Chapter 30
EMMA
I sit in front of a glass panel, waiting for Myles. The room has chairs separated by dividers, and there’s one other person in here. It’s an older lady. Even though I can’t see her, I can hear the tremble in her voice.
My heart sinks as I imagine Myles’s mom visiting him like this all because of me. Does she cry every time she talks to him too?
On the other side of the glass, Myles appears with a guard beside him. His hair is short and he wears a bright orange prison uniform. He has glasses instead of the contacts he wore all throughout high school.
I cover my mouth, throat tight and eyes stinging.
This is how I wanted him. I wanted him to suffer after what he did—what I thought he did—to Mallory. He suffered because of me.
His lips part when he catches sight of me, and he does the unthinkable. He smiles. His lips turn up slightly in the corner.
My heart pinches and I want nothing more than to break this glass and tear him away from the guard. I want to shout to the world that he’s innocent. I was wrong all along.
He takes the seat across from me and points to the phone hanging to my right.
I pick it up and hold it to my ear.
Myles does the same.
“Are you okay?” I ask, voice cracking.
There’s nothing okay about this. He shouldn’t be in there, and it’s tearing me up inside because I know I’m the reason. I am the reason he threw his life away and gave up on his dreams, and for what?
He puts his hand on the glass like he’s trying to touch me. “It’s good to see you.”
The way he’s looking makes me want to throw up. How can he be so content sitting there? It’s been an entire year of taking the blame for something he didn’t do. He let me yell at him. Hit him.
“Why?” I say, choking on the word. I put my hand in the same spot on the glass as I cry. “Why did you do it? Why did you push me over?”
I know he did it for me, but how could he do something so careless? Who cares if I was disappearing from history? He wasted his life on me for nothing. Mallory wasn’t even here like we thought. We didn’t save her.
“Tell me!” I yell.
He takes a breath before his soft eyes lock with mine. “I needed you to hate me more than yourself.”
I shake my head as a tear falls down my face. I think about how useless I feel right now and wonder if this is the way I would’ve felt if he’d shown me the note instead of pushing me. I’d never forgive myself for running away that night. I’d hate myself.
I know it.
He knew it.
He was trying to protect me like he had my entire life.
His need to protect me always outweighed everything else.
It never mattered whether or not he got hurt in the process.
It’s like that never crossed his mind. If I was hurting, he jumped into action, doing whatever he could to make me happy like making me smile was the most important thing in the world.
Look what good that did.
I’m not happy.
What he did only makes me hate myself more because I didn’t just fail to save Mallory. I ruined his life in the process, and I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for that. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be living his life the way he should. He wouldn’t be trapped here, letting his life rot away.
I pull my hand off the glass because it hurts. I can’t shake the truth: I put him here.
“You were wrong,” I say.
A little crease forms around his eyes and he narrows them like he’s confused. “What do you mean?”
I blink away my tears. “Mallory isn’t here.”
He nods and his confusion melts away. “I know.”
“How do you know?” He’s the one who told me Mallory had to be here. He told me to find her.
“Someone would’ve told me if she was found.”
He’s probably right. It would’ve destroyed the case against him since he couldn’t possibly have killed her that night if she showed up a year in the future.
It would’ve been unexplainable and every reporter would be covering the story.
It would’ve been plastered all over the news.
Instead, the only thing to report was Emma Adler, a missing teen, was found alive just days after she went missing.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I choke out.
He leans forward like he’s forgotten about the glass. All I want is for him to reach through it and engulf me in a hug. I want him to tell me everything is going to be okay and for him to come up with another plan to save Mallory.
She’s still missing, and somehow that’s worse than finding her body because there are no answers. What good is time travel when I don’t know where she is? It’s like time swallowed her whole and is taunting me.
It gave me a taste of a second chance just to rip it away from me.
Tears brim his eyes.
