Page 65 of The Getaway List
“Well, she’ll tell you when she gets back,” I say firmly. I’m ready to add that I’ll stay with Tom until then, ready to offer up theories for what his mom’s doing with the dispatch if he wants to discuss them, ready to drop what we’re doing here and leave with him so he can give me the play-by-play of what she just said to him on the phone.
Tom just shakes his head. Then he pulls in a breath so resolute that I start steeling myself for his next few words before I even know the shape of them.
“I’m just—going to leave the city early.” He’s talking to the group, but he’s almost looking at me. Like he wants permission, maybe. Or forgiveness. “The way I originally planned. So I’ll be gone before she gets back.”
“Gone where?” asks Jesse.
My heart sinks not just for the clear pain Tom is in right now, but the finality of this. It’s ridiculous, I know. But there was some stubborn, relentless, overly optimistic part of me that was hoping maybe fate would intervene. That Tom and his mom would have an opportunity to work things out, and it would settle this ache in him. That maybe if we just kept him here a little while longer—here with our friends and our various misadventures, here in this city he’s seeing in a whole new light this summer, here with me—that he’d change his mind.
Tom smiles an apologetic smile, an almost sheepish one.
“I’m moving,” he says, so casually that it’s clear he’s trying to play it off, not to let anyone worry. “I should have said something earlier. The summer just got away from me, is all.”
My heart doesn’t just sink then, but crash. It wasn’t just stubborn hope, I realize. There was a reason Tom kept this from all of us for so long. I think he didn’t really believe he was going to do it either.
When I blink myself out of the ache of that thought I realize everyone’s turned to me. Expectant. Hopeful, even. As if I’m going to step out right now and say the miraculous thing that stops this from happening.
I want to. I know I’m the only one of us who can. The trouble is, given everything I have on the line, I’m the last one who should.
“Tom,” Jesse starts.
But Tom pulls out his phone fast and says, “Anyway, uh—we’re short on dispatchers today, so I’m actually going to go help out with a few real quick. So sorry to bounce.”
Every single one of us can tell this is a lie, but nobody calls him on it, not even Mariella with the app open a foot from her face. I watch him carefully until his eyes snag on mine, until he can see the question in them. He gives me a quick shake of his head. Wherever he’s going, he wants to be alone.
He leaves and it’s so quiet that for a moment nobody knows what to do with it. Tom has a way of filling the nooks and crannies of a space in that comforting way of his, even when he’s not saying much, and there’s nothing quite as loud as the silence he leaves behind.
“Shit,” says Jesse. “He can’t be serious.”
“He is,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. Trying to keep up Tom’s ruse, or maybe one of my own: that everything really is fine.
Luca just keeps shaking his head like he’s confused or rejecting the idea entirely, and Mariella’s eyes are on me, searching my face. She must see the grim certainty in it, because she pulls in a breath.
“Well, I guess there’s only one thing left to do,” she says. “Which is obviously throw a going-away dinner for him so good that he’ll come to his senses and stay put.”
Luca nods in agreement and also faint alarm. “Why do I have a feeling we’re all going to be arrested for kidnapping before the end of the night?”
“Luca,” says Mariella, reaching up to pat him endearingly on the head. “You can’t get arrested if you don’t get caught.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
There’s a scene in the fourth Tides of Time book where the time stone cracks midmission, and Claire and one of her best friends are separated in the time stream. Several long chapters are devoted to finding him, but her time instruments just keep finding doppelgangers. She dismisses most of them easily, but eventually she starts to question herself. Starts to wonder if she should go back and make sure she wasn’t too hasty—if maybe something happened in that garbled time stream to make him forget her, and she’d accidentally left him in a time where he didn’t belong because of it.
By the time she does find him she’s seen so many doppelgangers, including ones that try to trick her into taking them with her, that she doesn’t know if she can trust him. “Tell me something only you would know,” she demands, just in case.
But he doesn’t tell her. He shows her. A series of hand gestures—a collection of the ones they used to make in class together, when they were trying to talk without getting caught. She knows instantly she’s found him, and they bring him back home to the time school, where—for the next few pages before the time worms attack, at least—all is finally well.
We read that book just before the summer Tom and I were ten, the same summer Vanessa took him out to Los Angeles for a month to start meeting with producers about one of her first big scripts. It was the longest we’d ever been apart since we met, so long that it felt like the kind of time that I couldn’t measure, could only dread. We’d only been friends for two years by then, and for some reason my little-kid brain was certain that a month would be all it took to unravel it. Like Tom happening to me was some kind of happy accident from the universe, but as soon as he unhappened, he’d be lost to me like Claire’s friend in the time stream. He’d come back as some doppelganger of himself, someone so changed that he’d finally come to his senses and realize he didn’t want me around anymore.
This irrational thought was partially fueled by the sense that us being apart didn’t even seem to bother Tom in the days leading up to it. So I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me either. I went out of my way to make plans with my cousins and Jesse and our other friends. I told Tom about them loudly and in great detail whenever I got the chance. I did it like I was punishing him for caring less than I did; I did it like I was trying to test to see if he really did.
I kept this whole charade of mine up until the Fourth of July, the day before Tom was supposed to leave. The fireworks started going off and everyone’s heads tilted toward the sky, and with all eyes safely preoccupied, I immediately, humiliatingly started to cry. It was as if someone had turned on a faucet in me—big, thick, silent tears just dripping down my cheeks so fast that it felt less like crying and more like I was malfunctioning. Like someone had tapped the wrong button in my brain.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Tom to wrap his hand in mine and say, “Let’s get ice cream.” Which seemed absolutely ridiculous until I realized he was using it as an excuse to pull me away from our moms and friends without anyone else noticing I’d become a geyser, which only made me want to cry harder, because here was Tom being nice to me when I’d spent the whole start of the summer grandstanding about how perfectly fine I’d be without him.
Tom found a bench away from the crowd and sat us down on it. He didn’t say anything, just let me sit there and cry, which was for the best because my throat was a big knot and I wouldn’t have been able to answer if I tried. The fireworks kept whirring and popping and flashing overhead, but neither of us looked up. We just watched the faint light of it streak across our faces, mine wrecked and his as solemn as I’d ever seen it.
Eventually I came back to myself just enough to realize I needed to make something up to explain. Except when I opened my mouth, all I could do was immediately croak out the words, “I don’t want you to go.”
