by Stacey Jay
“Katie, I—”
“I really treasure your friendship, Mitch,” I said, forcing myself to look straight in his eyes, to make it clear that this was the last time this was ever going to happen. “You’ll always be so important to me. You know that, right?”
He stared at me, into me, searching for whatever he thought he’d found a few minutes ago, but it was gone. The weak Katie was gone. Forever. Never to return. Finally, he stopped looking and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Yeah. Me too.” When he glanced back up, his smile was almost back to normal. Almost. “And sorry if I stuck my nose in your business. You and Isaac are great together, and if his disappearing act doesn’t bother you, then who am I to start trouble?”
“You haven’t started trouble.” And neither had I. Not this time, and not ever again.
Using the locket had brought me closer to crazy than I’d ever been and maybe even ruined Theo’s life. I wasn’t going to let that be for nothing. Isaac and I were going to make it, no matter what. Even if Isaac had done something with Rachel, we would get past it. I could forgive him. Even if—in another life—he hadn’t been able to forgive me.
“I should get home,” I said, taking another firm step away from Mitch. “I want to call Isaac and see if he and his dad made up after their fight.”
Mitch sighed and fell in beside me as I walked to the door. “What were they fighting about?”
The story filled the space while we fetched our bikes and waved goodbye to the bride and groom, giving us something to talk about while the last of the awkwardness between us faded away, banished into the unrepeatable past. By the time we reached Mitch’s van, we were just friends again. For now. For always.
Chapter Fifteen
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2:01 P.M.
Only one more day. One more day until my birthday. Then the do over would be over, the wrinkles in time would smooth, and I’d be able to take the locket off and move on with my life. I had to believe that. I had to believe the picture of my grandfather would stop flickering, and the weird inconsistencies would stop, and the—
“Katie, could I borrow a ponytail holder?” Rachel asked, sliding in next to me at the dressing room mirrors. In the new world, juniors and seniors had gym class together seventh period.
Because God was cruel and fate unkind and wishes come true didn’t play out the way you thought they would.
“Sure.” I fumbled for a few holders from my makeup bag and handed them over. “Take three. It’s not like I need them anymore.”
“I love the new look. It’s so you.” She ran her fingers along the bottom of my bob before brushing her own long brown hair into a ponytail.
I fought the wave of nausea inspired by her touch and forced a smile. I’d done my best to put my suspicions about her and Isaac out of my mind, but it wasn’t easy.
Isaac hadn’t helped shore up my wavering faith by skipping school today. After the fashion show last night, he’d disappeared and hadn’t called me until a few minutes before class this morning. He was allegedly hitting the mall with his mom, but I found the excuse hard to swallow. In all the years I’d known him, Isaac had steadfastly refused to enter a mall with his shopaholic mother. Even getting to skip class wouldn’t usually be enough to get him to agree to such a thing.
Then there was the fact that Rachel hadn’t checked into school until lunch hour. She’d said she’d been too “drained” from coordinating the fashion show to make her morning classes, but it seemed horribly convenient—Isaac and Rachel gone at the same time when neither of them had missed school all year.
My imagination had been running wild, torturing me with scenes of Isaac and Rachel and what might have been.
And that had been before Sarah pulled me aside just before class and said she wanted to talk to me in private after school. The look in her eyes had promised I wasn’t going to enjoy our conversation. I could only guess that she planned to tell me whatever she knew about Rachel and Isaac. In less than an hour I’d know the truth.
I struggled to swallow a rush of acid that surged into my throat. Ugh. I was falling apart. I probably had an ulcer, but I hadn’t bothered to ask my mom to make a doctor’s appointment. I kept hoping it would go away, just like I hoped everything that hurt or scared me would go away. Just like I’d wanted the mess I’d made with Mitch to go away.
Seemed like I would have learned my lesson about wishful thinking by now, but I hadn’t. I still didn’t want to hear whatever it was that Sarah was going to tell me. It made me wish for a fire drill or a bomb threat . . . something that would allow me to slip out to the parking lot without having that conversation.
