I swallow, feeling like I’m losing my mind. “What year is it?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
ROSE
Deputy Gibson frowned, his hands tightening on the handcuffs at his waist. “Okay, kid, I think you’d better come with me,” he said, reaching for one of the strange boy’s outstretched wrists.
All the blood rapidly drained out of the boy’s face as the officer twisted his arm behind his back.
“Wait,” he said, his breaths coming faster now. “Wait, you don’t understand!”
Rose watched, her own heart rate increasing as the boy’s wide eyes met hers, filled with fear and confusion and desperation. She could tell he wasn’t lying—or didn’t think he was—but it was more than that. Her mind was seized by a prickling thought that kept nagging at her, despite being completely impossible: he’s telling the truth.
Nothing he said made sense. Some of it was verifiably false. And yet, a part of her believed him. Maybe even the biggest part.
Something in Rose’s heart twisted, then gave.
“Officer, wait!”
She jumped out of her car before fully considering what she was doing. Gibson pivoted toward her, one hand still holding the boy’s wrist behind his back, the other grasping a dangling pair of handcuffs. “Miss, I’m going to need you to stay back.”
“He’s my cousin!”
Gibson frowned as the boy stared at her, mouth agape. “Your . . . cousin?” His eyes slid suspiciously from her to the boy, and back, one eyebrow raising at the obvious lack of physical resemblance between them.
“On my mom’s side,” she said, thinking quickly. “He’s visiting from, uh, Hawthorne. We were just heading back from the bonfire, but he, um, had to get out of the car for a minute to, uh . . .”
Crap. Why would he have to get out of the car? Her mind was totally blank.
“I felt dizzy,” the boy supplied, his voice shaking.
Gibson raised an eyebrow, his gaze shifting to the dazed-looking boy. “Dizzy?”
Rose nodded, her throat thick, heart hammering. What was she thinking? She was lying to a police officer, all to help a complete stranger who thought he was from the future. If anyone found out about this, she’d be grounded for the rest of her life, and Diane’s campaign would be ruined. And that was a best-case scenario, assuming this guy didn’t kill her and dump her in the river.
But she couldn’t just sit there and watch him get arrested. Not when there was a small but insistent part of her that was—inexplicably—sure he was telling the truth.
Deputy Gibson chewed on his lower lip, narrowing his eyes. “Yin,” he repeated to himself. He peered into her face. “You’re the stepdaughter, aren’t you? Of the woman running for mayor?”
Rose noticed the disdain in his voice, confirming her suspicion that he was likely related to Franklin Gibson, Diane’s opponent. “Yes, sir.”
He snorted, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Rose couldn’t make it all out, but she definitely caught the words these people.
Her face grew warm, but she hoped the officer couldn’t tell in the flashing red lights of his patrol car. In the six years since her dad had married Diane, she’d still never gotten used to the comments. For a while after the wedding, kids would make buzzing noises whenever she or Lisa passed them in the halls. Eventually, she learned it was because their family was half-Black, half-Asian—black and yellow, like a bumblebee.
The buzzing had stopped after a few months, but there were still times when Rose was caught off-guard by a dirty look, a mumbled comment, a mean-spirited laugh. Things that she and her family had never done anything to deserve, except exist.
Which was why they had to be perfect. All the time. No exceptions.
If Diane and her father knew what she was doing right now, they would kill her.
Deputy Gibson sighed and checked his watch, then finally dropped the boy’s arm. “Okay, Miss Yin, if you want to take responsibility for him, be my guest. But he’s gotta get in the car, and you’ve gotta drive the speed limit. I don’t want to see either of you out here again. Understand?”
Rose nodded around the lump in her throat. She just wanted to be back at home, where she could shower this whole night off her.
Gibson strolled back to his car, then paused with his hand on the door. “1985,” he called.
“What?”
“Kid asked the year. It’s 1985,” Gibson said with a grin, his shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter as he climbed into the patrol car.
Rose looked at the boy, whose face was as white as a sheet and oddly waxy in the moonlight. He looked like he might throw up, but she very much hoped he didn’t, since she now had no choice but to give him a ride. “Get in the car,” she hissed through clenched teeth as she climbed back into the driver’s seat.
He nodded, drifting to the other side of the car like a zombie and flopping into his seat without a word. Rose started the engine, glanced in her rearview mirror—the lights were no longer flashing, but Deputy Gibson was still sitting there, watching—and eased her foot onto the accelerator. Once she started moving, so did the police car behind her, matching her pace across the bridge. She fervently hoped that he wasn’t planning to follow her home.
The boy whispered something she couldn’t quite make out.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Is it really 1985?” His voice sounded dull, like it was covered in dust.
Rose nodded. For some reason, she wasn’t nervous anymore. Sometime during their encounter with Deputy Gibson, her apprehension had disappeared, replaced by curiosity. “What’s your name?”
“Justin. Justin Warren.”
Rose thought for a second. “You said the school is named Warren. In . . . where you’re from.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. After my grandparents. They died there. Or I guess . . . they will die there.”
Rose didn’t say anything, but her stomach clenched as her mind made the obvious connections. Veronica, Diane’s campaign manager, was married to Bill Warren, the school guidance counselor. They had a baby—a little girl. Veronica brought her to their house sometimes for campaign meetings. She and Emmie would play together. Rose and Lisa would take turns holding her.
Was Justin really talking about those Warrens? Were Bill and Veronica in danger?
And why on earth did she actually believe any of this? Was she losing her mind?
Justin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
Rose’s stomach flipped a second time at the sound of the words she’d just been thinking. Again, she was struck by the sense that they were somehow uniquely aligned with one another. Like the moon passing over the sun. “I don’t think you’re losing your mind,” she said.
“You’re just saying that because you’re trapped in a car with me.”
“No, I’m not. I mean, I am trapped in a car with you, but that’s not why.”
“Why, then?”
She tilted her head, her hands tight on the steering wheel. “I honestly don’t know. It’s just a feeling, I guess.”
“A feeling. Sure. Why not.” He sighed, dropping his head back to thump rhythmically against the back of his seat.