Loop (19 page)

“Doesn’t it bug you not knowing?” he asked.

“The only thing I want to know is how to get you back where you belong.” Whatever the saying meant, it wouldn’t do me any good if Finn got caught. There was no way that ICE would fund so much as a pedicure for my mom if they found out about him.

Mimi flipped over and whacked her butt against the canopy, temporarily breaking the soundproof barrier. She snored and smacked her lips, saying something about Charlie before she rolled back over. I grabbed my covers and pulled them over Finn and me.

“What are the chances you have a Shifter gene that will kick in and your tendrils will synch you back to the twenty-first century without a fuss?” I asked.

“Your lips are so cute when you say things that mean nothing to me.”

“Quantum tendrils. They’re the invisible bits and bobbles in your brain that root you to a time period.”

“So Shifters have these tendrils?”

“Everyone has them.”

“Then why can’t everyone time-travel?”

“Everyone does time-travel. Most people just do so in a linear fashion, one moment to the next. With the occasional slipup.”

Finn raised his eyebrows.

“Déjà vu.”

“Gotcha. So these tendrils are on your, what, skin?”

“They’re rooted in your hippocampus. That’s a part of your brain,” I added when he still looked confused.

“I know what the hippocampus is. Sort of.”

“In your time, all scientists knew was that the hippocampus played a function in memory and spatial orientation. And it does do those things. They’re just more closely related than the scientists realized. I guess you could think of Shifting as tendrils stretching. But they can only stretch for so long and so far before they have to join back up with the time they’re genetically most drawn to. That’s called synching. So if a Shifter is gone to another time period for, say, five hours, then he’ll come back five hours after he initially left.”

“Okay, I know what synching is. Dad’s told me that much. But what is it that draws tendrils to a certain time period?”

“We don’t know for sure.” And I wish I did. It might answer how Finn was even here and give me a clue as to how to get him home.

“So”—I patted his knee—“feeling stretchy?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said flatly.

“Could your dad have been born in this time and somehow spends large chunks of time in yours?” It was a long shot but worth asking.

Finn shook his head. “My grandparents live in Boston. My granddad’s a Shifter.”

“Maybe there’s some freakish genetic mutation that runs in your family that allows you to Shift to the future.” I looked at Finn hopefully. “Has your dad said anything about that? That he’s been to the future. He could come … fetch you.”

“Nope. He’s never mentioned it. But even if he could do it, I doubt he would. He’s a little busy saving the world.”

“To save his own son?”

Finn shrugged, but even knowing him for the short time I had, I could tell the thought bothered him.

“It’s not like he has that much control over where he’s called.” Finn’s voice rang hollow, a dim echo of the hurting kid in his kitchen.

“Called? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. He goes where a surgeon’s needed most, I guess.”

“So your dad gets pulled willy-nilly through time and space to wherever someone needs their appendix out?”

Finn frowned. “He’s a trauma surgeon. And I don’t know that he’d say ‘pulled willy-nilly.’ Partly because it seems to be more purposeful than that and partly because … who on earth says ‘willy-nilly’?”

I brushed his question off. I collected words in the past like his parents collected art, but I wanted to stay on topic.

Finn continued. “Dad goes back to battlefields mostly. ‘Fix ’em under fire.’ Calls it his specialty.” Finn pointed around the dorm room. “But isn’t that why you’re here? To learn how to go where you’re most needed?”

“Something like that,” I murmured.

Finn wouldn’t let the subject drop. “What about your mom? Did she feel like she’d found her calling?”

“Yes.” That one I could answer with conviction. “My mom loves forgery detection. She would have gone into it whether she was a Shifter or not. But Shifting made it easier.”

“Exactly,” he said. “So she went where she was supposed to go. I think that’s what it’s like for my dad. He may not know exactly where he’s going, but he knows it’s exactly where he’s meant to be.”

Something about the way Finn phrased his comment bothered me. “Where he’s meant to be.” An old, crumbling photograph, real photo paper, flashed in my mind. In it, a young and laughing Poppy Bennis nuzzled into the arms of a geeky but handsome bespectacled man a few years older than she was. From the look on her face, you’d never know she’d ever heard of the Buzz. If it had been a painting, I would have named it
Adoration
.