“And I really like the color,” Rachel continued, adjusting her ponytail a little higher on her head. “It’s a lot more interesting than plain red.”
“Thanks. Yin’s mom is so great.”
“Totally,” Rachel agreed.
I turned back to my own alien reflection, ignoring the perfectly made-up face staring back at me, trying to stay calm as I brushed on a coat of lip gloss. I didn’t know why we put on lip gloss before gym class, but the popular girls did, so now I did too. Last night’s fashion-show performance had cemented my platinum status. The dress I’d modeled had sold for four thousand dollars, the highest price fetched by any outfit in the show.
“Isaac must love it. Did he tell you he loved it?” Rachel’s tone was filled with so much fake sweetness that I nearly turned and walked over to Sarah.
I could see her reflection in the mirror. She was already dressed out even though we had five more minutes until we had to be in the gym. I could go to her and ask for the truth right here, right now.
Instead, I plunked my lip gloss back in my bag and dug around for some hair spray to keep my new bangs out of my face.
One more day. The locket would come off in one more day and who knew what the “truth” would be then? Maybe things would stay the same, but maybe they’d be different. Maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about Isaac and Rachel because there wouldn’t be any Isaac and Rachel. Maybe—
“Oh my God!” Rachel screamed, and knocked my hair spray out of my hands. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I shook my stinging hand and glared openly at Rachel in a way I never would have dared before. But I couldn’t help it. I was just so stressed out and scared.
The locket was making me crazy, stealing every ounce of joy and hope from my life, making a joke of the second chance it had given me, twisting every dream I’d had into some sad, pale imitation of what I’d thought I’d wanted, showing me what a failure I was.
“I was trying to keep you from spraying deodorant in your face, but if you’re going to be a bitch . . .” Her eyes flicked to the ground and then back to me. “Then Dove it up.”
I looked to my feet, wincing when I saw that she was right. It was a can of Dove spray deodorant on the ground, not hair spray. Failure. More failure. Even at fixing my stupid hair.
“I can’t believe you even use that stuff,” she said, turning away from the mirror with a disgusted sniff. “Aerosol is so bad for the environment.”
I knew that. That’s why I didn’t use spray deodorant. I used roll on. Degree roll on, but no one would believe me if I told them the truth. Who believed in time travel? And even if they did, who would believe that traveling through time changed stupid little things like which kind of deodorant you used or the color of a coffee shop door?
No one. That’s who. Especially not Rachel, a girl who had always reveled in my mortification, a girl who was only being nice to me because of a freak accident, a girl who would stop being nice to me as soon as my popularity faded or—
The locket warmed against my chest, shocking me from my thoughts. I stared—wide-eyed—at my reflection, praying for the metal to cool down again. I didn’t want to go back and relive anything ever again. Let Rachel think I was a freak. I just wanted my life to go back to normal. I didn’t want any more scars or mistakes that weren’t “meant to
last.”
The locket gave second chances I wasn’t sure anyone was supposed to have. I was beginning to think there was a reason we only got one opportunity to do things right. Knowing nothing was set in stone made the whole world topsy-turvy, terrifying. Wrong.
Slowly, the locket cooled, and I drew a slow, calming breath.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Ally whispered as Rachel threw her makeup bag into her backpack and left the room. “One time, I almost drank lighter fluid. I was so drunk I thought it was vodka. So embarrassing.”
“Thanks.” I worked on a shaky smile. Ally was much nicer than I’d given her credit for.
“No problem,” she said, grabbing my deodorant from the floor and shoving it back into my bag. We both dropped our makeup on the bench and headed for the door. “And Rachel will be cool. Just tell her you like her new bracelet or something.”
I followed Ally out into the gym and settled between her and Rachel on the bleachers. I didn’t want to compliment the girl who was probably after my boyfriend, but I couldn’t afford to have her mad at me either. I needed my life to stay calm, not get any more crazy, and having Rachel Pruitt mad at you was a good way to end up in Crazyville.
“Nice bracelet,” I whispered, my voice so soft I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear.
