Malice, page 19
I frown. The statement jostles something in my brain. Not just because it contains my daughter’s name but also because the saying is familiar. Too familiar. I’ve heard it somewhere before. Or read it…
My hand falls open, and the spindle slips through my fingers and thunks onto the floor. That’s it. I remember how I know that sentence.
I read it in a note to Lalana from her secret admirer.
Chapter 37
My brain explodes with a million questions, a gazillion ramifications. I don’t get it. How can the line from Lalana’s secret admirer be engraved on this spindle? How?
I press my hands against my temples, but it does nothing to calm the tornado swirling inside. I almost can’t think. I almost can’t go down the rabbit hole to the logical conclusion.
But there’s a gun in my pocket. I was seconds away from shooting Bandit. So I have to do this. I have to follow this path to see where it leads.
Tilting my face to the ceiling, I take a long, slow breath, focusing on the ballooning of my abdomen. And then another. And another, until I’m capable of basic analysis again.
Archie’s been carrying around the spindle since my mother left…the same saying appears in Lalana’s note…therefore, Archie must be Lalana’s secret admirer.
Not Bandit.
And if Archie is Lalana’s secret admirer, then that means the Voice was trying to separate her from my brother. So that he wouldn’t feel so betrayed. So that there would be one less way for him to lose touch with reality. And that means…that means…
This is where I falter. This is where my mind shuts down, erecting a wall so impenetrable that my thoughts can’t go any further.
I sway. The room spins dizzily around me, the blue light messing up my sense of direction. I stumble, and my knees crash into something hard and metal. I pitch forward and—
OOMPH.
I land in a heap on top of solid muscle and taut skin. Bandit.
He jerks awake, and then I’m flying through the air, my back slapping against the firm mattress. Within seconds, he’s got my wrists above my head and the rest of my body pinned underneath him. Good instincts, this guy.
His mouth drops when he gets a look at me. “What the…? Alice, what’s going on? What are you doing here?”
The sight of his bare skin sends a jolt through me, scattering my thoughts even further. There’s just so much of it—on his chest, on his torso, on the legs nestled against mine.
His thighs press down on me, and the contact is too much. Too confusing. I put my hands on his chest and push with all my strength. Startled, he eases back, letting go of my hands.
He sweeps his gaze over my body, taking in the black knit hat. My long-sleeve black shirt. Black joggers. My sneakers—you guessed it: black.
Not exactly the outfit you would wear if your intent was to seduce.
The realization registers on his face.
“You have exactly ten seconds to tell me what this is about, or I’m calling the police,” he growls.
My heart leaps into my throat, and my eyes dart all over the room, searching for an escape. No exit materializes, unfortunately.
He can’t call the police. But how do I stop him? I can’t even untangle the thoughts in my own head. What can I spit out that will satisfy him?
“Five seconds,” he says warningly. “Four… Three… Two…”
I have no other choice. Reaching up, I press my mouth against his. Warm, just as I remember. Soft, like I’ll never forget.
His lips go still under mine, and then he’s kissing me back, hard and desperate. My mouth parts, and that’s even better. I didn’t mean to enjoy this. I only intended to buy myself time. But he’s kissing me like he’s drowning, and I’m his one last hope for air. I might as well not have a pulse if I don’t die a little, too.
I wind my hands around his neck. His fingers go to my waist, careful to stay on top of the cotton material. Impatient, I yank up my shirt, revealing my bare stomach.
I want. I want to stay in this bed, with our limbs intertwined, for the rest of our lives. I want to kiss him until we melt like a beeswax candle. I want to have never heard of the Voice, to possess no inkling of the future, to bear no responsibility for saving the world.
But even now, the future reaches its long, shadowy fingers into the present. The images of a flailing baby, of a little girl with pigtails, float at the edge of my consciousness. Somewhere on my original timeline, she’s dying slowly, day by day. I can’t ignore that just because Bandit Sakda is a good kisser.
The best, actually. His kisses caress not just my lips but my entire body, making me feel protected, now and for the rest of time.
Which is the biggest illusion yet. If I don’t change the course of the future, then none of us is safe.
I want…but I can’t.
He must reach the same conclusion because he wrenches away his mouth, and it’s like pulling away from an electric current.
“Don’t,” he pants as we both sit up. “Don’t kiss me because you’re trying to distract me. Or because it’s part of some master plan I don’t know about. I want you to kiss me for one reason alone, and that’s because you want to.”
