Sixteen Minutes, page 1
Also by K. J. Reilly
Four for the Road
Words We Don’t Say
Nancy Paulsen Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024
Copyright © 2024 by K. J. Reilly
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Nancy Paulsen Books & colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
The Penguin colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Books Limited.
Visit us online at PenguinRandomHouse.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reilly, K. J. (Writer of young adult fiction), author.
Title: Sixteen minutes / K. J. Reilly.
Description: New York: Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024. | Audience term: Teenagers | Summary: “When a new girl arrives in town, seemingly from the future, three teens’ lives are turned upside down”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024037506 (print) | LCCN 2024037507 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593620052 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593620069 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Love triangles—Fiction. | Time travel—Fiction. | Multiverse—Fiction. | City and town life—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R4553 Si 2024 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.R4553 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024037506
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024037507
Ebook ISBN 9780593620069
Illustration by Pablo Hurtado de Mendoza
Design by Theresa Evangelista
Edited by Stacey Barney
Design by Cindy De la Cruz, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
pid_prh_7.0a_148405522_c0_r0
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Saturday
Prologue
Monday: Five Days Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Tuesday: Four Days Before
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Wednesday: Three Days Before
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Thursday: Two Days Before
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Friday: One Day Before
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
After
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Saturday
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
After After
Two Weeks Later
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_148405522_
For the strong, infinite, real girls in my life: Kate, Kenz, and Riv.
And for my book girls who only live on these pages, and in my heart.
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Saturday
Prologue
When we pull into the hospital parking lot in Cole’s truck, it’s pitch-dark—and almost five. We spot Stevie B in the middle of the empty lot across from the emergency room doors, looking like the last man standing after an apocalypse, and our hearts soar, then tumble, then rise again when we pull up closer and see he’s holding something in his arms. Cole mumbles, “Finn,” and my breath catches in my throat, ’cause her name comes out of him sounding more like a whimper than a word. We don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen next, but the whole thing feels so dramatic. Stevie B standing there holding Finn like that, looking all shell-shocked and beat-to-shit. His mouth open, eyes big and wet, shirt untucked, hair sticking up. Finn not moving at all.
When this whole thing started, we were scared at first—real scared. But then this kind of mind-expanding wonder sparked, and there was something bigger, something surprising, mixed in with that fear. Something bright, without edges, that felt vast and indescribable—like the sky, maybe.
Stevie B said he felt like the Wright brothers must have felt the first time they went running down that beach in Kitty Hawk with wings strapped on their backs and their feet lifted off the ground. You know, scared to death, but full of hope too—like all of a sudden an ordinary life might become unordinary because, for once, the wind promised to lift you up instead of beating you down.
We’ve had a whole string of those moments since Charlotte showed up in Clawson—moments when our feet lifted off the ground and our hearts stopped, then soared, then opened up bigger than we ever thought possible. And I get it now, what the Wright brothers did. Wanting to fly. Wanting to do something so big that just the thought of it paints the horizon all peachy and rose and strawberry red, like a sunrise full of promise or a field full of summer fruit, ripe for the picking.
The difference is, the Wright brothers, they were real smart and they worked for what they got. They dreamed and invented something, built something with their own hands.
But me and Cole and Stevie B, we didn’t do anything. We just got blindsided.
And then we jumped.
Feet first. Heart second. Head a distant third.
Once we did that, we knew we were on the cusp of something either lethal or brilliant—we just didn’t know which one it was, or how to tell the difference. And Charlotte, she tried to explain stuff to us. But only some stuff. And we tried to listen. We really did. But in the beginning, we were still stuck in the normal way of thinking, so we didn’t understand most of what she was saying. Plus, it’s hard to think you’re destined for something big when you live in a town like Clawson. It’s never been the kind of place that sprouts big ideas or smart people.
But right here and right now, as Cole runs from his truck to lift Finn from Stevie B’s arms and we wait to see how this whole thing is gonna play out, I’m wishing that Charlotte had told us how all those things that happened to us change a person. And change them forever.
