“You floated that folder over to me using your telepathy!”
Ryan picks up the folder and drops it back on the desk. “I tossed it to you using my hands,” he says. “Man, you are crazy. Like, really crazy. Damn.”
The walls in the Doctor’s office ripple and twirl like oil mixing with vinegar.
I glance down at the information in my folder. All the Doctor’s notes are about me after Sofía went missing. When Ryan’s powers were growing stronger. When he started the illusion.
Ryan flips through his file, letting his eyes drift over the diagnosis the Doctor gave him. He casually gathers the forms and crams them into Dr. Franklin’s paper shredder. He watches with a smile on his face as the Doctor’s notes turn into nothing but long, thin strips.
“Let’s go,” Ryan says, heading to the door.
“It really is you, isn’t it?” I stand up slowly, pushing back the chair and moving against the wall, positioning the desk between Ryan and myself. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, even when all the evidence pointed to him.
“The hell is wrong with you?” Ryan says, turning back toward me.
“It’s you.”
“What are you on about?”
“It’s been you the whole time. It’s not the Doctor or the officials. It’s you.”
“What the fu—?”
I snatch my own folder. “You guessed I’d figure it out. ‘It is recommended that Bo be relocated.’ You’re trying to get rid of me. You’re doing all of this.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ryan says, his voice dangerously close to shouting.
“You. You. You can control minds. You’re controlling all of us. You’ve made it look like we’re all crazy, that the Berk isn’t for people with powers. You even have the Doctor scammed . . .”
“You are nuts,” Ryan says, turning back to the door. “I mean, there’s crazy, and there’s you. This is insane. Look around you. Where do you think you are?”
I do look around. I see the Doctor’s license in psychiatry, and then I blink and see his doctorate in history. I see the diagnosis folders. And then they melt into dossiers detailing our individual powers.
It’s all fake.
It’s all an illusion. A brilliant, terrifying illusion.
“Look, dude, face facts,” Ryan snarls. “Your little girlfriend died. Dead. Totally dead. If you would rather go to la-la land than admit that, fine. But me? I’m looking out for number one.” I stare hard as Ryan heads for the door. He turns to face me, but whatever he was going to say evaporates on his lips.
He looks terrified. Of me. And the truth I now know.
CHAPTER 55
His fear makes my blood surge with power. Now that I see him for what he is, he can’t control me. I sweep the remaining folders back into Dr. Franklin’s desk drawer and get up, chasing Ryan into the hallway. All around me, the walls ripple as Ryan struggles to hold on to the world he has created. I see flashes of other people, other times—breaks in the timestream. An old man with fluffy white hair—Berkshire Academy’s first director, I recognize him from the portrait downstairs—walks by us, muttering to himself before disappearing.
Small children wearing bright yellow camp T-shirts run by. The very last kid looks back at me and waves, and I recognize Carlos Estrada, his T-shirt darkening with water.
Ryan sneers at me. “What are you looking at?”
The other kids disappear. It’s just Ryan and me in the hall.
I know what this all is now. My powers have been suppressed by Ryan, dampened by his mind control. But like a balloon that pops when it’s full of air, my powers have been bursting out around me. It wasn’t the timestream that was breaking; it was me.
“Stop!” I shout as Ryan opens his door.
The world blinks from reality to reality so fast that my head spins. Light streams out of Ryan’s window as if it’s still daytime, then turns into darkest night with the speed of a strobe.
I grab Ryan’s wrist, holding on even as he tries to shake me off.
“Let go, freak,” Ryan growls.
“I know what you’re doing,” I say in a low voice.
The world stills. The sun outside doesn’t move. The walls are steady. The ghosts of the past are gone. I am in control.
“You can only shift what’s real,” I say. “You can’t create a whole new world, but you can shift it a little. So what does that say about you?”
“What do you mean?” He tries to wrench himself free again, but I tighten my grip.
“Your ‘diagnosis.’ You really are a narcissist, aren’t you? Can’t hide that fact, even in a world you made yourself.”
Ryan shoves my chest with his free hand, and I have to let go. He backs into his room and slams the door.
And with that sound, his false world shatters back into place. There’s a keypad by his door, bars on his window.
I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I am in control,” I tell Ryan’s closed door. As the air escapes my lips, the illusion melts away again.
I am in control.