I do, I wish I could say. This is what I want more than anything.
But the gun jabs me in the leg, reminding me of why I’m here and what I meant to do, before I read the inscription on the spindle. Before everything that used to make sense all of a sudden didn’t.
“Are you in love with Lalana?” I blurt.
He blinks. “Huh?”
“Lalana. Your old family friend, the one you’ve known since you were kids, peeling layers off your kahnom chun. Are you in love with her? Did you leave letters in her locker, proclaiming your undying devotion?”
He arches an eyebrow. Ah. His signature bored face. My heart actually squeezes when I see it.
“First, that’s still how I eat my kahnom chun,” he says. “And second, how could you think that? Lalana’s like a sister to me. Besides, she’s your best friend. I’d be kind of a jerk for falling for you both.”
Now it’s my turn to blink. “You’re falling for me?”
The corners of his lips twitch. “Well, yeah. I assumed you knew that.”
“I assumed you thought I was an untrustworthy girl who refused to explain anything.”
“That too.” His smile fades before it has a chance to bloom. “You never answered me. What are you doing here?”
I wince. Minutes have passed, and I still haven’t come up with an adequate response.
“Well, it’s not to ravish me, that’s for sure,” he says. “If it were, we wouldn’t be talking right now.” He searches my face. “That means you must be here because of this.” Before I can react, he plucks the gun out of the pocket of my pants.
My jaw drops. “How did you know that was there?”
He blinks at the weapon, whose metal glints ominously in the moonlight. “I knew something was trying to brand itself on my skin. But holy crap. I didn’t realize it was a gun.”
He rolls the weapon on his palm, weighing it. Considering it from every angle.
It would serve me right if he shot me. After all, I tried to kill him. He doesn’t know I had a good reason, but so what? If I succeeded, he’d still be just as dead.
“What, uh, are you going to do with that?” My mouth is as dry as the Kalahari Desert.
He picks up my hand, smiles mock seductively…and then reaches past me to set the gun onto his desk.
“What did you think I was going to do? Shoot you?” He glances at the weapon and shudders. “Was that your intention?”
“Not anymore,” I mutter.
He shakes his head. “Am I supposed to thank you for that? Or be annoyed because, I don’t know, you planned to kill me?” His eyes pierce into me, cutting through the layers of my confusion, pushing aside my deception and my lies to the real me. The girl I am right here and now. In this present, this timeline. “I want to trust you, Alice. My gut says you’re a good person. But you sure aren’t making it easy for me.”
The truth suddenly coalesces in my mind. The swirling questions, the ill-fitting puzzle pieces—all of it descends into one stark realization.
He’s on my side.
“A voice in my head told me to kill you,” I blurt.
His eyebrows jump. “You’re hearing voices in your head?”
“Yes! I mean, no. Not multiple voices. Just one voice. My older self.” I stop. Tilt my head to the glow-in-the-dark solar system on his ceiling. I have the same stars in my bedroom. If the situation weren’t so grave, I might’ve smiled at the thought of the two of us lying under the same model universe all these years.
“Don’t worry,” I continue. “I’m not losing touch with reality. I promise this situation is much more rational that it sounds. My older self has been traveling from the future, whose population has been decimated by a virus. She said I had to kill you in order to save the world. I had every reason to believe her. Every sign pointed to you as the Maker. But then I read the inscription on the spindle…”
Scanning the plush carpet, I snatch up the wooden rod from where it rolled next to the nightstand. “And if you’re not in love with Lalana…”
I look into his eyes. Dark brown. Tapered at the corners. Aloof but sincere. Confused as hell but still trusting. Always trusting. I’m probably not making much sense to him, but it doesn’t matter. Every cell in my body, every filament in my brain, tells me I’m right.
I just need to say the words out loud in order to believe them.
“You’re not my target. I don’t think you’ve ever been my target.” I swallow hard. And push out the conclusion I’ve reached. “My older self has been lying to me all along.”
Chapter 38
Two, maybe three seconds pass, but I live an eternity in my mind. The conclusion I’ve reached feels too big for my brain. So epic, so all-encompassing, that it fills up this time stream and reaches its fingers out to another.
“I have to go.” I leap up from the bed.
“Wait!” Bandit pushes the hair off his forehead. “You can’t just drop this bombshell and take off. I have so many questions—”
“Me too,” I interrupt, edging toward the door. “But I can’t explain anything to you until I figure out the answers myself.”
