“Bo,” Dr. Franklin says, leaning forward, tears making his eyes watery. “Bo, she’s dead. Sofía is dead. You can’t save her. It’s over.”
All around me, the world stills. The Doctor becomes a motionless statue. The clouds moving in front of the moon freeze. The clock on the Doctor’s desk stops ticking. His words cut me so deeply that I have accidentally stopped time.
I blink, and the clock starts ticking again. But my heart is calm. Even though Dr. Franklin’s not aware of what I’ve just done, I am, and I know that my powers are still real.
I still have a chance.
“I can save her,” I say again.
“No,” he says in a gentle voice. “You can’t.”
CHAPTER 27
I leave Dr. Franklin’s office and walk slowly back to my room. The Doc watches me go, as if he suspects I’ll get lost along the way.
I pause by my door, looking back at him. All up and down the hallway, doors are closed. On the left side of the hall, the heavy wooden doors to the library are locked for the night, as are those to the common room and our classrooms. On the right side of the hall are the dormitory rooms. Harold’s, then mine, then Ryan’s, Gwen’s, and Sofía’s.
And by each of their doors, there’s a keypad.
There’s one by mine too.
They’ve never been there before. I look closer. The keypad is made of metal, but there are dings and nicks in it, and it’s slightly worn from use.
“Is there a problem?” Dr. Franklin asks.
I jump; he’d moved silently down the hall, and he’s waiting for me to go into my room. “How long has that been there?” I ask.
“It’s always been there,” the Doctor says. “Bo, it’s well past lights-out.”
“But—”
“Bo.”
I step inside my room, and Dr. Franklin closes the door behind me. I listen as the Doctor punches in a code, and I can hear the heavy metallic thud of a lock clicking in place.
Lights-out is literal—our overhead lights don’t work from midnight to seven in the morning. But I don’t go to bed. Instead, I cross the room to the window, where moonlight filters through my thin curtains. I sweep them aside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ruins by the marsh, hoping that will give me some inspiration for what to do to next to save Sofía.
But my gaze outside is marred by iron bars on the window.
I try to get a closer look at the bars, but the window is sealed shut. I strain against it, but it’s utterly immovable. I grab my cell phone and use its flashlight to illuminate the bars. They’re painted black, but there are cracks of rust in them, tiny slivers of red leaking through the edges.
These bars have been here for a while.
But at the same time, they’ve never been here before. The locks on the doors, the bars over the windows . . . none of this was here before I went home this weekend.
I turn my cell phone off, letting the darkness wash over the room. For just a moment, I see a glint of something—fire, maybe, or just sparks—in the distance, near the edge of the marsh, near the ruins where I lost Sofía.
But I blink, and it’s gone.
I move to the bed and sit cross-legged in the center.
The video from the USB drive plays through my mind. It wasn’t real, I know that, but it seemed real.
And this does too. The iron bars and the locked doors. It’s ironic; I just came back from a house where I wasn’t even allowed to have a door, and now I’m in a room trapped behind one.
I jump up from the bed and test the door now. It doesn’t budge.
We never used to have locks . . . I think, but then another thought: Yes, we did. We always did.
There have always been locks on the doors, iron bars on the windows.
No, there haven’t.
? ? ?
I don’t know what’s real anymore.
? ? ?
Except . . . Sofía. She’s real. I may only ever be able to see her in the past, but I still know that she’s real. I can still taste her kiss on my lips, reminding me of truth.
I grab my calendar from the desk and use my cell phone to illuminate its pages, picking a weekend when Sofía was at Berkshire and I was home. I blindly reach into the timestream, grabbing the strings of that date and practically throwing myself into the past, before everything went pear-shaped. When I open my eyes, I’m in my bedroom, but my calendar confirms that it’s March 15.
I burst out of my room. It’s not yet time for lights-out, so I head straight to the common room. But first I check my door behind me.
No keypad. No locks. No iron bars on the window.
Ryan and Harold are still around here somewhere, and there’s a chance I could run into the Doctor or someone else on staff, but I’m too excited to be careful.
I throw open the door of the common room.
“Bo?” Sofía asks when she turns around.
I almost lose it right there.
“Sofía.” I breathe her name.
“I thought you left already.”
“I decided to stay here instead,” I say. “I’d rather be here.” With you.
She smiles. “I was about to watch a movie, but would you rather—”