Emma’s mom and I spend the next three hours making small talk and staring out the window, and when the clock finally strikes six, I can’t help feeling relieved. I give Emma an exhausted kiss on the forehead and hug her mom good-bye.
I’m heading to the waiting room to meet Mom when I hear the faraway ding of the elevator. I round the corner and literally collide with someone, and we both step back, muttering apologies until we each realize who the other is.
“There you are,” he says at the exact same time I say, “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” Bennett’s face is all scrunched up with concern. “Why didn’t you tell me about Emma?”
I don’t have an answer. It probably should have occurred to me to call him and tell him, but it just didn’t. I can only shrug as he pulls me to him and asks me if I’m okay. I nod against his chest.
I think at this point I’m supposed to cry. If there were ever a good time, this would be it—with me all nestled into him like this, his head resting on mine and his hand on my back—but I can’t. Instead I tell him about the tubes and the machines and the stitches, the doctors and the rehabilitation she’ll have to endure when she comes to. That she looks awful, like someone I don’t know. And that I feel horrible for saying so.
The elevator dings again, and this time Mom steps out. She looks surprised to see me curled in the arms of a boy she’s seen exactly one time and whom I’ve never mentioned on a Tuesday family-dinner night. “Well, hi.”
“Hi, Mom,” I say nervously. “You remember Bennett…from that night…at the bookstore.”
She nods and extends her hand. “Yes. Hi, Bennett.” She keeps shaking his hand and staring at him. I’m waiting for her to give him her signature smile—her nurse smile—the one that makes people warm up to her so quickly, but she doesn’t. Even though there’s nothing cold about the look on her face, there’s no warmth there, either, and when she finally drops his hand, Bennett looks a little relieved. She turns away from him and looks at me. “How’s Emma?”
I shrug. “The same. Her mom’s with her now.”
“I’m going to go check on her and see if I can do anything to help. Do you want to come?”
I can’t even imagine walking into that room again. “I’ve been here all day, Mom. Do you mind if maybe…Bennett takes me home?”
She whirls around to face him again, her expression full of worry as she looks him up and down. “How’s your driving?”
“Good. I’m very careful.” She still seems concerned, so he adds, “I’ll be especially careful.”
“It’s really windy.”
“I’ll drive slowly, Mrs. Greene.”
“Okay, then.” She pulls me to her and gives me a big hug and a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll see you at home, Anna.” But instead of heading toward Emma’s room, she lingers for another moment. “You know, Bennett, Anna’s father told me that she was supposed to have you over for dinner so we could get to know you a bit. Has she invited you yet?”
He looks at me, then back at her. “Not yet, Mrs. Greene. But I’m sure—”
“How’s Tuesday?”
“Tuesday?” Bennett looks at me. I cover my face with my hand. “Tuesday’s great,” I hear him say.
“Excellent. We’ll see you then.” Mom kisses me on the forehead again before turning and disappearing down the hall.
In the elevator, Bennett looks at me. “Dinner.” He nods. “Tuesday.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No. It’s good. I like family dinners.” The elevator stops and we hold hands and walk toward the lot. “Actually, I can’t remember the last time I had a family dinner. We’re not too big on them.”
“We just have Tuesday. We close the store early so Dad and I can get home, and Mom never takes a shift. She insists on one night a week, and that’s Tuesday.”
Bennett opens the door on my side of the car, and I slide in. We’re alone again, back in the Jeep, just like we were at this exact same time last night. But now we’re driving in the opposite direction and there’s no laughing or punching each other across the console. No question-and-answer game.
“You okay?” Bennett keeps asking in a whisper and I keep nodding, untruthfully.
The streetlights and traffic signals pass by in a slow-motion blur, like Bennett’s driving far below the speed limit. Mom must have terrified him. Or perhaps it’s me—maybe everything is moving in slow motion.
“They were alone.” I finally say to the passenger-side window. “Justin was alone for four hours before his parents got there. Emma was alone for two.” I run my finger across the glass and stare out into the dark. “I don’t know why that part’s bothering me so much, but I just keep picturing them in separate parts of the hospital, surrounded by total strangers. Maybe that’s what happens, you know—maybe your parents have to wait outside—but how could they just leave them all alone like that?”
“They knew everyone was on the way.”
“Did they?” I ask, and Bennett reaches over the console and grabs my hand.
We’re silent for a few moments, until I finally say what I’m really thinking. “I wasn’t there.”
He looks over at me.
“It took me eight hours to get there.”
“It’s okay, Anna. You got there as fast as you could.”
He squeezes my hand in his, and even though there’s really nothing he can say to make me feel better, his grip is somehow reassuring. I look down at our fingers intertwined, resting on the console—his nails still a little dirty from yesterday’s climb—and remember how I traced the grooves in his palm while I happily reclined against his chest. His hands feel so normal that sometimes it’s easy to forget how extraordinary they are.
“Oh, my God.” I recoil from him. “Pull over.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Pull. Over.” I’m shaking and feeling stupid and having a hard time believing I didn’t think of this earlier.