“But, Alice…” He stands and begins to move toward me.
“Later,” I blurt out. “I have to get out of here.”
I flee from his house, praying that he doesn’t follow. My heart’s pounding so hard that I wouldn’t be able to hear footsteps, even if there were any. But when I arrive home, winded from the run, and I see that I’m alone, I stop to take a shaky breath.
I have only one destination in mind. One spot that makes any sense. One place where I hope to find my answers.
I head straight to the bedroom next to mine. The one that’s been by my side ever since we moved into this house—and every house before that.
Archie’s room is a mess: Marie Curie T-shirts and khaki shorts strewn on the floor, stacks of old textbooks burying his desk. The comforter hangs half on, half off the mattress, and the pillow is a misshapen ball shoved in the corner. Dawn is fast approaching, judging by the soft splashes of light dispersing the shadows in the room.
And my brother’s not here.
I sink onto the tangled mess of his sheets, trying not to breathe in the musky scent of dirty laundry and old books. He was home last night. Right before Zeke visited, I went down to the basement to bring him a snack.
“Brother Bear,” I said in the world’s worst British accent. “May I interest you in some Oreos and a spot of milk?”
Archie dragged his eyes from the computer screen, blinking like I was a baffling line of code. “Huh?”
“It’s from Berenstain Bears,” I said, feeling faintly foolish. “You know how Mama Bear was always giving them milk and cookies? And in one of the books, she was teaching them manners?”
His blinks only grew more pronounced.
“They decided to be extra polite to dissuade Mama, and that made us go around for weeks, speaking in a British accent—” Cutting myself off, I sighed. “Oh, never mind. You don’t remember.”
Although I don’t see how he could forget. My parents were always busy, and my genius brother started reading when he was three. So, guess who was in charge of my bedtime stories? Together, we systematically worked through a hundred Berenstain Bears titles, with him reading out loud and me tucked against his side.
The memory of it is indelibly imprinted on my mind. But I guess Archie’s got more important things crowding his gray matter.
Turning, I began to trudge away.
“Why, Sister Bear, I didn’t recognize you without your pink bow,” Archie said in an affected, posh voice.
I stopped in my tracks, delight spreading like honey across my face.
“And look! You bought these cookies instead of making them. My stomach and I thank you.”
I puffed out a breath to feign annoyance. “Ha-ha. Brother Bear the comedian.”
“Could be. Those bears learned how to do everything. How did I go so wrong as to not read you a book teaching you how to cook?”
I snatched up an Oreo and threw it at his head, but we were both grinning like forest animals sitting down to a feast of grilled salmon and wild berries.
The conversation rolls through my mind now, lodging in my throat like a section of honeycomb. I just need to see Archie. Talk to him once more, and I’ll know that the thoughts buzzing around my head are ludicrous.
I grab two fistfuls of the loosened sheet. Now that I’m alone with my thoughts, I finally let myself remember the Voice’s words:
Lalana’s secret admirer grows up to be the Virus Maker.
There. She said it. An equation as clear as 1 + 1 = 2.
But that doesn’t mean I have to believe her.
She straight-up lied to me about Bandit. Which means I can’t trust anything she’s told me.
Maybe my actual target really is Lee Jenkins. He’s cruel enough. He has access to time travel through his relationship with his old friend Cristela.
Or, hell, maybe it’s Cristela herself. The poison that made Bandit sick didn’t get into the cupcake by itself, and she admitted that time travel is her passion.
And then… And then…there’s Zeke. I didn’t want to entertain the possibility before, but he has the scientific expertise. Charlie even expressed interest in his research.
But Zeke’s my boyfriend in the future. My husband. Does that automatically absolve him? Or is that the very reason the future chose me to go on this mission?
I gulp at the air, my pulse racing faster and faster. I feel guilty even working through this analysis. But in the future, people are dead. More are dying. I have to go down this path. I have to view the suspects objectively. I have to consider the possibility that the person I need to kill might…be…my brother.
NO! my mind screams. My stomach heaves. Every cell in my body revolts.
I dig my fingernails into my palm until I feel the pain at my core. Just consider it. You owe the future this much. Is it possible that Archie is the target?
He’s always had a soft spot for Lalana. He would look at her whenever she was around, a small smile on his face. Add in the telling quote from the spindle, and it’s pretty clear he’s the one in love with her.
