow Mushroom, where we gorged ourselves on pizza and talked for so long that the restaurant eventually kicked us out because they needed to close for the night.”

  “Now you have me craving pizza.” My stomach rumbled, and I wrapped my arms around it to quiet it. “I barely ate my lunch, so I’m starving.”

  “Dominos?” he asked, pulling out his phone.

  “That’s my favorite,” I said. “Well, favorite delivery pizza. Since Mellow doesn’t deliver.”

  “I know that too,” he said, and this time, he even winked. Zac was probably the only guy who could pull off a wink without it looking cheesy.

  He went into the delivery app and knew what I wanted—spinach and mushrooms on my half—without me having to tell him.

  “And after dinner at Mellow Mushroom?” I asked after he placed the order. “What did we do then?”

  “I realized that if we stayed out any later you would be late for your curfew, so I took you back home,” he said. “After all, I wanted to make a good impression on your parents.”

  “My mom did mention how much she likes you,” I said, recalling the conversation I’d had with her on Monday.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” he said. “You’ve always been important to me. Of course I wanted your parents’ approval.”

  I searched my mind for the actual memories of everything he was telling me—the drive to the Thai restaurant, dinner at Mellow Mushroom, and the conversation we’d had there that made us lose track of time—but no matter how hard I tried, it felt like running into a brick wall. It was like he was telling me about someone else’s life—not my own. Which, I supposed, he was.

  “It’s not working,” he said. “Is it?”

  “Maybe we’re not trying hard enough.” I smiled sadly, not wanting him to lose hope.

  “Should I give more details about our date?” he asked. “Or tell you about our second date?”

  “No.” I looked him straight in the eyes, making sure I sounded as determined as possible. “That won’t be enough.”

  “Then what will be enough?”

  “Something that will help me remember my feelings,” I said, keeping my gaze locked on his. “I want you to kiss me.”

  Thursday, October 30

  “What?” He sat back, looking at me as if he didn’t recognize me.

  “You heard me.” I set my shoulders, determined not to lose my nerve. “I thought you would be excited about this?”

  “I am,” he said. “This just isn’t how I imagined our first kiss would go.”

  “Technically, it’s not our first kiss…”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “It’ll be our first kiss for you.”

  “And maybe it’ll help me remember our actual first kiss.”

  I watched him with so much hope, wanting to remember the feelings that Annabelle had for him. Why couldn’t I feel the same way about him that she did? It would lessen the pain from Jake’s betrayal.

  “I want you to remember it too,” he said. “But I want you to kiss me because you want me, not because you’re trying to get over Jake. I don’t want to be your rebound. What we have is bigger than that. It’s better than that.”

  It was tempting to point out that there was a possibility that Zac had started out as a “rebound” for Annabelle—since she was trying to forget about being rejected by Jake—but I said nothing. Because I refused to give up until trying everything possible.

  So I leaned forward and kissed him.

  He responded immediately, pulling me closer, his lips falling into rhythm with mine. It was obvious that he’d kissed me before. My first kiss with Jake hadn’t even felt this familiar.

  But I couldn’t think about Jake right now. That wasn’t fair. I needed to focus on Zac.

  He tasted fresh—like cinnamon—and I wrapped my arms around his neck, wanting to push the rest of the world away and remember Annabelle’s feelings for him. My heart pounded faster, and I waited for that spark. The one I felt when I kissed Jake.

  But it didn’t happen. Kissing Zac felt nice, and strangely familiar, but that was all. My memories weren’t coming back. The pa
in from Jake’s lie was as strong as it was five minutes ago.

  I pulled away and pressed my lips together, not wanting to meet Zac’s eyes. I couldn’t bear to see the hope that I expected to be in them, knowing that I was about to crush him all over again.

  “So…” He was breathless, his voice rougher than usual. “Did it work?”

  I raised my eyes to meet his, and the moment they did, his expression crumpled.

  “It didn’t,” he said. “Did it?”

  “No.” I shook my head sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  He blinked, and the disappointment was gone. Just like that. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he said, shrugging it off. “You tried. And you said earlier that you could see how Annabelle fell for me. So that’s a good start, right?”

  It sounded so forced. Did he believe what he was saying, or was he just hoping for the return of a ghost?

  “You still think she’s coming back?” I asked.

  “I hope so,” he said. “But if she did come back… what would happen to you?”

  “I would probably go back to where I came from,” I said, shivering at the thought of it.

  “To a world where your mom and your boyfriend are both dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said, since the other possibility—that I’d died in that world—was too terrifying to think about. “There would be no other place for me to go, would there?”

  “You said there are an infinite number of worlds,” he said. “Couldn’t you end up in one of those?”

  “If I did, what would happen once I got there?” I asked. “Would I live out this same awful week over and over again? That sounds like the worst version of Groundhog Day ever.”

  “I wish I had an answer for you,” he said. “But no matter what happens, I want you to make me a promise.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Depends on what that promise is.”

  “I want you to promise that if you end up back in your world, you’ll come to me,” he said. “Well, to the version of me in your world. And that you’ll tell me about everything that happened to you this past week. Because you’re going to need someone, and that version of me will be there for you. You need to give him a chance.”