While the others examine the murals, Trent and I walk up to the curved, wooden information desk, where a woman smiles at us. Her flexi depicts three tiny books flapping their pages and flying away, like birds.
“Anything I can help you find?” she asks.
“Yeah, we uh…” I’m not sure how to phrase it. “We’re looking for old records.”
“Do you have death certificates?” Trent asks.
“We do,” the librarian says. “Each computer has a subscription to a genealogy program that can access those records. Is there something specific I can help you with?”
“What about old newspaper articles, like from thirty years ago?” I ask.
“Thirty years ago…We should have all of those in the computers too, and we might have some of the originals in the back.”
“Thanks.”
We give the others the details, and then the five of us head under the nearest arch and split up to sit in different cubbyholes. Some of the cubbies can fit two people, but I think we all want to be alone when we read about our fates.
The cubbyhole has just one big screen with the Los Angeles Public Library logo on it, and underneath it says “Touch to activate.” I press my finger to it, surprised it doesn’t have newer, fancier technology. Probably due to budget cuts or some crap. I’d much rather use this one anyway, since it doesn’t mess with my head.
There are half a dozen different kinds of searches listed—for ebooks, paper books, videos, and so forth—but I find the one to the genealogy program. A search box opens up with different things you can input, such as name, location, date of birth or death. I’m not sure how much this genealogy site will have on me, since I’m both a foster kid and a child of immigrants, but I enter my name and birth date, and narrow the search to Los Angeles County.
But I can’t hit the search button. A part of me doesn’t want to know what my future holds. For this one final moment, I can pretend everything is going to be okay when we get back to the present. Aether will give me my money, I’ll get my own place to live, and I’ll start college in the fall. I’ll have a real future. I’ll be free.
I lean back to check out the others, but their faces are all intent and focused on their screens. I can’t tell if they’ve found anything yet or how bad it is. I sigh and turn back to my screen, where the search box waits, blinking cursor and all.
I hit Search and there it is. My death certificate.
My dream for the future crumbles at the sight. I’m dead, I’m really, truly dead.
I click on the image to make it bigger. No turning back now. I have to know everything, have to see if it’s true. Besides, this might be another Elena Martinez. There have to be hundreds, thousands even, in Los Angeles.
But the date of birth on the certificate matches mine, along with other things like my parents’ names and my current residence with the Robertsons. It has to be me.
Then I see the date of death, and it’s like someone’s taken my heart and crushed it in their fist.
Friday. Tomorrow. The day after this crazy time-travel experiment. The day we return to our normal lives.
The walls close around me. I can’t die tomorrow. I’m not ready. I need days, months, years to figure out how to stop this from happening. I’m not even eighteen. I can’t die yet.
But the others died thirty years ago too. It has to be true.
This is the last day of my life.
When I was a kid, Mamá would tap her watch and say, “Hay más tiempo que vida.” There’s more time than life. She meant it in a life-is-short-seize-the-day kind of way, but her words take on new meaning for me now. I check her watch, touching the cool face with my finger, trying to find some comfort from the familiar habit. There’s something soothing about the predictability of time. No matter what happens, there are always sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day. For years, this watch, with its steady ticking hands, was my one constant.
In all those years, even in my darkest moments, I’ve never wanted more than those sixty seconds, sixty minutes, twenty-four hours.
Now I’d give anything to have more time.