Chapter Fifty-Eight Crash and Learn
Iblink again.
Nothing changes.
Rub my eyes really hard.
Still nothing.
I blink again, and when that doesn’t work, either, I do the only thing I can think of. I freak the fuck out.
My heart rate goes wild.
I forget how to breathe.
And my head—actually, my entire body—feels like it’s going to explode.
Because the whole world isn’t just in triplicate—which would be bad enough. No, the world I’m seeing, the world spread out right in front of me, appears to be the past, the present, and the future.
All at the exact same time.
The Caspian in front of me, talking to me, is the eighteen-year-old cousin I’m used to, dressed head to toe in Calder Academy red pajamas. But the Caspian next to him is the little boy with the perennially skinned knees who I used to build tree houses with. And the Caspian next to him is a forty-year-old man in a three-piece suit, who, unnervingly, happens to be missing a hand.
What. The. Hell. Is. Happening?
“Clementine?” Caspian sounds concerned, but I’m too busy trying to figure out what’s going on—while also keeping my brain from imploding—to answer him.
Frantic, confused, and more than a little horrified, I turn back to the center mall, where some of the teachers have finally reached the horde of traumatized students spinning around themselves and each other. I search the sidewalks for Jude—he shouldn’t be hard to find considering how tall and broad he is—but everything’s such a mess that I can’t find him.
Honestly, I can’t find anyone. Because the center mall doesn’t look like the center mall anymore. Or at least not a singular version of it.
Because it’s rainy, windy, and filled with broken sidewalks…and even more broken students.
But when I blink, it’s also sunny and filled with smiling paranormals walking down a sidewalk edged in beautiful flowers. Some have shifted—there are wolves and leopards and even a couple of dragons flying overhead—but there are also witches in old-fashioned bathing suits and vampires strolling along under huge, black umbrellas.
And then there are a bunch of other people again. I don’t recognize any of them, and the fact that they’re dressed in regular clothes instead of uniforms makes me wonder where they’re from. Especially since the sidewalk they’re walking on isn’t broken. And they don’t look scared. And it isn’t raining.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
I press a hand to my galloping heart, try to suck a breath into my too-tight lungs. And I guess I succeed because the world isn’t going dark around me. Which is a shame, because right now, I kind of wish it would.
“Your mom wants me to bring you to her,” one of the Caspians says, eyeing me uneasily. “She’s down at the beach, overseeing the portal. She says we’re leaving early.”
Considering what’s happening here, I can absolutely believe she wants to get out as fast as we possibly can. But that doesn’t exactly solve the problem I’m having.
I close my eyes and force myself to calm down—which isn’t exactly easy. I take another breath, promise myself that whatever happens when I open my eyes, it’s going to be okay, and exhale the breath out slowly.
Then, I open my eyes to a world that is still completely upside down. I ignore it for a moment, refusing to look at anything or anyone but eighteen-year-old Caspian. And I ask, “But what about—”
Words fail me, and I lift my hand up in an all-encompassing gesture, too overwhelmed by everything that’s just happened to even try to find the right words to talk about Eva. And Bianca. And all the many, many others.
Thankfully, though, Caspian understands. “We’ve been making plans for the last half an hour on how to deal with everything. The dorm is a mess—” His voice breaks, but he clears his throat and tries again. “We’ve got rosters, and we’ll be checking off every student who goes through the portal so we can make sure that we’ve found…all the others. We won’t leave anyone behind, Clementine, I swear.”
“Eva—” This time it’s my voice that breaks, and Caspian looks like he wants to cry with me. The other two versions—past and future—are doing their own things, with future Caspian scrolling through his phone and little Caspian bouncing a tiny rubber ball.
“We’ll get her body,” he promises me after clearing his throat. “We’ll get everyone. But I need to get you to your mom before she completely freaks out.”
I nod, because I know he’s right. No matter how difficult my relationship with my mother is—and it is exceptionally difficult—I’m just as relieved to know that she’s alive, that the nightmares didn’t get her.
“Jude?” I ask, my voice breaking once more because just the sound of his name has pain swamping me all over again. I can’t believe it has to end like this. Not after ten years. Not after everything we’ve gone through. And not after he finally told me what I’ve wanted to hear for so long.
