“I was thinking it would be fun to go as a group. You and me, Steph and Trevor. What do you say?”

I walked to my window and watched my dad’s car drive away. “Your winter formal? I don’t even go to your school. Besides, would Stephanie even go for that?”

“So are you telling me you don’t want to go to the dance with me?” Rowan asked.

“I would just feel a little weird going to your school’s dance.” The doorbell rang, and I rolled off my bed to go answer it.

“Trevor thinks it’s a good idea.”

Trevor was in on this plan? Suddenly, everything was different. “He does?”

“He said I should ask you.”

Maybe Trevor didn’t understand that when I told him I had ended up with him in the other version of my life, that meant I wanted to end up with him in this version. Or maybe he wanted me to be there. “Okay?”

“Was that a question?”

“No, it was an answer. Yes, I’ll go.”

“Awesome. I’ll pick you up at six on Friday.”

I hung up my phone and answered the door. Trevor stood there, and I almost burst into tears from happiness and relief. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. “I just had the worst fight ever with my dad.”

When his whole body went still, I realized I didn’t have these privileges anymore. I let go and backed up with a mumbled apology.

“No.” He tentatively ran a hand down my arm. “It just took me by surprise.”

“Come in.”

He stepped inside and took everything in. I reminded myself, again, that he didn’t have the same memories I did. So he’d never been inside my house before.

“Um.” My eyes stung, and I pressed my fingers to them. “I’m sorry. This is just so hard for me.” I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. “Can I get you anything?”

“No. I’m good.” He followed me to the couch, where we both sat down. “Has Rowan called you yet?”

“Yes, just barely. Like right before you got here.”

“Good. You said yes, right?”

“Only because he said it was your idea.”

“I wish I could ask you. I asked Stephanie after they”—he paused, then lowered his voice—“messed with my memories. I thought it was easier than having her hate me.”

I smiled. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“I want to, though. If I could un-ask Stephanie I would, but I think that would be very rude at this point.”

“It would.” My stomach twisted when I realized that at some point Stephanie was going to find out that Trevor and I were . . . were what? Getting to know each other? I was in love with him and he was in I-might-one-day-want-to-date-you with me? This was so complicated.

It was quiet for a few minutes, and Trevor broke the silence with a small chuckle. “This is weird. I’m being weird. Talk to me. Tell me about you.”

An image of him telling his mother all about me in our other life flashed through my mind, and I burst into tears. He looked like a deer caught in headlights for a second, then pulled me toward him, wrapping his arms around me.

“Shh.” He petted my hair. “Addison, it’s going to be fine. We’ll figure it out. Listen, even before this, before you told me about . . .” He trailed off. We had agreed not to talk about it out loud. “I was interested in you. I threw a shoe at your face and nearly kissed you. Don’t you remember?”

I nodded against his chest. “I swear I’m not a baby.”

He laughed.

“I just miss you.” My heart ached as I said it.

He hugged me tighter. “We’ll figure it out.”

The garage door swung shut, and a set of keys hit the counter. Trevor stood, almost whacking me in the head when he did. “Hello, sir,” he said.

My dad finished his brisk walk into the living room and stopped in front of Trevor. “Hi. Who are you?”

Ugh. My dad was not trying to get off my bad list at all. “This is Trevor.”

My dad’s jaw tightened. He probably remembered that he had asked me to stay away from Trevor because the CC agents had mentioned him.

“Good to meet you, sir.” He extended his hand, and my dad shook it. Trevor knew my dad’s ability. I wondered if that was intimidating.

“We were just leaving,” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“Downtown.” I looked at him, waiting for that to register. For him to realize that was where my grandfather’s apartment was.

He didn’t. “Be home by curfew.”

Outside, we stopped by Trevor’s car. “I wanted to check on my grandpa. I’ve been worried about him. Did you have plans before I kind of threw you into mine?”

“As long as I don’t have to eat anything there, I’m good. Let’s go see your grandfather.”

When my grandpa answered the door, I realized just how worried I’d been. Even though I had talked to him, with that guy lurking in his apartment, I thought maybe they had done something to him. But there he was, stick and headphones in place, just as crazy as ever. I was getting used to his craziness, though. It made me smile.

“Hi. I brought you seeds.” I held out a pack of squash seeds I had bought on a whim the other day when I saw them in the checkout line at the store.

He looked at the pack and then offered me a big smile. “Addie. That’s so nice. Come in, come in.”

