I'll Stop the World, page 29
Rose says something to me as I get into the car, and I grunt in response, not paying attention. I stare out the window as we pull out of the Derrins’ driveway, taking in the world I am doomed to be stuck in for the rest of my life.
As we drive across Wilson Bridge, I wonder what would happen if I flung open my door, jumped out of the car, and took the leap I’ve spent all week avoiding.
Would I die, and stop this hellish cycle from repeating?
Would I live, and find myself back in 2023?
Would I just be wet and cold and still stuck in 1985?
In my mind’s eye, I see myself reaching for the door handle, rolling across the pavement, flinging myself off the bridge.
But I don’t. I just sit there, frozen and useless.
As always.
Rose likes to talk about fate, about purpose, but I know now: I have no fate. I have no purpose.
I don’t matter.
I have never mattered.
I never will matter.
And there’s nothing I can do about it. It was stupid to believe there was.
I fist my fingers into my hair and twist, hard enough that I hear strands ripping free of my scalp. I want to tear my stupid, useless body apart. Shred it to pieces and let it scatter in the wind. Tears burn my eyes as I let out a scream.
“Justin!”
Rose pulls onto the shoulder of the road and stops the car, then grabs my wrist. I realize I’ve been punching the dashboard. My knuckles are red and raw. “What’s going on?” Her eyes dart between me and the road, one hand on the wheel, one still clamped on my wrist.
It all comes pouring out. Seeing Karl on the riverbank. Throwing rocks at the kids. Falling and mangling my knee. Karl admitting he started the fire at Mrs. Hanley’s. Realizing that Stan and I have the same scar.
Rose shakes her head, her forehead crinkling a little as she presses the tips of her fingers to her lips. “So . . . Stan is you?”
I nod, feeling a fissure begin to spread through my insides, wondering how long I can hold it together before I shatter. “I’m never getting back,” I say, my voice cracking. “We never had a chance of solving this case. Stan’s spent his whole life trying to do it, and he’s never gotten anywhere.” I force myself to say it. “I never get anywhere.”
That does it.
The dam inside me bursts, and all the fear and confusion and hopelessness come pouring out in giant, hiccuping laugh-sobs. I try to hold it in, but that just makes it worse.
“I . . . hated . . . him,” I gasp through spasms of violent laughter, tears streaming down my face. “My whole life, I’ve thought he was the biggest asshole on the planet. And he’s me.”
I get out of the car and hobble into the middle of the road, throwing my arms wide to the sky.
“What are you doing?” Rose calls, but I shake my head, spinning in a circle.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Get back here before you get hit by a car.”
I stop spinning and face down the road, keeping my arms raised. “Hit me!” I scream to no one, and to everything. “I fucking dare you!”
“Justin!”
“What?” I turn to face her. “Don’t you get it? Nothing matters,” I shout. “Not me, not you, not this ridiculous quest we’ve been on all week. It’s all meaningless bullshit! Everything is pointless!”
“Stop it!” she yells at me. “Seriously, Justin, get out of the road. Then we can talk about this.”
“Or what, I could die?” Another burst of wild laughter. “Can I die? Am I invincible? I mean, Stan lived, so I live, right? Maybe I could get hit by a car and walk away!”
“You can barely walk now,” Rose points out.
I look at her over my shoulder, through blurry eyes. “Touché.” That sends me into another fit of giggles.
Rose gives up on persuasion and marches onto the pavement, taking my arm. I let her lead me back off the road, where I collapse onto the grass, drained of all energy. “So,” she says, “you don’t get back.”
“Nope.”
“So the question is, what are you going to do now?”
I fight down another burst of laughter. “Do? I guess I’m going to turn into an angry, obsessive old man with no friends who never does anything with his life.”
She shakes her head. “You’re telling me what he did. I’m asking what you are going to do.”
“Have you not been paying attention? He is me.”
“No—he’s Stan. He’s the result of some other Justin who went into the past and never made it back. But that doesn’t make him you. You can still do things differently than he did.”
“Some other . . . Are you high? There’s only one me.”
“There are two of you in 2023.”
“Yeah, but they’re still both me. One’s just older than the other.”
“You don’t know that they’re you you. Maybe this keeps happening, and you keep going back into the past, but each time you do things a little differently. Maybe there are a bunch of alternate universes where you make different choices. Maybe in some of them, you do make it back. Maybe every version of you is a little bit different.”
“So now, instead of two of me, you’re saying there are, like, hundreds?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, that’s terrifying.”
“Or it means you have free will, and your choices do matter, because this version of you has never existed before.”
“But what if that’s not how it works? What if this is just a loop, and there’s just me and Stan, doing the same things over and over for infinity?”
Rose shrugs. “Then you have nothing to lose.”
I frown. Much as I would like to believe that there’s a way out of this, I just don’t see it. I mean, look at the scar. I made all my choices leading up to that believing that I could change things, that I could make a difference, and I still did everything exactly the same way that Stan did, down to getting hit with a rock and falling at the precise angle and moment that would give me the exact same scar.
