Chapter Fifty-Nine Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here
It looks like the technical difficulties fuzz on old-fashioned TV screens that you see in TV shows and movies.
I stare at it for a few seconds, trying to decide if I want to pick it up or just leave it here to get blown away by the hurricane. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help blaming it for its half-assed messages. Telling us to beware isn’t the same as giving us any kind of warnings about the horrors that were coming. Especially because I can still see Eva’s face as she read the warning that didn’t help save her.
And yet Jude wanted it enough to fight with me about it. And someone cared about it enough to lock that damn shed up tight—Jude or one of the Jean-Jerks, I don’t know.
“What’s wrong?” Simon shouts, following my gaze to the wet, muddy tapestry.
And fuck it. Just fuck it.
I crouch down and roll the damn thing up. Despite the rain that’s drenched it for the last hour, it’s still light and easy to maneuver as I stand back up and hold it out to Simon.
“Can you get this to Jude?”
“To Jude?” His eyes go wide with realization. “This is what you two were fighting over earlier.”
It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. Because it all seems so foolish now.
All the arguments.
All the secrets.
All the wasted time when the tapestry got one thing right—we are so completely out of time.
“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Simon tells me, his face more serious than I’ve ever seen it.
“You guys, come on!” Caspian yells as a full-blown lightning storm fills the sky. “We have to go now!”
Seconds later, hail starts falling onto anything and everything. It’s not big hail, thankfully, just dime size, but it still hurts like hell when it slams into us.
Caspian takes off running, with Simon and me right behind him. But the hail just makes things more complicated for me as I try to avoid…everyone.
I dodge a man in a bathing suit carrying a kayak—a kayak—only to end up running straight through a future Calder Academy student on a bicycle. Pain assaults me, electric shocks racing through my body from head to toe.
I stagger a little but manage to keep going as I fight through the agony.
“Clementine?” Simon calls, looking both confused and concerned as the hail continues to pummel us.
Up ahead, Caspian screams as he brushes up against a giant strolling along the center mall with a fishing pole the size of a large tree branch slung over his shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Poor Simon looks completely bewildered now as my cousin stumbles to a stop.
“What is that?” Caspian wildly flails his arms.
“Do you feel something?” I ask.
But before he can answer, one of the other students starts shouting and spinning around in circles. I can see that she’s walked right through a group of future Calder Academy students, but she can’t, and she is completely freaking out.
As are a number of the other students surrounding us, screaming and scratching at themselves and looking completely possessed to everyone around them as they lash out at nothing.
Or, at least, what looks to be nothing to everybody else. To me, it looks like somehow—some way—they’re suddenly feeling, but not seeing, the people from the past and future that surround us.
But I can see them, and everyone who is freaking out is doing so because they’ve just brushed against or walked through or gotten too close to someone who was either exactly where they were in the past—or who will be, one day in the future.
It’s the wildest thing I could ever have imagined, and to see it happen right in front of me is even wilder. Plus, it’s made a million times worse by the fact that the island’s ghosts have decided to join in the melee. They’re shuddering and complaining about the rain, but they’re here in all their nondescript grayness, nonetheless. Probably because every ghost I’ve ever met has a terrible case of FOMO. They all know something strange is going on here, and they don’t want to miss out on whatever it is, even if it means braving the worst storm to ever hit the island.
But their presence makes a complicated situation infinitely more complicated, though—at least for me. Because not only can I see decrepit old Finnegan as he waves to me, I can see past Finnegan as well. I can’t help but stare at the guy in a peacoat and work boots who is floating along behind him, a wide smile on his very handsome face.
Thisis what Finnegan looked like when he was young?
As if he can read my thoughts, young Finnegan shoots me a wink and a thumbs-up.
And, just like that, I give up on even trying to figure out what is going on in this shit show that has become my life.
Caspian hasn’t, though, considering he looks straight at me and demands, “What is happening here, Clementine?” as he shudders nonstop.
I reach out and grab his hand, pulling him several feet forward—and away from the young girl with ponytails and a teddy bear that he was literally standing halfway through.
I don’t have time to explain it, so I just say, “Get right behind me and follow in my footsteps exactly.”
“Umm, why?” Simon asks.
“Because she can see ghosts!” Caspian tells him.
Simon’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?”
But I’m too shocked to answer him. “You knew? But I never—”
“Carolina told me!” he says, rain streaming down his face. “She wanted to make sure I could watch out for you if she wasn’t around.”