Bennett turns in to a residential street and puts the car in park. He stares out the windshield, and that’s the moment I realize that I might not have thought of it before, but he certainly did. He knows exactly what I’m about to ask, because even if I’ve briefly forgotten about the ability Bennett Cooper possesses, he never does.
“Do it over.” I twist in the seat to face him. “Bennett. Please. Do it over. Do the day over.”
“I can’t.” He won’t look at me.
“You can. You can fix this. Take us back before the accident. We’ll stop her from driving. We’ll fix it! Bennett?”
He gets out of the car and slams the door, leaving me trembling in the passenger seat. The headlights illuminate the fury on his face as he slams his fists hard on the hood, and I jump. He paces back and forth, then turns his back to me and leans against the front of the car. I watch his shoulders rise and fall. I think I’m supposed to regret asking, but I don’t.
After a while he comes back to the car, opens the door, and gets in. He’s calmer now, but he’s still shaking with rage. He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white.
“Please don’t ever ask me to do that again.”
“Look, I understand all your rules.” I stress the word your and hope he hears my point. “I get your butterfly-effect thing and your superstition about affecting the future—”
“It’s not my butterfly-effect thing. It’s the butterfly effect, and it’s a major concept in chaos theory, which has nothing to do with superstition. A small change in one part of a complex system can have large effects somewhere else—I didn’t come up with this stuff, Anna.”
“Okay, I get it. But you can make little changes, right? Affect small details? How is this any different from what you do for your parents? What you did last Friday before Spanish? What you did that night in the bookstore, when you changed what could have been a horrible future for me—it might have been the end of me—but it wasn’t, because you intervened. And look…” I put my arms out to my si
des and gesture around the car. “Nothing terrible happened. We’re still here. No butterfly mayhem.”
“It’s not that simple. Eventually something has to backfire. I just can’t do it over.”
I stare at him, willing him to look at me, and he finally does. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Look, I shouldn’t have done either of those do-overs, Anna, but they were different. I went back five minutes, an hour, I didn’t go back a whole day. I didn’t stop the guy from holding you at knifepoint or attempting to rob the store, I just got you out and got the cops there sooner. And that day in school, we still went to class, and it was like that hour just never happened. They were minor little changes. But stopping the car accident entirely? That’s erasing a major event.”
“Sorry, I don’t get the difference.”
“Yeah? Well, neither does my dad.” He bites his lip hard and turns to look out the window. “Look, it’s a slippery slope—I affect one bad thing that happened to one innocent person, and suddenly it’s up to me to keep every plane that’s ever crashed from taking off and be the one-man-early-warning-system for every natural disaster. Until something even more catastrophic happens because of what I did to prevent the last tragedy. This is my ability, and I don’t think that’s what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m supposed to observe. Not change the future. Period. I’m already breaking all the rules just by being here.”
“They’re not the rules, they’re your rules. And how do you know your rules are right? Maybe you’re supposed to test them.”
“I’m not.” He stares me down. “And if you recall, Anna, the last time I tested the rules for a girl, it didn’t turn out so well. For her.”
He has a point, but still, I’m not giving up. I can’t. Not when my best friend has spent the past day being sliced open and reconstructed, with parts of her missing, other parts now held together by string. She may be a crappy driver, but she deserves a future. “Well, this isn’t about me. And it shouldn’t be about you.”
He looks at me with sad eyes, and I know he wants to help her. To help me. To be the hero, even though he doesn’t think he’s supposed to be. “It’s not about me, Anna. It’s about…everyone involved. I can’t. I’m sorry, but it’s just too dangerous.”
“Will you at least think about it?” I give him a small smile and hope he’ll smile back, but he doesn’t. He just puts the car in drive and makes a U-turn.
“No. Don’t ask again.”
“Travel plans, por favor.” I twist around to take the stack of plans as they’re passed forward to me. One has a laminated cover. Another one is spiral-bound. Mine—which I’d planned to staple—is still handwritten on individual pieces of notebook paper, wedged in a travel book, and stuffed in my backpack. I won’t be turning mine in today, but apparently I’m not the only one who’s blown the assignment.
Bennett’s chair is empty. When he pulled up to my house last night, I got out, slammed the door without saying goodbye, and walked into the house without looking back. Once I was out of sight, I looked through the kitchen window for a minute or so, long enough to watch him lay his head on the steering wheel before smacking it and peeling out of the driveway.
Argotta gives a lecture today but doesn’t make us converse, and when the bell rings at the end of class, I linger and wait for the room to clear. Then I stand up, stop at his desk, and wait for him to look up at me. “How am I going to like your plan, Señorita Greene?” he asks as he pats the stack of travel itineraries.
“You’ll love my plan, señor. But it’s not done.”
I expect him to look at me like I’ve let him down, but instead he gives me an understanding smile, stands up, and walks around to the front of his desk. I tell him about Emma’s accident on Saturday (he’s heard), and I remind him about the robbery last Monday (which makes him look sad), and I emphasize that I’m not one to make excuses, but it’s been one hell of a strange week (he agrees).
