My head was throbbing when Paul dropped me off that night, but I was fresh out of eggshells for a bath. What did that matter? I knew all the eggshells in the world couldn’t ease what I was feeling. There was no question that the jumps were taking a greater and greater toll on me. My brain was now firing on all cylinders, revving high. You do that to a car for too long, and the engine blows. I know about that—my dad makes a lot of his living off of people who blow out their engines. Or he used to. Or he still does in another place. I couldn’t even be sure which world that was. It was starting to swirl together like food on an overloaded Thanksgiving plate.

And that made me think of Paul, and whether or not he’d accept my family’s Thanksgiving invitation. This would be one Thanksgiving where I wouldn’t be stuffing my face, because I’d be too nervous about things going well. But what was I even thinking? Because if things went according to plan, Paul wouldn’t be there for Thanksgiving. Part of me was okay with that, and the other part of me hated that first part for it.

I was in bed, dozing in that uneasy state, when Katie called me. It was close to midnight now.

“I’ve been dying to call, but I couldn’t with Layton. So tell me! What changed?”

“Nothing,” I told her, plain and simple. “Nothing happened.”

“But . . . but we all saw that tackle . . .”

“Yeah, I’m sure Layton was going on all night about it, and how I almost lost the game for us, and how he saved the day.”

She didn’t deny it. But she didn’t talk about it either.

“You’re telling me that things didn’t change at all? Not even a little?”

“It was just an ordinary tackle. I didn’t hit hard enough to make a difference.”

“Then you have to hit harder!”

I wasn’t expecting that from her. Katie was a “you’ll do better next time” person. It unsettled me.

“Why are you so desperate to get back to a world you don’t even remember?” I asked her.

“Because this one is wrong,” she said. “I feel it more and more each day. Maybe not as strongly as you do, but I still feel it!”

“Katie . . . the old world isn’t any different for you,” I told her—and we both knew what I was talking about. “If you want it different, you have to be the one to change it.”

She was silent for a moment. Then the phone practically grew cold in my hand when she spoke.

“I didn’t call you to get a lecture.”