I search like I’ve never searched before. I don’t use my eyes or my ears, my tongue or my hands. The five senses I’ve spent my whole life developing are useless now. Where I am, those senses don’t exist.

Instead, I search for her with my mind. I feel for the contours that are nearly identical to—but not quite—mine.

Aha! There she is. Bright, sparkly. Shimmery on the edges and glowing in the center. A consciousness that is so young, so full of life, that it has to be the teenage Alice.

I mourn. Sorrow fills up my consciousness with no outlet for release, because I don’t have eyes to cry. I don’t have a mouth to wail. How can this be me from one week earlier? Just nine days, and I’ve changed so much. That’s what a heavy knowledge of the future will do. That’s the effect of bearing the burden of saving the world.

The object of my supposed affection smirks. “We can skip the note. Can’t say I blame you for falling for me. I mean, I’m a lovable guy. But have we actually met?”

I’m running out of time.

I need to find my older self before that earsplitting whistle; I need to zip up my consciousness to hers at the exact moment that past Alice jerks back. Stealthily, as Cristela instructed. Without my older self’s notice.

I start combing through the space again with renewed determination.

And…bingo! I feel her.

Instead of a consciousness overlaid on past Alice, my older self is chilling in the space underneath my younger self’s mind. Very sneaky, although I doubt she’s actively hiding. She’s probably just hanging back so she doesn’t interfere.

I fit together our jagged edges—carefully, slowly.

An earsplitting wolf whistle slices through the air, and I yank up the zipper.

Click. Our consciousnesses lock together, just as…

I jerk back, away from Bandit. Away from my disgrace. Without looking at him, I crash through the crowd.

Did my older self notice? Can she sense me here, attached to her consciousness? I don’t think so. She’s thoroughly distracted by past Alice fleeing the basketball court.

“Whatever you do, don’t fall for this boy,” the Voice warns. “It’ll only make what you have to do later harder.”

And then I’m hurtling through a black and bodiless void once again. Only this time?

I’m going to the future.

Chapter 45

Chapter 45

I roar back to myself. No disorientation this time. No fogginess. I know exactly where I am. Who I am—and who I’m not.