I turn on my heels.
“Dr. Franklin’s going to start our session soon!” Gwen calls as I stride back toward my room.
I don’t care. Ryan’s a jerk, but I don’t think he’d play me like that. By my count, the officials have been here just thirteen days. But Ryan looked at me like I was clueless.
I travel through time. I don’t lose it.
I slam open my bedroom door and head straight to my calendar. I stare at the date.
It’s been a month.
How the hell did I lose a month?
Did the officials do this? Dr. Rivers could tell that her regular mind games weren’t working on me. Did she find a way to make me lose time?
I shake my head. Ryan’s just being a jerk. He’s playing a joke. He must have snuck in my room and altered my calendar. I flip through the pages, but each is marked with my special code.
Gwen shows up at my door. “Dr. Franklin told me to get you. Session’s starting.”
I follow her, but my mind’s focused on my lost time. This has to be a joke. Ryan’s messing with me.
“Hey,” Gwen says as she leads me down the hall. “Maybe try not to be too crazy. In front of the officials, I mean. I think they’re going to go soon. I don’t want to give them an excuse to stick around.”
I nod my head tightly. So don’t blow up at Ryan for messing with me. Got it.
We all sit around Dr. Franklin’s desk, and Ryan pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. The date flashes on the screen—the same date that’s on my calendar, the one that’s several weeks off. How did he do that? I didn’t even know you could change the date on a cell phone.
“Ryan, put that away. You’re only allowed to use your phone after class.”
Ryan crams the phone back in his pocket, but there’s a smirk on his face. If he wanted to rattle me, it worked. I just don’t get why he’s doing this now.
I can’t even pay attention to what the Doctor’s talking about, and within fifteen minutes, he dismisses us. I stand up to leave.
“Bo,” he says, “I just asked you to stay.” He gives me a weird look. I sit back down. The officials are busy recording everything that’s happening.
Once Gwen, Harold, and Ryan leave, the Doctor pulls up a chair and sits across from me. “I want to say again,” he says, “Dr. Rivers and Mr. Minh are observers, but it’s your right to ask them to leave if you’re uncomfortable with them sitting in.”
He’s nervous, that much is clear. His eyes widen slightly, glancing to his left, where the officials are sitting. Maybe he knows, subconsciously, that they’re doing something to mess with his head.
“It’s okay,” I mutter. They’ll just find another way to spy on me if I kick them out, and I’d rather have them where I can see them.
“Before we go on, I want to know: Do you have any questions for me?”
I sit up straighter. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “What—uh, what day is it?”
The Doctor shoots me a strange look but tells me the date. The same as the date on my calendar, on Ryan’s phone.
It wasn’t a joke.
I’ve lost several weeks of time. The last thing I remember is going to bed the day I texted Phoebe. I stayed up until lights-out reading that book assigned to us in English. And then I woke up, just like normal, but somehow time has zoomed past me. What the hell happened? The officials are still here, everyone’s acting like everything’s normal . . . but I’ve lost weeks.
Weeks when I could have been saving Sofía.
Is that it? Is this time’s way of punishing me for finding a loophole to see her again? I stole time with her, so time stole some back.
Or maybe the officials did.
“I’m holding you back to discuss your medication,” Dr. Franklin says.
“Medication?”
“I’d like to add a few different scripts,” the Doctor continues. “First, something for your insomnia.”
“I don’t have a sleeping problem.”
The Doctor smiles sadly and writes something in his notebook. I lean forward, trying to see it, but I can’t.
“It’s a neuroleptic,” Dr. Franklin continues, as if I hadn’t spoken. “And it’s stronger than your previous medication, but still a bit mild compared to others on the market. I need you to keep track of how you feel when you take it, okay? And I want you to continue taking it when you go home for the weekends. Family Day is coming up, and then spring break, and I need you to be responsible and keep up with your medication even when you’re at home.”