“I just don’t see the point,” I say wearily. “I’ve watched him try to solve this case my whole life. The fire happens tomorrow, and we still have no idea who does it. How am I going to do in twenty-four hours what he couldn’t do in almost thirty-eight years?”
“Maybe he never got back because when he got to the point where you are now, where he realized that he is you, he gave up.”
“But he didn’t give up. I’ve seen the murder wall. It took over his whole life.”
“Yeah, but he tried to solve it after the fire. I’m saying, what if he gave up trying to solve it before?”
“It doesn’t matter. If there was anything else to do, I’m sure he would’ve thought of it.”
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or obvious. I’m just saying, you don’t know for sure what he did once he reached this point. You only know what he did later. These next twenty-four hours are a big question mark. Maybe—”
“Just stop,” I say, unable to stomach another second of her relentless optimism. “Isn’t it obvious by now? You were wrong. I don’t matter; you don’t matter; none of this matters. There isn’t meaning in everything, there isn’t some grand master plan, and the universe does not give a shit about either one of us. Maybe I’m not dead, but this is hell, and it’s time we both just admitted it.”
“Justin, you don’t mean—”
“Shut up.” My face is hot, my eyes burning. “Don’t tell me what I mean; don’t tell me what to do; don’t tell me anything. I should never have listened to you. I wish I’d never even met you.”
Rose’s mouth drops open, her face crumpling.
The instant the words leave my mouth, part of me wishes I could take them back. I’m stuck in this nightmare for the rest of my life, and I just torpedoed the one good thing about it.
But frustration and anger keep my lips pressed together, my eyes narrow. Maybe it’s not fair, but I just need her to feel what I’m feeling for once. I need to not be alone in this fear and rage and despair. I need someone to share this absolutely shitty, hopeless feeling with me, because it’s too much for me to handle by myself.
No wonder Stan was alone his whole life. We truly are the world’s worst human.
“You know what?” she growls through gritted teeth. Her jaw works furiously as she straightens her shoulders. “I wish I’d never met you either. You’ve made it clear that caring about what happens to you is a waste of my time.”
She starts toward her car, and abruptly, my need to push her away dissipates, replaced by a desperate need for her to stay. I wish I could wind back the last twenty seconds. Doesn’t seem like a huge ask after accidentally winding back thirty-eight years, but time continues to march stubbornly forward. “Rose, wait—”
“No, you wait,” she says, spinning so fast she sends me stumbling backward. “I don’t matter? If it weren’t for me, you’d probably have been in jail all week, or do you not recall how you nearly managed to get yourself arrested thirty seconds after arriving here? I’m the one who found you a place to stay. And I’m the one who’s been here with you every single day trying to save your grandparents. Maybe it can’t be done, but I’d rather try and fail than be like you.”
I blink, stunned. I’ve never seen this version of Rose before. I didn’t even know this version existed.
“You know what? Do what you want. I’m done with this.” Rose throws up her hands in frustration as she stomps back to her car.
“Rose, I’m sorry.” I trail behind her, giving her plenty of space in case she starts breathing fire again. Panic is beginning to bubble up inside me at the realization that I’m about to be abandoned to a life stuck in the past, all alone. And it’s all my fault. “I didn’t mean it,” I plead. “I was just really upset.”
Unbidden, Alyssa’s voice pipes up in my head. Sometimes even the most justifiable of excuses is still not an actual excuse.
Oh god. Alyssa. I’d thought the worst thing about all this was the possibility of never seeing her again, but it turns out I was wrong. The worst thing is going to be seeing her again as Stan.
Rose turns to look at me as she reaches her car. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”
I spread my hands in bewilderment. “I said I’m sorry. I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“Never mind.” She shakes her head, disgust evident on her face. “Don’t call me again.” She gets in and slams the door, and a second later, the engine growls to life.
I start to walk around to the passenger side, but she glares at me through the windshield and I stop.
Seriously, she’s leaving me here? “How am I supposed to get back to Mrs. Hanley’s?” I ask.
“Figure it out,” she calls, her voice muffled by the windows.
And then she’s gone.
I’ve spent a lot of time by myself since falling into 1985. I’m used to it. But this is different.
For the first time, I’m truly alone.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
ROSE
“Can we talk? In private?” The words were out of her mouth before she registered that Noah wasn’t the only one standing in the doorway. Steph hovered behind him in an oversize sweatshirt that Rose recognized as one of Noah’s. Steph had cut the neckline wide, so that it hung off one shoulder.
So she was wearing his clothes now. Awesome.
“Um,” Noah said, his eyes flitting to the side, like he was trying to spin them around to the back of his head in order to gauge Steph’s reaction to Rose’s sudden presence on his doorstep. “Now’s not a great time . . .”
“It’s important,” Rose insisted, not caring that she was being rude. She’d spent months walking on eggshells in order to not get in the way of his relationship with Steph. But he’d been her best friend first, and she was tired of feeling like last week’s leftovers with every important person in her life. She mattered, no matter what Justin said.
