“Get out of my car,” Anna demands.
“Wait!” I grab her hands. Even if I tell her, she won’t believe me. But maybe I can show her. “I don’t know if this will work but just—wait.” I close my eyes and draw in a slow breath, focusing on the current jumping between my fingertips. And for the first time in my life, I don’t immediately push it away. I call to it. It flurries in response, as if it’s waiting for me, simmering beneath the surface. The energy concentrates in my hands, heat warming my palms from the inside out. I pull my second memory of Anna.
She’d come to class, just as she had the week before, and plopped down next to me, a whirlwind of accessories and color. A spike of adrenaline rushed through my veins. Had she made a mistake for a second week? Heart thrumming, I spent minutes mustering the confidence to tell her I loved her earrings. She launched into conversation, information spilling from her like an overflowing fountain. After class, she clutched my hands and told me she’d known wewere destined to be friends. My reply lodged in my throat; why would this flamboyant, courageous person want to be my friend?
The sentiment fresh in my mind, I force the warm current pooling within my palms toward Anna, just like when I anchored Rose. Volatile energy ignites within my chest and tears down my limbs. Euphoria floods my body, but it’s fleeting, pouring out of me, yanking the buzzing current with it. Photons of bright white fly toward us, like thousands of shooting stars engulfing us in light. Anna’s hands stiffen in mine, her acrylic nails digging into my skin when the tunnel of white expands.
I’m staring at our past selves sitting in the lecture hall on that second day. The vision is fleeting, like a flash of lightning across a dark night sky, but my echo lingers: my churning stomach and racing heart. The exhilarating prospect of becoming Anna’s friend.
Pain slices through my skull, and I’m thrown from my visions, my chest heaving. Temples damp with sweat, I release Anna’s hands.
Her eyes are wide, her mouth slightly agape. “What—what was that?” she whispers, staring at her hands as if she might see electrical sparks dancing along her skin.
“Did you see anything?” I ask between breaths.
“I saw…myself.” Her brows draw together, and she presses her hand to her chest. “But it felt like, I wasn’t—myself.”
“That’s because you were feeling an echo of how I felt in that memory. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had vivid dreams. And when I wake—” I glance up at Anna. Her eyes arefixed on mine, her expression unreadable. “—I have these strange symptoms, like there’s electricity running through me.” I clutch my heart-shaped charm between my fingertips.
“Those pills you found? They’re sleeping pills, prescribed by my psychiatrist to make it stop. I spent years thinking there was something wrong with me. But this year, I met people like me. They told me I wasn’t dreaming; I was time traveling. I can’t tell you much more than that.” I search her wide eyes and slack mouth.
“That’s where I’ve been every time I said I was with Sarah—since I moved in with you. I’m sorry I lied to you. And that I made you question yourself. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Anna, and I think the world of you. Please forgive me?”
Anna finally closes her gaping mouth, her vacant gaze looking outside. When her head swings back to me, her bottom lip is trembling. “Oh my God!” she screams, bursting into tears. She wraps her hands around my shoulders and yanks me toward her until we’re awkwardly hugging over her central console.
“So, you can, like—see into the past?” Anna asks, finally letting me go. I nod, and her green eyes light. “Oh my God,” she says again. “What else can you do?”
“Nothing. There’s a place that trains people to time travel, but I’m not going.”
“Why not?” she demands.
Emptiness spreads through my chest. “Because I’d have to drop psychology.”
Anna scrunches her button nose. “Okay? So, drop psychology.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Ella, you’ve been given a gift,” Anna says, grabbing my hands. “Don’t throw it away.”
I pull my hands from hers. “I’ve already decided.”
“Why?” she says.
My arms snake around my heaving chest. “Because I’m terrified of ending up like my mom. Studying psychology is the only way I—” Tears sting the back of my eyes. “If I can understand her illness, I can prevent it… Stop it from happening to me.”
“You’re not going to end up like her,” Anna says softly.
“I finally got her death certificate. It listed schizophrenia and psychosis as contributing causes. We’re products of our parents, and mental illnesses have genetic components. Schizophrenia is highly inheritable. Last year I started getting paranoid that I was being followed, and it’s only getting worse. That was how it started for my mother. She and I are so similar, even our mannerisms are the same.” Both introverted homebodies who’d prefer to sketch the world around them than actively participate. “You even said yourself how much I look like her.”
Anna’s face falls. “You’re not your mother, Ella. Just because she got sick doesn’t mean you will.”
“You don’t know that. She seemed fine. Then she deteriorated over the course of three months, and there was no trigger. She didn’t drink or take drugs. We were happy. It makes no sense.”
“Sometimes mental health disorders don’t. Sometimes there isn’t always an answer.”
“I need there to be an answer.” I’m giving up too much for there not to be.
“Ella, you just said your mother was well her entire life until she got sick. You said you were happy.”
