Alice shoves his shoulder. “I’m only saying,we don’t have to just let the future play out—we can take matters into our own hands.”
“Right, yes, there are actually two main schools of thought regarding this,” Henry says, shifting forward in his seat, his shoulders straight and eyes alert as if he’s about to make an intelligent point in class. “To drastically simplify them both—this philosopher called William Livingston believes that the future is set in stone. Everything is predetermined, so no matter what you do between now and the night of the vision, you’ll only be playing into fate’s hands. His theory strips away any individual agency; we might as well all be hired actors, going through dialogue and stage directions and monologues that have been scripted out for us by a higher power.”
My stomach sinks. “Wow, that’s super comforting.”
“But that’s only what Livingston believes,” Henry says. “This other philosopher, Ma Mengxu, argues the precise opposite. He considers the future to be fragile and malleable, and he interprets the butterfly effect to be proof of that.”
“The butterfly effect?” I echo, my head spinning.
Henry nods, and recites, as if he has a textbook open right in front of him. “A seemingly trivial change in one part of a nonlinear system can trigger significant nonlinear effects elsewhere.”
“That sentence means nothing to me,” I tell him.
“It basically means that one event leads to another,” Alice explains. “Even something small could set up a chain reaction down the line and act as the catalyst for a huge change in your life.”
“For instance,” Henry says, “a few months ago, I turned on my notifications forNational Geographic.”
I blink. “Congratulations?”
“Well, yes, thank you. But my point is,becauseI’d turned on my notifications, I received an alert about an exciting scientific discovery as I was leaving the auditorium from the Top Achievers’ Assembly. I had originally been planning on heading down to my father’s company, you see, but after I read theNational Geographicupdate, I had a new train of thought for my science project, and so I decided to go straight to my dorm and make my edits. And because I was in my dorm room at that time, Alice was able to find me when she was panicking about suddenly turning invisible. If she hadn’t sought me out, we might have never come up with the Beijing Ghost app, and you wouldn’t have been our first client, and you wouldn’t have found out about Alice’s invisibility powers, and the three of us wouldn’t be sitting together in this room right now,” Henry says. “Now, Livingston would argue that us being here is inevitable, but Ma Mengxu would make the case that this current moment is comprised of all the little moments that preceded it, and there are hundreds and thousands of alternate timelines where things played out very differently.”
“To sum it up,” I say slowly, “Livingston thinks I’m fucked and I should just call it quits and let the fire happen, because itwill, whether I like it or not, but my man Ma Mengxu thinks I’ve got a shot at changing the future.”
“I wouldn’t phrase itquitelike that,” Henry says, “but effectively, yes.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m like, a way bigger fan of Ma Mengxu’s school of thought,” Alice tells me, and I feel a deep rush of gratitude for her.
“I’m a big fan too,” I say. “So—okay. Okay. If I’m going to change the future, then...”
“I believe Ares is key here,” Henry says. “Your fates are intertwined, and judging from what you described in the vision, he’s the one who’s setting out to ruin your life. If you want to change the future, you’ll have to stop him, somehow.”
“But, like. How?” I ask.
The room lapses back into silence.
“Maybe we should revisit murder,” Alice mutters after a beat.
“Alice.”
“What? How else do we stop him from going after Chanel? Unless he has a sudden change of heart—”
“Wait,” I say, springing up on my feet, my blood abuzz with adrenaline. “That’s exactly what has to happen. If I can manipulate him into likingme, he won’t want to hurt me, and he’ll have no reason to set my house on fire.”
Henry doesn’t look super convinced. “Emotions aren’t so easily manipulable or quantifiable, Chanel—”
“Emotions areverymanipulable,” I counter, tossing my hair over my shoulder.
“Even if that were true, how could you measure whetherhe likes you enough? How would you know if your plan is working?”
“I just need him to ask me out to prom,” I say, and as soon as the words leave my mouth, I can see it happening. The alternate timeline, a future where everything works out the way it’s supposed to. My home will remain intact, and I’ll be crowned prom queen. “Think about it,” I urge them. “He’s already been nominated as prom king... and the prom queen and king always stay back until midnight for photos and the special yearbook feature, right? So if he goes to prom as my date, spends the entire night with me, and we win, it’s physically impossible for him to be setting my house on fire at the same time.”
“It could work, in theory,” Henry says slowly, exchanging another look with Alice. “And you know I’m fond of the theoretical. But in practice... how would you go about doing that?”
Ares’s face flashes through my mind again, the memory that isn’t a memory: those sharklike, remorseless eyes, the lighter gripped in his bruised hand, the glow of the flames against the hard lines of his profile. I try to imagine those features softening into a look of pure affection, his hands gentle around my waist, slow dancing under the chandeliers. Itdoesseem difficult, almost impossible. But I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent the vision from happening. I’ll pry his ribs apart if it means forcing my way into his heart.
“Maybe we should break it down into steps,” Alice suggests, turning to Henry. “Can you bring out your whiteboard?”
He perks up immediately. “Give me a moment,” he says.He returns with an entire set of markers in every color, and a whiteboard almost the same size as his plasma TV. At the top, he’s already written the title:How to Make Ares Fall for Chanel in Three Weeks.Then he nods at me, expectant. “Well?”