Does that mean he’s the Virus Maker?
That’s the million-dollar question. Or at least, the millions-of-lives question. I lean back on Archie’s bed and look at the darkened ceiling. No glow-in-the-dark constellations for him.
Charlie and my brother met at the cocktail party, thanks to me being preoccupied with Bandit. Still, they don’t have a relationship. Not yet. And they may never have one, if Charlie doesn’t make it out of the hospital.
But what if they do? What if Charlie takes Archie under his wing? What if they research together, side by side, first as mentor and mentee and then as equals? Would Charlie entrust Archie with his life’s work? Is it possible?
Yes. I don’t know! Maybe?
I leap off the bed, tearing at the sheets and flinging off the comforter, as though there might be evidence of the future hidden here. Rational? Of course not. Can I stop the desperate frenzy of my hands? No more than I can halt the beating of my heart.
A few minutes later, I collapse on the carpet, wadding up pieces of my brother’s bedding. The mattress is naked, its sweat stains exposed, its potential secrets locked inside.
Who is Archie Sherman?
He’s the brother who once gave me a dog biscuit disguised as a cookie and then cracked up when I took a bite. He’s the boy who gamely handed over his spinning, light-up pinwheel when mine broke. He’s the guy who tore down the hall, wielding a wooden rod like a baseball bat, determined to protect me at all costs.
Who will he become?
That, I don’t know. That, I can’t answer.
Which means I’m not leaping to any conclusions. There are too many pieces of the puzzle that still don’t fit. Too many parts of the equation I can’t understand.
Resolved, I stand and leap nimbly over the crumpled-up bedding. Only one person has the answers to my questions. I’ll be waiting when—and if—she ever shows up in my brain again.
And if she doesn’t appear?
Then, I’ll just have to go looking for her.
Chapter 39
A couple of evenings later, lightning flashes across the sky. Three seconds pass, and then the entire house rattles as though it’s on the San Andreas Fault line.
My dad jostles the coffeepot, spilling the dark-brown liquid onto the tile. “Toss me a towel, would you?” he asks. “I need to get back to work. Big deadline.”
I throw him a dishrag that was hanging on a cabinet hook, and he mops up the coffee. “You’re not supposed to use electronics during a storm,” I say.
My hand falls open, and the spindle slips through my fingers and thunks onto the floor. That’s it. I remember how I know that sentence.
I read it in a note to Lalana from her secret admirer.
Chapter 37
My brain explodes with a million questions, a gazillion ramifications. I don’t get it. How can the line from Lalana’s secret admirer be engraved on this spindle? How?
I press my hands against my temples, but it does nothing to calm the tornado swirling inside. I almost can’t think. I almost can’t go down the rabbit hole to the logical conclusion.
But there’s a gun in my pocket. I was seconds away from shooting Bandit. So I have to do this. I have to follow this path to see where it leads.
Tilting my face to the ceiling, I take a long, slow breath, focusing on the ballooning of my abdomen. And then another. And another, until I’m capable of basic analysis again.
Archie’s been carrying around the spindle since my mother left…the same saying appears in Lalana’s note…therefore, Archie must be Lalana’s secret admirer.
Not Bandit.
And if Archie is Lalana’s secret admirer, then that means the Voice was trying to separate her from my brother. So that he wouldn’t feel so betrayed. So that there would be one less way for him to lose touch with reality. And that means…that means…
This is where I falter. This is where my mind shuts down, erecting a wall so impenetrable that my thoughts can’t go any further.
I sway. The room spins dizzily around me, the blue light messing up my sense of direction. I stumble, and my knees crash into something hard and metal. I pitch forward and—
OOMPH.
I land in a heap on top of solid muscle and taut skin. Bandit.
He jerks awake, and then I’m flying through the air, my back slapping against the firm mattress. Within seconds, he’s got my wrists above my head and the rest of my body pinned underneath him. Good instincts, this guy.
His mouth drops when he gets a look at me. “What the…? Alice, what’s going on? What are you doing here?”
The sight of his bare skin sends a jolt through me, scattering my thoughts even further. There’s just so much of it—on his chest, on his torso, on the legs nestled against mine.
His thighs press down on me, and the contact is too much. Too confusing. I put my hands on his chest and push with all my strength. Startled, he eases back, letting go of my hands.