I scanned his living room. Everything looked just as it had last time we were here. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course.”

I eyed the toaster. It wasn’t beeping or flashing warnings at me, so supposedly that meant there were no foreign devices around. They may have been monitoring him more closely now, but I hoped they still thought he was fairly harmless. Because he was.

Trevor seemed to follow my cue and leafed through the stack of newspapers he’d been so interested in before. “Any unexpected visitors?”

“Yes. You’re here.”

“What have you been up to?”

He flicked the pack of seeds. “Growing things. And making things.”

He brought me the black box from his table.

“What is it exactly?”

“Talk into it.”

I put the box up to my mouth. “Hello.”

It repeated my word back to me. If my grandpa wanted a recorder, couldn’t he just buy one? They did have that kind of stuff here, didn’t they? Maybe they didn’t. “Cool.”

“Let Trevor try,” he said. When he handed it to Trevor, he said, “Say a few sentences.”

Trevor looked at me. I just shrugged, my sign that meant, Humor him. We both know he’s on the crazy side.

“Hi,” Trevor said into the box and then, like me, must’ve run out of words to say to an inanimate object, because he tried to hand the box back after it said hi back.

My grandpa was too busy looking at the top of Trevor’s head to be bothered to take the box. “You’re tall, young man.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How long have you been that tall?”

“Um . . .” He smiled, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “A while now.”

I laughed and grabbed the box from Trevor, putting it on the table. “We better go. It was fun to see your stuff.” I had just wanted to check on him. Now that I knew he was fine, I wanted to spend some time with Trevor away from reminders of the Compound.

My grandfather pulled me into another hug, and for the first time since I’d met him again, my body relaxed. It was nice having my grandpa back in my life, especially because my father and I weren’t exactly getting along. I hugged him back. It was hard to believe my father had robbed me of this relationship for the last ten years.

On the way down in the elevator, Trevor said, “Tell me three things.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

“From our other life. Three things.”

Thoughts and feelings raced through my body. I wanted to tell him everything in that moment, but I loved the way he limited it. Three things. Slow steps. So much like Trevor. Which three things, though? Maybe I should just start with the first three things.

“We met at a football game.”

He smiled. “Very appropriate.”

“My dad forced me to go sit in the student section, and there you were, an open seat next to you. It was fate.”

The elevator dinged as we reached ground level. We stepped out and started walking to his car.

“Okay, thing two. The following Monday at school we ran into each other in the library, where I found out you hate classics.”

“Classic what?”

I sighed and shook my head. “Classic books.”

“Oh yeah. Yuck. You like them?”

I laughed. “And thing number three. Because of this very attitude about classics, I wrote you a note about being attacked by the decaying, awoken-from-the-grave body of Charles Dickens.”

He laughed. “You threatened me with zombie Dickens? Nice.”

“And that’s when I decided we were going to be best friends.”

“Best friends?”

“I was delusional.”

We reached his car, and he opened the door for me. I took in the littered mess that coated the floor and smiled. It was so nice to have my memory back.

CHAPTER 34

Laila: When wrong, is it absolutely necessary to admit it?

Eli slept, and for the first time that night my anxiety eased. The chip seemed to help. I had watched the mind patterns for a moment, but they only made me dizzy. For him they seemed to take the knots out of his neck.

“Is he going to be okay?” Derek asked. I hadn’t realized he was awake.

“He’ll be fine. Where were you earlier?”

“Dad said we had to leave. Said Eli needed some quiet.”

“Dad took you somewhere?”

“We went to the field by the school and threw around a football.” He took off his socks, folded them together, and threw them at my head. “I know, shocking, right?”

“Yes. Good night, Derek.” I picked up the socks and, when I reached the door, pelted him with them. He laughed and then lifted his blanket up in front of him, probably worried I’d find more ammo.

My dad watched television in the living room, and I waited for a while, trying to collect my thoughts, not sure exactly what I wanted to say.

“What?” he asked from where he sat. “Spit it out. Your thoughts are so loud I can’t watch my game.”

“I’m worried about Eli.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Fine like you? Because you’re far from fine.”

“I don’t know, Laila. He’ll learn to deal with it in his own way. Whatever way that is.”

That wasn’t exactly the reassurance I was hoping for, but when could I ever count on comfort from my father? The memory of my brother in the closet, pillow clamped over his head, seized me. Maybe for the first time in my life, I could understand why my dad would want to suppress that. I grabbed my keys off the counter. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.” Not that he ever did.