Extra Life (12 page)

“Right,” I said.

I would’ve done a fist-pump if I could’ve gotten away with it. My time line
had
changed, and it had veered down a positive path. Somehow 2.0 managed to get the Monday extension
without
having to collide with Mr. Yes outside the men’s room after school. Probably because the other me showed up, got the morning announcements prepped, and ran a flawless show like he was supposed to. After all that
responsibility
, Mr. Yes couldn’t help but give him an extension.

Now it was on me to return the favor.

“Mr. Yes? Sorry for saying this, but you’re not looking so great.”

“Not myself today, that’s for sure.”

“You should take an early day—maybe go see your doctor.”

“It’s that obvious, huh?”

I was wary of saying too much, but I had to convince him. “You should, you know, be careful of your blood sugar.”

He cocked his head. “My blood sugar?”

“Watch your insulin or whatever.”

“Russ—what makes you think I’m diabetic?”

“You’re not?”

“Not that I know of. Did someone give you the impression I was?”

Yeah
,
you,
I wanted to say. But I couldn’t accuse him of lying about being a diabetic because he wouldn’t actually be telling his lie for another hour and a half. In fact, I pretty much just ensured that he
wouldn’t
end up having that conversation with me at all.

“I guess I was thinking of someone else,” I said.

“Someone else, huh?”

I could see Mr. Yes didn’t buy it, but we were in a standoff.

“All I’m saying is—it looks like it might be worse than just your average flu bug. My Mom’s in the pharmaceutical business, so, you know, I hear about these things.”

“Okay. Right,” Mr. Yes said. “I’ll get it checked out.”

The mention of my mother, Madeline Belmont, put Mr. Yes on his own dark little cloud. Creepy, but effective, because it gave me a chance to slip away without further questioning. I’m not sure he even registered I was gone until I left the studio, camera case in hand. I had a plan to carry through.

S
OMEHOW
I had to get in contact with Conrad, but there were two Horace Vales wandering the halls of Port City Academy. If no divergences had happened yet, one of me was still in the cafeteria with Connie, so I couldn’t exactly make a double showing at my own lunch period, even if, after something like fifteen hours of fasting, I was hungry enough to eat those gray green beans all over again.

Instead, I loitered in the East Hall, a “free zone” just off the cafeteria, where upperclassmen on their lunch break were allowed to mill around and socialize after mealtime. It was mostly just the Future Runway Models of America who refused to eat or even sit within sniffing distance of food.

Ten minutes until 1 p.m., the milestone moment when Savannah sends the text agreeing to meet me at the Silver Bullet Diner for videotaping. Fierce jitters. You’d think the second time around I’d be more confident, but I couldn’t be sure 2.0 had laid the groundwork just right. Very possible he blew it with Savannah because of some unforeseen variable, and now I wasn’t going to get that text at all.

When my phone buzzed seven minutes early, it was Connie, not Savannah. For privacy, I crouched into an auditorium side-exit alcove and read his text:

testing. r u there?

I considered not answering, but I’d already obliterated Connie’s former past. I texted:

yep

who? someone stole russs phone,
he wrote.

me, real russ

?

from the future!
I wrote. I could erase the texts later if they needed redaction.

ur here? stole his phone???

my phone too. is 2.0 with u?

no. just left, looking for his phone! where r u?

I started to type, but then the implications of Connie’s comment sank in.

2.0 was on the loose.

I glanced around the corner and, sure enough, I got walloped by another bout of metaphysical double vision. Because there he was, Russ 2.0, stalking up the hall toward me.

One look at his zombie posture and I could see how stricken with worry he was. I’d probably look like that if my phone went AWOL right before I was destined to get my first text (and maybe
only text ever
) from Savannah Lark.

Even if my day was looking up,
his
was sucking rotten limes.

I popped my head back into the alcove and yanked the hood over it. The phone never buzzed as loudly as it did just then.

Connie:
where r u??
I didn’t type back until I was sure 2.0 had walked well past my hiding spot.
free zone, third alcove,
I wrote.

I left the borrowed HD camera in the alcove so Connie wouldn’t see it when he came out to meet me. No need to tip him off about what I planned to do. I made sure Russ 2.0 was out of sight and then eased back into the open, cool and collected, hooking a finger through a belt loop on my jeans to keep them from sliding down.

Twenty-odd students filled the hall, arranged in their cliques. None of them looked at me like I was the ghost of the kid that just passed by a few seconds earlier. Nobody noticed me at all. I wasn’t part of their circle of friends, so I didn’t exist.