He sweeps his gaze over my body, taking in the black knit hat. My long-sleeve black shirt. Black joggers. My sneakers—you guessed it: black.
Not exactly the outfit you would wear if your intent was to seduce.
The realization registers on his face.
“You have exactly ten seconds to tell me what this is about, or I’m calling the police,” he growls.
My heart leaps into my throat, and my eyes dart all over the room, searching for an escape. No exit materializes, unfortunately.
He can’t call the police. But how do I stop him? I can’t even untangle the thoughts in my own head. What can I spit out that will satisfy him?
“Five seconds,” he says warningly. “Four… Three… Two…”
I have no other choice. Reaching up, I press my mouth against his. Warm, just as I remember. Soft, like I’ll never forget.
His lips go still under mine, and then he’s kissing me back, hard and desperate. My mouth parts, and that’s even better. I didn’t mean to enjoy this. I only intended to buy myself time. But he’s kissing me like he’s drowning, and I’m his one last hope for air. I might as well not have a pulse if I don’t die a little, too.
I wind my hands around his neck. His fingers go to my waist, careful to stay on top of the cotton material. Impatient, I yank up my shirt, revealing my bare stomach.
I want. I want to stay in this bed, with our limbs intertwined, for the rest of our lives. I want to kiss him until we melt like a beeswax candle. I want to have never heard of the Voice, to possess no inkling of the future, to bear no responsibility for saving the world.
But even now, the future reaches its long, shadowy fingers into the present. The images of a flailing baby, of a little girl with pigtails, float at the edge of my consciousness. Somewhere on my original timeline, she’s dying slowly, day by day. I can’t ignore that just because Bandit Sakda is a good kisser.
The best, actually. His kisses caress not just my lips but my entire body, making me feel protected, now and for the rest of time.
Which is the biggest illusion yet. If I don’t change the course of the future, then none of us is safe.
I want…but I can’t.
He must reach the same conclusion because he wrenches away his mouth, and it’s like pulling away from an electric current.
“Don’t,” he pants as we both sit up. “Don’t kiss me because you’re trying to distract me. Or because it’s part of some master plan I don’t know about. I want you to kiss me for one reason alone, and that’s because you want to.”
I do, I wish I could say. This is what I want more than anything.
But the gun jabs me in the leg, reminding me of why I’m here and what I meant to do, before I read the inscription on the spindle. Before everything that used to make sense all of a sudden didn’t.
“Are you in love with Lalana?” I blurt.
He blinks. “Huh?”
“Lalana. Your old family friend, the one you’ve known since you were kids, peeling layers off your kahnom chun. Are you in love with her? Did you leave letters in her locker, proclaiming your undying devotion?”
He arches an eyebrow. Ah. His signature bored face. My heart actually squeezes when I see it.
“First, that’s still how I eat my kahnom chun,” he says. “And second, how could you think that? Lalana’s like a sister to me. Besides, she’s your best friend. I’d be kind of a jerk for falling for you both.”
Now it’s my turn to blink. “You’re falling for me?”
The corners of his lips twitch. “Well, yeah. I assumed you knew that.”
“I assumed you thought I was an untrustworthy girl who refused to explain anything.”
“That too.” His smile fades before it has a chance to bloom. “You never answered me. What are you doing here?”
I wince. Minutes have passed, and I still haven’t come up with an adequate response.
“Well, it’s not to ravish me, that’s for sure,” he says. “If it were, we wouldn’t be talking right now.” He searches my face. “That means you must be here because of this.” Before I can react, he plucks the gun out of the pocket of my pants.
My jaw drops. “How did you know that was there?”
He blinks at the weapon, whose metal glints ominously in the moonlight. “I knew something was trying to brand itself on my skin. But holy crap. I didn’t realize it was a gun.”
He rolls the weapon on his palm, weighing it. Considering it from every angle.
It would serve me right if he shot me. After all, I tried to kill him. He doesn’t know I had a good reason, but so what? If I succeeded, he’d still be just as dead.
“What, uh, are you going to do with that?” My mouth is as dry as the Kalahari Desert.
He picks up my hand, smiles mock seductively…and then reaches past me to set the gun onto his desk.
“What did you think I was going to do? Shoot you?” He glances at the weapon and shudders. “Was that your intention?”
“Not anymore,” I mutter.
