But I don’t care about the rules anymore.
I wrap my hand around the thread connecting Harold to the key. It burns like hot wire melting through my palm, slicing open the thin skin between my thumb and forefinger. I grit my teeth and wrap tighter, pulling it, straining against time itself, begging the universe for the power to finally make a change to the pattern of history.
Even though it feels as if the thread has maimed my hand, when I blink, I can tell that this is an injury no one else can see. Ryan’s still clutching his face, and the Doctor’s shouting into a phone that there’s a kid inside the building. Gwen’s watching me, a slight frown on her face. She can’t see the thread. She can’t see how close I am to breaking it.
With a mighty heave, I pull.
The thread snaps.
And now time itself can be altered.
I don’t waste a second. I move like a puppet master, grabbing handfuls of threads from the timestream, sifting them through my fingers. I know exactly where I need to go, because I have already been there.
I go back to a few weeks ago. There’s a past version of me sitting in front of the old Salem ruins. It’s starting to piss rain, the clouds dense and dark. And Harold—still alive, still well—is walking up the path toward me.
Before he rounds the corner, I step in front of him. In moments, he’s going to go to the ruined brick fireplace and talk to me about darkness and voices, and then we’re going to go back to the academy together. But first, I stop him here.
“I want you to have this,” I tell him, handing him the iron key.
Harold looks at me in surprise, but he accepts it.
“Keep it with you all the time,” I say. “You are definitely going to need it in the future.”
He keeps his head down, staring at it. His fingers wrap around the metal, and he starts to lift his head to speak to me, but I’m already gone.
I’m back in the present, in front of the fire, my eyes on the door. Carlos Estrada is no longer in front of me, framed by the flames. Instead, it’s Harold staggering through the smoke, coughing, the iron key in his hand.
CHAPTER 62
I saved him.
I went back in time. I gave him the key. I saved him.
My power is real.
“Harold!” Dr. Franklin yells, abandoning Ryan so abruptly that he drops to the ground. The Doctor falls to his knees in front of Harold, clutching his shoulders, running his hands along his sides, looking for injuries. One of the teachers—the science tutor, Mr. Glover—passes over a bottle of water, and Harold chugs it, sputtering through a sore throat.
“Where were you?” the Doctor says over and over.
“I was locked in the book closet in the library,” Harold says in a weak voice. He raises his arm, pointing to Ryan. “He left me there.”
“How’d you get out?” Mr. Glover asks.
Harold shrugs. “That lock was really old, and I guess with the heat, it sort of snapped. I’m sorry, I totally broke it.”
The Doctor sob-laughs in relief and hugs Harold tightly.
I creep closer, searching Harold’s eyes. Does he really not remember using the key I gave him? Or is he pretending not to know because he still doubts the Doctor, as I do?
I look at his hand.
No key.
Above us, the windows burst, shooting out shards of glass followed by bright red-orange flames. Several students on the ground scream and dash even farther away.
“Where are the damn fire trucks?” Mr. Glover asks Dr. Franklin.
One of the windows that broke was to Sofía’s room. And while I don’t see Sofía’s face, I see the outline of a girl in flames. An invisible girl, trapped in the fire.
I move forward without thinking.
The illusory world Ryan created—the one where he made me think I was crazy, that Berkshire Academy was for kids with special needs instead of kids with special powers, that Sofía was dead—has broken away. The fact that Harold is still alive proves that.
As I walk closer to the burning academy, I bring up the timestream. It comes to me easily. All those stutters before, they were all just growing pains. I’m in control now. I understand now. This is not something I need to fear.
The power is mine for the taking.
It washes over me in a glorious wave. I have never been in such control before. I have never felt the power this way. I finally have complete control. The power courses inside my body, filling me with a firm knowledge: I can change time. I can bend it to my will. I am its master.
The timestream is tantalizingly in my reach, and I can see with perfect clarity exactly how every thread is placed, how every moment in history rests within the palm of my hand.