A World Without You (20 page)

How did I get here?

My parents and sister are acting like it's perfectly normal for me to be here, now. My mom cooks dinner every night, beaming at me as she puts down a plate of pork tenderloin or beef kebobs or whatever other recipe she found online. My dad reads the newspaper. Phoebe watches TV, bringing me a bowl of popcorn like there's nothing weird about the fact that I'm here.

But sometimes . . . sometimes they forget I'm here. When they look directly at me, they see and accept my presence. But if I stick to the walls and shadows, if I avoid their gaze, it's like I'm as invisible as Sofía can be.

I don't think I'm really here. I'm only half here, only made real when they remember I exist.

Or maybe I am here, and they can tell that something is wrong. My family is extraordinarily good at ignoring problems, especially when I'm the problem.

Or maybe I've fallen into a reality where this—me, forgotten and powerless—is normal.

Dad came into my room one day—remarkably easy to do when you only have to sweep aside a curtain—and took my laptop. He just took it. I was in the middle of using it, and he just lifted it out of my grasp and walked away. I'm not sure if that was during one of the moments when he could see me or not.

But before he took my laptop, I did as much reading on time travel as I could. I latched onto the idea of string theory, maybe because the timestream looks like strings to me. Each string of time leads me to a different place, a different time. But in string theory, the idea is that each string leads you to a different reality.

I've tried to call up the timestream.

I can't.

Maybe that's where I am now, in a reality where my powers don't work. Or maybe my last experience, when I cycled through different times so fast I could barely breathe, has put my powers on a temporary hold.

Time, as always, will tell.

I don't really know what to do here. This house—this family—doesn't fit me anymore. It's not even like a pair of jeans that are a few inches too short; it's like someone gave me a baby's onesie and told me to try to wear it.

My parents keep finding excuses to look in my room. Dad lingers in the hallway behind my curtained door, his feet pointed toward me, sometimes shuffling forward as if he wants to come in. Mom comes up with reasons to enter, laundry, a snack, something. At least she knocks on the wall before pushing aside my curtain, but if they're not going to trust me
with a doorknob, I don't see how knocking makes much of a difference.

I keep trying to go back to the island and Berkshire. Or just back in time. I'm trying to go anywhere, really. I can feel the timestream like an itch underneath my skin, but I can't reach it, no matter how often I try to call it.

What if I've lost my power for good?

No. I refuse to believe that. Losing my power means losing Sofía.

Forever.

And I cannot live in a world without her.

I'll find a way back to the timestream.

To her.

• • •

Phoebe's been acting weird. She pretty much goes out with friends or stays locked up in her room all the time, but there's something off about her.

I don't know why my parents can't see it, but when I look at Pheebs, it's obvious that something's not right. There's some worry eating her away, something that she won't put into words, and maybe she can't. She hides it, she's always hiding it behind a bright pink lip-glossed smile, but there's something . . .

It reminds me of the way there was something wrong with Sofía. I didn't notice with her, but I do with Phoebe.

I tried to talk to Phoebe, but the words all came out wrong, and she laughed at me and went back to her room. That's all this damn house is, a bunch of shut doors. Except mine.

Maybe that's why time threw me back here. Maybe in addition to everything else that's wrong in my life, my home is crumbling, but all my family does is smile and shut their eyes.

Phoebe

Bo moves like a wild animal,
scratching at the walls of the house.

I hear him creeping down the hallway moments before Mom shouts at us that dinner's ready. I pass him on the stairs—he's pressed against the railing as if my touch would poison him, but he watches me as I descend, not moving again until I'm off the final step.

Mom has poured every ounce of her homemaker instinct into setting the table. Fresh white and blue hydrangeas are clustered in the center of the table, flanked on each side by a pair of unlit candles. Just before Mom whips the flowers off the table to make room for the roast chicken, though, I realize they're fake. Expensive, realistic fakes, but still. Fake.

Doesn't she understand that the only thing that gives the candles purpose is burning them? That what makes flowers beautiful is the fact that they eventually die?

“Rosemary chicken!” Mom proclaims, as if this is a triumph.

“Looks good.” Dad snaps the paper to make it lie flat.

