Chapter Twenty-Four

August 31

I wake up to the sharp smell of coffee. My eyelids feel sticky; it takes me a few blinks to actually open my eyes.

I’m staring at an unfamiliar popcorn ceiling with a single light fixture in the center. What Olivia likes to call a boob light.

She has a whole stand-up routine about it.

Wait a minute. Am I back in New York?

I blink again and yesterday comes back to me in fractured bits and pieces. The locked door of the bookstore. Michael and his

truck. Michael’s house and then Michael’s mouth and hands and...

I push myself up onto my elbows, blinking the rest of the room into focus. Sunlight floods through the window over Michael’s

desk.

“Shit.” I scramble around, tangled up in Michael’s pin-striped sheets, looking for my phone. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Next to me, still face-planted in his pillow, Michael groans. “What?”

“I slept here.” Where is my phone? “Shit.”

Michael rolls over and squints at me blearily. “So?”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I told my mom I was coming over here, but...” I lean over the edge of the bed. My phone

is on the floor. I grab it, fumbling for my glasses on the bedside table. I don’t have any voicemails. Or text messages. I

guess that’s a good sign.

“She probably assumes you spent the night,” Michael says, sitting up. He’s shirtless, leaning back on his hands.

Oh, god .

I never even told Mom Michael had kissed me, but... how much has she figured out?

I rub my eyes. “I should go.”

Michael reaches out, but he stops just short of touching me. “Yeah. I mean, sure.”

I take a big gulp of air, but I feel like there’s a rubber band tight around my lungs.

“Are you okay?” Michael asks.

“Yeah.” I push back the sheets, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I seem to be wearing underwear. I honestly don’t

even remember putting my underwear back on. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Never mind.”

I glance at Michael, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s reaching for a T-shirt. Pulling it over his head.

So I grab my clothes, pulling on my pants and my T-shirt. There’s a weird nervous pain in my chest, a scratching under my

solar plexus. My birthday party is tonight. Young Darby’s birthday party is tonight.

I’m out of time.

Tomorrow, even if the bookstore is still there—even if I can still travel—Young Darby will be gone.

“I’m just gonna run to the bathroom,” I say.

I’m terrified, as soon as I leave the room, that I’ll run into Liz or Amanda, but I hear the murmur of their voices coming

from downstairs. The coffee smell is stronger out here, and it nudges me awake as I go into the bathroom. I close the door

behind me, leaning against it. It’s not a very big bathroom, and the vanity is crowded with toothbrushes and contact lens

cases and mouthwash and toothpaste and somebody’s hair straightener.

I stare at the jumble, trying to make myself hang on to that wanting feeling of last night with Michael. But I can’t find it. All I feel is anxious.

I splash water on my face, but that doesn’t make anything clearer. And then I realize none of these towels belong to me, and

I’m not sure what I should use to dry my face, so I end up just sort of patting it with my hands, like that’ll help.

The scratchiness won’t leave my solar plexus.

When I go back to Michael’s bedroom, he’s gotten out of bed, and he’s dressed, in the middle of running a hand through his rumpled hair.

“Hey,” I say.

He picks up his glasses from the desk, but he doesn’t look at me. “Hey.”

I lean over, picking up my socks. “I should go get my car.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Michael—”

He looks at me. Finally.

“I really just feel like I should go,” I say. “This isn’t about last night.”

He hesitates. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” And I am. And I’m not.

He nods. I can tell he’s deciding to believe me, and I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse. “Do you want any

coffee? Or breakfast?”

No. I want to go back to the rental car immediately. I want to try to get back into the bookstore again.

I glance at my phone. It’s barely nine. The bookstore isn’t open yet.

The scratchiness turns painful.

“Sure,” I say. “Breakfast sounds good.”

It’s almost ten thirty when Michael drops me off on Main Street. I somehow managed to drink coffee and eat a piece of toast,

and be with Michael and Liz and Amanda as they moved around the kitchen, going through their morning routines. I watched the

way Michael relaxed around them. The way they talked and laughed with one another. Neither Liz nor Amanda seemed that surprised

or thrown by the fact that I was there in the morning with no explanation.

It was all just... normal. Normal, comfortable, easy. And I felt like I was watching it from far away.

“So I guess I’ll see you tonight?” Michael asks, as I climb out of the truck. “At the party?”

“Yeah. See you tonight.”

He drives away, and I turn for the bookstore, stomach churning. I grasp the doorknob, tugging open the door, walking through...

And it’s still here. The musty smell, the new releases that aren’t new, the magazine stand. I’m in 2009. I made it.

My breath rushes out. The scratchiness in my chest fades. I turn to the counter, and there’s my younger self, just coming out of the back room, holding a book.

“Wow, perfect timing,” Young Darby says. “Your book just got here.” And my younger self holds up the book— Transgender History . I recognize the cover immediately.

I glance quickly at Young Darby’s face. My pulse speeds up. “Um... that’s great. Did you... have you read it at all?”

Young Darby glances down at the book. “I was just starting to look through it.”

Something catches my eye behind the counter—a blurry shape, like a moving shadow. But when I look again, it’s gone.

I try to focus on Young Darby. “What do you think? I mean, about the book?”

“Um... it’s...” Young Darby glances at me, and then quickly away, shrugging one shoulder. “I’d like to read it.”

God, am I hearing music again? It’s faint, slightly distorted, almost like it’s underwater.

Another flicker at the corner of my eye. The magazine stand is flashing—like it’s there one minute and gone the next.

Young Darby doesn’t seem to notice.

“You can keep the book if you want,” I say, but my voice sounds a mile away. Like I have cotton in my ears.

Young Darby frowns, looking down at the book again. “Keep it?”

“For now.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to ignore the distant music, like maybe if I do, it’ll go away. “I mean... why

don’t you read it? I’ll come back later.”

“I guess,” Young Darby says. “If you’re sure, then—”

But I don’t find out then what , because I open my eyes, and Young Darby is gone. I’m standing in the other bookstore, the present bookstore. Journals. Mugs.

Soft music playing over the speakers. Someone I don’t recognize is behind the counter, talking to someone else who’s in the

middle of buying a book.

Fuck.

I head for the door, pushing my way out onto the sidewalk.

I don’t turn around and try to go back in. I don’t even know what good it would do. I don’t know what I would say to my younger

self.

It’s too late. I’m too late.

I walk toward the rental car, barely seeing anything except the sidewalk in front of me.

Maybe this was all just random—the universe being strange and unknowable, and I just wanted there to be a purpose to it because

I’m a human and that’s what humans want. Maybe I was never going to be able to change anything for the better. Maybe I was

never going to be able to change anything at all.

I climb into the rental car, and I sit for a while, resting my head on the steering wheel.

But I can’t even summon the energy to cry.