Earthbound

“Excuse me?” I ask. ’Tis? What the hell?

“They’ve discovered us.” He pauses and looks over at me for the first time. “You know it.”

I swallow hard and nod, his words confirming my suspicions. I don’t actually know for sure who they are—Reese and Jay? The people they’re hiding me from? Sunglasses Guy? But someone has definitely found me.

“We must go to Camden. We’ve no cause to wait any longer.”

I clench my teeth, not wanting to be mad at him but hating the way he jerks me around. Jerks my emotions. But I’m helpless to resist. And I resent that.

Not that I’m giving up. “You said you’d bring something. Something to help me understand.” I want to stop, to put my hands on my hips and refuse to walk anywhere else with him until he gives me answers, but a quick glance over my shoulder shows me a distant smudge of black that I’m pretty sure is Sunglasses Guy and I don’t want to take the chance that he’ll catch up.

In fact, I’d rather quicken my pace.

“Camden. Everything waits in Camden.”

“What is in Camden? Where is Camden?” I snap, the tension of Quinn’s mystery act and the fact that I’m being followed not a very happy- making combination.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says, as though I hadn’t said anything.

“Why can’t you just talk to me?” I ask, exasperated.

He says nothing, only lengthens his stride. “Tell no one,” he hisses.

“Quinn!” I reach for his arm as he turns from the quiet neighborhood street onto a busy boardwalk in the touristy zone, but at the last second he skirts out of reach. I try to follow, but there are people in my way now, though he weaves through them nimbly. My bad leg twinges, as if in warning. I’m not sure I could have caught him even with two good legs.

I curse under my breath. Curse myself, Quinn, my heart and its wild beating. Why can’t he just stay in one place? Or, at the very least, give me a straight answer? In regular English. I guess he’s left me in a better place than the empty street we were on, as it’s hard to lose a tail in a nonexistent crowd, but it wasn’t what I wanted! He knows something and I have to find out what it is. I have a suspicion—a rational one, under the circumstances—that my safety hangs in the balance, and he runs away. Jerk.

Still, based on the direction he took off in, I’m pretty sure he’s going to the same place I was headed before I ran into him. And I am not letting him get away this time. Today someone is going to tell me something.

I take a circuitous route and after about six turns, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost Sunglasses Guy. I go straight for a few blocks, glancing behind me every hundred feet or so, but no tail in sight. I let myself breathe just a little easier and get back on track. It takes another ten minutes to reach my ultimate destination, but finally I see the specialty food store that started the whole fiasco my life has become.

But Quinn’s house isn’t there.

The white porch, the red door, the triangle, even the cheery maroon and gold tulips—all gone. The whole space is covered with grass and a couple of trees, and I think it’s actually part of the yard of the house to the right … and has been for a long time.

The minutes fly by as I stand in the middle of the parking lot thinking about everything bizarre I’ve seen this week: the house, Quinn, the triangles, the alley that disappeared, the flickering woman, the vanishing ChapStick and pencil.

Benson saw them too, I remind myself. Some of them. My chin trembles as I fight back tears of despair. I clench my fists and suddenly there’s an icy, cold weight in one of them. I open my palm and drop its contents to the ground as though it would burn me.

It’s the locket my mother used to wear—one she got from her mother. She was wearing it on the plane. I never saw it again. Couldn’t bring myself to ask about it.

Now it’s here. On the ground. I made it. Without even thinking.

Like the water. The water that could have killed Benson’s roommate.

Terror makes my whole body shake. How do you run away from yourself?

“I’m not crazy,” I whisper into the wind, then stand and stare at the curlicued silver on the ground until the locket pops out of existence.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I’m exhausted already. Not only from my long walk to avoid my tail, but because of everything that has happened. That keeps happening. My pace is slow and dragging, but eventually it gets me to Elizabeth’s office, where she invites me in as though it were just another day.

It’s not.

She doesn’t even mention that this appointment is at her request, not mine.

Or that Reese is gone.

The only reason I’m even there is to keep up the appearance that everything is normal—that I’m still the ignorant child they think I am. My emotions are completely muddled; I’m angry and frustrated and confused, and desperation is slowly devouring me from the inside. I know I need to do something; I just don’t know what.

However, the first thing I have to do is sit through at least fifteen more minutes of BS with Elizabeth. Then I can make my escape. Until then, I’m stuck here with my lying shrink, trying to convince her I’m okay.

I’m not good at lying. But I’m pretty good at not saying anything at all. So, here we are at a total impasse as I sit silently on her couch and try not to glare at her.

Or maybe just glare on the inside.

Part of me wishes I could spill everything, but after yesterday I know it’s impossible. I scoff inwardly at how close I came to telling her about making stuff out of thin air.

What would she have told Reese then? I vividly remember Reese’s all-too-serious question: Is she too damaged? If I had confessed it all, would Elizabeth have said yes?

“Why don’t you want to talk, Tavia?” Elizabeth asks, after I let too much time pass in silence. She’s calm and quiet, but I swear I can hear the frustration bubbling beneath the surface like a river of lava.

Or maybe it’s my imagination.

If it was, how would I know the difference?

“I have nothing to talk about,” I burst out, the thought of Quinn’s refusal to tell me anything unraveling my patience. “I don’t even know why I’m here; I’m fine!”

I rub my neck; it’s sore from carrying my lies, and the tight control I used to have on my temper is gone.

Now Elizabeth sighs and it sounds real, but I know better. “Tavia, I have no idea what’s changed, but I’ve lost your trust.”

Liar.

She straightens and then leans forward, her elbows on her knees. “I don’t know how to convince you that all I want is for you to be okay. You used to believe that.”

I did used to believe it. I wish I still did. She has no idea how much I wish it.

“You didn’t bring a new sketch.” Her voice is calm, casual. Her shrink voice.

That’s because you’d just show it to Reese and Jay. “I had homework,” I mumble, staring down at my fingers twisting around each other until they ache. Homework, creating things from thin air, the problem of two boys who’ve each laid claim to half my heart, whatever you want to call it.

“Have you seen Quinn again?” Elizabeth continues without pausing to give me a chance to deny it. “It would be natural to want to keep a new romance like this secret—special, I guess. But you know you can tell me