His words hit like body blows, and I nearly go down.
It’s too much. It’s all just too much.
Too much grief.
Too much pain.
Too much struggle only to lose again and again and again.
It never stops, and I don’t want to do it anymore.
I can’t do it anymore.
I’m so tired. So hurt. So broken beyond repair.
I just want it all to stop.
But then I look at Caspian, and I can’t help thinking that he’s kept my secret all these years. That, in his own way, he’s protected me all along, and I didn’t have a clue.
I take a deep breath and do my best to fight off the sorrow that presses down on me with the weight of the whole ocean. Because I can’t give up. I can’t let anything happen to him—or to Simon, or to anyone on this path with us. I have to get them through the tangle of time that stands between them and the beach.
Them and the portal.
So I shove the grief and the horror back down to a place I don’t have to think about right now. And then I run straight for the fence that surrounds the whole island and normally cuts the students off from the beach and the docks.
As I run, I dodge ghosts and flickers, past and present and future, and pain. So much pain. But I just keep shoving it back down and keep going because students and teachers alike are following the path I’m cutting now.
Only the retrieval crew stays behind, packing up student remains so they don’t get left behind, either.
The hail gets bigger and harder the closer we get to the beach, but there’s no time and no place to take shelter anyway. So I duck my head, throw my hands up to shield myself as best I can, and keep going while Caspian and the others follow right behind me.
Past the main dorm, through the dense copse of trees that stands between the students and the fence, and finally—finally—through the brand-new opening in the fence to the beach beyond.
And then I run some more. I don’t stop—none of us do—until I make it to the loose sand right before the ocean meets the beach.
We’ve been running so hard for so long that my breath is whistling in and out like a freight train. I bend over, hands braced on thighs, and try to bring it back under control as I stare out at the roiling ocean.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but also the most perilous. Because the surf is churning in the storm, causing giant waves to continuously hit the shore. They kick up detritus and carry it up the beach in seawater that’s gone black and foamy. The roar of the sea is deafening, overwhelming, and I can’t help wondering—even with the portal—how we’re going to get everyone through this.
Each wave that rolls in is bigger than the last, and it’s only a matter of time before a tsunami comes crashing down and floods this whole part of the island.
I look around for Jude, for our friends, for my mother, but between the storm and the hundreds of people from all different times milling around, it’s an utter disaster out here. I can’t see shit.
At least not until my mother starts shouting my name through a megaphone.
I follow the sound through the crowd—and even manage to get past the Jean-Jerks unscathed—until I finally see my always impeccable mother drenched in rain, hair plastered to her head, and blood, which I’m pretty sure isn’t hers, streaked across her face. Next to her is a younger past version—all bright and shiny in a pair of pinstripe pants and a white button-up, with a backpack slung over her shoulder—and a future version, stooped with age, an afghan thrown over her shoulders.
For a second, I can only stare at these two versions of my mother that I don’t even recognize. But then something else catches my eye, and I turn to see my uncle Christopher standing next to her. Next to him is Jude, looking as broken—as defeated—as I feel.
I stumble toward them, calling his name as I go. But the storm is too loud and he can’t hear me—none of them can. At least not until I’m standing right in front of them.
“Clementine!” My mother looks dizzy with relief as she pulls me into her arms. “Oh my God. I was so worried that the nightmares had…”
She trails off as I hug her back, and though I’m relieved she’s okay, I’ve only got eyes for Jude, who is staring back at me like I’m the only lifeline he’s got.
“There she is!” I hear Uncle Christopher growl at him. “She’s fine. Now it’s time for you to keep your end of the bargain, Jude. Let’s go.”
At first, Jude doesn’t seem to hear him. He just keeps staring at me with haunted, kaleidoscope eyes.
“Clementine,” he whispers, and for the first time ever, I don’t mind that he’s used my real name. How can I when he makes it sound like I’m the most important thing—the only thing—in his world?
Even knowing what he told me, even knowing what we’ve somehow done, I can’t stop myself from reaching for him. From needing him.
He closes his eyes as my fingers brush against his hand, his face alive with an agony that slices me to the bone.
“Jude,” I whisper, clutching at him because I can feel him slip away. Even before he pulls his hand from mine.
And this time, when he looks at me, his face is completely blank.
“Jude,” I say again.
But he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he takes three steps back and just disappears.