“Please, Noah,” she added quietly, unable to completely smooth out the slight quiver in her voice.
He stared at her for a second, looking conflicted, then turned to Steph. “I’m really sorry, but I need to go. Rain check?”
Rose pretended she didn’t see the hurt expression flicker across Steph’s face before she nodded. “Sure. No problem,” she said with a too-bright smile. Her eyes shifted to Rose. “I hope everything’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Rose said impatiently, giving Noah an imploring look as he pulled on his shoes. She knew she should probably be nicer to Steph, but just then, she couldn’t bring herself to put in the effort.
She looked away as Noah gave Steph a quick kiss goodbye—just a peck, she noticed—and led him to her car.
“Whoa,” Noah exclaimed, his hand scrambling for the bar above the door as she pulled out of the driveway and into the street so fast the tires squealed against the pavement. He turned in his seat to look at her. “You were really rude back there.”
She shrugged. “I’ll apologize later.”
He shook his head, frowning. “What is going on with you? And where are we going?”
That was a good question. She hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Her only thought when she’d left Justin on the side of the road was that she was done wasting time. That led her to Noah’s house. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure.
She wound up driving them to the school parking lot, which was mostly empty, save a few cars clustered around the gym entrance. The sign in front of the school wished the football team luck in their away game, so the cars probably belonged to football players, cheerleaders, and band kids who had shown up earlier to load the buses. They wouldn’t be back for hours.
Even so, Rose parked far away from the empty cars. No one would overhear them, but she still wanted to be as isolated as possible for this conversation.
The conversation that she had never intended on having. Until suddenly, she did.
“I have some things to tell you,” she started, turning off the ignition and shifting in her seat so she was facing him. “They’re going to sound a little . . . insane, but I just need you to believe me. Even though you’re not going to want to. Okay?”
“Okay.” His answer came without hesitation, despite his bemused expression.
Rose took a deep breath, steeling her nerves, and then the whole story came pouring out. How Justin wasn’t really her pen pal, but someone she’d nearly run over the night of the bonfire. His insistence that he was from the future, and his knowledge about what was going to happen tomorrow. Her theory about why he was here. Their efforts to figure out who had started the fire at Mrs. Hanley’s, and the discovery that it was Karl Derrin. Justin’s realization that he was really Stan, a man he knew from his time as an angry surrogate-uncle figure, which meant he was destined to never make it back. Their fight over what to do with that information.
“That was right before I went to your house,” Rose finished. “I felt like it was time you knew everything. I should’ve told you earlier. I’m sorry.”
She’d been mostly staring out the windshield as she talked, too nervous to watch his face as he took in everything she was telling him. After the things Justin had said to her, she didn’t think she could bear to watch someone else she cared about look at her like she was delusional.
Now she dared a peek, and wished she hadn’t. He was staring at her with his brow furrowed and lips pursed, his body tensed like he was afraid she might suddenly attack him, or maybe rip out her hair and start howling at the moon.
“You think I’m crazy,” she said, her heart sinking.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I would never think that. It’s just . . .” His jaw moved far more than was necessary to form those few syllables. “This is a lot to process. I need a minute.”
“Do you believe me, though?”
He hesitated before answering. “I believe that you believe you’re telling me the truth,” he said finally.
Her stomach tightened. “That’s not the same thing.”
He sighed. “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Rose. I mean . . . time travel?”
“You promised you’d believe me.”
“I thought you were going to tell me that, I don’t know, your dad was working for the mafia or you’d started dealing drugs or something. Something that was far-fetched but at least possible. But this . . . Rose, time travel doesn’t exist.”
“You think I don’t know that? I would’ve said that, too, a week ago. I’m not telling you this because I want to believe it. I’m telling you this because it’s true.”
Noah took off his glasses and placed them on the dashboard, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How can you know for sure, though? Did he like . . . predict anything to prove to you he’s from the future?”
“He knew Michael McMillain was going to be fired.”
“Who?”
“The janitor at school.”
“He was fired?”
Rose opened and closed her mouth wordlessly. The truth was, she didn’t know whether he’d been fired. Justin had said that would happen today and she hadn’t seen McMillain at school, so she’d assumed he was right, but she realized she didn’t know for sure. “I . . . think so,” she said meekly.
“Rose,” Noah said gently, “I know you love to believe the best about people, and that’s an amazing thing about you, but isn’t it more likely that he’s just . . . really confused?”
Rose shook her head. “I know how it sounds,” she said. “But I just . . . I know this is real. I can’t explain why. I know it sounds impossible. And if someone else told me, I probably wouldn’t believe it either. But this is me, Noah. And I’m telling you, this is real.”
Noah sat for a moment, searching her face, then blew out a slow breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“If you believe it, I believe it.”
“Really?” Relief flooded through her, and she realized she’d been braced for more doubt, more insistence that she didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d been so ready for rejection, she hadn’t truly considered acceptance. “Just like that?”
