Emma’s mouth hangs open as she breathes in shock until her trembling hands cover it. “Mallory!”
I don’t know what to do. My body is frozen in time, forced to watch Emma fall apart when I was so confident I could fix it for her.
Emma steps back, head shaking. “She jumped,” she says, voice cracking. She grabs me, shaking me by the shoulders. Her eyes are wide and scared. “We need to do something! We need to get help!”
She takes off running but I speed up to her, grabbing her wrist. I force her to look at me. “Emma, stop!”
She tries to shake me off. “I have to get down there! I need to help her!”
“She’s not here.”
Her mouth falls open and she catches her breath. “What are you talking about?”
“Look.” I point at the water. “She’s not there.”
She practically throws herself over the side, peering down at the water. There’s no sign of Mallory even though the water is shallow.
I’m shaking because I know this is the same bridge Emma fell off, and this only confirms what Emma told me. When she fell off the bridge, she traveled through time. She disappeared.
“We never found her body,” she cries.
How could she have left that part out? The answer is so obvious. If Mallory isn’t here, she has to be somewhere else. “What if the reason you never found her body is because she traveled in time too?”
Emma slowly turns. “What?”
“You told me this is where you fell, right?”
She nods, face so pale I think she might faint.
“If Mallory ended up in the past, wouldn’t someone have found her?” My words spill out all at once because I have to make this all okay.
She kicks the ground. “What are you trying to say? Spit it out already.”
“You ended up a year in the past. What if she ended up a year in the future?”
She covers her mouth, looking at me like I suddenly have all the answers, and I wish I did, but I’m purely guessing.
“Maybe she’s there right now.”
“You’re right,” she says. Then she swallows, looking down at the water again. “I have to jump.”
I grab her, scared if I let go, she’ll do something she shouldn’t. “What are you talking about? You can’t do that.”
“I have to! What if she’s drowning? I have to save her!”
My grip tightens. “No. There has to be another way.” There has to be a way for me to keep Emma next to me and save Mallory at the same time. A way that doesn’t involve Emma possibly jumping to her death.
“Let me go,” she says. “I won’t let her drown!”
“But what if you get hurt?” I ask, stating the obvious fact she’s somehow forgotten. “Do you see the rocks?”
“I won’t. I promise.” She struggles to free herself from me.
“What if it doesn’t work? You didn’t change the past, so what makes you think this will work?”
She stops fighting and looks at me like I just smacked her. “What are you talking about? You didn’t hurt Mallory. We did change the past.”
I know she’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel better. I can’t let her go. “What if we’re wrong?”
