Chapter Sixty-Nine Yuzu Could Do Worse
The second the yo-yo touches her, Ember grabs her shin and jumps about three feet. Seeing the skeptical, normally too-cool-for-school phoenix freak out is extra amusing.
Everyone else rears back as she loses it, even before she books it back across the room to the rest of us.
“Okay, so maybe Clementine knows what she’s talking about after all.” She shudders violently. “What did that kid hit me with anyway?”
“A yo-yo,” I answer as I struggle not to laugh.
She still looks more than a little freaked out when she settles back down on the ground.
“So you can see things that previously happened or that will happen in whatever place you happen to be in,” Simon recaps as he ticks off the point on his finger. “Which you’ve never been able to do before.” He moves to the second finger. “And at the same time you became able to see these things, the rest of us became able to feel them.”
“Pretty much,” I agree.
“It’s like the two different time periods or dimensions or whatever are brushing against each other,” Mozart says in awe.
“I have no idea if they’re brushing against each other or not. I just know that what Simon described is happening.”
“Okay. And—”
She breaks off when Jude holds up a hand. “Is that it?” he asks me.
“Isn’t that enough, man?” Simon exclaims incredulously. “Your girl is seeing things that aren’t actually there—”
“Oh, I’m not his girl—” I start but then stop abruptly when Luis, Ember, and Mozart all make half-choking, half-laughing noises, all of which I’m pretty sure are sounds of disagreement. Luis throws his hands in what is definitely an I-just-call-’em-like-I-see-’em gesture. Remy and Simon are studiously avoiding my eyes, while Izzy is rolling hers so hard, I’m a little insulted.
I glance at Jude out of the corner of my eye, only to find that ridiculously small smile of his playing around the corners of his lips. “Careful or you’ll break my heart, Yuzu.”
“What the fuck is a yuzu?” Luis asks blankly.
Jude and I answer at the same time.
“A citrus fruit,” we say.
This makes everyone laugh even harder. And my cheeks go red with utter mortification.
“It kind of tastes like a grapefruit,” Jude answers, which only makes it worse. I give him a disbelieving look.
“What do you do? Just sit around researching fruit?” Simon heckles.
He shrugs. “Maybe I just know a lot about fruit.”
“Maybe you just know a lot about messing with me,” I shoot back.
For the first time in maybe ever, the corners of his mouth curve up into what can only be described as a half smile. “Maybe I do.”
I just stare at him, speechless, mind completely blank. Partly because his smile turns his whole face from gorgeous to I can’t even describe the glory and partly because I haven’t seen this version of Jude—the one who looks at me with warmth in his eyes while he teases me—for a long time.
All I can do is stare at him with a little lopsided smile.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Simon continues, breaking the awkward silence, “maybe we can find out when you started seeing the past and the future all at once.”
I snap out of my trance. “The past and future thing happened about the same time the tapestry broke.”
All amusement drains from Jude’s face in an instant. “What do you mean it broke? Like it started to unravel?”
“No, I mean it went all wonky, almost like static on a TV screen. Just a whole bunch of dots with no picture in it at all. It was really weird.”
“Where’s the tapestry now?” he asks, and he’s already up and heading for the door. “Is it where we left it?”
“I think it’s lost,” I tell him. “Since it seemed like such a huge deal to you, I gave it to Simon, since I was supposed to go across the portal with my mom. But then the portal broke and—”
“It’s in the ocean?” Jude’s face is blank again, but there’s a look about him that makes me think this is even worse than I imagined. Even before he repeats, “The tapestry is in the ocean?”
“I assume so, since Simon was in the portal when it broke.” I turn to look at Simon, but he’s jogging away. “Hey! Where are you going?” I call after him.
He doesn’t answer, just waves a quick hand in acknowledgment as Jude takes off after him, darting up the main stairs of the dorm.
Only a couple of minutes pass before Simon and Jude are back.
“I stashed it in a closet upstairs after Caspian took you up to the portal,” Simon tells me sheepishly. “I don’t know what kept me from bringing it with me—”
“Common sense, maybe?” Ember comments.
“Pretty much, yeah.” The smile he shoots her lights up his whole face, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, that and a bad feeling that I couldn’t shake.”
“Maybe you’re seeing the future now, too,” Izzy suggests dryly.
I walk over to where Jude has put the tapestry down and is currently unrolling it. Part of me has been hoping that it will be back to normal, that whatever weird thing made it go awry last night has somehow resolved itself.
But I can tell before it’s halfway unrolled that that’s not the case. It looks as strange and eerie as it did last night—maybe more so now that we’re out of the rain.
“So I’m not trying to sound ignorant,” Mozart says as she gets up and comes over to look at the tapestry. “But what is it?”
“It’s a textile,” Simon answers. “A weaving of—”
“Seriously?” she cuts him off. “I know what a tapestry is. I’m asking what this tapestry is, since it’s obviously special or the Jean-Jerks wouldn’t have come looking for it and Clementine wouldn’t have been able to break time or whatever the hell she did.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I object. “I wasn’t even near the tapestry when it happened. I just know that things went off-kilter for me, and then when I picked it up, it was messed up, too.”
Mozart turns to look at Jude. “I saw how freaked out you got when Clementine had the tapestry. So what is it? Why did it bother you so much that she had it?”
Jude stares at her for several seconds, jaw working and face going expressionless like it does when he doesn’t want to talk about something. I see the moment he gives up on prevaricating and decides to just tell the truth.
“It’s a dream tapestry,” he finally tells us reluctantly. “Or, I guess in this case, it’s a nightmare tapestry.”
“A what?” Simon asks as he takes a big step back away from it.
Not that I blame him—after everything that happened in the middle of the night, it’s taking every ounce of courage I’ve got to stand my ground as well.
“A dream tapestry—it’s woven with people’s dreams.”
“Dreams?” Remy asks, moving closer to get a better look. “Or nightmares?”
Jude lets out a long slow breath before saying, “I am the Prince of Nightmares. So you do the math.”
It’s the second time I’ve heard those words, but they still feel like a punch to my stomach. A quick glance around tells me they feel like that to everyone else, too—well, everyone but Izzy, who hasn’t bothered to look up from her nails or her knife.
But before I can ask Jude for a better explanation, a massive crack of thunder rattles the whole dorm—right before we hear the sound of the outer door crashing open.