Tannis wrinkled her nose. “Are those . . . binoculars?”
“Yep,” I said, though they weren’t like any I’d ever seen before. Clunky, with strange knobs and gears and lenses longer than they should have been. They looked like a cross between a small telescope with two barrels and a brass View-Master, dirty with bits of green where the metal had oxidized.
Forgotten by some old bird-watcher or hunter, I thought, turning them over. Someone sheltering in the cave or camping up here. I rubbed the lenses, which were clear and unbroken. I’d have Morris Headley at the antiques shop check them out. He always had junk like this in the window. If I were lucky, maybe they’d turn out to be worth a few bucks.
I put them to my eyes and turned toward Trip, expecting to see his face magnified when I looked. I even had a joke ready—I knew you had a big head, man, but . . .
Only, I didn’t see Trip through the glasses at all.
There was a show of colors and light instead. Patterns swirled slowly in and around one another, like when my mom made squash soup, her wooden spoon cutting white lines of cream as she stirred in figure eights. In the binoculars the lines twisted, folding in and out, new colors emerging. A kaleidoscope, I realized vaguely. An expensive one. Not like they sold at Miller’s General in town. Some rich kid’s toy, I thought thickly. I was mesmerized by the changing view, fluid purple merging into yellow, then green, a burst of red. A tourist must have brought it up here.
I could hear Trip and Natalie talking. Someone saying my name. I tried to drag my eyes away and listen, but it dawned on me just then that there was something else.
A picture was taking shape slowly, coming out of the colors, but also, not. Something was happening somewhere between the gyrations in the kaleidoscope and the dead center of my brain. Like the ghost images you see when you stare at brightness for too long, shadows burned into the back of your vision.
It was a room, I realized. That shape, a bed. A dresser behind. There were clothes on the floor and hung over chairs. A table, books, computer. The image was sharpening, and I saw a window. Outside, a blue sky broken by a building, long and uneven, with row after row of tiny squares. The whole picture was there but not, vivid but translucent, like something remembered from a dream.
Then suddenly there was movement. A rustling in the bed.
The image shifted as a figure rolled over and sat up.
I stared, focused, and sucked in my breath.
Holy shit.
It was me.
CHAPTER 2
“RILEY?” TRIP’S VOICE WAS FAR AWAY.
In the glasses, patterns were still swirling, moving in and out of each other. I watched the scene unfold, projected in front of or behind the changing colors.
The guy looked like he—I—hadn’t shaved for days. My hair was long enough to curl around my ears in a way it hadn’t since I was ten. I looked exhausted, rubbing my scruffy face like I’d just woken up from a two-month nap.
Then something moved and I realized the Riley in the picture wasn’t alone.
There was someone beside me in that bed.
I watched my other self turn toward the rustling sheets that were twisting slowly as a girl pushed up on one arm, a glint of metal by her throat. Her skin was soft and silky down to her shoulder, where her body disappeared, bare, beneath the covers.
Sarah.
I dropped the binoculars. A dull clang sounded as they hit a rock. A weird noise escaped my throat, every nerve in my body jangling.
“Hey!” Trip said, surprised.
I’d recognized her faster than I’d recognized myself, had known almost before I saw her face—the sense of it deep inside me. She was thinner, beautiful, but too pale. Her hair was heavy and dark and messy in a way I’d never seen it. Bed-head, my brain whispered. Because she was in bed. With you. My heart was jackhammering, and I felt like my face was on fire.
What the hell?
“Riley?” It was her voice drifting across the fire. “You okay?”
I nodded, trying to swallow, not daring to look up.
“Hey.” Trip gripped my shoulders. My chest was still pounding so hard, I wouldn’t have ruled out a heart attack. Could you have one at seventeen? “What’s wrong, man?” I had a flashback to third grade, when I’d blacked out after Paul Peterson punched me because he thought I’d stolen his Lugia EX Pokémon. Trip had sat beside me with that same watchful look, and my brain had felt like it did now, like nothing made sense.
“I’m okay,” I squeaked, coughing to find my voice. “Sorry.”
Trip looked at the woods, then scooped up the binoculars. “What’s out there?”
Oh no. No, no, no, I thought as he raised them to his eyes. He was going to completely freak—
Get a grip, Riley.
I breathed, slowing my heart so my brain could work. Trip isn’t going to see you in bed with his girlfriend. You didn’t just see that. Not in those binoculars. It’s in your mind. Imagination or fantasy or whatever. Beer, and fumes from the fire.
Yes, I thought, muscles unclenching. Of course.
After a minute, Trip laid the binoculars aside. “You scared the crap out of me,” he said. “I thought the cops were here.”
“You didn’t see anything?”
“It’s a kaleidoscope.” He shrugged. “I saw shapes and stuff.”
I nodded, relieved even though Trip was looking at me like I was nuts. Which I might have been.
“What’d you see?” he asked.
“Same thing,” I said weakly.
Trip frowned. “Did you drop acid on the way up here, Ri?”
“You know I don’t do that stuff.”
“Colors and shapes are only scary if you’re whacked-out.”
“Yeah. I just . . .” I shook my head. “It must have been, like, a panic attack or something.” I looked down at my hands, could feel them trembling. Thankfully Trip didn’t ask more. I’d had exactly three panic attacks in my life. All around the time my dad died. It was a sure out with Trip, though. Talking about stuff like that made him even more uncomfortable than it made me.
I ventured a quick glance at Sarah, who was still watching me.
She smells like spices and coffee and sleep.
The thought sent my heart racing again. Something was messed up. Was the beer spiked? I’d just been in the cave with her. She’d smelled like mints, maybe a flowery perfume, but I knew she smelled like that other stuff too. It had been so vivid in the binoculars, like it was real.
I could still feel the tangles of her hair, the coolness of the room we’d been in, the warmth and silkiness of her skin when I—