“And you’re talking to Ryan.”
I shrug. “Yeah?”
Gwen frowns. Before Sofía was gone, they were best friends, always together. I was never close with Ryan, and no one is really friends with Harold, so I sort of drifted around. Being with Sofía put me in Gwen’s group, but I don’t think she ever really considered me a friend.
“Listen,” Gwen says, lowering her voice and walking with me back toward my room. “Don’t put too much trust in Ryan, okay?”
“Why?” I ask. Ryan’s not my favorite person in the world, but he’s a part of our unit. Unlike the officials.
Gwen glances back at his room. “I don’t like him,” she says bluntly. “He’s an asshole.”
I snort. “Well, yeah, everyone knows that. But he’s our asshole.”
Gwen shakes her head. We’re at my door now, but neither of us makes a move to leave. “It’s not like that. He’s not like us. You look at me and him and Harold as part of this unit. This team. But it’s not like that, is it?”
“And Sofía too,” I say, searching Gwen’s eyes. “She’s part of our unit as well.”
“And Sofía too,” Gwen says, her voice cracking over her name. “Before she died.” She places gentle emphasis on that last word, clearly worried about my reaction to it. But after we talked in the foyer before the weekend started, I knew there was something wrong with her. And her words now confirm it. Whatever reality the officials are trying to weave around us, she’s caught in the web.
“But Bo . . . it’s not like that,” Gwen continues. “We’re not a team. At least Ryan’s not. He only ever looks out for himself. He doesn’t care about you or me or anyone here at Berkshire. He only cares about himself.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “He’s trying to save the academy.”
“Save it? From what?”
“The officials and whatever it is they’re planning.”
Gwen’s frown deepens. “I don’t know how to get this through to you,” she says, “other than this: Sofía didn’t like Ryan either.”
I shrug. “Well, no one really likes Ryan.”
“No,” Gwen says in a very serious voice. “She really didn’t like him.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to understand what she’s not saying. “Why not?”
“She had her reasons, and I’m not going to betray them even though she’s not here now. But she didn’t like him. She didn’t trust him. And you shouldn’t either.”
CHAPTER 25
I go back to my room and shut the door.
Can’t trust the Doctor. He’s being manipulated by the government officials.
Can’t trust my parents. They believe the Doc.
Can’t trust Ryan. He may want to help me get rid of the officials, but Gwen’s right: He’s helping me because what I want lines up with what he wants. If that ever changes, Ryan wouldn’t hesitate to drop me.
Can’t trust anyone.
I call up the timestream, focusing on the swirling black hole where 1692 is. I can’t go there and I can’t pull Sofía out, but I’ll get as close in time as I can, maybe reach Sofía that way.
I rub the back of my neck. These futile attempts to save my girlfriend are wearing me down, mentally and physically. I’m exhausted. But I can’t give up.
I reach out, grabbing for the red string swirling into the vortex. It slides through my fingers like water, but I grab some other threads woven into the timestream that lead to a time close to where I left Sofía in the past. I hold on with all my might, gritting my teeth against the pain of their pull, refusing to let go. I steel myself for the fight, holding on to the threads of time with the same desperation as I’d hold on to a rope if I fell off a cliff, but then I feel it, the familiar tug in my body, the sweet release as time lets me slip through its cracks.
I am standing in a field.
No, not a field. There’s grass, but the soil is sandy. I’m definitely still on the island. I whirl around. No academy. No remains of the camp for sick kids.
The house, however—the one built in Salem—is in front of me. The paint is bright white and new on the wooden siding, and the bricks of the chimney are not yet soot-stained.
I head toward it. The air is warm and the sun high in the sky, but even so, there’s smoke rising from the chimney. Behind the dark glass windows, the house looks abandoned: no people and few pieces of furniture—a table and two chairs, one of which is knocked over, as if the residents had left quickly. But someone has to be here, or nearby. The fire in the hearth blazes like it was set just moments ago.
I whisper-shout for Sofía. No reply. Still, she could be close but invisible, hiding. Not from me, but from something or someone else.
The door to the house is slightly ajar, and I step inside, still calling her name.
Nothing.