A World Without You (24 page)

When Ryan punched the wall,
it rippled. When he got close to the screen, it changed, and when he left, it changed back.

This whole time I thought it was the officials who were manipulating our reality. But that doesn't really make sense, does it? If they wanted to use us for our powers, they wouldn't have made us forget them.

But Ryan . . . he never forgot. Not because he could protect himself from the officials, but because
he
was the one creating the false reality.

Ryan is a telepath.
He
could change the videos. He's been pushing the boundaries of his powers since he got here. He knows
exactly
how to mess with someone's mind. He's messed with our heads before, and his powers have only been growing—far beyond anything we ever thought possible. Beyond anything the Doctor or anyone else could control.

It must have scared him when the officials arrived. He had to have known from the start that the academy was in danger
of closing. Maybe this all started out as a way to save the school and make the officials go away, but if Ryan had good intentions at the beginning, his desperation has twisted them. The officials are gone, and he's still maintaining an illusion that no one has powers. He can't stop the school from closing—that's out of his grasp—but he can stop everyone else from remembering who they really are. He can stop the officials from sending him to another academy.

• • •

As soon as Ryan is out of the library, I waste no time in calling up the timestream. For a moment, I'm worried it won't work.

But it's there. All of time, laid out before me, strings floating atop a river, tangling and weaving together into beautiful chaos. I work hurriedly, finding a date when I can see Sofía in the past. The red string connecting me to Sofía is as slender as a hair, but it cuts my finger like a razor when I touch it. I snatch my hand back, sucking on the blood springing up.

I grab the string again, with my whole hand, not just wrapping my finger around it. It slices into me, and I grit my teeth against the pain.

I have to do this.

I feel my bones crunch, squeezed together by the red string as I wind it around my palm. Blood makes my hand slick and warm. I can't let go.

I can't let go.

The pain disappears. I look down and the string is gone, along with the blood.

Sofía stands in front of me.

“Hi,” I say.

She smiles, but the happiness doesn't reach her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I had to see you.”

“You have to go.”

I shake my head, crossing the short distance between her and me. “No,” I say.

“You have to.”

I want to tell her everything, but time won't let me. So I just say, “Things are bad right now.”

“You've been coming to me in the past,” Sofía says. “I figure something is wrong with the future—I mean, the present. Your present. Am I right?”

I nod.

“And I'm not there to help you.”

I nod again. I expect time to snap me back at any minute, but it doesn't. We're both still here. “I was afraid,” I say tentatively, still testing the boundaries of time.

“Of what?”

“That my powers weren't real.”

For a brief second, everything wavers. Colors shift and swirl in and out of one another. Everything stutters . . . except for Sofía. She is still in front of me, real and vivid and true.

She reaches up and puts the flats of her hands against the sides of my face. Her skin is cool and calming. “But Bo,” she says, “what if I'm not real? What if none of this is real?”

“You're the only thing I'm certain of,” I whisper.

She opens her mouth, but instead of words, water pours out. It dribbles down her chin, a waterfall over her neck, rivulets across her chest. I reach out and grab her, but my fingers
puncture her arm as if her skin were a water balloon, bright blue liquid that stinks of chlorine erupting from her body. “Sofía!” I cry, reaching for her again. My hand brushes against her hair, and every dark brown strand turns invisible, then reflective, like the surface of a pool. Her body grows translucent, liquid, melting away until there's nothing left of her but a puddle at my feet.

• • •

Ryan comes to get me in my bedroom an hour after lights-out. I don't know how he gets around the door locks, but he does. Further proof that the locks—like the iron bars—are just part of his illusion.

“Ready?” Ryan asks in a low voice.

I stare at the water stain on my floor, its edges creating an odd, circular shape in the hardwood.

I nod my head.

The door to Dr. Franklin's office is locked, but Ryan somehow got his hands on a key. We creep into the darkened room.

It looks strange here without the Doctor, without people at all. The chairs are shadowed tombstones, all circled up around an empty space, signifying nothing.

Ryan turns on the lights.

“We're looking for permanent records. The Doctor's notes. Anything that could incriminate me or land me in a worse school when this one closes.”

“Which notes?” I move over to Dr. Franklin's desk, where a pile of papers sits in disarray. I'm not really paying attention to Ryan. I'm here for my own reasons. I need proof. After seeing Sofía melt away, I have to know what reality is—outside of the
illusion Ryan has created. I don't want to live a lie . . . but I also don't want to live in a world without her.

I just want the truth. Maybe I can find that here.

Ryan shrugs. “I'll know what I'm looking for when I see it. All schools keep records. What I need is a clean start.” He grins maliciously. “So if you see something with my name on it, tell me. I can't have a bad record if I don't have a record at all.”

When I look out the window, sunlight glitters for a second. I blink, and the moon replaces it. All around me, the timestream is still cracking. I need help. I just don't know who can help me.

I sit down at the Doc's desk, riffling through the papers there. They're all notes written in his nearly illegible handwriting. Words I don't know are circled or crossed through.

Water drips onto the paper.

I look up. Ryan has moved on to the second drawer of the Doc's filing cabinet, scanning its contents quickly. But Carlos Estrada stands across from me, pointing down at one of Dr. Franklin's desk drawers.

I bend down, yanking on the heavy drawer. It's full of more files, and I almost slam it shut again. But then I see my name. And Ryan's name. And Gwen's and Harold's. My hand shakes, and I notice that only one file is red, a bright swath of color hidden among the manila folders.

Sofía Muniz.

I pull out all of our files in one armful, spreading them across the desk.

I reach for Sofía's file first, but a wet hand slams across the folder. I look up. Carlos Estrada shakes his head silently.

“Why?” I demand.