Not that I’d ever met him in person. I tried to peel the image out of my mind, but it clung there like a stubborn compubadge.

Where she was meant to be …

I pushed the covers off of us. I needed some air. I’d always thought of my microchip as a life preserver, keeping me afloat in time and space. Right now, it felt like a sinkweight.

“Finn,” I said softly, “did Future Me ever talk to you about my chip?”

“Why? Do you think it might have something to do with the saying?”

“No. I’m just curious.”

“Not really. I mean, I know you have one. But you never wanted to talk about the future. You changed the subject if it ever came up.”

I nodded again. Sensible.

And yet I wanted to cry.

chapter 16

FOOD WOULD BE OUR DOWNFALL.

In order to successfully harbor a secret souvenir from the past in one’s closet, it turns out one has to feed him. With all my solo meals for the month used up, I managed to sneak out a total of one apple and two slices of toast after breakfast the next morning. Lunch netted a dollop of hummus wrapped in a basil leaf and more toast. Nothing at dinner fit in my pockets.

Finn’s stomach grumbled even as he stayed his chipper self, sitting in his corner of the closet in my dorm room. The whole day.

And night.

Breakfast the next day yielded another apple. When I dropped by my room to give it to him before class, Finn was sitting on his pile of pillows, scouring the article about my mother’s accident again.

“It says she seemed weak even before she repeated the thing about the enigmatic grin over and over. Did anyone look into that?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And nothing. She wasn’t sick. Wasn’t injured.”

“Then she just slipped into this coma?”

“On the way to the hospital. Look, I don’t understand why you feel the need to dwell on it.”

“Why I—? Bree, I’m locked in your closet. You have no idea how frustrating this is for me. How am I supposed to keep you safe from here?” He closed the holo-paper with a snap, and it disappeared. “If Future You had just given me a little more information.
Finn, protect me from…”

Well, the possibilities to
that
fill-in-the-blank were endless.

My mind immediately flew to Leto, but it didn’t make sense that my future self would ask Finn for help with that fiasco. She’d already gotten the delivery back from Finn.

“Who knows?” I tossed him the apple. “Maybe I’ll make up the whole ‘protect me’ thing to lure you here to my closet paradise.” I tapped my fingers together like a nefarious villain.

“Yeah, maybe.” He tried to smile, but only one side of his mouth put forth any real effort. It made me think of the words we’d both been obsessing over the last day. “The truth lies behind the enigmatic grin.” I still needed to find out how both our mothers knew that same odd phrase. It could be the key to proving my mother wasn’t going insane when she’d said it.

Finn chomped the apple. “Am I making you want to lure?”

“Not particularly, but keep trying my clothes on. That should do it.”

“I’m not…” He threw a dirty sock at me. “Trying…” And a tank top. “Anything…” He picked up a bra and blushed before tossing it to the other corner of the closet. “On.”

I gathered the sock and tank top and dumped them on top of him. “Maybe you’re supposed to protect me from an avalanche of my own junk.”

“I swear, if you summoned me two hundred years into the future to be your personal maid…”

I laughed again as I swished the closet door shut on him.

*   *   *

Yep, food would be our downfall.

When I returned to my room after my next class, I found Finn sprawled out on my bed surrounded by plates.

“What the—?” But before I’d maneuvered all the way through the door, I caught sight of Mimi and Charlie sitting on the edge of the couch watching Finn like he was on display at a museum.

Mimi sprang up. “Don’t be mad at Finn! I opened your closet to borrow your pink tank top, you know, the one with the sparkly neckline, and he was just sitting there.” Mimi’s lower lip slid into a pout. “Like a lost puppy.”

The puppy polished off a giant falafel and started in on a pile of yam crisps.

Charlie slid his arm around the back of the couch. His fingertips grazed Mimi’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. He told us everything.”

“Everything?” Even I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Everything.” Finn tossed me a crisp with a wink. “All about how I’m homeless because my parents kicked me out.”

