I take the phone back from Gracie.
Aleeza:What did you say when you saw her sweater?
Jay:I said it matched the carpet in the library.
I show the message to Gracie. She stares at it.
“So now do you believe us?” I ask. “And are you going to keep this a secret?”
Gracie’s eyes are still wide. “Yeah, I don’t get it, but clearly there is something weird going on. November second is only—”
“Four days before Jay disappears. That’s why I need to figure out what happened ... so it doesn’t happen to him.”
“So you’re trying to save him.”
I nod.
“You think you can bring him back to life?”
“No.” I sigh. “If the Jay from our time is dead, there’s nothing I can do about that. Like I explained earlier, we discovered that we’re in parallel and almost-the-same universes, not at different points in the same timeline. Things he does don’t necessarily always affect this time.”
“But sometimes it does. Like what he told his cousin about you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I can save Jay from the present, but I am determined to savethisJay.” I tap my phone with my fingernail. “The Jay from months ago who’s still living in this room.”
Gracie says nothing for a while, fidgeting with the hem of her sweater. I get it—this is a lot to process. Finally, she looks at me. “But we don’t know if current Jay is dead or not. If he’s not, then solving this means wecanfind him. Alive.”
I nod. It seems like a long shot, but yeah, we could. But each day I’m more and more sure that current-day Jay is gone. Because past Jay and I have become so close. He said he wanted to hold me. He said he wanted to ask me out. He wanted to kiss me. We’ve both admitted our feelings for each other. Hell, he even admitted it to his cousin. And if all that is true, and if the Jay from this timeline is out there somewhere, why hasn’t he tried to contact me? Why hasn’t he shown up so he could give me that hug? Or get a message to me somehow?
But maybe he’s out there, and he can’t. Or maybe he’s out there, and he doesn’t remember any of it. Because it didn’t happen to him. It happened to the Jay I know from five months ago. Not today’s Jay.
I get up from my bed and walk over to the bulletin board over Jay’s desk, where I pinned that picture of him from the school paper. I doubt I’ll ever see Jay again in person. We’re doomed. But it’s still important for me tosavehim. For Salma, for Manal, for Ausma—even for his aunt and uncle. And most of all, for Jay. And who knows, maybe if I can prevent his disappearance, past Jay—myJay—will ask out past Aleeza like he wants to, and they can be happy.
Lucky past Aleeza.
Gracie looks at Jay’s empty bed for a while, then up at me. “Okay. We have four days. Let’s find Jay.”
With Gracie sitting next to me watching our messages, I fill Jay in on everything that happened today. And as expected, he freaks out about his mother being missing.
Jay:Where the hell is my mother?
Aleeza:Good question. I don’t know. Ausma at the shawarma shop doesn’t know either. And Manal didn’t tell us much.
Jay:Let me call them—I’ll tell them to talk to you in five months, like I’ll tell Ausma in four days.
“Don’t,” Gracie says. She looks at me. “Tell him not to do that. For all we know, the fact that he told Manal about you is why she won’t talk to us now.”
I type out what Gracie says, and he reluctantly agrees. We are seriously fucking up the timelines. Doc Brown fromBack to the Futurewould be so disappointed in us.
Aleeza:Why do you have a letter here from a law office? Choi, Patel, and Associates. Do you recognize the office?
Jay:No, I have no idea what it’s about. No clue at all. When am I supposed to get it?
Aleeza: Postmarked for ... December 13.
About a month after his disappearance. Was Salma gone by then?
Jay:Open it.