But she didn’t. She didn’t tell us that.
Not on the day she showed up in Clawson. And not any time after.
We had to figure that part out for ourselves.
Monday
Five Days Before
1
“Cole, you’re not listening,” I gripe, acting like I’m put-out, but I’m not. At least not really.
Cole doesn’t respond. He keeps sitting there next to Stevie B, looking off at something or someone and not listening to me. I know that’s Cole’s way, and besides, he’s got his fingers all over my heart, so it’s hard for me to get mad at him in a way that matters much.
I was going on and on about this weekend, trying to get him to agree to Friday night at the diner and Saturday at his house, but he went Cole-quiet on me and acted like he hadn’t heard a thing I’d said. So I try nudging his shoulder, and that doesn’t work, ’cause he only moves his feet a bit and slides forward like he’s aiming to inch away from me.
“What are you looking at?” I ask, still trying to get his attention, ’cause the bell is gonna ring and lunch is gonna end soon, and I need to know about this weekend and I won’t get to ask him again till tonight.
Still, there’s no answer. I just get that lost I’m-in-my-own-world look of his.
I glance around the quad to the field beyond. Emma is sitting on one of the picnic tables, leaning back on her hands, flicking her hair over her shoulder, laughing at something TJ is saying, and there are a couple of freshmen over by the woods getting high, and Billy Hepner looks like he’s in some kind of argument with a pair of blue sneakers and dark-wash jeans, which could be any number of people; it doesn’t much matter who. The way I figure it, we’re all doomed to predestined misery. The way they figure it—they being Cole and everyone else I know—this is high school and we haven’t screwed up anything big yet, like our parents have, so life still has this magic to it. Like it’s embedded with sparkles and fizz and possibility. I mean, Emma still thinks she’s gonna be discovered and become a movie star, not a checkout girl at Binsky’s, and the kids smoking weed up by the woods don’t think they’ll be working as guards at the prison in four years, then laid off two years after that, flat-out broke, addicted to one drug or another, with no way out, but who am I to stomp on their dreams?
I follow Cole’s line of sight past all the normal stuff, looking for what caught his eye, and I see that he is looking at something or someone. And it’s that new girl.
She showed up this morning in the front office to register for classes, and no one knows anything about her. She caused a stir, though, ’cause she’s pretty in a way we don’t usually see around here. Plus, she’s new and shiny, and maybe not broke yet, in the way that this place breaks people.
“Who is she?” I ask Cole.
“Dunno,” he mumbles, then he looks down like he feels guilty, like maybe he got caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Like looking at the new, pretty girl with me sitting right here next to him.
“Should I be jealous?” I ask, not really serious. I mean, it’s Cole. And me and Cole go way back, to the Elm Street playground swings and worn-down crayons and snack bags full of Goldfish crackers—the kind of stuff that ties you to someone in a way that even new and pretty can’t cut through, unless it’s razor-sharp.
When Cole doesn’t answer, Stevie B looks over at the new girl and whistles long and low. Then in that teasing troublemaker voice of his, he says, “You might have reason to be jealous, Nell.” So I give him the elbow.
“Hey!” he whines in mock pain. “Just being real, Nell.”
“Be real somewhere else, Stevie B!” I say, not actually meaning it, because I know he’s not going anywhere, and I wouldn’t want him to anyway. Not in a million years. The three of us are plain old part of each other. It’s Nell and Cole and Stevie B, like we’re this triangle that wouldn’t sit right if one side was missing. That’s just how it is.
Right now, the three of us are sitting here on the grass under a tree, thirty yards away from everyone else who has sixth-period lunch, like we always do, and like we plan on doing every day until this spring when someone announces that high school is over. And then I suppose we’ll have to find somewhere else to plant our asses.
“Cole!” I’m practically shouting now to get his attention.
“What?” he finally asks. He looks at me like he’s surprised to see me. I wave at him and say, “Remember me? Your girlfriend? Name’s Nell? Started dating before we were born?”