He loves me. Jude loves me. But instead of being with me, he’s walking away—for good this time. And I’m left standing here, broken and brokenhearted, in a world that makes absolutely no sense anymore.
“My dad just found him.” Caspian sounds grim. “He told me Jude must have lost control of a lot of nightmares.”
“You know?” I gasp. Terror moves through me as we start to walk down the cottage steps. Because now that my mom and Uncle Christopher know that Jude lost the nightmares, I don’t know what they’re going to do. But whatever it is, it’s not going to be good. And there’s a part of me that can’t help thinking the Aethereum might have something to do with it.
“I don’t really get what’s happening,” Caspian admits. “But I know my dad isn’t letting him out of his sight until we can get to the warehouse and figure it out.”
I don’t say anything to that, partly because I don’t know what to say and partly because I barely make it down one step before I trip over nothing. My brain is completely freaking out right now, trying to process the multiple images in front of me. Except it’s not actually three cottages this time because, in what I think is the future, there is no cottage. And no steps. So, it’s actually two cottages and a bench surrounded by several small potted trees.
And I keep thinking I’m about to crash into one of the trees.
I throw a hand out to try to grab the railing that I know is there but also can’t see. Thankfully, my palm connects, and I force myself to go down the stairs that my brain doesn’t quite believe are there anymore as I finally say, “Jude told me.”
“He told you?” Now Caspian sounds incredulous. “Did he say why he did this? What did he think he was going to gain? Was he—”
“Stop!” I know I sound harsh, but I can’t take a bunch of condemnation being heaped on Jude right now. “Just stop for a—”
I break off as I trip over a huge crack in the sidewalk that I didn’t know was there. I catch myself and blink several times, trying to focus on seeing only the present. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.
I take a couple more steps, then jump to the side to avoid a bench—only to walk straight into a bike someone has abandoned in the middle of the center mall. I end up tripping over it and nearly fall flat on my face.
Caspian somehow manages to catch me, but he shoots me a very concerned look. “You okay, Clementine?”
I have nothing to say to that, so I turn around, trying to keep myself focused solely on the present. The inner tubes in the middle of the mall aren’t real. And neither are all the rose bushes. Only the cracks are real.
I step over a big one and start to congratulate myself for not falling on my ass, and then run directly into a dragon shifter.
She whirls around. “What the hell is your problem?” the present version of her says.
“Sorry!” Caspian steps in, pulling me away. “She hit her head pretty hard.”
“I didn’t hit my head,” I tell him. He’s got a firm grip on my shoulders now and keeps it that way as he steers me down the walkway.
“Well, you’re acting like it,” he says. “Just try to keep it together a little longer, will you please?”
“I’m trying!” I tell him. “It’s harder than it looks.”
I don’t know how to explain it—except everything keeps changing. Every time I move or blink or look someplace new, I have to try and figure out where I am all over again. And if I’m focusing on the past, the present, or the future.
If they lined up in the same order every time, it would be easier. But sometimes the future is first. Sometimes the present is last. And sometimes the past is in the middle, which really fucks me up because I keep thinking present day is always in the middle—which is exactly how I ran into that damn dragon.
“What’s going on?” Caspian asks, looking half concerned and half bewildered. “Seriously, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I grind out as I keep walking—and try not to dwell on how the word makes me feel. Now that I’m off the porch, I have more than enough to contend with in the open. Things have gotten exponentially harder because walking down the center mall with people existing in different realms of time is a lot like how I imagine bumper cars would be. Or a real-life game of Frogger.
I dodge to the left to avoid a Calder Academy student before realizing they’re not actually there before immediately diving to my right to avoid a woman in a short, yellow sundress and cat-eye sunglasses.
She gives a startled yelp and drops the drink she’s holding. The fruity concoction—it looks like a pi?a colada—goes flying everywhere.
What just happened? Did she actually feel me even though we’re separated by decades? How could that— My thoughts are interrupted just as something cold and sweet-smelling smacks me in the face.
Huh. Not a pi?a colada after all. A mai tai.
I’m so shocked by the revelation that this past woman and I can feel, see, and even spill things on each other that I totally miss the pink anemone bench in front of me. I crash into it so hard that I tumble to the ground as pain shoots up my foot.
“Clementine!” Caspian yells, half exasperated and half concerned. “What are you—” He breaks off when he sees what is directly in front of me. Bianca’s broken body, crumpled and bloody, beneath the bench.
