“Not a single bar,” I replied. “And the time isn’t working, either. It still says eight o’clock, but I know it’s later than that.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Is it? I … I can’t really remember.” He glanced at the sky, orange light flooding it with early sunset. “I just realized it’s been dusk for hours now. And when do you find the door?”
I said, “In the evenings.”
“Around the same time?”
I thought about it. “I think? Right before sunset. It disappears after dark, and I can’t find it on overcast days at all,” I realized as I said it.
He gave a slow nod. “Okay,” he said slowly, dropping his gaze to his watch. It also read eight o’clock. The minute hand barely ticked. Slow, like time was pulling at the hands, stretching one sunset into eternity. He rubbed his thumb across the smudged glass clockface and sighed. “Say I believe you,” he said, tearing his eyes away from his watch. “That I’m stuck—what—in a single evening in your future? And you keep visiting from my past? What then?”
“I . . . haven’t thought that far,” I admitted.
“Right,” he muttered, as if he hadn’t expected anything different. “So even with this revelation, I’m still stuck here.”
I wrung my fingers together, trying to think. If Harrie were here, she could think up a way out of this. She was the best at that. She could fix any story, she could solve any mystery. Escape rooms were too easy for her, and puzzle boxes were like morning brainteasers. If she were here, Rus wouldn’t be stuck. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake.
“Do you know anything else that could help?” I asked, hoping that Oliver was right, that maybe Rusdidknow about some secret garden in Lilymoor. “Do you remember anything about a garden from when you used to come here or . . . something you notice while I’m gone?”
He gave it a long thought before he admitted, “I don’t really remember much between your visits.” He pulled his fingers through his hair again, and by now it had come completely unstyled. “Like . . . I’m sleepwalking whenever you’re not here. I know I’m here, I just . . . can’t remember a lot of it. Now that I say it aloud, it sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?”
“Sort of,” I agreed.
He was trapped here, alone with only his own thoughts for company—a feeling I knew too well. It was lonely, and impossible to explain if you hadn’t lived your own personal hell of it, too. While I’d never been trapped in a garden, in some slants of light a hospital waiting room looked just the same. Time that never seemed to move, lingering in this liminal space,teetering just before the drop, where you had to come to terms with the new rest of your life.
I knew this kind of solitude.
I didn’t wish it on anyone.
I glanced back at the door, which was still slightly ajar from when I hadn’t closed it on my way in. “I wonder how long I can stay …”
He bristled like a cat at the thought. “And if that’s how I got trapped? I overstayed? You’ll be trapped, too, then,” he said, shaking his head. “No. That’s reckless.No.”
“But if we don’t know the rules then how can we break you out?”
“I’m not going to endanger you that way.”
I twisted my fingers tighter, until my fingertips were white from the strain. “But—”
He put a hand over mine. His palm was warm, and his fingers were gentle as he pried my hands apart. “You don’t have to help me,” he said calmly. “I’ll be okay. I’m not your responsibility.”
I pulled my hands out of his grip and pushed myself to my feet. “No,” I said forcefully. “I already promised I’d help you, and I keep my promises.”
“Sophie,” he said tiredly. “Please—”
“What if you never come to the bicentennial instead?” I interrupted. If he was trapped now, then what if I could stop him from ever coming to the party? “I’m in your past, right? So the Cyrus in my time hasn’t gotten trapped yet. I could convince you not to come. That solves everything, doesn’t it?”
He dropped his gaze to his watch again. The second hand gave another long, laborioustick.
“It’s worth a try,” I went on, because I knew he probably felt helpless, and this probably seemed like an impossible situation. But if I was right, and if Icouldconvince him to just . . . stay away from Lilymoor . . . maybe I’d never find him in the garden to begin with.
There was a curious part of me that wondered what would happen if Ididget to know him, and if I would find that smiling boy from the photo at his center, but that was dangerous to wonder. It sounded dangerously close tofriends.
“And with any luck,” I added, “we’ll never have to meet in the first place. Better for both of us.”
A dubious look crossed his face. “Sophie . . .”
“It’s as good a plan as any,” I decided as I stood. I grabbed my emotional support shovel from where it was staked by the tree; it was good to have it back. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rus—or, if things go according to plan and I get you to decide not to come to the party at all, I’ll be out of your life forever—”