Homeless. Fabulous. Because
that
social ill hadn’t been eradicated a century ago or anything.

“Even about…?”

“Yes.” Finn balled his hand into a fist and held it against his heart. “Even about our secret, forbidden love.”

I was going to kill him. And when I did, I would bring along a set of reviv-a-paddles, so when he was good and dead I could resuscitate him. And kill him again.

And maybe once more for good measure.

“You told them I was in
love
with my
cousin
?” “Glare” was not a strong enough word for the look that had taken over my face.

“Of course not, sweetie. I told them the truth. The whole truth. About meeting you for the first time a year ago when my family was here on vacation and our falling madly in love with each other. And fighting—” He held his fist up in the air. “Fighting for that love when my parents disapproved of me pledging my heart to a Shifter.”

Mimi wiped a tear from her eye. “Which is so crazy to me, since all my mom’s parents did was make sure my dad’s chip was functioning correctly.”

Even Charlie looked a little misty.

I turned to face Mimi. “You’re not freaked out that I was stashing a human being in my closet? A live human being.”

“It’s a little creepy,” conceded Mimi, “but you put up with my snoring.”

Good grief.

“I still can’t wrap my mind around it, man.” Charlie ran his fingers through his hair. “Coming all this way to be with Bree.”

“You have no idea,” I said under my breath.

Finn nodded and popped a mint into his mouth. “Yep, all the way from New Mexico.”

Oh, this was too much.

“New Mexico,” I said, “which is nonexistent, since it was annexed by Texas over ninety years ago.”

“The one and the same. Old New Mexico.” He stood up and reached for my hand, which I shoved in my pocket leaving his dangling in the air like a strung-up fish. “Where small, hidden pockets of traditionalists cling to the old ways and despise what they do not understand. Like Shifting.”

“Because if there’s anything your parents are clueless about, it’s time travel.”

“We’ll make them understand someday, pookie.” Finn squinched up his nose at me. “Someday.”

Killing him at this point would be justifiable homicide. A slap on the wrist at most. Maybe even a medal for doing society a favor.

Charlie and Mimi must have misinterpreted the intensity of my bloodlust as regularlust. They both stood up at the same time and nearly ran over each other as they prattled off weak excuses to leave the room.

Mimi turned back around after she already had one foot out the door. “It’s just so romantic and exciting. You’re like Romeo and Juliet … only without the dying part.”

I forced myself to nod along with Finn. But Mimi didn’t move. She stood there like she was expecting something.

Oh. Yes. My secret, forbidden love.

I leaned over and gave Finn a peck on the cheek. Mimi’s face fell in disappointment. She flashed me a scathing look and jerked her head toward the rather pleased-looking Finn. Okay. I could do this. I needed her to buy whatever crazy story Finn had spun. I exhaled a little puff of air and adorned myself with my most charming grin. On my tippiest of toes, I leaned in to meet Finn’s lips in the chastest of kisses.

But Finn was having none of that.

He clasped his hand across the small of my back and drew me in close, so close the thump of his heart hammered against my shoulder. My lips held their ground, shriveled into a pucker he couldn’t penetrate. His peppermint breath tickled my nose. It took me back to the bus ride when I first met him. He had offered me a breath mint while he was playing with that silly toy. The memory cracked my mouth into the tiniest of smiles. Finn took my parted lips as an invitation and kissed me more deeply. My own heart started to pound. I could feel each rush of blood
everywhere,
right down to the tips of my fingers, which had unwittingly found their way to his shoulders. I tried to call my soldier lips to attention, but they had dropped their weapons.

Traitors.

Charlie leaned back in the room and coughed. The sound knocked me and Finn apart. It felt like thunder in my ears. Charlie caught Mimi’s hand in his and tugged her out the door.

She fanned her face and mouthed,
Hot,
at me like Finn wasn’t standing right there.

“Go,” I hissed, then added, “You can’t tell
anyone
.”

The door sealed shut behind them. There I was with my new pseudoboyfriend. The sunlight glinted off the auburn lowlights in his hair. He flopped down on my bed, laced his fingers behind his head, waggled his eyebrows at me.