“I just need a few minutes alone.” I walk toward my closet.
“Wait, you’re going to shut yourself in the closet? I can leave.”
“No, I need you here. Please don’t go.” If she doesn’t do it soon, I’m sure I’ll talk myself out of it.
“Okay, I won’t.”
I open the door and shut it behind me. Beneath the hanging shirts and between two shoe racks, I sit down. Tears stream down my face. I feel like my life is over. I try to concentrate on my breathing, in and out. Over and over. Every once in a while it catches as an image of Trevor breaks through my concentration.
In. Out.
And then it hits me, like an alarm wailing in my ears. A car alarm, to be exact. Laila. She restored that car’s “memory.” That may have been in the other future, the future I wasn’t going to let play out, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t learn how to do it in this future … later. After everything happens. I wipe my tears and rush out the door. In my desk I grab a notebook and pen and run back into the closet.
On the paper, I write: I promised someone I care about very much that I wouldn’t Erase this path, but I have to. On Friday morning, the fourteenth of November, however, after certain events occur, talk to Laila about advanced ability control. Tell her she can learn how to restore memories. This is the only way I know how to keep my promise to you.…
I have to keep it vague enough so that if I stumble upon this note, it doesn’t give me any clues. I place the notebook and pen on the floor. My stomach aches, and I wrap my arms around it and let more tears fall for a few minutes. It makes me sick to know I’m about to let my heart get broken by one boy and Erase another boy who cares about me … or would care about me. Now he won’t know me. Even after a memory restoration, if Laila can actually learn how to do it, I will still be a stranger to him.
I have to believe that she can learn how. It is the only thought keeping me sane. I wipe at my tears and rip the page out of my notebook. “Be strong,” I tell myself. Laila can’t know any of this. She will Erase my memory, but I need her to be clueless as well for everything to play out exactly the same.
Squaring my shoulders, I step back into my room. In my desk I find an envelope and seal the letter to myself inside. “I need you to give this to me on Friday, November fourteenth, okay?”
“Why are you being so cryptic? What happens?”
“Laila, promise me you will give this to me on the fourteenth and won’t open it before then.” I write the date on the outside of the envelope. “Promise? I’m trusting you with this.”
She widens her eyes like she thinks I’m overreacting. “All right. I promise.”
“Okay, put it in your purse then, so I won’t see it after you Erase my memory.”
“Okay.” She tucks it away.
I sit cross-legged on the bed in front of her. “I’m ready. I need you to Erase both paths.”
“What? Why both?”
“Please, Laila, don’t ask.” I’m on the verge of tears again.
She bites her bottom lip and then shakes out her hands. “Okay.”
“Why do you look so nervous? Don’t you Erase my memories all the time?”
“No. This will be the first.”
“Are you serious?”
She nods, and I throw a pillow at her head. “You’d better be good then.”
“I am.”
She takes a deep breath, brings up her hands to rest on my head, and closes her eyes.
I close mine as well.
EPILOGUE
Six Weeks Later
Laila scratches at the bandage on her neck as she paces the hospital room. “Are they going to let us go home already? We’re both fine!” she leans out the door to yell. “I don’t need a Healer for this! It was a scratch.”
“Just sit down, Laila. You’re making me dizzy.”
“I’m sorry.” She sits down only to pop right back up again. “I’m sorry for everything. I can’t believe this is the future you chose. This is crazy. Duke is a jerk. We almost died. Why in a million years would you choose this future?”
“You can ask me that a million times, and I still won’t know.”
Laila’s eyes drift to her purse on the chair in the corner. “The other future must’ve been really bad,” she says, “for you to have chosen this one.”
“Yeah, maybe you betrayed me for real in that one,” I say with a laugh.
Her eyebrows lower. “I …”
“I’m just kidding, Laila.” Sort of. Even though I try to tell myself it wasn’t Laila’s fault, I still get an ache in the back of my throat every time I think about it.
My mom comes whisking into the room. “Addie, Laila, I’m sorry. I promise it won’t be much longer. We’re filling out reports, the Healer will be in here to look you over, and then we’ll be able to leave.”
“How did you know where I was, Mom?”
“I didn’t. Your father called. I guess Mr. Paxton’s guilt got the better of him, and he called the Bureau to let them know that Bobby had you. Apparently Bobby has been teaching Poison how to extend his ability, and Mr. Paxton started to suspect he had something to do with the missing teenagers. When you went inside Bobby’s house, he decided to tell the Bureau his suspicions.”
“Missing teenagers?” I say.
She fills us in on the other girls Bobby had gotten to. Just like with Laila, he had forced them to hold knives to their own throats. Only unlike with Laila, he had actually used his recently acquired ability of nerve control to force them to cut their own throats.