“What?” he says, voice low.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Do you remember anything strange happening with the lights that night?”
He thinks for a moment. “No, but the Wi-Fi was down. I came back to stream and I couldn’t connect.”
“So it was only happening out here,” I rationalize. “But—why?”
Sumner turns to William. “I don’t suppose,” he drawls, “you can explain?”
William clasps his hands behind his back. “I was working with a galvanometer and, much like this, it was going awry.” He nods to the pocket of his coat. “It’s recorded in my journal.”
My fingertips brush leather as I reach for it, handing it over. He flips through a few pages before passing it back, so I read thelast entry he’d logged:2nd of September, 1859: Galvanometer unreliable, odd occurrences this evening.
Sumner produces a pen from his jacket and pushes his sleeve up to his elbow, then begins writing equations on the inside of his forearm. One long, then a shorter one. When he finishes, he studies it, then shakes his head. “Look, if time travel exists, it would have been explained by now. Time is defined in one direction. Forward. Even if the magnetic vortex is the common denominator, it’s hard to theorize that someone can then travelbackin time. You can’t un-rot a banana that’s gone brown.”
In theory, this is true. But William is here, which disproves every concrete thing we’d come to understand about our physical world.
“Nothing is impossible when we’re talking about the universe,” I say, hearing my dad’s words tumble from my tongue. “There’s so much we don’t know. Even if we don’t fully understand something, it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Because clearly”—I swoop my arm toward William—“heisreal.”
William slides his gaze to mine. “Might there be a connection?”
I blink. “A connection?”
“Between you and me,” he clarifies.
Sumner shoots me a warning look. I know what it means, but a tender ache of guilt builds anyway. Thereisone connection—the not-insignificant fact that he founded Ivernia—though we swore not to tell him. That’s reason alone not to preemptively rule this out as a random occurrence.
My heart trips as William holds my gaze. Flecks of deep gold ring his irises, nearly identical to the sun-kissed strands in his hair. The faintest scattering of freckles dot his nose, and his two front teeth overlap slightly, a charming characteristic.
I am distracted by this beautiful boy who has no right being this gracious or attractive.
Is a different kind of connection possible? As inI’ve crossed barriers of space-time to find you because we are meant to be together?Anin-every-universe-I-will-love-youkind of fate?
“Probably not,” Sumner says flatly. “Let’s go to the lounge. It’s freezing out here.”
William smiles at me, pure and wholesome, before gesturingafter you. Heat zips straight to my head. William is charming. There. It won’t kill me to admit it. I am a sucker for an English accent because I am only human (and American), and it doesn’t help that said accent is attached to a face with exceptional bone structure and a smile that could melt arctic ice caps.
It also doesn’t help that he told me I have striking eyes.
When he acts like this, it’s easy to pretend he’s a regular student. Not a complex cosmic mystery.
When we reach the admin building, William, a fan of this technology, swipes us in with his badge and holds the door open.
Sumner steps in first, turning to me as I enter after him. “I keep thinking—”
“Try not to hurt yourself,” I volley.
He presses down the hint of a smirk. “I keepthinking,” herepeats, “about what would trigger daylight in the middle of the night.”
That’s what William said, hadn’t he? Back when he recalled the last dredges of his memory. But when we turn to see if he’d have any idea, he looks as lost as us.
Together, we bound down the hall toward the Forgotten Lounge. As we approach the door, I drop my gaze to his journal and flip to his last entry, my breath quickening as something occurs to me. We’ve gone over what we were doing and where we were, but we’ve neglected to pay attention towhen.
“Hey.” I stop in my tracks. “Did anything significant happen September second in 1859?”
It’s comical, really, how Sumner looks to William for confirmation while William looks to me, as though I’m able to answer my own question whenhe’sthe person who lived through this very specific point in time.
Suddenly, a voice that doesnotbelong to me, or Sumner, or William goes, “Actually—yes.”
