“Yeah, well, I like to keep an open mind.” She nodded at the group of guys in black sitting in the back of the bar. They were talking over each other now, getting rowdy, drunk. “Unfortunately, they aren’t quite as evolved. Once they figure out who you are, they’re going to beat the crap out of you.” She shrugged. “You may as well have a drink first.”

Ash started to stand. “Maybe I should—”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, sit down. I’m messing with you. They’re all too drunk to care who you are.”

Ash wasn’t sure whether that was true, but he slowly lowered himself back down to his barstool, still feeling uneasy.

“Besides, things are different now.” The girl turned back to her matchbook tower, and one of her sleeves pulled back to reveal a smudgy, black tattoo in the shape of a circus tent, the words the past is our right scrawled below it. “Now that Quinn and Roman can go back in time, everyone thinks this is all going to change. This morning on the docks, I heard someone say they were going to try to reverse the damage from the mega-quake during their next trip back in time.” She cocked an eyebrow and said, her voice almost challenging. “Even you have to admit that would be amazing.”

Ash didn’t know what to say. It would be amazing; he just didn’t think it was possible.

“I had a big house out in West Seattle before the mega-quake,” the girl said, almost to herself. “I was supposed to start college in the fall.” She gave her head a shake and added, with a small laugh, “Who knows? If they really do fix things, maybe I still can.”

Ash raised his glass. “I hope it works out for you.”

Ash figured it’d be easier to concentrate on the textbooks without his friends around distracting him, and he was surprised to find that he’d been right. There was a rhythm to the numbers that was immediately familiar, like an old song he didn’t realize he remembered all the lyrics to. Poring over them, he could almost imagine he was back in the Professor’s workshop at WCAAT in the days before the earthquake.

Ash had always loved that workshop. It hadn’t looked like how he might imagine a professor’s study should look, all old leather and heavy wooden desks, but had more of an artist’s studio vibe. A massive drafting table stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by easels where the Professor would prop oversize notebooks filled with scribbled equations and sketches and theories. One entire wall was taken up by bookshelves, a vintage ladder standing before them so the Professor could reach the highest shelves.

Ash could still remember the smell of that place—the cigarettes the Professor swore he didn’t smoke and the charred scent of burnt coffee—him and Zora and Roman lying on their stomachs on the faded rugs that Natasha had thrown over the concrete floors to keep out the chill. The gentle rustle of turning pages and sunlight melting through the windows, the Professor’s footsteps pacing the floor between the three of them. He used to tell long, rambling stories about Stephen Hawking and Nikola Tesla, or lecture them on the different time traveler’s paradoxes. But if what you do when you go back in time actually influences what you do in the past, then the solution to the theory is far more interesting. . . . Roman glancing at Ash from across the room and rolling his eyes dramatically. Ash snickering, trying to cover it up with a cough.