Surprisingly, she did, and smiled right away. “It’s from Tiffany’s, a gift from my dad for excelling at charity work,” she said, holding it up for me and Ally to admire.
“So gorgeous!” Ally squealed.
“Really pretty,” I agreed, focusing on the delicate gold-and-diamond bracelet, deliberately avoiding Sarah’s eyes as she walked by.
She loathed my new friends, so there was no chance she’d try to sit with us. A cowardly part of me hoped she might also rethink her plan to tell me the truth I didn’t want to hear if she saw how tight I was with Rachel and Ally. Surely she didn’t want to mess things up with me and Isaac and ruin my new friendships all in one big swoop.
“I wish my dad bought me jewelry. The last two things he got me were a four-wheeler and a pink shotgun for hunting season. He totally wishes I’d been a boy.” Ally sighed and popped her gum. We weren’t supposed to chew gum in Coach Miller’s class, but she got away with it most of the time.
“I can’t believe you even go hunting with him. So gross.” Rachel watched Coach head out of the equipment room, wrinkling her nose when she spied the cart of big red balls. “No! Not dodgeball.”
“I hate dodgeball,” I agreed, neglecting to add that I usually hated it because Rachel had a surprisingly accurate—and powerful—right arm.
In my old life, I’d cried with relief on the last day of gym the year before. Sophomores and juniors had class together, but seniors had their own, separate class. No more leaving gym with my cheek throbbing bright red because Rachel had “accidentally” thrown the ball right at my face . . . or so I’d assumed.
But at least today I had a decent chance of being on Pummeling Pruitt’s team.
“I’ll choose you first, Ally, then you choose Katie,” Rachel said, automatically assuming she’d be one of the team captains, which she no doubt would be. Coach Miller loved Rachel. “Katie, you can choose either Sammy or any of the jock girls.” Rachel stood up, brushing an imaginary piece of lint off her black shorts. “Just don’t pick Sarah Needles. M’kay?”
“Why?” I asked, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Underlings didn’t question the queen’s authority, especially so soon after a deodorant misunderstanding.
“I want her on the other team.” Rachel smiled. “She’s so cute and tiny and I like a challenging target, don’t you?”
“Um . . . yeah . . . but, she’s my friend.” I couldn’t aid and abet Sarah’s face smashing, especially when I guessed Rachel’s reasons for wanting Sarah as a target had little to do with her “challenging” size. Whatever Sarah knew, Rachel knew that she knew—she’d made that clear that day in the theater—and she wanted Sarah’s mouth to stay shut.
Rachel shrugged, an ultra-feminine lift of her shoulder that sent boys into rabid drool fits. “Okay, you can pick her for our team. No worries.”
I should have known right then that something awful was going to happen. Rachel had agreed too easily, without so much as a wrinkled nose or a narrowing of her melty, baby-deer-esque brown eyes. Looking back, I could see trouble coming a mile away. But at the time, I was just pleased by the way Sarah’s face lit up when I called her name.
“Thank you,” Sarah mouthed as she scampered to our side of the gym, casting a pointed look at Rachel, grateful to have been spared.
I forced a smile. Sarah was a good friend. I didn’t like the way it felt to have a secret between us, but I liked the idea of having Isaac’s infidelity confirmed even less. If I didn’t hear the cold, hard facts, it was so much easier to pretend everything was fine.
“You know the rules, girls.” Coach Miller lovingly arranged the balls along a thin white line she’d had painted on the court specifically for her yearly dodgeball tournament. “Play tough, but play fair.”
As if she cared about fair. I would swear Coach enjoyed seeing us hurl things at each other with intent to do damage.
“Be prepared to suffer!” Ally giggled and ran to the centercourt line. Rachel, Sarah, me, and the two other girls on our team lined up beside her, facing down our opponents, who had reluctantly arranged themselves beneath the basketball goal.
They were condemned prisoners facing a firing squad, but . . . twitchier. Prisoners knew it would only take a bullet or two to get the job done. These girls had an entire forty minutes of brutality ahead of them without the promise of death to cling to.
