Page 44 of Parallel

“Wait!” I cry. “Wait. Please!”

She turns around the corner and I lunge forward, my hand reaching out…and passing through thin air.

Only her clothes remain, in a pile on the floor.

I slide down the wall, staring blankly at the vacant space where she should be standing. Is it possible she really just did it? Is it possible I could do it too?

I think I’m starting to believe.

21

QUINN

When Nick finds me, I’m still on the floor, slumped against the wall. “Quinn,” he says, dropping to his knees and gripping my shoulders. “What happened?”

“I just watched a teenage girl disappear in front of my eyes,” I whisper. “She was there, and then she wasn’t.” I nod at the clothes in my lap. “These are hers.”

I wait for him to smirk, to look at me the same way he did Dr. Grosbaum, but it doesn’t happen. His eyes meet mine and in them I see faith. His belief in me makes my throat tighten. There’s been too little of that in my life. “Do you have any idea who she was?”

I shake my head. “None. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but…I think it’s possible Dr. Grosbaum wasn’t quite as crazy as we thought.”

“Did she say where she was going?” he asks. “What about her clothes? Did you check them?” He reaches for the clothes in my lap, digging into the skirt’s deep pockets and pulling a handful of paper out. Candy wrappers, a few dollars, and something else. He holds it aloft after he’s examined it. “It’s a concert ticket for tonight. It’s in Baltimore, but we could make it if we left right now.”

“If she doesn’t have her ticket, is she still going to go?”

A small smile cracks his face. “Are you really under the impression that a teenager capable of vanishing in midair is going to find a missing concert ticket an obstacle?”

I laugh, the sound slightly unhinged. I can’t believe we’re discussing this, and I can’t believe it really may be true. “I guess not.”

He pulls me to my feet. “Then let’s go to a concert.”

By the time we’ve made it through the tangle of traffic and construction on 95, found the club, and bought our tickets, the opening band—who I’ve never heard of—is done, and the crowd is chanting for the headliner, who I’ve also never heard of. Fortunately, the show is pretty loosely attended so we are able to push all the way to the front of the stage with ease. We get there and then walk all the way back, but she is nowhere to be found. She was probably my only chance to understand this and it just slipped through my fingers. My shoulders drop. “She’s not here.”

“We could wait…” Nick urges. “Maybe…”

“It’s over,” I tell him.

His jaw shifts. “I feel like you’re giving up.”

“There’s nothing to give up. You can’t possibly believe that—” I come to such a quick halt that he walks right into me. “She’s here,” I whisper.

She’s ditched the sweatshirt in favor of a half-shirt and is wearing a plaid school skirt just like earlier…only now she’s got it rolled up well above mid-thigh. And she’s sitting at the bar surrounded by men I recognize from the posters and T-shirts being sold at a table near the entrance. The opening act, I assume. Each of them at least a decade older than her.

“That’s our lead?” he asks with obvious skepticism.

“Does she look any less reliable than Dr. Grosbaum?” I counter.

“You have a point,” he says, placing his hand at the small of my back. “After you.”

I hustle through the crowd more easily than Nick because of my size. When I arrive, I lean against the corner so I can make eye contact with one time-traveling teenager and the four losers currently focused on her—one of whom is now holding a shot glass to her glossy lips.

“You guys know she’s in high school, right?” I demand. Five faces turn to me, and the girl narrows her eyes. It’s perhaps not the greatest idea to make an enemy of the only person who can help me, but so be it. “And I don’t know where you’re from, but statutory rape is kind of frowned upon around here.”

The one beside her sets the shot glass down. “She said she was eighteen.”

I roll my eyes. For fuck’s sake. The girl barely looks like she’s out of middle school. “Look at her. She’s fourteen, if that.”

The girl scowls at me. “I’m not fourteen. And you’re being a total buzzkill.”