He shakes his head. “Am I supposed to thank you for that? Or be annoyed because, I don’t know, you planned to kill me?” His eyes pierce into me, cutting through the layers of my confusion, pushing aside my deception and my lies to the real me. The girl I am right here and now. In this present, this timeline. “I want to trust you, Alice. My gut says you’re a good person. But you sure aren’t making it easy for me.”
The truth suddenly coalesces in my mind. The swirling questions, the ill-fitting puzzle pieces—all of it descends into one stark realization.
He’s on my side.
“A voice in my head told me to kill you,” I blurt.
His eyebrows jump. “You’re hearing voices in your head?”
“Yes! I mean, no. Not multiple voices. Just one voice. My older self.” I stop. Tilt my head to the glow-in-the-dark solar system on his ceiling. I have the same stars in my bedroom. If the situation weren’t so grave, I might’ve smiled at the thought of the two of us lying under the same model universe all these years.
“Don’t worry,” I continue. “I’m not losing touch with reality. I promise this situation is much more rational that it sounds. My older self has been traveling from the future, whose population has been decimated by a virus. She said I had to kill you in order to save the world. I had every reason to believe her. Every sign pointed to you as the Maker. But then I read the inscription on the spindle…”
Scanning the plush carpet, I snatch up the wooden rod from where it rolled next to the nightstand. “And if you’re not in love with Lalana…”
I look into his eyes. Dark brown. Tapered at the corners. Aloof but sincere. Confused as hell but still trusting. Always trusting. I’m probably not making much sense to him, but it doesn’t matter. Every cell in my body, every filament in my brain, tells me I’m right.
I just need to say the words out loud in order to believe them.
“You’re not my target. I don’t think you’ve ever been my target.” I swallow hard. And push out the conclusion I’ve reached. “My older self has been lying to me all along.”
Chapter 38
Two, maybe three seconds pass, but I live an eternity in my mind. The conclusion I’ve reached feels too big for my brain. So epic, so all-encompassing, that it fills up this time stream and reaches its fingers out to another.
“I have to go.” I leap up from the bed.
“Wait!” Bandit pushes the hair off his forehead. “You can’t just drop this bombshell and take off. I have so many questions—”
“Me too,” I interrupt, edging toward the door. “But I can’t explain anything to you until I figure out the answers myself.”
“But, Alice…” He stands and begins to move toward me.
“Later,” I blurt out. “I have to get out of here.”
I flee from his house, praying that he doesn’t follow. My heart’s pounding so hard that I wouldn’t be able to hear footsteps, even if there were any. But when I arrive home, winded from the run, and I see that I’m alone, I stop to take a shaky breath.
I have only one destination in mind. One spot that makes any sense. One place where I hope to find my answers.
I head straight to the bedroom next to mine. The one that’s been by my side ever since we moved into this house—and every house before that.
Archie’s room is a mess: Marie Curie T-shirts and khaki shorts strewn on the floor, stacks of old textbooks burying his desk. The comforter hangs half on, half off the mattress, and the pillow is a misshapen ball shoved in the corner. Dawn is fast approaching, judging by the soft splashes of light dispersing the shadows in the room.
And my brother’s not here.
I sink onto the tangled mess of his sheets, trying not to breathe in the musky scent of dirty laundry and old books. He was home last night. Right before Zeke visited, I went down to the basement to bring him a snack.
“Brother Bear,” I said in the world’s worst British accent. “May I interest you in some Oreos and a spot of milk?”
Archie dragged his eyes from the computer screen, blinking like I was a baffling line of code. “Huh?”
“It’s from Berenstain Bears,” I said, feeling faintly foolish. “You know how Mama Bear was always giving them milk and cookies? And in one of the books, she was teaching them manners?”
His blinks only grew more pronounced.
“They decided to be extra polite to dissuade Mama, and that made us go around for weeks, speaking in a British accent—” Cutting myself off, I sighed. “Oh, never mind. You don’t remember.”
Although I don’t see how he could forget. My parents were always busy, and my genius brother started reading when he was three. So, guess who was in charge of my bedtime stories? Together, we systematically worked through a hundred Berenstain Bears titles, with him reading out loud and me tucked against his side.
The memory of it is indelibly imprinted on my mind. But I guess Archie’s got more important things crowding his gray matter.
Turning, I began to trudge away.
“Why, Sister Bear, I didn’t recognize you without your pink bow,” Archie said in an affected, posh voice.
I stopped in my tracks, delight spreading like honey across my face.
