“It’s on your favorite topic. Time travel!” She reaches down and fishes a book off the cart. She hands it to me.

The cover has a boy standing in the middle of a light tunnel.

“He travels all the way back to the Jurassic era. Pretty cool, huh?”

I turn the book over in my hands. I stare at the boy on the cover, and irritation itches inside me. This boy did what I want to do. Also, for some reason, it’s almost always a boy on these type of books. Super annoying.

I point at the cover. “Isn’t that kind of a spoiler?”

“How so?”

“Because he’s standing in that light tunnel, so we already know that he managed to time-travel. Why should I read the book?”

Mrs. Euclid laughs a little. “I think the book is more about what happens after he time-travels. Not so much about whether or not he is able to.”

“Hm.” I’m not sure this book will be that useful for my research, but I thank Mrs. Euclid anyway.

I can hear kids talking in the hallway outside the library. Once upon a time, this was my favorite part of the day. School can be tough because it’s so much sitting.

But the end of the day was great. It’s when I got to see all my friends. Cora has always been my best friend, but I used to have other friends, too. Lots of them, actually. Like Scarlett and Ainsley, who I played soccer with on the weekends, and after our games, we’d beg our parents to take us out for ice cream, and then we’d have a sleepover at Ainsley’s house, building massive pillow forts in her basement.

And there was Jacob and Bea and Emerson, we’d all been friends since kindergarten. Last year before it happened, I ate lunch with them every day and then played tetherball with Bea at recess. I was always a better player than Bea, but I sometimes let her win when I knew she was having a bad day.

Now none of those kids talk to me.

They talk about me, sure.

But they don’t talk to me.

It’s okay, though. I even kind of actually get it. Like they can’t look at me and not see what my brother did. And I mean, I can’t look at me and not see what Parker did, so I don’t really blame any of them. Even though I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t feel like sandpaper scratching my skin every time one of them turns away in the hall, pretending like they don’t know me.

But like I said, it’s okay.

It’s okay because I’m going to fix it.

Mom has this lipstick that’s a shade of red called “Leading Lady.” Back before everything happened, when Mom still was busy with work, she would wear that lipstick. She said it was a bright spot that could get her through even the toughest and hardest of days. It was a fake-it-until-you-make-it sort of thing.