“I’d like to announce the winner soon. Do you think you can have it done by Thursday?” he asks. I nod. “If you need more time, just let me know. We can announce the winner next week instead.”
“Gracias,” I say. I amble out of the room and into The Donut, drop my books off at my locker, and walk into the dining hall. I take one look at our empty table and decide I’m not hungry.
Mom drops me off at the hospital. I lug my backpack into Emma’s room, plant myself in the chair, and start working on my travel plan. Thirty minutes later, the nurse comes in to check Emma’s chart. She looks at me with a sympathetic smile and leaves the room.
I look over at the bed. Emma’s just lying there, looking far away and isolated, so I grab my copy of Lonely Planet: Yucatán and settle in next to her on the bed. I open the book and start reading to myself about “sugary beaches” and “scandalous nightlife” and “pork slow-cooked in banana leaves.” And then I get to the shopping. Now, this is something she’d love.
I start talking, just whispering at first. “This place sounds incredible, Em. Listen to this: ‘Shoppers will appreciate the handicrafts found on the peninsula…exquisite silver ornaments that reflect the filigree technique introduced by the Spanish, wonderful models of galleons carved from mahogany, and panama hats so tightly woven that they can hold water.’ Doesn’t that sound amazing?”
I look down at Emma’s still features and wait for a reaction. I speak a little louder. “You know, you look really good in hats. If I win Argotta’s travel challenge, I’m going to go to Mexico and bring you back a hat.” I consult my travel guide again. “Oh, and get this, they make some of the world’s best hammocks, too.” I look down at her. “Maybe I’ll get you a hammock. What do you think? Do you want a hat or a hammock?” I look for a reaction. Any reaction. There’s no movement. “I’ll just get you both.”
I go back to reading, scanning the pages for another section she might like. I’m just about to start telling her about the “famous cuisine” when I notice that there’s a drop of something on the page. Then another. Then another. I bring my hands to my face and find that my cheeks are wet, and the tears are falling in a steady stream, faster than I can stop them—on the pages, on the sheets, on Emma’s hand. I look at her face, at all the tubes, and my chest feels tight.
“I’m sorry, Emma,” I whisper as I lay myself over her right arm, the only part of her that I know isn’t stitched or internally wounded, and I finally let myself cry because she’s not supposed to be here. She made one small mistake. One tiny little move that changed everything. Would we be sitting here like this right now if just one thing about her day had been different? What if Emma and Justin had decided to go somewhere else, like the movies or the mall? What if they had left ten minutes earlier? Or ten minutes later? Or if Emma had committed to a single CD before she left the driveway? What if she had come to a full stop at every stop sign, slowing her progress to that intersection? What if the driver of the other car had forgotten something, run back into the house, and left three minutes later? What if I hadn’t insisted that her CDs live in that stupid case? What if, if, if, if, if ? If any little detail had been different—just one single detail—Emma and I would have spent yesterday in the coffeehouse, sipping lattes and comparing our dates.
He just needs to change one little thing. He’s the only one who can make things right, and he’s too afraid to do it.
I kiss Emma on the cheek. “I have to leave now, Em,” I whisper in her ear, “but I’ll be back. I’m going to go fix this and make it right, and after I do, you won’t remember any of this.”
Mom shoots me an impressed look as she pulls up in front of Bennett’s house. “Wow. Nice digs.”
“It’s his grandmother’s,” I say, but I’m pretty sure the one his dad bought with their stock market “luck” is equally impressive. “I’ll be home later, okay? Thanks for picking me up. And tell Dad I said thanks for taking my shift today.” I shut the car door and walk across the snowy grass,
because the walkway hasn’t been salted and it’s looking a little slippery. I knock.
Bennett opens the door and I blurt out, “I just spent the afternoon with Emma.” He looks nervously back into the house and finally closes the door behind him and joins me on the porch.
“How is she?” At least he has the decency to sound concerned.
“The same. Critical condition. No better than yesterday.”
“Give it some time, Anna. She’ll be better.”
“And you know this how? Because you’ve seen her in the future and know she’s happy without her spleen?”
“Technically, you don’t need a spleen.”
“That wasn’t my point.”
“I know it wasn’t.”
“How can you live with yourself, knowing you could fix this and not even bothering to try?”
He grabs my arm hard and leads me away from the door.
“Ow. You’re hurting me.”
He lets up on the pressure.
“How can I live with myself?” he whispers, checking around for eavesdroppers. “Are you kidding? This is killing me, Anna. I want to try—trust me, I do—but what if I can’t change it? What if I make it worse? What if the accident happens anyway, no matter what I do? What if I change the wrong thing and it ends up ruining her whole life? Or mine? Or yours?”
“I don’t know! Nobody knows! But how can you have this gift and not use it to find out? Maybe you try to do it over and the accident happens anyway and Emma lands in the hospital and nothing changes. But at least you’ll know you tried—”
“That’s my point! I’m not supposed to try. I’m not saying it’s fair, or right, but what if this was—”
“Don’t you dare say something lame, like ‘supposed to happen,’ because this was not supposed to happen. She is not supposed to be there.”