A World Without You by Beth Revis Read Free Book Online Page A

is.
    But . . . what if instead of trying to reach Sofía, I brought
her
to
me
? If I pulled the middle section of the thread, could I pull her out of the past and back to the present?
    I find Sofía’s red thread, my hand shaking as I reach for it. Once I touch the string, I’ll have flashes of memories. Pull too hard, and I’ll transport myself back to that time. But if I tug just a little and let go quickly, maybe I can loosen Sofía’s thread and pull it out of the swirling black hole engulfing 1692. It won’t matter that I can’t go to her if I can make her come back to me.
    I take a deep breath. I have to move quickly; I’ll waste precious time if I let myself get sucked into the past.
    I try not to think about the irony of a time traveler worried about wasting time.
    I zero in on a moment in time, a portion of the string. Before I can doubt myself, I snatch the string, yanking it back and letting go as quickly as possible. I see it pucker and then—
    â€”I
see
the past. I’m used to pulling myself physically through time, but this is different: I stay where I am, watching as the past plays out in my mind like a movie.
    A session early in the year. Dr. Franklin was trying to make a game of us getting to know one another better. He’d shout out something like “If you were born before August, stand up, and if you were born in August or later, stay sitting!” or “If you’d rather go to the beach for vacation, hop up and down, but if you’d rather spend your vacation in the mountains, wave your arms.” Ryan pretended like the whole thing was stupid, but everyone else had fun.
    I see the Doctor now, grinning at us. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him smile.
    â€œIf you’re the oldest in your family,” he says, “stand up. If you’re the youngest, sit on the floor. If you’re a middle child, jump up and down. And if you’re an only child, stand on your chair!”
    The me in this vision jumps up, looking around, eager to see what everyone else did. Ryan deigns to get up, then turns the chair around and stands on it, sighing as if it takes too much effort. Gwen plops on the floor, and Harold—little, quiet Harold—starts jumping around. Laughter breaks out in the room; none of us had seen him act so silly before.
    But none of us had seen Sofía look quite that sad before either. She hadn’t known how to answer because she used to be a middle child, and now she was an only child. I had merely a moment to register the deep sorrow etched into her face before she turned transparent and disappeared from sight.
    I shake my head, hard, trying to clear it from the vision. Glancing at the timestream, I see that my plan has worked, at least a little. Sofía’s string is looser and has moved slightly within the pattern of the timestream. But this small victory is tinged a little by melancholy—I can’t help but remember how long it took Sofía to talk about her family with the group, and longer still for her to say anything more personal than their names to me in private.
    The week of her family’s funeral, Sofía stayed invisible and silent. Her father stayed drunk and not silent. He was angry, so angry because he’d lost his wife and daughters, but he didn’t understand that even though Sofía was alive, he’d lost her too.
    I’m glad Sofía lived at the academy and not with him.
    Lives.
Not lived.
Lives.
    I force myself to push the memories aside. There’s work to do.
    I select another point in the timestream where I can pluck up the red string. I brace myself, ready for the memory, as I pinch the string and yank it back as quickly as I can. I hear Gwen and Sofía’s voices before I see the common room on the day Harold turned sixteen—which shocked us all because he still looked about twelve. His birthday was on a weekend, and though Gwen and I