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“No. The Gomolinskis will make sure she gets home safely.”
“Huh. Okay.” I don’t like it, but whatever. “What year is it, I mean, for you?”
“In my present?”
“Yeah.”
“July 13, 2031. It’s nice to visit winter—the day I left was so hot my brain was melting.”
I consider this. “Why are you here?”
She shrugs. “Time travel is a little like memory; sometimes I end up in times that mean something to me, like tonight. But I can remember something without traveling to it. Nobody knows why, yet.”
“So in 2031, do you still know me? You are here because . . . ?”
Alba smiles. “This is an important night. I’m surprised I’m not lurking all over the house.”
“Maybe you are?”
She laughs. “Maybe I am. We could use more people.”
“Do we—?”
She interrupts. “It’s better not to know certain things, Zach. If I tell you about your life before it happens, you’ll feel powerless, like you can’t decide anything for yourself.”
“Do you feel that way?”
“Sure. Yeah, all the time.”
“So it’s like being omniscient?”
“No,” she says, “because there’s so much I don’t know. I don’t tell myself everything, because I want to feel free, or as free as possible under the circumstances. You should think carefully before you allow yourself to get caught up with me. What do you really want?”
I don’t have to think about it; I’ve always known what my three wishes would be. “I want a home.”
Alba smiles. “‘There’s no place like home.’”
“Yes,” I say. “How did you know?”
“You have it tattooed on your left forearm,” she says.
I slide back my sleeve and reveal blank skin.
“You will,” she says, refuting my refutation. She reaches for my hand. Her fingers are warm; she turns my hand palm-up and traces her fingers over the skin above my wrist. “Here. In a script, in black ink. Anyway. You see how things get jumbled?”
“Yeah.”
She is still holding my hand. It’s arousing, and I struggle to pay attention to what she’s saying. “The point is, you are looking for an escape from your childhood; you want adventure, you want to change things; you are an optimistic, practical guy; you keep trying to fix things that are too fucked up to ever mend. You want to walk out of your black-and-white Kansas and into Technicolor Oz.”
I sit there looking at her, waiting for her verdict. “And?”
“You choose.”
“When?”
“Now. Tonight.”
“It doesn’t seem that difficult,” I say. “Or is this like one of those dark fairy tales, where the three wishes end up leaving the poor sucker worse off than when he started?”
