“With what?” I don’t bother hiding my anger; my eyes are on the twisted picture of the girl I love and the lies surrounding her face.
“I want to look at what Dr. Franklin has in his office,” Ryan says. “The video feeds of our sessions are gone, and that’s good, but there are paper records too, records that might lead to me getting the shaft.”
“Go away,” I say. I don’t care what Ryan wants.
“Fine. But Sofía’s records are in there too.”
My eyes flash to his. He’s always trying to manipulate me. “I said, go away.”
“Yours too. Don’t you want to know what the Doctor is saying about you? What’s going on your permanent record? What if he recommends that you go to the loony bin like Harold?”
“If I agree to help you, will you leave me alone?”
“Tonight, an hour after lights-out.”
“Fine.”
Ryan pushes himself off the desk he was leaning against and saunters away.
The farther he goes, the more the screen flickers and fades, the damning headline replaced by the original. I watch as the words Sofía Muniz, 17, was found dead last night change into Sofía Muniz, 17, has been reported missing.
I turn around in my seat, glaring at Ryan as he disappears into the shelves.
He did this.
CHAPTER 54
When Ryan punched the wall, it rippled. When he got close to the screen, it changed, and when he left, it changed back.
This whole time I thought it was the officials who were manipulating our reality. But that doesn’t really make sense, does it? If they wanted to use us for our powers, they wouldn’t have made us forget them.
But Ryan . . . he never forgot. Not because he could protect himself from the officials, but because he was the one creating the false reality.
Ryan is a telepath. He could change the videos. He’s been pushing the boundaries of his powers since he got here. He knows exactly how to mess with someone’s mind. He’s messed with our heads before, and his powers have only been growing—far beyond anything we ever thought possible. Beyond anything the Doctor or anyone else could control.
It must have scared him when the officials arrived. He had to have known from the start that the academy was in danger of closing. Maybe this all started out as a way to save the school and make the officials go away, but if Ryan had good intentions at the beginning, his desperation has twisted them. The officials are gone, and he’s still maintaining an illusion that no one has powers. He can’t stop the school from closing—that’s out of his grasp—but he can stop everyone else from remembering who they really are. He can stop the officials from sending him to another academy.
? ? ?
As soon as Ryan is out of the library, I waste no time in calling up the timestream. For a moment, I’m worried it won’t work.
But it’s there. All of time, laid out before me, strings floating atop a river, tangling and weaving together into beautiful chaos. I work hurriedly, finding a date when I can see Sofía in the past. The red string connecting me to Sofía is as slender as a hair, but it cuts my finger like a razor when I touch it. I snatch my hand back, sucking on the blood springing up.
I grab the string again, with my whole hand, not just wrapping my finger around it. It slices into me, and I grit my teeth against the pain.
I have to do this.
I feel my bones crunch, squeezed together by the red string as I wind it around my palm. Blood makes my hand slick and warm. I can’t let go.
I can’t let go.
The pain disappears. I look down and the string is gone, along with the blood.
Sofía stands in front of me.
“Hi,” I say.
She smiles, but the happiness doesn’t reach her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I had to see you.”
“You have to go.”
I shake my head, crossing the short distance between her and me. “No,” I say.
“You have to.”
I want to tell her everything, but time won’t let me. So I just say, “Things are bad right now.”
“You’ve been coming to me in the past,” Sofía says. “I figure something is wrong with the future—I mean, the present. Your present. Am I right?”
I nod.
“And I’m not there to help you.”
I nod again. I expect time to snap me back at any minute, but it doesn’t. We’re both still here. “I was afraid,” I say tentatively, still testing the boundaries of time.
“Of what?”
“That my powers weren’t real.”
For a brief second, everything wavers. Colors shift and swirl in and out of one another. Everything stutters . . . except for Sofía. She is still in front of me, real and vivid and true.
She reaches up and puts the flats of her hands against the sides of my face. Her skin is cool and calming. “But Bo,” she says, “what if I’m not real? What if none of this is real?”