“And look! You bought these cookies instead of making them. My stomach and I thank you.”
I puffed out a breath to feign annoyance. “Ha-ha. Brother Bear the comedian.”
“Could be. Those bears learned how to do everything. How did I go so wrong as to not read you a book teaching you how to cook?”
I snatched up an Oreo and threw it at his head, but we were both grinning like forest animals sitting down to a feast of grilled salmon and wild berries.
The conversation rolls through my mind now, lodging in my throat like a section of honeycomb. I just need to see Archie. Talk to him once more, and I’ll know that the thoughts buzzing around my head are ludicrous.
I grab two fistfuls of the loosened sheet. Now that I’m alone with my thoughts, I finally let myself remember the Voice’s words:
Lalana’s secret admirer grows up to be the Virus Maker.
There. She said it. An equation as clear as 1 + 1 = 2.
But that doesn’t mean I have to believe her.
She straight-up lied to me about Bandit. Which means I can’t trust anything she’s told me.
Maybe my actual target really is Lee Jenkins. He’s cruel enough. He has access to time travel through his relationship with his old friend Cristela.
Or, hell, maybe it’s Cristela herself. The poison that made Bandit sick didn’t get into the cupcake by itself, and she admitted that time travel is her passion.
And then… And then…there’s Zeke. I didn’t want to entertain the possibility before, but he has the scientific expertise. Charlie even expressed interest in his research.
But Zeke’s my boyfriend in the future. My husband. Does that automatically absolve him? Or is that the very reason the future chose me to go on this mission?
I gulp at the air, my pulse racing faster and faster. I feel guilty even working through this analysis. But in the future, people are dead. More are dying. I have to go down this path. I have to view the suspects objectively. I have to consider the possibility that the person I need to kill might…be…my brother.
NO! my mind screams. My stomach heaves. Every cell in my body revolts.
I dig my fingernails into my palm until I feel the pain at my core. Just consider it. You owe the future this much. Is it possible that Archie is the target?
He’s always had a soft spot for Lalana. He would look at her whenever she was around, a small smile on his face. Add in the telling quote from the spindle, and it’s pretty clear he’s the one in love with her.
Does that mean he’s the Virus Maker?
That’s the million-dollar question. Or at least, the millions-of-lives question. I lean back on Archie’s bed and look at the darkened ceiling. No glow-in-the-dark constellations for him.
Charlie and my brother met at the cocktail party, thanks to me being preoccupied with Bandit. Still, they don’t have a relationship. Not yet. And they may never have one, if Charlie doesn’t make it out of the hospital.
But what if they do? What if Charlie takes Archie under his wing? What if they research together, side by side, first as mentor and mentee and then as equals? Would Charlie entrust Archie with his life’s work? Is it possible?
Yes. I don’t know! Maybe?
I leap off the bed, tearing at the sheets and flinging off the comforter, as though there might be evidence of the future hidden here. Rational? Of course not. Can I stop the desperate frenzy of my hands? No more than I can halt the beating of my heart.
A few minutes later, I collapse on the carpet, wadding up pieces of my brother’s bedding. The mattress is naked, its sweat stains exposed, its potential secrets locked inside.
Who is Archie Sherman?
He’s the brother who once gave me a dog biscuit disguised as a cookie and then cracked up when I took a bite. He’s the boy who gamely handed over his spinning, light-up pinwheel when mine broke. He’s the guy who tore down the hall, wielding a wooden rod like a baseball bat, determined to protect me at all costs.
Who will he become?
That, I don’t know. That, I can’t answer.
Which means I’m not leaping to any conclusions. There are too many pieces of the puzzle that still don’t fit. Too many parts of the equation I can’t understand.
Resolved, I stand and leap nimbly over the crumpled-up bedding. Only one person has the answers to my questions. I’ll be waiting when—and if—she ever shows up in my brain again.
And if she doesn’t appear?
Then, I’ll just have to go looking for her.
Chapter 39
A couple of evenings later, lightning flashes across the sky. Three seconds pass, and then the entire house rattles as though it’s on the San Andreas Fault line.
My dad jostles the coffeepot, spilling the dark-brown liquid onto the tile. “Toss me a towel, would you?” he asks. “I need to get back to work. Big deadline.”
I throw him a dishrag that was hanging on a cabinet hook, and he mops up the coffee. “You’re not supposed to use electronics during a storm,” I say.
