At what cost?
Analeigh took the comp back, reading in silence. Her fingers worried at the pieces of lint on her quilt as my mind stumbled through the implications of this entire scenario. The only thing we knew for sure was that Rosie left the Triangle when she wasn’t meant to. I felt pretty solid in my assumption that Jonah had warned her at some point during his stint with the Historians, given their connection, but what I couldn’t wrap my mind around was how he could have known the resulting ripples wouldn’t implode the world as we knew it.
“Does it say any more about her? The Rosie that lived?”
“A little. She married and moved to Chicago in her early twenties. Had six children with her husband—they were married for fifty years before he died. She did an interview once for the paper about surviving the tragedy, and said how every year on March 25th she had a panic attack. That she never locked her doors again, not ever, after that day.” Analeigh pushed her glasses up on her nose, squinting closer at the screen. The gears in her head ground almost audibly as she tried to make sense of this unique and possibly horrifying scenario. “If Jonah really changed this, if he really warned her and she lived when she wasn’t supposed to, he could have killed us all, Kaia.”
The Elders taught us that the reason we couldn’t interact at all was because no one could predict the spiderweb effect of altering even one insignificant life, one innocuous day. There were simply too many options. Perhaps Rosie Shapiro had been no one of consequence, but what if she’d given birth to a murderer who’d strangled John F. Kennedy before he became president? From there, what if the man elected in his place had started a nuclear war with Cuba?
The entire existence of human history could be altered by slipping a single, tiny block out of place. Saving Rosie Shapiro could have made every single one of us disappear.
As much as I loved my brother, as hard as I wanted to believe in him, my throat burned with shame. Tears filled my eyes and I bit my lip as I nodded, bunching the quilt in my fists. “I know.”
The alarm signaling the end of lunch interrupted us, but neither of us moved. We were due in the next Reflection session in five minutes for a quick debrief on the Triangle Fire so that didn’t leave much time for melting down. Along with all of the thoughts about my brother and the rules we’d both broken, I was wondering how Rosie lived with herself all those years. How could she leave all of those girls to die?
The answer to the last question seemed obvious enough—she had to, and Jonah would have known that. If those 146 girls hadn’t died, women’s and workers’ rights would have been delayed by years. The leaps the United States made in the early twentieth century in proper working conditions, which propelled the country to a place of prominence in the world, would have been hampered or stalled.
It horrified me that people had to see those burned, broken bodies lying in the street with their own eyes before taking action made sense to them. But they hadn’t died for nothing.
“If he saved her, Kaia, when do you think he did it?” Analeigh’s voice shook. It brought me back to the present. Genesis. Sanchi.
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t thought about the logistics. Jonah had disappeared nearly three years ago, the year he’d been certified a full Historian. “Maybe that’s what made him leave.”
The Elders could have found out. The lecture Booth had passed along yesterday sprang to mind, along with his mention of my brother and the strange reference to changing the past—it sort of made sense.
He could have been talking about Jonah and Rosie.
“If it’s been three years, we should have seen repercussions from the alteration.” Analeigh stood, running her fingers through her long blond waves. Bags drooped under her eyes that hadn’t been there before we left this morning.
Fatigue rolled balls of lead through my limbs, too. I wanted to skip the afternoon and hide under the covers. I wanted to forget the looks on those girls’ faces as they leaped to their deaths, stop wondering what Jonah had done and whether or not he had broken everything. Most of all, I wanted—needed—to forget the whisper in the back of my mind wondering if I could do the same for Caesarion. Save him.
I had to believe my brother wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been sure we’d all be safe. Jonah and I were alike—impulsive but not reckless. Not dumb.
“I guess he got lucky,” I finally replied to Analeigh’s question as she reached a hand down to pull me to my feet.
“What are you planning?” Analeigh rummaged in her desk and handed over a protein tab before chewing one herself.
“Nothing. What do you mean?”
“You always answer with a question when you’re up to something. You never told me where you snuck off to the other day, and you never, ever talk about Jonah in front of people the way you did at lunch.” She braided her long hair into a single plait that hung over one shoulder, then crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Don’t tell me the only reason you’re hanging onto that cuff is for sentimentality’s sake. You’re not that kind of girl. I want to know what’s going on with you, Kai. We used to tell each other everything. What happened?”
My heart climbed into my throat. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble. But I’m your friend, and that’s what you do. I don’t approve of the unnecessary risk taking, but I won’t tattle.” Her huge green eyes were earnest behind her glasses.
The stubborn friendship in them broke down the last of my resolve, no matter how selfish it felt to include her in my subterfuge. Maybe telling her one more thing would be okay. “I want to use the cuff to go see Jonah before this morning’s heist.”