“You know why they’re here, why
His father’s fists curled. “It’s been nine years! It’s over!”
She raised her head. Makeup smeared under her eyes, looking like black-and-purple bruises. Her eyes looked hollow. “It’s never over! It will never be over. I dream about her. Who she was supposed to be. What she would have been like. All of us, together.”
“Jesus, why won’t you stop?” his father said.
“Because I deserve this pain!” she said. “Because I should be dead, not her. Because life is cruel. Life is brutish, short, and …” She searched for the word. “Short.”
“But it’s not,” Zach said. “It can be magical and—”
“And you, shut up,” his father said. “Don’t you see you’re making it worse? You always make it worse.”
Zach paled.
“Zach.” I held out my hand. “You can take my breath if you want it.” He’d have to walk past his father to reach me. I saw him realize this, calculate the distance. “You don’t need to be powerless.”
His father’s face flushed darker, and he shot a glance at me. “This isn’t what it looks like.” He knelt beside Zach’s mother and began to tend to her. He fetched a paper towel and dabbed it on her lip. Blood had welled in the middle of her bottom lip, just a drop. “She took a nasty spill. Slippery floor.”
“I’d just mopped it,” Zach’s mother agreed.
“And the bruises?” Zach asked. “Are you going to claim the floor made them as well?”
Rising, his father leveled a finger at him. “No more.”
“You’re right,” Zach said. “No more.” In three strides, he brushed past him and crossed to me. He wrapped his hand around mine, fingers laced tight. His hand was slick with sweat.
His father slammed his hand on the counter. “You don’t—”
Zach leaned his forehead against mine, and I exhaled, giving him whatever magic he wanted. Behind us, on the counter, the red wine caught fire.
His parents spun toward the flames. His father shouted for a fire extinguisher. Shrieking, his mother raced from cabinet to cabinet. The fire alarm wailed. His father yanked the extinguisher off the wall next to the stove and sprayed white mist on the flames. Foam coated the counter and floor.
Zach pulled me away, and hand in hand we walked out of the kitchen. He turned toward the front door, but I tugged his hand and drew him through the hall, past the family photographs, to the back porch. The yard looked empty. We went out onto the patio.
“Should we walk, drive, or fly?” Zach asked, his voice grim but steady.
“Definitely fly,” I said.
“Oh yes, definitely.”
We kissed and rose into the air. Spiraling upward, we reached the level of the roof. I felt Zach’s heart beat fast through his shirt. Mine was thumping too. Entwined, we soared higher.
Quiet wrapped around us. Up here, the cars were only a distant buzz, like cicadas, and the wind smelled like freshly cut lawns. It was more peaceful than I’d imagined, to be untethered from the earth. I felt as if I could cocoon myself in clouds and drift away from all fear. Below, I saw the marshals rush toward Zach’s house, drawn by the shrieking.
“They’re after you, aren’t they?” Zach asked.
“Yes. I … I’m in the witness protection program. But I’m leaving. I left. And they want me back. They want to know what I can’t remember, and I think … I think when they have my memories, they plan to kill me.”
His arms wrapped tighter around me. “I knew you were in danger.”
“I thought they were keeping me safe, but now … I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I know I’m not … from here. And I have these visions. But I don’t know if they’re true, and I don’t know who to trust.”
“Trust me,” Zach said automatically, and then as if he knew he’d spoken too quickly to be believed, he repeated it. “You can trust me.”
Looking into his warm eyes, I wanted to. And then I realized that I had already decided to. By coming to his house, by soaring into the sky with him, I had involved him, and he deserved to know at least as much as I did.
Taking a deep breath, I told him everything as we flew high above the houses and trees: about the agency, about the other worlds, about my visions, about the case. I watched his face as I talked. His cheek twitched. His lips were pressed together. His eyes were open so wide that the skin around them stretched. I didn’t know his expressions the way I knew Malcolm’s. I didn’t know if he believed me, or if he wanted to drop me from the sky now that he’d heard it all.
“Oh,” he said.
I didn’t think I had ever seen him truly speechless before.
“And you want
“I didn’t know who else …” An idea burst into my mind. “Patti.”
“The librarian?”
“She has two extra eyes.”
“Extra eyes?” he repeated.
“She knows how to keep herself safe. She’ll know what to do.” She’d have answers! I was sure of it. “Just let’s go there. Please?”
The wind shifted as we changed directions. We flew in silence for a while, with the wind curving and swirling around us. The sun, thin through the clouds, warmed the air.
Lips against my ear, Zach said, “You have no idea how many dreams I’ve had about flying. Except I’m in a Superman cape or have falcon wings, instead of being in the arms of a gorgeous girl, which means this moment totally surpasses every dream I’ve ever had.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a nice dream.”
“Ever?”
Arms around each other, we drifted over the roof of the library. “Maybe I just don’t remember them. Given a choice, though, I’d rather remember what’s real.”
“No, no, you need a few good dreams. Like flying, or blasting into outer space, or winning a gold medal.” Breathing in more of my magic, he lowered us down behind the library. “Or spending the afternoon with someone you lost.”
As soon as my feet touched the ground, the feeling of peaceful floating vanished. Wind rustled the branches of the trees. Leaves slapped together. I tried the door handle. Locked.
Zach knocked on the door, loudly. I cringed at the sound. “Zach …,” I began, intending to tell him we could walk through the wall.
“You told me your truth; let me tell you mine. Sophie was my sister, the girl on the swing from the photo that you saw.” Zach didn’t look at me. “She … she fell in the middle of the night. She hit her head too hard, and she didn’t wake up. It was an accident. A stupid accident. The stairs were smooth wood. Her slippers had no tread. The lights were off. But she had bruises on her arms—she’d been learning to ride her bike. And she had scabs and cuts—she’d played hard at school. And so the police investigated. They claimed we were lying, that it wasn’t an accident, that one of us had … It took a court case to end it.”
“And that’s why you don’t lie?”
“Yep.” Zach knocked again. “And why, in a twist of irony, my mother has become the raging alcoholic that they thought she was, my father has developed a temper he can’t control, and my home is now poisonous to live in.” He knocked harder, as if he wanted to punch the door.
I put my hand on his arm. “Zach …” I didn’t know how I was going to end the sentence, but I knew there was something that I was supposed to say, something comforting or wise.
Before I could think of the words, the door swung open.
I jumped backward, ready to dive into the woods. Zach reached toward me—to protect me or stop me, I wasn’t sure. But it was only one of the librarians, the one with tattoos on his neck. He scowled at us. “You know there’s a front door.”
