Meg Cabot - Twilight

I thought my mom hadn't known about it - the shirt, I mean - but now I knew she must have. She surely would have found it when she was making my bed or playing tooth fairy.

But she had never said anything. To be fair, she couldn't say anything, because she kept Dad's ashes in his favorite beer stein for years before we finally got the guts to scatter them in the park where he'd died, the park he'd loved so much, just before her wedding to Andy.

A park, I realized, I'd have to go to if I wanted to go back through time to save him, because the apartment we'd lived in had been sold and I couldn't very well walk up to the new owners and be all "Can I stand in your living room for a minute? I just need to pop back through time to save my dad's life."

Of course, both the park and the apartment were all the way across the country. But I had some babysitting money saved up. Maybe even enough for a plane ticket. . . .

I could do it. I could totally keep my dad from dying.

"What else?" I asked Dr. Slaski, with a glance at the TV. A commercial, thank God. "When you have the . . . thing that belonged to the ghost, and you're standing in a spot where he once stood? What do you do then?"

Dr. Slaski looked annoyed. "You hold the object - that's your anchor - and nothing else. That's important, you know. You can't be touching anything else or you could end up taking it with you. Then you picture the person. And then you go. Easy as pie." Dr. Slaski nodded at the TV. "Turn it up. Feud 'll be on in a minute."

I couldn't believe it was so easy. Just like that, I could go back through time and keep someone I loved from dying.

"Of course," Dr. Slaski said casually, "once you get there - to where you're going - you have to watch yourself. You don't want to be changing history . . . at least, not too much. You have to weigh the consequences of your actions very carefully."

I didn't say anything. What possible consequences could my saving my dad have? Except that my mom, instead of crying into her pillow every night for years after he died - right up until she met Andy, actually - would be happy? That I would be happy?

Then it hit me. Andy. If my dad had lived, my mother would never have met Andy. Or rather, she might have met him, but she would never have married him.

And then we would never have moved to California.

And I would never have met Jesse.

Suddenly, the full impact of what Dr. Slaski had said sunk in. "Oh," I said.

His gaze - despite the glaucoma that clouded his blue eyes, which otherwise were like a photocopy of Paul's - was sharp.

"I thought there'd be an oh in there somewhere," he said. "Not as easy as you thought, shifting through time, is it? And keep in mind the fact that the longer you stay in a time not your own, the longer your recovery time when you do get back to the present," Dr. Slaski added not very pleasantly.

"Recovery time? You mean like . . . it gives you a headache?" Which was what shifting gave me. Every time.

Dr. Slaski looked amused about something. His gaze wasn't on the television screen, so I knew it was something to do with what I'd just said.

"Little worse than a headache," he said dryly, and patted the mattress beneath him. "Unless you mean that as a euphemism for losing a host of brain cells. And that's the least of what could happen to you. Time shift too many times and you'll be a vegetable before you're old enough to buy beer, I can guarantee."

"Does Paul know that?" I asked. "I mean, about the . . . losing brain cells thing?"

"He should," Dr. Slaski said, "if he read my paper on it."

And yet he still wanted to try it.

"Why would Paul want to go back through time?" I asked. He could hardly be motivated by a desire to help anyone, as the only person Paul Slater had ever been interested in helping was . . . well, Paul Slater.

"How should I know?" Dr. Slaski looked bored. "I don't understand why you spend any time at all with that boy. I told you he was no good. Just like his father, that one is, ashamed of me. . . ."

I didn't pay attention to Dr. Slaski's diatribe against his grandson. I was too busy thinking.

What was it Paul had said the other night, in the Gutierrezes' backyard? That he wouldn't kill Jesse . . .

. . . but that he might do something to keep Jesse from having died in the first place.

That was when it finally dawned on me. Standing there in Dr. Slaski's bedroom, while he fumbled for the remote, found the volume button, and cried, "Damnit, we missed the first category!"

Paul was going back through time. To Jesse's time.

And not to kill him.

To save his life.

Chapter seven

"Father Dominic?" My voice seemed frantic, even to my own ears. "Father D, are you there?"

"Yes, Susannah." Father Dominic sounded frazzled. But then, that could be because he still hadn't figured out how to work his cell phone. "Yes, I'm here. I thought you had to hit the Send button to answer, but apparently - "

"Father Dominic, something terrible has happened." I didn't wait for him to respond, but just plunged ahead. "Paul's figured out a way to go back through time, and he's going to go back to the day Jesse died and save his life."

There was a long pause. Then Father Dominic said, "Susannah. Where are you?"

I looked around. I was standing in Paul's kitchen, using the wall-mounted phone I had found there. I'd asked Dr. Slaski's attendant after I'd left his patient, if I could use the phone. He'd told me to go right ahead.

"I'm at Paul's house," I said. "Father Dominic, did you hear me? Paul's figured out a way to keep Jesse from dying."

"Well," Father Dominic said, "That's wonderful news. But shouldn't you be in school? It's only just a little past one o'clock - "

"Father D!" I practically screamed. "You don't understand! If Paul keeps Jesse from dying, then Jesse and I will never meet !"

"Hmmm." Father Dominic took his sweet time to consider what I'd said. "Altering the course of history is never a good idea, I suppose. Look what happened in that film. What was it? Oh, yes. Back to the Future ."

" Father Dominic ." I was practically crying with frustration. "Please, this isn't a movie. It's my life . You've got to help me. You've got to come back here and help me stop him. He won't listen to me. I know he won't. But he might listen to you. . . ."

"Well, I couldn't possibly come back now, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "The monsignor isn't - well, the, er, hot dog appeared to be lodged in his throat for longer than anyone thought . . . Susannah, did you say Paul's figured out a way to travel through time ?"

"Yes," I said from between gritted teeth. I was beginning to regret having kept Father Dominic in the dark about so much of what I'd learned from Paul during our Wednesday afternoons together.

"Goodness," Father Dominic said. "How interesting. And how do you suppose he does that?"

"All he needs is something old," I said. "Something belonging to the person, you know, he wants to travel back to see. The person has to be a ghost, a ghost that he's met. And then he just has to stand in a place he knows that person will be - in his head, you know - and he's there."

"Good heavens," Father Dominic said. "Do you know what this means, Susannah?"

"Yes," I said, miserably. "It means that I'm going to move to Carmel, and there isn't going to be anybody haunting my bedroom because Jesse will never have been killed there."

"No," Father Dominic said. "Well, I mean, yes, I suppose it does mean that. But more important, it means we could prevent the deaths of all of the ghosts we encounter, just by popping back through time and - "

"We can't," I interrupted flatly. "Unless we want to end up with six months left to live, like Paul's grandfather. It isn't like shifting to the spirit plane. Your whole body goes . . . and, I guess, suffers the consequences. But Paul's just planning the one trip."