Blue caught up to me just as the gleaming yellow Checkerboard Taxi pulled up to the curb. He caught my hand. His eyes pleaded. “Did I do something wrong?”
I shook my head, staring at his shoes. The reflection from the fountain sent orange light dancing across the leather.
“Did you remember where your aunt lives?” His voice was soft. Heartbroken.
I nodded.
He shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. I could feel his pulse throbbing in his hand. His skin felt like fire. He started to say something several times, but couldn’t seem to find the right words.
“I left the money in Helena’s bedside drawer,” I said. “I want you to have it.”
He furrowed his brow. “What? No, Alex–”
“I want you to pay off Frank’s debts. Then I want you and Helena to start fresh. Save up all the money you make and keep it hidden.” He kept trying to interrupt me, but I refused to let him. “I’ve already made up my mind. And I don’t care what you believe about taking money from a girl. You’ll take it, and you’ll do as I say. It’s my money, I can do whatever I want with it. Now promise me. Promise you’ll pay off his debts and you’ll never work for Fifth Street again.”
For a long time, he was speechless. Finally he cleared his throat and nodded. “I’ll pay you back.” His voice was thin.
“No, you won’t. Then you’ll just be trying to pay off another Frank. I won’t allow it.”
He let a ghost of a smile appear at the corners of his mouth. He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “You get a little bossy when you’re tired, you know.”
I tried to smile, but it came off as more of a wince than anything. I looked down so he wouldn’t see it. “This was the best night of my life. I want you to know that.” I spoke the words into his breast pocket. Then I tore my hand from his and climbed into the cab. I slid onto the bench seat in the back, and Blue latched the door behind me. He reached in through the window and found my hand again.
“You don’t have to go just yet,” he said. “You could stay one more night.” His voice wavered. He refused to look me in the eye.
I couldn’t look at him either. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye.
The taxi pulled away from the curb, and Blue’s hand slipped from mine. I turned around and looked out the back window. He stood there, a hunched shadow, a bent frame, watching me go. His hands were in his pockets.
“Where to, miss?” the cab driver asked.
Through blurred tears, I handed him a five dollar bill. “As far as this will take me.”
CHAPTER 12
IMPACT
When I return to my garden in Limbo, Porter is there waiting for me. He’s still wearing his black polo and orange ball cap, but the laugh lines around his watery eyes are long gone.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says, storming up to me and grabbing me by my coat collar. “Do you think this is some sort of game?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear,” I say, cowering. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to touch the soulmarks.”
“I’m not talking about touching soulmarks. I’m talking about ignoring me when I told you to leave. I’m talking about staying as long as you could in that body with no regard for the rules. I’m talking about making an impact.” He pushes me away like he can’t stand the sight of me, and I stumble backwards. He turns his back to me, pacing. Steam rises from his shoulders.
“I thought we were supposed to use time travel to help people,” I say. “I thought that’s what I did.”
He wheels around and aims a finger at me. “That’s not what you did. You played dress-up while you chased after some ridiculous teenage fantasy. You can’t make that much of an impact on the past. You can’t fall in love.”
“I didn’t.”
He gives me this cynical look that makes me think twice about my answer. I hadn’t fallen in love, had I? It was one day. One date.
“What about him, then?” Porter says. “You don’t think he fell in love?”
I don’t know how to respond. I’m too shocked to form a coherent sentence. Surely Blue hadn’t fallen in love with me. We shared a kiss. A single kiss. We held hands. It didn’t mean he was in love.
Porter squeezes the bridge of his nose like he has a migraine. “Our impact on the world as a whole, as humans, is microscopic compared to the ebb and flow of the universe. We think we’re so important that if we go back in time and move a pebble in the street in 1943, we’ll send the world toppling off its axis. It’s simply not true. What can change the course of the world, however, is the impact we make on individual lives. This is why we never stay longer than a few hours, and we never manipulate historical events. We never interfere in the lives of historical figures. We are spectators only. We are listeners. Gatherers of knowledge. Now and again we move something – an artifact, a document – to a secret location so we can recover it in Base Life, but we do so after years of meticulous research. We only take things that are deemed lost or destroyed in the present time. We change things that no one will notice. We don’t make an impact. But you?” His short laugh is dry and hollow. “You broke just about every rule we have – short of killing someone – on your first run. I think that must be some kind of record.”
I sink down to the black and hug my knees to my chest. I feel like throwing up.
I hate screwing things up. I don’t take things apart and leave the pieces scattered across the floor. I finish what I start, and I make it work better than it did before.
Porter heaves a sigh. The steam rising from his shoulders starts to fade. “We all remember our first loves, Alex. Second and third loves come and go, but first loves…” He pauses as though recalling his own. “They change our lives. They make an impact. That boy is going to make decisions now that he wouldn’t have made if he hadn’t met you. Those decisions will change the course of his existence. They’ll make a ripple effect. It will change things on Earth. If you go back to your Base Life now, there’s no telling what could be different. He may decide to take a different path in life because you left him that money. And worse yet, he may miss out on another love because he was looking for you or waiting for you to return. In that case, a child who was meant to live may never be born. Generations would disappear overnight. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
My tongue is thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth. Of all the things I could possibly screw up, I had to go and delete entire generations from existence. With my first kiss.
“Is there a way to fix it?” My throat is so dry, I can hardly hear my own words.
“You think I would’ve let you go if there wasn’t?”
I scramble to my feet. “What is it then? I’ll do anything.”
Porter hesitates. He looks like he doesn’t trust me. “You’ll have to go back to 1927.”
“OK. Then what do I do? Tell him he can’t keep the money? Tell him I really am married to a mob boss?”
“No. This time you won’t be speaking to the boy at all. You’ll go back to when you first landed, when you woke up in his apartment that morning. You will dress yourself in whatever suitable clothes you can find, and you will sneak out without speaking to the boy or his mother. No sleeping in until lunchtime. No pickled cucumber soup. No date. No kissing. And you’ll take the money in the bedside table with you.” I open my mouth to interject, but he continues. “You’ll take a taxi back to the bakery, leave your host body there, and report back here. Understand?”