CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I chose a method and a tool and a place.
Fear gripped my ankles as I walked into the forest carrying Vivian’s heaviest mallet.
I trembled, my nose and eyes dripping from the pain and peace of our final goodbye, but I didn’t stop.
I passed features I recognized—a tree trunk with a middle that bent oddly into the shape of a kite.
A fallen log perfect for sitting and long talks.
The little grove where I’d seen my first cascara sagrada. But not my tía, not one trace of her.
Minutes ago, I had left Anne Shirley with a kiss and overflowing bowls of food and water. A note on the door for Del saying it was open.
And now it was as if the woods had opened wide for me. I stopped, spinning a slow circle as the weight of what I was about to do rushed in from every leafy nook.
The watch is dangerous, he had said. But . . .
Dangerous enough to take my limbo and stretch it into unfathomable shapes? Treacherous enough to trap my own eternity in an hourglass, grain by grain, only to be inverted again and again?
The golden watch had stolen a boy’s dreams. For weeks, I was tricked into thinking I had to help secure his afterlife, when I was the one standing a few ragged breaths away from her own all along.
But now, if I recklessly defied that same enchantment, would my afterlife become the next thing stolen? Would the magic take me too?
A flock of birds screamed a shrill chorus, and I shook my head roughly, blanking out each shadowed notion until the truth shone clear and bright.
This was the only way. This act at the apex of my newest plan was the next step and the right path and everything Tía Viv had said I would know.
I did know. I tightened my hold on the mallet and continued walking.
If these were my final minutes, I used them to ground my body into the core of that green and dampened place.
I counted breaths and listened to the last echoes of my heartbeat and whatever the leaves were doing.
I remembered the way Penn had calmed and centered me by drawing me into my safest place.
(That dimly lit room, that first midnight kiss.) But this time I would take more of him and us, and that place would be boundless.
With my eyes locked open, I halted my steps and let myself dream the only dream I would ever have in Sacred.
I saw the girl I could’ve been. This girl stood on a Lincoln City beach with a boy who looked at her like she was something he wanted to keep.
Above them, sunlight streamed, thick and buttery.
And behind them, an endless ocean stirred.
The girl held a red glass globe that could’ve floated in the center of her chest.
I more than know you, the boy said as she spun the red glass. And then, in her image and at the flickering end of her wish, she didn’t stop him when he said, I love you.
I love you, she told him, because it was true. She loved him.
I loved him.
And right then, as my internal clock struck now, I unlatched the clasp on the watch. The notched pattern of the band was stamped into my wrist. A river ran down my face as I rested the gold Vacheron Constantin on top of a freshly hewn tree stump.
No one in Penn’s family had done this. His grandpa Patrick had tried to hide and rehome the tricks this watch held behind its champagne dial. But he never dared to try ending it for good. I understood; some things double down when you try to destroy them. But my resolve had doubled too.
The universe would know that it would be me to stop time this time.
I might even be a killer of magic. That wasn’t something girls like me were ever taught to be (seize it, grasp it—that’s what we read in storybooks).
But I loved Penn enough to release his dreams from the watch’s hold, even though it would release him from me forever.
His dreams needed to be his alone. He was alive and free, and nothing—not his grandfather’s watch, not an unfair world, not even a girl who loved him—would hold him back.
Be a doctor, Penn. And call your father. And never stop being curious.
I faced, head-on, the fear of what my act might do to my own infinity—the forever that loomed.
Displace me, I dared.
Abandon me into the starry unknown.
Break my heart again and again.
I lifted the mallet high and swung, the first blow reverberating through the arch of my body with a tremendous slam.
The watch appeared unharmed, but when I looked closer, all the hands—not just the notorious second hand—began to creep the wrong way.
Backward. If the eerie movement was meant to be an omen or a warning, I refused to listen.
I refused to quit, and I lifted the mallet once again.
Each strike was the ache of a kiss and the thrill of a touch.
An oath, a mantra, a shroud of fear and rage, an ocean of love.
Even in my rash dizziness, I saw the glass face finally relent and crack.
Ignited, I increased my power until the entire piece splintered into two, four, thirty-two.
I still didn’t stop, my vision blurring.
I shut my eyes, operating on instinct and rhythm, striking over and over until—-
The mallet bounced off clean, flat wood.
I peeled my lids open, wiping pooled sweat and billowing tears. The gold watch was gone.
I crouched low, digging and sifting until my fingers were stained with earth. Not one sliver of glass or metal was left.
The watch had vanished. Its final trick.
I looked up and around, and the trees above me began fading at the edges. My time was up. My destination, unclear. All I could do was drift into the blackness that loomed behind my eyelids. Endless, like a dreamscape.