I’m careful about what I say next, purposely withholding the future-specific things I can’t tell her about, like the online news article and Google Maps. “It started as pure curiosity. I sat there, scratching equations and time conversions into my notebook, trying to figure out if it would even be possible, but before I knew it, I was combing the house for a fire extinguisher and a smoke detector.”
“No way.…” Her eyes light up and a smile spreads across her face. “You stopped it?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t stop it. I just…readjusted a few things.”
“You…readjusted a few things?”
I tell her how I crept through the dark apartment. I describe the wall of school photos, and I explain how I worked quickly to mount the smoke detector without waking the kids.
“I went back and did nearly three days over again. Until Emma, I’d never gone back more than five or ten minutes, you know? I didn’t even know it was possible. But it worked. When I went into the kitchen that morning, the news story on TV was about a fire that took out an apartment complex, not a fire that killed two kids. And when I told my dad what I did…” My words hang in the air. I look down at a cluster of plants and Anna rests her hands on my hips.
“You changed it.”
I nod slowly. And then I can’t help it. I break into a huge smile. “I don’t know if it was right or not. It doesn’t matter now, it was a one-time thing. Or, I guess, counting Emma, a two-time thing. I just wanted to see if I could do it again.”
“And you did.”
“Yeah.”
Anna brings her hands to my face and kisses me. She pulls away and stares at me for what feels like a really long time, and I assume that she’s trying to think of something to say. Finally I remember that she had something to tell me too.
“Hey, you said you had news too? What did you want to tell me?”
She checks her watch.
“Nothing. It can wait.” She stands up and holds out her hand. “We’ve been gone a long time. Emma is probably starting to look for me.”
I realize that tonight’s supposed to be about Emma, but I’m not ready to go back out there and share Anna with the rest of her friends yet. I wish I knew when we’d get to be alone again.
Before I can say anything, she shrugs and says, “Really. It’s no big deal. I’ll tell you later.”
We wind back up the path and reemerge from the trees. I spot Emma right away, but that’s not saying much. She’s pretty hard to miss, dancing with a big group of girls in her short skirt, tight half-shirt, and a huge fabric hat in the shape of a birthday cake.
When Emma sees us, she bounces over and gives me a big hug. I wish her a happy birthday and she grabs each of us by the arm and leads us back out to the patch of grass that’s become a dance floor. I try not to think about the fact that I’m the only guy out here.
We’ve been dancing for about five minutes, and I’m thinking that’s more than sufficient. I’m just about to leave when Emma throws her arm over my shoulder and pulls me in close to her. “I’ve missed you, Shaggy.” She musses my hair and I can’t help smiling. No one’s called me that in months.
“I’ve missed you too, Em.”
Then she stands up on her tiptoes and gets right in my face. “I hear you’ve turned my sweet little Anna into a big fat liar,” she says, shaking her head.
That’s the last thing I’d want to do. I look at her, genuinely confused. “How so?”
She stares at me like I should know what she’s talking about. “Tonight?” she says, raising her eyebrows, waiting for it to sink in.
I’m starting to feel a little dense because I’m still not sure where she’s going with this. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She pulls away and studies my expression, and I guess she comes to the conclusion that I’m telling the truth. “She didn’t tell you?” she asks, and I shake my head no. Resting a hand on my shoulder, she whispers in my ear, “Her parents don’t know you’re in town.”
When she pulls away, I just look at her. I’m still not getting it.
“She told them she’s spending the night here, at my house. She brought an overnight bag and everything.” She winks.
I turn and look over my shoulder at Anna. She’s dancing with a big group, but she keeps looking over at Emma and me.
“Really?” I say without taking my eyes off Anna.
“Yes, really.” Emma musses my hair again. “I believe somebody owes me one,” she sings.
We have a whole night together. We’ve never had a whole planned night together, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. But right now, I just need to get off this dance floor. I spot Justin over by the tree, talking with a couple of guys I don’t know. “What if I go chat with your ex and see what I can do about getting you two back together again?”
She huffs. “What makes you think I want to get back together with him?”
“The way you’ve been looking over there the entire time I’ve been talking to you.” The corners of her mouth twitch, like she’s fighting back a smile.
She pokes me in the chest four times as she spits out each word: “We. Are. Just. Friends.”
But you’re not supposed to be, I want to say. You’re supposed to be together. You might still be if I hadn’t wiped out the first four hours of your first date. I flash back to the Saturday that Anna and I went back and changed. How we basically created two versions of the same day, one that ended with a horrible accident that left Emma in the ICU and another that ended with Anna, Emma, Justin, and me at the movies together. The first one ended with Justin telling Anna how he and Emma had this incredible morning hanging out at her house, bonding over a conversation that left him surprised and unquestionably interested in her. The second one ended with them breaking up a few months later.
It would be nice not to feel so responsible for the second version, but I am. “So, you don’t want me to talk to him?” I ask.
She looks over at Justin and back at me. I wait her out. “Okay,” she finally says with a heavy sigh. “If you want to.”
I give Anna a small wave, thrilled to be honorably discharged from the dance floor, and squeeze through the crowd toward Justin. On my way, I grab a Coke from a bucket of ice and pop the top.
He introduces me to his friends, two guys he works with at the radio station, and we spend the next ten minutes talking about music. Eventually they take off to find the hidden beer, and I’m standing alone with Justin.
“So,” I say. I take a sip of my drink. “Can I ask you a question?”
Justin nods.
“What happened with you and Emma over the summer?”
He looks in her direction. Emma and Anna are buried somewhere in the crowd of people jumping up and down because the song is telling them to.
“I don’t know,” he says without looking away from the dance floor. He stares into his red Solo cup, like he might find the answer he’s looking for somewhere at the bottom. “At first, I thought we were a good match, you know? But after a while, it seemed like we were both trying too hard or something. Or…maybe I just was.”
We both look back at the dance floor again. The song ends and we see Emma emerge, one arm hooked through Danielle’s and the other around Anna’s shoulders. She’s leading both of them away from the dance floor toward the big bucket of drinks in the corner. She grabs three sodas, passes them around, and pops the top of her own.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Justin says. “She’s funny and gorgeous and I’m sure everyone here thinks I’m crazy for breaking up with her. But honestly, I don’t think I ever really got used to the idea of the two of us together.”