My grandmother’s name is handwritten inside the cover, just as it was in the diary she gave me when she first broke the news that I’d inherited the ability to activate these devices. I drag my finger along the first page. The words, written in a flowery script that is clearly not my writing, begin to scroll upward.
“Katherine’s research is stored in the first few pages,” Kiernan says, “but if you flip ahead, there are newer entries, with some pretty detailed background on the jumps you made—what went right, what went wrong, and so forth.”
“Oh, wow. This could save us a lot of time. Katherine will—”
“Umm . . . yeah. You might want to preview these before you show them to anyone else. Some are full-fledged rants, mostly about Katherine. You might want to pick and choose what you share. And you didn’t—” He shakes his head and then goes on. “Kate didn’t have much patience for writing things down. All of her notes are video, so you should probably wait until you get back home.”
No question about that. I don’t even like watching myself on normal home movies, so it will be hard enough to view diary entries from this me-who-isn’t-me without doing it in front of Kiernan, who probably still finds it painful to hear her voice—which is, of course, the same as my voice, so I just sit there silently for a moment.
I feel a soft touch on my ankle. “Something wrong, Kate?”
I shake my head, and he just lifts his eyebrows. He knows I’m hiding something. But I’m not sure how to put any of the things I’m feeling into words.
“Everything okay in the twenty-first century?”
I nod. “Katherine and Connor are back from their trip. She’s gained a few pounds, so I think she’s doing a bit better. Dad and I have moved our stuff out of the cottage on campus, so I’m at Katherine’s half of the week and spend the other half with Mom. And I’m back in karate, more or less—I have private lessons with the improbably named Sensei Barbie twice a week.”
He gives me an odd look, and I realize he doesn’t get the same visual image I did when I first heard the name—a tall, leggy blonde with a ponytail and disproportionate boobs. She’s actually only an inch or so over my five foot three, nearly double my weight, and runs my butt ragged for an hour each Monday and Wednesday without ever breaking a sweat herself. Kiernan probably doesn’t even know what a sensei is, for that matter, so I just continue.
“I also celebrated my seventeenth birthday—again. So it’s the same old routine, pretty much. Aside from the occasional journey through space and time, that is.”
And the dreams, but I don’t mention those or the fact that the past few months have been really strange. I tried to keep up with my classwork when I lived in the other timeline this past spring, even though I couldn’t attend school for the simple reason that there was no record of my existence. As a result, the schoolwork in the last few weeks of my junior year was relatively easy, except for the occasions where I stumbled across something different in this reality—a different president or some famous author, scientist, or inventor I’d never heard of.
It was also odd experiencing events at Briar Hill that I’d only heard about secondhand from Trey in the previous timeline, especially since Trey won’t even be at Briar Hill until the fall in this reality. The sign for the prom that went up in May is a good example. Before, I’d have walked right past that sign and never have considered going. In the previous timeline, Trey said he’d never have gone without me—but we both would have been happy to go together. I guess I could have asked him to go this time, but we’re not really at the prom-date stage yet.
So yeah, it’s been weird. And I can’t even gripe about all of this weirdness to my best friend, Charlayne, because she doesn’t know me. In this reality, she’s probably hanging out with her Cyrist pals, totally unaware that we were ever friends.
Kiernan’s dark eyes are soft as he watches me. His arm is resting on the frame of the bed, and his hand cups my ankle, causing me to pull in a shaky breath.
“And Trey? Are you seeing him much?”
“Yes.”
He raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe me.
“Really, everything is great. He’s coming by this evening, in fact.”
That last bit is the truth. But the part about seeing him much isn’t. Trey has barely been in DC since I gave him the DVD with video conversations between the two of us and a clip of himself, or I guess I should say his alternate self, attempting to explain our relationship. We went to the movies that first weekend after I gave him the DVD, and it was wonderful to see him, but it was awkward to say the least. I kept wanting to say (and do) things that I would normally never dream of on a first date, and I’d have to pull back and remind myself that he wasn’t really my Trey, at least not yet. I could tell he felt uncomfortable, too. He was going to come for dinner later that week, but then his dad surprised him with a three-week trip to Peru to visit friends he’d made when they lived in Lima. We texted a couple of times, and Trey posted a few scenic pictures on Facebook, but he spent most of his time at the beach.
He’s back now, and the dinner is tonight. And while I’m really, really looking forward to seeing him, I’m simultaneously dreading it. Every time I’m with Trey and it’s not the same as before, a little piece of me withers.
I have no idea why I didn’t just tell Kiernan the truth. That I’ve barely seen Trey. That everything is far from great. I opened my mouth, and the lie rushed out, and now I feel a little guilty.
Apparently, it wasn’t even a convincing lie, because he’s giving me this sad, sympathetic smile. “But, it’s not the same as before. Is it?”
It’s definitely not the same, not yet, but I’m nowhere near the point of giving up. And it seems cruel to give Kiernan false hope, so I just shrug and say, “Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day, right?”
“No. I don’t suppose it was.” He gives my ankle a quick squeeze and then lets go. I’m relieved but also a bit flustered to realize that I miss his touch.
I flip to the back of the diary and see there’s a page of sequential numbers. They’re underlined, like the videos I’m accustomed to seeing in the diaries, but only a couple have dates or titles after the numbers. The link at the bottom of the page is 28, but when I tap the margin with my fingernail, the page starts to scroll upward. It scrolls for about thirty seconds, and the final link is 415. This is going to take forever.
“There’s so much here. Do you think you could give me a CliffsNotes version?”
Kiernan just looks puzzled.
“That means the short version.” I laugh. “A cheat sheet?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t watched most of them,” he says. “I skimmed through the last twenty or thirty when I thought they might give me some clue as to where she’d gone, but then once I saw you on the Metro that day, I knew it was no use. If this version of you exists, then that one doesn’t. And later, when I was missing her, I watched a few entries I remembered her recording when she was here, but . . .” He shakes his head.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?”
“It’s okay, Kate. Take it.”
“Maybe I could make you a copy or something?”
“No. Most of this was her private diary. I wouldn’t have watched them when she was . . . when she was here with me. I don’t feel right watching them now. And they don’t bring her back.”
The hours I’ve spent watching the DVD of my conversations with Trey spring to mind as he says this. Watching them over the past few months has been somewhat bittersweet for me, and there’s still a chance that Trey and I will be together at some point. Would I keep those videos if I knew there was no hope? I’m not sure.
I give him a weak smile. “Any advice on these jumps? Is there one that’s really easy?”
“Port Darwin, if you want to get an easy one out of the way. I’d definitely suggest waiting on the 1938 jump. The one to Georgia. It was the last one we tried, and . . . it didn’t go well. If you want to tackle them in the same order that she did, you should start brushing up your Russian.”