CHAPTER TWENTY
Emily, Age Thirteen
“Wait. What?” Emily said. It was the day before Klara’s and her Wishing Day. They’d planned everything out, down to the last detail. Then Klara had arrived at Emily’s house before school started, pale and agitated and shifting her weight from one foot to another. She’d dragged Emily to Emily’s bedroom and shut the door, jabbering about stuff that made no sense.
The most disturbing part? Klara wasn’t Klara. Or, she was, but she wasn’t the Klara Emily was accustomed to. She was Klara Plus, kind of.
“We have to stay together,” Klara said. “The Bird Lady—she isn’t the batty nice lady I thought she was.” She screwed up her face. “Or . . . no . . . that’s not right. She’s . . .” Klara’s gaze grew unfocused. “I missed that. What?”
Emily rubbed her arms. She and Klara were the only ones there, and yet Klara looked for all the world as if she were talking to someone else. Someone in her head. Worse, Emily could almost feel someone else in Klara’s head.
Except that was crazy, obviously.
Maybe she’s got a stomachache, Emily thought.
“She is nice,” Klara said emphatically. She focused again on Emily. “The Bird Lady’s nice, but she’s confused. She wants to make things better, which is good. Only she doesn’t yet know that what she’s planning to do will make things worse, which is bad.”
“I don’t understand,” Emily said, not for the first time. She’d tried several times since Klara had arrived to push on Klara’s thoughts in order to gain some sort of clarity, any clarity, about what had happened to her friend. Normally, she stayed out of Klara’s head, but she’d decided that this was a special case. Klara was acting so strange.
Emily couldn’t, though.
She couldn’t push her way in.
Something (or someone?) was blocking her.
Shivers ran up her spine. She rubbed her arms more vigorously, trying to warm up.
“Emily,” said Klara abruptly. She stared at Emily with wide eyes. “This is going to sound really out there . . . but do you think maybe you have, like, psychic powers?”
Emily paled.
“Please don’t get scared,” Klara said. “Ava just—I mean I just . . . I just have this feeling that you do.”
“Do you have psychic powers?” Emily said, hearing her pulse in her head. If Klara had a gift like she did, how had she failed to notice for all these months and even years?
“No! I wish!” Klara paused, again adopting her listening face. “Or, maybe I do, but . . . they’re on loan.”
“You’re scaring me, Klara.”
“For what it’s worth, I was scared, too. I threw up, even.”
“You threw up? When?”
“Last night, when, um, it first happened.”
“When what happened? Klara, tell me what’s going on!”
Klara pushed her hand through her hair, which was wild and unbrushed. “It’s going to sound impossible. It is impossible. But—”
Klara seemed to fight an internal war with herself. She closed her eyes and groaned, then stared at Emily with resignation. “My daughter is here. From the future. It has to do with her wishes.”
Emily had no words.
“She says not to feel bad,” Klara went on. “She says that the Bird Lady couldn’t sense her, either. Maybe because she’s not, you know, real yet?”
“Not real yet,” repeated Emily. “Your daughter from the future?”
“I know. I know. Her name’s Ava—”
“She has a name?!”
“Well . . . yeah! And supposedly, Ava reminds people of you, so you shouldn’t be mean to her.”
Emily held out her hands, palms up.
Klara puffed out a breath of air. “She thinks she’s blocking you from, like, reading my mind, so she’s going to get out of the way for a bit. I don’t know how, so don’t ask.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” murmured Emily.
“Oh, God, Emily. There’s so much you need to know!” Klara cried. “It’s life or death, literally. So just . . . help yourself?”
And then it was as if a veil was lifted from Klara’s thoughts. Emily felt a jolt. Time seemed suspended for several long, mind-bending moments.
Then time started up again, and Emily heard an insistent buzzing. She tried three times to shake the buzzing out of her ear before realizing that the buzzing was real. She uncoiled herself from her spot on her bed and strode to her window, cracking it open to free a honeybee that was bashing itself repeatedly against the pane.
“So . . . do you know now?” Klara said. “All of it?”
Emily returned to her bed and perched next to Klara. She prodded, but Klara’s mind was closed again.
“She—Ava—is back in?” Emily said.
Klara nodded.
“Right,” Emily said. She felt foggy from the information dump she’d just undergone. It was as if she’d read a book in its entirety, but had yet to absorb its contents—and there was so much to absorb. “Can you give me a minute?”
Klara nodded again: up, down, up, down.
Emily wondered if she was as pale as Klara was. She felt the lurching terror of free fall, imagining the future Ava came to warn them of, and was at once resolute.
“I agree with . . . Ava,” she said at last. It was odd, talking about someone who was both there and not there, but it had to be done. “We can’t not make your wishes at all. We can’t not make our wishes out of fear.” She cocked her head at Klara. “You’d seriously wish that you won the contest instead of me?”
“No! Never!” Klara’s face distorted, and Emily wondered if Ava, and the truth, sat like stones within her. “I don’t know—and, to be fair, the contest results haven’t even been announced.”
“They’re announcing the winner this morning,” Emily mused. “And tonight, according to Ava, the Bird Lady was going to come to your house? Throw rocks at your window and persuade you to wish you’d won instead?”
“Not tonight. Early, early tomorrow morning, right after midnight. But Emily, I haven’t made that wish, and I won’t. All right?”
Emily considered this.
“You’re my best friend,” pleaded Klara.
Emily sighed. “And you’re mine. And you’re right, or the Bird Lady’s right, that I don’t care all that much about being the winner. But if it happens—”
“Which it will, which I’ve been
