Tyler must have felt them too because I heard him gasp.
From somewhere I smelled burning chemicals and smoke, and the ground and walls around us were rumbling. There were more eruptions now, closer to us.
And right before everything was over . . .
Right before the whole place went up in flames, I heard him say . . .
“. . . always.”
EPILOGUE
THE STARS OVERHEAD GLOWED IN AN UNNATURAL way. Beautiful, but unnatural.
It took me several tries to figure out why.
Plastic. They were the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind that parents stick on kids’ ceilings.
I stayed where I was, studying them for an eternity, trying to decide if they were familiar or not. They gave me the strangest sense of déjà vu, and I felt like I should remember them even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on the memory.
I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 4:13, but I was awake-awake so there was no point trying to go back to sleep now. I chucked the covers aside and made my way to the kitchen in search of coffee.
The hallway was dark but I’d been in this house my whole life, I didn’t need a light. Still, everything about this was wrong somehow.
I had the strangest sensation I was sneaking around someplace I shouldn’t. Trespassing.
I froze when I reached the kitchen and saw Grant standing over the sink, loading dishes in the dishwasher.
Grant.
I knew him—his name, his face . . . and he obviously recognized me, because he grimaced when he saw me. “Sorry. Did I wake ya, slugger?”
Slugger? Was that really his nickname for me?
I tested it out, and the whole déjà vu thing tilted . . . right, but not quite.
“No,” I answered, when he just stood there, waiting for my response. “I . . . uh . . . bad dream, I guess.” I shrugged.
Was that the truth? It could’ve been a dream as easily as anything else.
He nodded, his eyebrows tugging downward. “Your dad again? I’m sorry, slugger. It’ll get easier.” He reached for a dish towel.
My dad . . .
Just the mention of him brought an overwhelming something almost into range. A memory I couldn’t quite reach, but there was a sharp stab of pain.
Again, I couldn’t help thinking none of this was right.
I took a step away from Grant before he could finish drying his hands. I didn’t want him to try to hug it out or anything, and for some reason I got the feeling that’s where this whole touchy-feely conversation was headed.
“All right,” he called after me as I staggered down the hallway to my bedroom. “I’ll be here if you wanna talk.”
I slammed the door behind me, and did a quick inventory of the room. It was mine, but not mine.
Mine from before, came the thought, hitting me like a freight train the same way the pain had. All these things were things from my past. From another me.
It all came rushing back at me then. The Returned, the camps, the No-Suchers and Agent Truman, the ISA. Adam and my dad.
The explosion.
So how was I here now? Why hadn’t I been blasted into smithereens when we’d destroyed the ISA facility and their fleet of spaceships?
And what had Grant meant about my dad? Why was he acting so weird?
I looked around, at the plastic stars and the purple walls. At the stuffed animals and the trophies. Why was my room back the way it had been before I’d been taken all those years ago?
Then, on my nightstand, I saw the program from a memorial service, and I knew whose it was before I even picked it up.
In Loving Memory the heading read, and below that my dad’s face stared back at me. Not the way I’d last seen him, with his soft gray beard and bloated cheeks. In the picture, he was clean-shaven and clear-eyed, as if someone had decided an image from the past would better represent him.
But I knew better. I missed my messy dad. The one who’d waited five years for me to come back and then hugged me so hard he’d almost choked me. The dad who’d gone on the run just to keep Tyler and me safe. The dad who’d sacrificed his own life to make amends for what he’d done all those years ago.
I bolted upright. Tyler.
If I was here . . . back from . . . wherever, was it possible Tyler was too?
Yanking on a pair of sweatpants I found on the floor, I decided to find out. I didn’t want to risk another share-your-feelings moment with Grant, so I climbed over my window ledge and bolted across the street to a house I’d once spent as much time in as my own.
The house was dark, but I went straight around the back to Tyler’s bedroom window and tapped on it. The entire time my heart was going a hundred miles a minute in my chest. I had no idea what I’d do if he wasn’t in there, if I had to go through this . . . whatever was happening to me, all alone.
When the bedroom light turned on, I closed my eyes and whispered a silent prayer, and with each footstep that came closer my stomach did a little flip.