Time After Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the wool blanket she covered me with a little earlier. “What do you make of this?”
    She reaches out, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and her forefinger. “Yeah, that’s definitely a problem.”
    “Exactly what I was thinking.”
    I start to pull the blanket back, but before I can, Anna moves from the coffee table to the couch, sealing the opening shut with her weight. “What did you want to tell me earlier?” Her dark eyes fix on mine and I feel a sudden chill that hits my core. I wasn’t expecting this turn in the conversation, and I’m trying to decide how to start, but she doesn’t give me time.
    “You aren’t staying this year, are you?”
    I shake my head no.
    She rolls her shoulders back and looks up at the ceiling. “I knew it. Every time I’ve mentioned something about school, you’ve looked away and changed the subject.” Her gaze ping-pongs around the room. Now she won’t look at me. “Why not?”
    “I can’t.”
    “Can’t or won’t?”
    “Can’t.” I sit up so I can face her straight on. “Look, I’ve been experimenting with this all summer. I even told everyone I was going on a two-week climbing trip and took off by myself. I pitched a tent where no one would find it and went to London. I wandered around, enjoyed the sights—missing you the whole time, by the way—but after three days, I was knocked back to the tent. The migraine was excruciating, but just like I did when I first got to Evanston, I immediately closed my eyes and brought myself back. It worked. I stayed another day, almost two. But then I got knocked back to the tent again. I kept bringing myself back, but each time…” I trail off, shaking my head, remembering migraines so debilitating I could barely open my eyes for nearly an hour. “The side effects got worse, not better. After a week, I closed my eyes and nothing happened.”
    “Why could you stay last time?”
    I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think it’s because Brooke wasn’t where she was supposed to be, you know? Like…things were off and once they were righted again…” Anna just stares at me, and I look at her, trying to figure out what she’s thinking. “The two must be connected, because once she got back, I couldn’t return here. And now it looks like my ability to stay here has changed too.”
    She still won’t look at me and she clearly doesn’t know what to say. She brings her hands to her forehead and rubs hard, like that will help the information sink in or something. “So, what? This is how it’s going to be?” she asks.
    “I don’t know. This is the way it is right now.”
    I feel horrible. Back in the beginning, I prepared her for the fact that I couldn’t stay here with her. I never should have let her believe that I could. I never should have let myself believe that I could.
    “But I want to come back. A lot. I figure I can’t visit too frequently or your parents will get suspicious, you know, but we can come up with, like, a schedule or something.”
    She doesn’t say anything.
    “If you think about it, this is how we always thought it was going to be, right up until Vernazza. Remember?” I stop one step short of saying what I’m really thinking: You already agreed to be part of the most screwed-up long-distance relationship on the planet.
    She wrings her hands while she weighs the pros and cons of everything I’ve just said. We’ll be together, but not every day, like we were before, and not on either of our terms. We won’t go to the same school or hang out with the same people and, at least while we’re both still living at home with our parents, we’ll spend most of our days seventeen years away from each other. So many people take proximity for granted. We just want to be in the same place at the same time.
    Her eyes are fixed on the carpet. “I can handle a lot, you know? I can handle everything about you and what you can do, but what happened last time…I can’t let that happen to me