I slump in my chair, waiting to be served. Dad carves the chicken, dropping a piece on everyone's plate. Mom passes around baked macaroni and cheese and a bowl of green beans flecked with something red.

Bo stands behind his chair. Mom looks at him, her mouth open to speak, but then she pushes away from the table abruptly, muttering that it'd be better to use the slotted spoon for the green beans rather than the one she has sticking out of the dish. Bo leans over his chair, filling up his plate unceremoniously. He doesn't pass bowls or the platter of chicken; he just reaches over the table. As soon as he has what he wants, he picks up his plate silently and returns to his room, not saying a word.

Mom comes back from the kitchen and opens her mouth to call Bo back to the table.

“Let the boy go, Martha,” Dad says, turning to the sports section. He sighs. “It's more peaceful like this anyway.”

Peaceful. This house is so peaceful that it's practically dead.

Mom sort of crumples into her seat and listlessly picks up her fork. She eats her food in a circle, starting with the green beans and moving to the mac and cheese before cutting the chicken into tiny pieces. Dad eats absentmindedly, reading the paper. I stab my food and swish it around the plate, but hardly anything winds up in my mouth.

“George,” Mom says.

Dad looks up.

“It's dinnertime.” She looks pointedly at the paper. He scoots it to the side of the table, where Bo would normally sit, but his eyes linger on the text.

We all chew our food.

I want nothing more than to pick the chicken carcass up off the table and slam it into the ground. The white porcelain platter would shatter beautifully, sending shards across the dark hardwood floors, splattering chicken grease everywhere.

I reach for the bowl of mac and cheese even though I haven't eaten what's on my plate yet. I wonder what Dad would do if I turned the bowl upside down on his head. Just that. Just turned it upside down and let the yellow, slimy noodles drip down the side of his face, and then walked back to my room as if nothing happened.

Like Bo did.

What would it be like to be Bo? To be already broken, to have no expectations laid upon me? Because as much as I'd like to burn this whole dining room to the ground, I know I won't. I won't ever. My parents can handle one child who walks as if he's in a trance, taking what he wants and leaving without a word.

They can't handle it from me too.

The chicken tastes like dirt in my mouth. I've never seen Bo act this way before, as if he could pretend he was alone and make it so. I've never seen him this far gone, this wrapped up in his own little bubble.

I'm so messed up. I'm
so
messed up, because right now, I'm sort of jealous.

I don't have the luxury of allowing myself to break. Bo is Bo. He can do what he wants, be who he wants. But not me. I have to be the good daughter. I have to come home every night. I have to get good grades and have a decent appearance and goals and ambitions that line up with my parents'.

Because if I break, they'll break too.

It's a responsibility I'd never really felt before, or at least
I never thought about enough to name. But Bo's actions just cement my place in my family. He can walk away from the dinner table.

I can't.

• • •

After helping Mom wash the dishes before she puts them in the dishwasher, I head back to my room. Bo's curtain is to the side, so I can see the way he sits in the center of the bed, almost as if he's meditating, his legs crossed, his head bent. His arms reach out in front of him, as if he's trying to grab something, but his fingers meet nothing but air.

“Hey.”

Bo opens his eyes, and he seems a little surprised that I'm there.

I pick up his dirty plate from the edge of the bed. “Mom's doing dishes,” I say as an excuse for interrupting him. He gives me a dismissive jerk of his head.

I turn to go, but then he moves, and I pause, and it feels as if we're both part of an awkward play, waiting for the other to give a cue.

“Is everything okay?” he asks finally.

I stare at him.
Everything but you
, I want to say, but we both know that's not true. Not true at all.

Instead, I try to smile. “I'm glad you're back home,” I say, and I don't let myself think about whether or not I'm telling the truth.

Bo's gaze slides away from mine. It's obvious he doesn't feel the same way.

“So, listen,” I say, shifting the plate from one hand to the other. I want to say . . . something. Talking with that doctor a
few days ago has made me think a lot about the past, like when I broke my arm. It's made me wonder when things went wrong. And that's made me think about when things were right.

“Thanks,” I say.

“For what?” Bo looks confused.

