Part 10 (2/2)

”The gla.s.ses are gone.”

”What?” asked Abbey.

”The gla.s.ses that were on the table at the Forresters' are gone. Someone took them.”

Mark had counted the lines that crisscrossed the burgundy and green floor three times already, going north-south and east-west. He'd multiplied them by three and then counted every third line. The lady behind them kept moaning from behind the curtain. Mark placed his hands over his ears and rocked to get himself through it. He could only imagine the number of germs crawling over all of the surfaces. The machines around his mother hummed and beeped. Wires ran from the machines to white circles pasted to his mother's head and chest. Her breath emerged as a whisper, and her closed eyes sat deep in her eye sockets. Why hadn't he noticed that her hair had grown silvery and her body ever so infinitesimally smaller in the last few years? When had the fine hair that covered her cheeks become downy, reminiscent of a garment of faint gauze? He didn't know.

A stroke, the doctors had said. They were lucky they'd gotten to the hospital early enough for her to receive the appropriate injections (although the trip to the hospital had been harrowing). She might have a full recovery. She might.

The ICU was bright. They couldn't turn off the lights, the nurses had said, when he started thras.h.i.+ng and pulling at his hair. They needed to see the machines to help the patients. He'd been ordered to stop thras.h.i.+ng or he'd be sedated.

He couldn't go home alone, they'd told him. Not that he would've known how to get there anyway. Buses contained a whole host of potential disease vectors, he didn't have the schedule, and he didn't have any money. It was too far to walk. Social services had been called-the older nurse, a small blond woman, had told him-and he might be sent to a group home. This had made him want to thrash and pull at his hair again. But he restrained himself and remained sitting on his hands, counting the lines on the floor, so he wouldn't, by accident, touch anything. Maybe if he stayed quiet they'd let him stay. He held his breath every time the woman two beds down coughed, although he knew this offered little a.s.surance of germ-transfer prevention. His full bladder fought against the confines of his stomach and had reached a point where moving sent p.r.i.c.kles of pain up and down his legs. Mark feared he wouldn't be able to hold it, and the yellow liquid would emerge and spill over the edge of the seat and onto the crisscross lines on the floor.

He needed the comfort of his maps and his bedroom. His time was running out. He still had to figure out how he was going to stop things. He only had one more day.

Carefully, he re-crossed his legs.

Abbey flipped listlessly through her chemistry textbook. Her parents had been tired and they'd all dispersed to their rooms with limited discussion. She pulled a sheet of pale pink paper from her stationery drawer, paper on which she'd written many hopeless first drafts of letters to Sam Livingstone. Retrieving a pen from the tidy collection on her desk, she wrote: Observer effect Rules a Don't change the future Stones Alive?

Light = The Light = Caleb?

Her handwriting had become tentative when she'd inscribed Caleb's name next to 'The Light'. It was a hypothesis, one she couldn't test unless she went back. She didn't want to think about it, because those men were talking about killing the light. She couldn't talk to Caleb about it. The future Caleb had been adamant that she not tell the present Caleb anything. Could Simon be trusted to keep it secret? She didn't know. She went to her bed and pulled the picture out from underneath her pillow, the dog-eared one of just her and Sam. Maybe Sam believed in quantum physics and alternate timelines. Maybe he wouldn't think this was all craziness.

Her door opened and Caleb strode in holding the two jars of amber fluid they'd taken from the Forresters'.

Abbey shoved the photo under her papers. ”Don't you knock?” she asked.

Caleb looked unperturbed by the sharpness of her words. ”Couldn't. I had these in my hands and couldn't wait for you to open the door or Mom and Dad would've seen me. Who's the dude?”

”What dude?”

”The geek central dude in the photograph you were mooning over before I came in.”

”Before you barged in, you mean?”

Caleb winked, his good spirits evidently restored. ”Whatevs. Let's get this into some test tubes.”

Abbey watched as he took the jars to her desk and poured the fluid into two test tubes.

”What do you want me to do with those?” Abbey asked.

Caleb waggled his eyebrows almost comically. ”Test them for poison, of course. We should have grabbed the gla.s.ses, too, to dust for fingerprints.”

Abbey squinted at her brother. ”What do you think I am? CSI? You have to know what you're testing it for. I can't just test for some undifferentiated poison.”

”Why not test it for common ones? Rat poison. Strychnine?”

”Testing for poisons isn't covered in The Principles of Chemistry.”

Caleb ran his fingers through his hair until it was standing aloft, like wild tufts of red straw. ”Couldn't you figure it out? You're pretty good at that kind of thing.”

”Do you really think something happened to the Forresters?”

”Well, it's pretty suspicious, don't you think? Especially with Mantis going into their house and then the gla.s.ses going missing...” Caleb trailed off. ”I guess we'll know tomorrow if they don't show up back at home.” He plunked himself down in her desk chair and there was a trace of an unhinged look in his eyes. ”I always thought I'd be rich and live in a city...maybe go into politics.”

”Maybe all those things will happen,” Abbey said. ”It was night. You couldn't see anything. Maybe it wasn't even your future.”

Simon ducked his head around the doorframe, clutching a piece of paper. ”I found another email,” he said. ”It was sent today to Mantis, who uses an IP address registered to Salvador Systems.” He strode into the room and pa.s.sed it to Abbey.

Envelope-to: [email protected]

Date: Tues, 20 October 2012 04:10:45 -0700

From: flykid <

Subject: Re: agreement

To:

Sinclair will be taken care of after the Holding the Light event in two days. Meet me on the hill tomorrow at 10:00 pm.

Fly Kid A twitch of energy had returned to Caleb's demeanor. ”The 'Holding the Light' event. What the heck is that? Do you think it's now or in the future?”

Simon sat on the bed. Abbey could smell the faint tang of sweat from his armpits. ”Didn't you see the Twinkle-Free Air poster? 'Holding the Light' was their catchphrase. Maybe they're having some marketing event or something.”

Caleb pulled his brows together. ”Wait a second. I just remembered something.” He bolted back to his own room and returned with a crumpled piece of cream and green paper.

</f

<script>