Future Shock

28

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.

But I’m not dead yet. The ticking watch, my beating heart, the smell of the musty books around me, they all mean I still have time. Not much time, but hopefully enough to stop this.

I pull myself together, brushing hair out of my face. I told Zoe and Chris that we were going to fix this, that we were going to change the future, and I have to believe we can. But to do that, I need more information.

My time of death is 11:38 p.m., a little over twenty-four hours after we return to the present. The place of death says Santa Monica State Beach. Not very descriptive, since the beach is pretty big, and I have no idea why I’d be there so late.

I scroll down, but when I see the cause of death, I have to cover my mouth to keep from crying out.

Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound. Suicide.

I’m the girl Shawnda mentioned, the one who shoots the others and then herself.

I’m the killer.

07:17

No, it can’t be. But the words stare back at me. Self-inflicted gunshot wound. Suicide.

No, no, no. It doesn’t make sense. I would never kill the others—would I?

I know I have a temper. I know sometimes I itch to fight, to let my rage out, to show other people I’m not weak. I know I’ve done some stupid s**t in my past—but to actually kill someone? And not just someone, but three people I’m starting to think of as…friends?

No, never. I refuse to believe it. And I’d never kill myself either. Not in a million years. It must be a setup. Aether Corp or whoever is behind our deaths did this to us and then placed the blame on me to tie it all up with a nice string.

But I’m the only one with a gun, and I would bet money the gun in my backpack is the same one that’s going to shoot the others. I even turned it on Chris less than an hour ago. And despite what I told him, I would have pulled the trigger.

Oh my God, it is me. I really am the killer. I’m going to become the one thing I swore I’d never turn into: a murderer like my father.

I guess it’s inevitable. It’s in my blood.

My nails dig into the desk, sending sharp, shooting pains up my fingers. I can’t look away from the image with my fate written on it. But if I am the killer, why would I do this to them? I can’t think of any reason I’d want to kill them. Maybe I snap at some point between now and then…and afterward my grief drives me to shoot myself. But if that’s the case, why do I spare Adam?

I need to know more. Maybe I can find some hint of a motive, or learn when and where the others were killed so I can stop it from happening.

I won’t become a killer. I won’t.