“I’m starting the three-minute timer . . . now!” Coach blew her whistle and our team bolted toward the balls like starving children swarming a food-supply van. I’m not much of an athlete—neither is Sarah—but we both knew better than to hesitate.
Rachel’s team didn’t lose. Not ever.
We were both right there with the rest of our team as they bent down, snagging all of the balls but one. As we spun—heading back to our line to take aim at our opponents—Rachel was on one side of Sarah and I on the other. So I saw what happened, saw it perfectly, though Rachel moved so fast I was sure no one else had.
I watched Rachel’s foot dart out at the last second, tangling in Sarah’s ankles, bringing her down. I watched Sarah’s eyes fly wide and her hands release her ball a second too late to block her fall. I watched my friend’s chin smash against the hard wood of the court and blood fly from her mouth, splattering across the floor like we were at a boxing match instead of a girls’ high school gym class.
Sarah screamed—a thick, liquid sound—and rolled over onto her back, pressing her hands to her mouth. Blood leaked through her fingers and trickled down the sides of her face, cutting a curved, crimson trail from her lips to the gym floor.
Couch Miller’s whistle screeched and everyone froze—balls falling from hands and soft cries from lips—as Couch raced to the center of the court to kneel beside Sarah.
“Let me see, Needles. Let me see,” she said softly, but Sarah only moaned. Coach turned, searching the eyes of the horrified onlookers. “Did anyone see what happened?”
“She fell, Coach. I think she might have tripped on one of the balls or something.” Rachel was innocence personified. She didn’t even look my way. She was that certain no one had seen what she’d done.
“Sarah, come on. Sarah, let me see,” Coach said, finally coaxing Sarah into removing her hands long enough for Miller to sneak a peek into her mouth. “Shit. Pruitt, go get the nurse.”
My eyes flew from Sarah’s bloody mouth to Rachel’s face just in time to see the shock etched on Rachel’s features before she nodded and ran for the door. She hadn’t meant to hurt Sarah so badly . . . but she wasn’t too broken up about it either.
Not like I was. This was all my fault. Again. I’d made a big freaking mistake when I’d insisted Sarah join our team.
&
nbsp; The locket warmed against my skin, as if sensing the direction of my thoughts.
I could go back in time and fix this, make sure Sarah ended up on the opposite team and Rachel didn’t have the chance to hurt her. I could make it all go away. I could make life better for a girl who mattered to me in the same way I’d made life better for a girl I loathed. I’d saved Rachel; I had to save Sarah, no matter how frightening the side effects of time travel.
Hotter, hotter, until I could feel the scar tissue on my chest ache and twitch. This was it. I was going back.
I fought to keep my eyes open as the metal edged into the burning zone. I had to be ready to act fast, just in case the locket did what it had done last time and put me only seconds ahead of impending danger. Every muscle in my body tensed, preparing for the pain . . .
But the pain . . . didn’t come.
A sharp knock on the steel gym doors made me jump and clutch at my neck, hands fisting around the locket through my shirt. It was cold now, so icy it made my fingers seem feverish.
“Mottola, go open the door. It’s probably the EMTs,” Coach said, before turning back to Sarah.
The locket hadn’t worked. This couldn’t be happening! I had to go back, I had to fix this! It had to take me back. I squeezed the metal harder, silently pleading for another chance, imagining how I would pull Rachel away before she could trip my friend. But nothing happened. No temperature change, no time travel, nothing except another shout from Couch Miller.
“Mottola! Move it!”
I took one last look at Sarah’s face—tears streaming down her cheeks, blood painting her chin like something out of a horror movie—then ran to let the paramedics in. As I watched them load Sarah onto a stretcher and wheel her out into the crisp, perfect day, the locket grew cold enough to make me shiver.
Chapter Sixteen
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 3:23 P.M.
The school parking lot was emptying fast. Only a smattering of cars, trucks, and luxury SUVs littered the vast expanse. The emptiness made me feel smaller and smaller as each vehicle pulled away, leaving me and my little Hyundai stranded in one lonely corner.