I know better than to cry in front of him, but I can’t help it. I’ve lost control of myself. I’m numb and barely functioning at this point. I’m helpless and trapped in my regrets. There’s nothing left for me to do but cry.
“We’ll figure this out,” he says. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
I want to believe him, but I can’t. I can’t fix it. “Nothing’s okay.”
“Emma, please don’t cry,” he begs.
That only makes me cry harder. I’m a blubbering mess and I know I should stop because I don’t want him to feel any worse than he already does, but it’s comes out like a flood. I don’t think I’ll ever stop crying.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I say.
“I’ll figure it out.”
I want to believe that he can, but it’s hard when the truth seems impossible to find.
“Look at me,” he says. “I will figure this out. Trust me.”
I bite my lip and nod, trying to stop the tears. “Okay,” I say.
“Do me a favor. I want you to research the bridge. See if there’s ever been any other strange activity near it. Maybe you two weren’t the only ones to travel through time. Maybe there’s been others.”
He’s right. I’ve been so caught up in the fact that Mallory isn’t here I didn’t even think of that. I begin to calm down because he’s given me something else to focus on. Something tangible I can do to make a difference.
“I can do that,” I say. The heaviness in my heart eases with this glimpse of hope. Maybe we really can figure out what happened.
“Find out what you can and then come see me again tomorrow.”
“Okay. I will.”
He smiles through teary eyes. “I’ll be waiting.”
“How did it go?” Sam asks when I get back in the car.
“Can you bring me back tomorrow?”
“I’ll take that as it went well then,” he says.
“I guess so.”
He sighs. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
I can’t tell him because he won’t believe me. For all I know, I’ll scare him off and he’ll never take me to Myles again. I can’t risk that. Not when I know no one else will bring me to the prison.
“It’s complicated.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’ll say.”
I’m itching to look into the bridge, and I don’t think I can wait until I get home. “Can I use your phone?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Look, we aren’t friends. The only reason I brought you here is because I promised Myles, okay?”
“I just need to look into something,” I say.
“Where’s your phone?”
“It’s dead,” I reply.
“Then charge it.”
Considering the fact that I jumped into a river with it, I think it’s a little beyond saving. Ruining two phones in the same week is a new record for me. “It’s dead dead.”
“Oh.”
I turn toward him with big hopeful eyes. “I promise it won’t take long.”
He takes his index finger and pushes me back by my forehead. “Fine, but stay over there.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and enters his password. “Don’t do anything weird on it.”
I take it and open the browser. There’s already a page loaded: a page about cosplay and how to build a DIY helmet. “Really?”
“Hey, don’t mock Blue Vortex. I’ll take my phone back,” he says, reaching back for the phone.
I jerk away. “What I meant is that it looks very cool.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I open up a search bar and look up “Oakland Bridge Missing Persons.”
A bunch of articles flood the screen. I see my name at the top, which I should’ve expected, but it catches me off guard. There are so many articles about me being found.
Emma Adler Was Discovered Safe After Running Away Just Days before the Anniversary of Her Sister’s Disappearance.
Young Girl Hospitalized After Being Discovered Near the Oakland Bridge.
Missing Cardale Senior Has Been Found Alive and Well.
I scroll past every article that looks like it has something to do with me. Farther down I start to see the articles about Mallory pop up. But hers are the opposite of mine.
Search for Mallory Adler in the Oakland River Continues.
Mallory Adler Presumed Dead Three Weeks After Being Pushed Off the Oakland Bridge.
Body Found Near Oakland River.
I sit up straighter. Body found? I click the link and scan the article.
On Saturday morning an unidentified body was discovered in the Oakland River. The area is closed off to the public as the police investigate the death.
Then I see it. The date.
My hands shake and I can’t breathe.
April 6th, 2023.
Mallory jumped off the bridge on April 5th, almost exactly one year apart.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m supposed to be getting you back home,” Sam says, following me into the police station.
But I don’t hear him.
“Can I help you?” asks one of the officers.
“I need to talk to Detective Amato.”