I saw her earlier from a distance, but this—this is awful. Especially because a very lost-looking past version of her hovers right beside her, turning a transparent gray as the color slowly, methodically, leaches from her.
Like her roommate, her arms and legs are bent at an unnatural angle and her eyes are vacant, staring sightlessly into the distance. A huge puddle of blood has pooled beneath her head, protected from the rain by the big, plaster bench she’s stretched beneath.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hysteria becoming a crushing weight on my chest.
Because I did this. I. Did. This.
Oh, Jude blames himself, but I’m the one who was unmeshed. I’m the one he set the nightmares loose for. I’m the one he saved.
The guilt is overwhelming, and so is the sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“We have to go,” Caspian urges from somewhere up ahead of me.
“Go,” I tell him as I reach out and close Bianca’s eyes. “I’ll catch up.”
“I can’t leave you!” he says. “Aunt Camilla will kill me. Plus, no one is allowed to stay on the island.”
The irony is rich.
He gestures to the teachers herding kids down the sidewalk toward the beach that is usually completely off-limits.
But as I sit here at her feet, all I can focus on is the girl whose death I caused.
“We need—” He breaks off as someone crouches beside me.
“Hey, Clementine.” I look up at the familiar voice, only to find three versions of Simon crouching down next to me. “You knew her?” he asks sympathetically.
“I’ve been here my whole life,” I answer. “I know everybody.”
He nods and reaches out a gentle hand to hold mine. “I’m sorry,” he says in that quiet way he has.
“You’re not the one who should be sorry.” I am. I did this.
My stomach revolts for the second time today, and I find myself puking what’s left of my favorite dill pickle chips into one of the potted plants behind the bench as lightning splits the sky above us.
“Go!” I tell Simon and Caspian, waving them away as my body continues to go through the motions of vomiting long after my stomach is empty of bile or anything else.
When the nausea finally passes, I rest my head on the cold, wet pot for a few seconds and try to catch my breath—and my will to go on—back.
The former is a lot easier to find than the latter.
“Can I help you up?” Simon asks, and it’s the first time I realize that he’s still here—and so is Caspian. They didn’t leave me.
I want to say no, want to tell them to just go on without me. I was never supposed to step foot off of this island anyway. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that neither one of them has any plans to head anywhere without me.
So I nod, and Simon wraps a surprisingly strong arm around my shoulders and helps me to my feet.
“We can’t leave her like this,” I tell him and Caspian.
“They’re coming for her,” my cousin answers. “I promise, Clementine.”
As if on cue, two of the staff warlocks head toward us, a large black bag in their hands—at least I think there are two, since I can see six of them.
I step aside so they can get to her, and Simon—who still has his arm around my shoulders—begins to guide me down the path.
Normally, I’d tell him that I’ve got this, but the contact helps me focus on present Simon, while past and future Simon—both of whom are dressed in Calder Academy uniforms just to make things extra complicated—hover nearby.
Add in the fact that, for once, I’m not reacting to his siren pheromones and this seems like the path of least resistance. Also, since he’s steering us, I don’t have to work so hard to try to figure out what’s real and what’s not.
More lightning splits the sky above us, followed instantly by a rumble of thunder that shakes the very ground beneath our feet. At the same time, the wind picks up so fast and hard that Simon and I stumble and nearly fall.
Sheer strength of will—his, not mine—keeps us upright as the eerie wail of the hurricane siren splits the night. It’s just my mother, calling us all down to the beach, but the low, discordant blast of it blends with the shriek of the wind, turning the sinister into the apocalyptic. Caspian must think so, too, because he speeds up until he’s as close to jogging as he can get considering the headwind he’s pushing against.
“What are you doing back here anyway?” I shout so Simon can hear me above the storm. “Caspian said they’re holding everyone on the beach.”
“Jude,” he answers simply. “They’ve got him locked down, but he wanted to make sure you made it to the portal.”
I don’t know what to say to that as a fresh wave of pain flows through me. It’s just one more layer to add to what’s already inside me.
“Careful!” Simon pulls me to the right, steering me around something on the ground.
No, not just something.
The tapestry. The fucking tapestry.
Only now the warning about time is gone. In its place is nothing but a bunch of squiggly, fuzzy lines in every color imaginable.