“For, um, teaching me how to drive.”

Bo laughs a little. “What? I didn't do that. It was Dad or . . .”

“No.” My voice is quiet but certain. “It was you.” When I meet his eyes, it's obvious he still doesn't understand. “We were on the road trip, remember? In Colorado. And Dad wanted to ‘take us off the beaten path,' so he drove us to this really scary, winding road. It wasn't even a real road; it was for loggers or something. Mom wouldn't look out the window, and she held on to that bar on the side of the door.”

“Oh yeah,” Bo says, a smile playing on his face. That trip had been our last family vacation. Driving and camping had been fun when we were younger, but we were both in high school then, and it was annoying to have to share the car charger with everyone and hope my phone's signal lasted in the woods.

“And then Dad stopped the car and told me to drive.”

I still remember the crisp, cold air and the scent of evergreens when Dad and I swapped places in the car. I was fifteen at the time, so it wasn't technically legal, but the road probably wasn't technically legal either, and no one was around. Just us and the mountains and the trees. Mom had been nervous, but I was excited—my first time behind the steering wheel. But as soon as I got in the driver's seat, I sort of freaked out. Not on the outside, of course, but my brain was screaming in panic.

“It was so scary,” I mused. “I mean, the mountain's edge on one side and trees on the other. The whole time, I kept thinking,
‘If I go just a little bit to the left or the right, I'll crash the car and kill us all. I am going to kill my whole family.'”

Bo snorts. “You were going, like, two miles an hour.”

“I was not!”

“You were. I could have walked faster.”

“Whatever. And Dad was yelling—”

“He was telling you to speed up—”

“And Mom was telling me to use the brake—”

“Because she's a scaredy-cat—”

“And I was swerving all over the road—”

“Again, you were barely moving at all—”

“And do you remember what you said?”

I want him to know that this moment was really important to me. I remember it so vividly. I had been leaning forward, half my body over the steering wheel, trying to look as closely at the road as I could, squinting at the little bit of gravel just in front of the car. “You have to look further out,” Bo had said from the backseat. “You can't look right in front of the car.” And then, I don't know, I just got it. I understood. I needed to focus on the distance; I needed to see where I was going.

But Bo just shrugs now. He doesn't remember.

“Anyway . . . thanks,” I say. I step out of his room, my foot landing on the gouge in the hardwood floor.

• • •

I take Bo's plate back to the kitchen. On the stairs as I head back to my room, I get a text from Jenny. I keep my eyes on the screen as I pass Bo's room again, not willing to make eye contact and conversation a second time.

What's up?
Jenny texts.

Nothing.
I step into my room and close the door firmly.
Bo's here.

I've always been jealous,
Jenny types,
that you have a brother.

LOL, not this one.

No, you don't understand.
The words come fast and furious across my screen.
You just don't get how weird it is to be an only child. It would be so much better to have a brother or a sister or something. You have no idea how good you have it.

I turn off my phone, ignoring the buzzes as more texts arrive. Jenny is the one with no idea. Because the reality is? She may want a brother, but she doesn't want Bo. She just doesn't understand. I mean, I know she's heard me complain about him, but she thinks it's like the movies when two siblings fight and then eventually bond and become besties. But that sort of thing is just as fake as the idea that taking off your glasses and putting on some eyeliner is all it takes to change from the class freak to a hottie. The truth is, sometimes siblings have nothing in common but blood. Sometimes you just know that the concept of a BFF brother is not applicable to your family.

Sometimes you stay up late at night, thinking things that make you feel like a heartless monster, wishing for something different and then feeling sick with guilt because you know what the cost of “different” would be.

Jenny doesn't want this life. There's a difference between having no siblings and having a broken one.

• • •

An hour later, my door opens without warning, and I jump from my bed, expecting to shout at Mom. That's our silent rule—I will be the daughter they need, but I get my privacy.

But it's not Mom, it's Bo. He glances at me, then quickly
away, avoiding my eyes and sticking closely to the wall as he creeps around my furniture. He makes his way to my desk and unplugs my laptop, tucking it under his arm.

“You could have asked!” I shout after him.

But he walks out of the room as if he hasn't even heard me.