She stands up from her desk on the other side of the room. “Emma?”
Sam stands awkwardly by my side as Detective Amato walks over.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
I shake my head and show her the article on the phone. “I need to know more about this case. Did the police ever find out who this person was?”
She takes the phone and tilts her head as she reads. “I’m not sure. I didn’t work on this case.”
“Can you find out?”
She looks between me and the phone and then back at me again. “I don’t think—”
“Please,” I beg. “You said you wanted to help me.”
She peers over her shoulder at the others in the room and sighs. “Okay, take a seat and I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I sit and fidget with my shaky hands.
“Why does it matter who that person was?” Sam asks. “It was two years ago.”
“It just does,” I say.
I want it to be someone else. It needs to be someone else.
My leg bounces up and down as the minutes tick by. What is only ten minutes to everyone else feels like an eternity to me. The seconds are like needles pressing into my skin one by one.
Breathe, I remind myself.
It’s going to be okay. I’m going to figure out how to undo all of this. I will fix it.
“Emma,” Detective Amato says, approaching us again. This time she has a file in her hand. “Will you follow me?”
I stand, leaving Sam behind to follow Detective Amato into a large conference-like room. She sits and gestures for me to do the same.
“Is that it?” I ask, eyes locked on the file in her hands.
She nods. “It’s considered a cold case. We never identified the body.”
My heart stops.
I know.
Of course, they never identified the body because Mallory wasn’t missing yet. She was alive and well.
I stand, reaching over and snatching the file, scattering all the papers free.
“Emma!”
But there it is. A picture of the body.
A picture of Mallory with pale skin and blue lips. Her dark hair is wet as she lies on the rocks.
“That’s her. That’s my sister,” I say with tears in my eyes.
Detective Amato scrabbles to pick up the papers. “That’s not possible.”
I gasp for air, trying to fill my lungs, but it’s useless. I can’t breathe.
Even though she’s put the picture away, I still see Mallory’s face. I know the jump didn’t kill her because it didn’t kill me. That means when the river pulled her back in time, she chose not to swim to the surface. She chose to drown.
“Please sit down and let’s talk about this,” Detective Amato says.
What is there to talk about? She can’t help me. I’m the only one who can make a difference. I need to jump back in time again. But I can only go back a year. I need to convince past me to jump and save her.
I bolt out of the room.
“Emma!” Detective Amato calls after me.
I race into the front of the station to where Sam looks up, confused.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I need to go. I need to go right now.”
Sam looks over my shoulder at Detective Amato, trying to figure out what happened, but he doesn’t understand.
I grab his arm. “Please.”
“Okay,” he says.
I run out of the police station and to his car, yanking on the handle even though it won’t budge because it’s locked.
He unlocks it and gets in the car, but he’s too slow. He does everything at half the speed I do.
Every time he looks at me, it’s like he has a million questions, but he’s too afraid to ask. Like he’s worried he’ll make it worse.
He backs up the car as I force myself to breathe because if I don’t, I’m going to pass out. We’re not even moving very fast, but my head is spinning.
“I need you to drive me to the Oakland bridge,” I say, the words flying out of my mouth.
“What? No,” he says, pulling out onto the main road. “I’m taking you home.”
“No!” I yell. “I need to go to the bridge. You have to take me!”
His eyes widen. “Emma, you’re scaring me. I’m going to drive you home.”
“Stop the car!”
“We’re in the middle of the road!”
I unbuckle because if he’s not going to take me, I’ll find another way to get there. I reach for the handle, propping the door open.
Sam grabs my arm as he slams on the brakes. “What are you doing?”
I shove him off me and jump out of the car. I’m running again, but I can’t see clearly. The world is blurred and I’m dizzy.
I’m on the road.
There are honking horns and screeching tires.
A car slams into me, pain shooting through every fiber of my body.
I’m on the pavement.
I’m bleeding.
And all I can think about is Mallory’s blue lips as I close my eyes.