“What?” Ryan asks, not turning from the filing cabinet.

“Nothing,” I say.

Carlos Estrada removes his hand, leaving behind a big wet stain soaking into the red file folder. He is still shaking his head no as I shift Sofía's folder to the side. I blindly pick another one from the desk.

Gwendoline Benson.

I flip the folder open. Glued to the right side is a sheet of information about Gwen—a small picture of her, generic and square, her parents' names, her address, her dad's address, a list of pills. I had no idea that Gwen was on so much medication. I read the names of the drugs silently in my head, stumbling over the long, unpronounceable words.

On the left-hand side of the folder is a list of notes in the Doctor's scratchy handwriting. Across the top, typed in bold letters, is one word:

Diagnosis.

My brows furrow as I read the words the Doctor has scribbled underneath.
Impulse control disorder (pyromania). Trust and abandonment issues.

I slide Gwen's folder away and open the next one. Harold's. It's structured just the same, with information on one side, including a list of medications and a series of diagnoses that don't make sense. Ryan's folder is similar, although I can recognize most of the notes on him: extreme narcissism, power complex, calculated manipulation, need to be in control, anger issues. Sociopathic tendencies.
He likes to play with emotions
, the Doctor notes,
for fun, but when there's something he wants, he'll use any means to get it. His narcissism makes him believe that normal courses of events are directed at him; if there are no
apples at breakfast, it's because the staff hates him for being so clever, and he plots a revenge against them, either psychological or physical. The closer he is to a person, the more this tendency escalates.

When the officials came, he thought they were out to get him. He always presumed that their arrival would doom him to military school. That he was the only one who had anything to lose.

I look up, expecting Ryan to turn around and catch me in the act of reading about him, but he doesn't. Carlos Estrada is gone.

I open my own folder.

There's my name. My parents' names. Phoebe. My address. A note that I had an “episode” while at school, another one during spring break at home.

A list of medications.

But . . . that's not right. I'm not on any medications. I don't take pills or shots.

The Doctor
said
he was going to put me on meds, but aside from those pills that made me sleepy when I first got back to Berkshire, I haven't taken any.

Have I?

My eyes skim over to the right-hand side of the folder to my diagnosis.
DSM-5
is written near the top and circled several times.

Bo's case is far more complex than I previously suspected. Bo has exhibited signs of having a break with reality following Sofía Muniz's death. His symptoms include prolonged delusions and, more recently,
paranoia, both of which are exacerbated by insomnia. The lack of REM sleep likely feeds the symptoms, though Bo is unaware of the problem, often entering into a delusional state instead.

Blood work indicated that no additional or recreational hallucinogenic drugs have been ingested, and Bo's insulin levels are well above diabetic range. Scheduled brain scan and additional blood work within two weeks, at off-site facility in Boston, to examine the possibility of brain lesions. No neurodegenerative diseases in his immediate family history, but the prolonged delusions may indicate peduncular hallucinosis.

FURTHER NOTES: Private sessions and group therapy show that Bo is experiencing a dissociative fugue with select amnesia indicative of something far more serious than his previous diagnosis. This is supported by the mental break he had while visiting his parents April 13–20. Although Bo's paranoia has risen and he therefore is more reluctant to talk during therapy, he has alluded to hallucinations that seem to tie back to Sofía's death.

At parent conference prior to spring break, I discussed possibilities of a prolonged complex visual hallucination and grandiose delusion diagnosis and what that might mean for his parents. Sister indicated that some proclivity for violence existed prior to diagnosis and treatment. The tendency for violence has diminished with medication and therapy, replaced by more personal delusions that lead to withdrawal rather than demonstrative frustration.

The last sentence is written with a heavy hand, making it stand out on the page.

Regardless of the fate of the school, it is recommended that Bo be relocated to a more secure facility that can more closely monitor his health.

I let the folder drop, and the sound makes Ryan turn.

“Find anything?” he asks.

Ripples radiate around him. The filing cabinet melts like candle wax, then I blink and it's just the same as it was before.

“Here, look at this,” Ryan says. He uses his telepathy to float a folder from the filing cabinet to me, but I don't open it.

“These papers make us sound crazy,” I say finally, staring at the closed folder.

Ryan snorts. “Well, obviously.”

“No, but look.” I hold up the folder detailing Ryan's medical history, expecting Ryan to use his telepathy to bring it closer to him, but he just slams shut the cabinet drawer and walks across the office toward me.

Ryan scans the contents of the folder. “Yeah, so?”

“It says you're a narcissist and have anger issues.”

“Yeah?” Ryan shrugs and drops the folder on the desk.

“It says I'm paranoid and have delusions.”

Ryan doesn't hide his sardonic laugh. “I figured you for a schizo.”

I swallow down the bile rising in my throat. “We . . . we're not crazy. We're special.”

“Yeah, ‘special,'” Ryan repeats, mocking me. “Like on the ‘special' bus.”

“No, I mean . . . our powers?”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “This? Still?”

“You
floated
that folder over to me using your
telepathy
!”

Ryan picks up the folder and drops it back on the desk. “I
tossed
it to you using my
hands
,” he says. “Man, you
are
crazy. Like, really crazy. Damn.”

The walls in the Doctor's office ripple and twirl like oil mixing with vinegar.

I glance down at the information in my folder. All the Doctor's notes are about me after Sofía went missing. When Ryan's powers were growing stronger. When he started the illusion.

Ryan flips through his file, letting his eyes drift over the diagnosis the Doctor gave him. He casually gathers the forms and crams them into Dr. Franklin's paper shredder. He watches with a smile on his face as the Doctor's notes turn into nothing but long, thin strips.

“Let's go,” Ryan says, heading to the door.