Cole says, “I know her, is all.”
“You know her? The new girl?” I ask, more than a bit stunned.
Stevie B gives me a look like he doesn’t believe Cole either.
“You just said you didn’t know her, Cole,” I say. “I just asked you who she is, and you said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
Cole gets that look again. Like he’s all sunk down deep inside himself and he’s gone somewhere else, with no plans of letting anyone else join him.
Stevie B asks, “From where?”
“From where what?” Cole asks, like he’s so distracted he can’t follow a conversation even for a minute.
“From where do you know the new girl?” Stevie B asks, annoyed.
I mean, Clawson, New York, is not the kind of town where people know people from other places. As my dad used to say, we’re two hours south of nothin’ and just north of nowhere. So we know people from here. Nowhere else. That’s it. It’s like there’s some kind of force field around the place—or one of those electric fences they have for dogs. You know, like we have a collar around our necks and we’ll get zapped if we even think about leaving. I mean, we don’t have a collar around our necks. I’m just commenting that it has a way of working out that way. I think it’s because all the dirt and small-town shit has a way of keeping you tied to a place.
My mom says I’m right, and that the binding dirt and small-town shit is called oppression. But Cole sees it different. He says it’s the people that keep us tethered to Clawson. But that’s only because if you don’t count his dad, he has better people than most.
Cole looks down and mumbles, “It doesn’t much matter how I know her. I just do.”
All of a sudden, I feel uncomfortable. I can’t explain it, but I get this crushing pressure in my chest sometimes when it feels like Cole isn’t telling me something. It’s not that he’s lying outright. It’s just that he’s leaving something out. And sometimes I feel that whatever he’s not telling me would change things if I knew what it was. It doesn’t happen often, and I know it’s probably meaningless, like I know everyone has their private stuff, but these last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking there’s more private stuff to Cole than there should be. Like there’s this whole part of him he doesn’t want me to see.
“What’s her name?” I ask softly.
It takes him a long minute to answer. “Anna.”
Stevie B’s leaning back on his elbow, looking over at the new girl with that grin he gets every September when a pretty new freshman arrives who promises to cause a whole circus full of trouble. “No way it’s Anna,” he says. “It’s got to be Hannah or Heidi or…”
I give him a sideways glance, like Why on earth would her name have to be Hannah or Heidi?
He shrugs, then laughs. “What? It goes with Hottie, is all. You know, Hannah Hottie, Heidi Hottie…” Then he pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and starts drawing a picture of the new girl wearing shiny tights and a sparkly cape and looking all fierce and sexy, like Rogue from the X-Men or the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four.
I punch him in the shoulder, and he makes a whole production out of it, faking like it hurt, tellin’ me I messed up his sketch, and sayin’, “Anna just sounds too old-fashioned. You know, like it’s from a book or something. And that girl standing there is no Anna.”
We all watch her for a bit, and then I say, “She got named before anyone knew how she’d turn out.” Then Stevie B looks up from the picture he’s drawing and says, “Hey, look at that. Hannah Hottie is walking in our direction.”
Cole straightens up and brushes some grass from his jeans and looks uncomfortable, like all of a sudden his shirt doesn’t fit him right or his skin’s itchy, and my uh-oh meter goes into overdrive.
I watch the girl for another minute or two and realize that she’s not coming over to us; she’s just walking around all awkward, trying to look occupied, probably not sure what to do with herself or who to talk to, since this is her first day in this new-for-her poor-ass excuse for a high school.
I whisper, “Welcome to the bright lights and big city of Clawson, Anna.” Mostly to myself.
But Cole kind of makes a sound like a grunt, low and sarcastic, like maybe he actually heard me this time. Then Stevie B puts his drawing down, hops up, and calls over to the girl as loud as he can. “Hey, Anna!”
She turns, startled, stares at Stevie B for a long minute, and looks back over her shoulder like she’s not sure he means her, but then she starts to walk toward us for real.