But Connie noticed me right off. He stepped out of the cafeteria, glancing up and down from his phone display, like he was following my coordinates by GPS. He rushed over and whispered, “I knew it was you as soon as his phone disappeared. And you’re wearing my t-shirt.”

The hoodie was unzipped far enough to show off the TARDIS. I decided not to mention the unmentionables I was also forced to borrow and said instead, “You didn’t tell me he was gonna mosey right past here.”

“Oh God, did he see you?”

“Obviously not.”

“There’s a really delicate matrix here, Russ…”

“Too late for that. The
past
past is already gone.”

“What? How?” He kept squirming, eyes flitting around.

“First of all, you and 2.0 got to school on time. In real life, you were late, and that triggered all sorts of stuff that isn’t happening now…”

“But this
is
real life,” he whined. “I’ve been busting my butt to keep things normal here. I tried to call you—”

“Everything in your house was going haywire. I had to get out.”

His cheeks went so red I thought they’d start bleeding. “
My house
? What’s wrong at my house?”

“Chill, Connie. Your house is fine. I mean mysterious emails and phone calls from fax machines. The video game I tried to play. All of it was these weird tech problems. And it was tech that sent me back in time in the first place. That app or program or whatever it was—the Pastime Project. I’m thinking there might be a screw up in the system.”

“Anomalies,” he muttered. “Corruptions. Bad code in the program.”

“But like you said—”

“A virus…” he went on, ignoring me.

“—
this is real life
.”

“Real life has viruses,” he noted. “Did you know our human DNA is actually encoded with residual viral material? Mitochondrial DNA? Endosymbiosis? Look it up. Viruses are part of us. Just like operating systems that gradually draw bad code off the Internet.”

“If that’s how you want to look at it,” I said, “then I’m here to do a virus scan.”

“What does that even mean, Russ?” He kept peeking over my shoulder in the direction 2.0 had headed. Probably worried that Other Me would come back and find us chatting in the hall. Good thinking, Connie. I seriously doubted a meeting of Russes would cause a black hole, but it would still be hella awkward.

And was it Russes or Russi?

“I just need you to stay like you’ve been,” I said. “Keep close to 2.0, don’t let him run into Paige or Savannah. Got it?”

“Why not?”

“Because it never happened, last time,” I lied. “The Other Me wants everybody to get together to make the video, but it didn’t happen during the first take, so it shouldn’t now, right?”

“No, I guess not, but…”

“Where’s your copy of the video script—the one I gave you this morning?”

That wasn’t technically right. 2.0 gave him the script, not me. Connie caught the continuity error, and it made him take a step back from me, as if he just realized I was an impostor.

“Why do you want it?” he said.

“You were supposed to have a fight this morning, because you didn’t really want to do the shoot.” My bullshit was piling up, nice and thick, but I had to take Connie out of the equation, for his own sake. “You admitted it, so I got mad, and I didn’t give you the script. The shoot never happened. But this time—I guess you didn’t say anything to him?”

Connie studied me. I could see belief easing over his face. I had picked the best possible fiction because what I told him was what was in his heart. He reached behind his head and withdrew the rolled-up script from his backpack. But then he hesitated and pressed it against his chest.

“Keep 2.0 away from the Silver Bullet this afternoon, all right?” I said. “Now that things have gone a different way, he might change his mind and show up there.”

Connie nodded. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going back to your house to wait it out.” Neither one of us wanted to discuss what that meant—
wait it out.
Seven p.m. would come around again, and there was no way of knowing what the hour would bring.

“Please don’t get anything on my Dr. Who shirt, please.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him.

A new text buzzed on my phone, and Connie was too busy wringing the script in his hands to notice. I took a sideways glance at the screen. One p.m., exactly on schedule, the message from Savannah’s blocked number.
okay 2:30 Slver bullet gr8 script! —sl

She was in, just like before, my second chance to get it right. The adrenaline rush, all over again. Except this time it felt a bit like Savannah was praising a script written by some other dude whose chops we both admired. I wasn’t the
me
I was before anymore. But I could still make this work. Fixing my mistakes was the whole point of this leap.

“All right, hand over the script,” I told Connie.

He sighed, averted his eyes, and made no move to give it to me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We should—we should do an even trade,” he finally said.

“What do you mean?”

“The phone, dude. You’re not supposed to have it.”

I could see his point. As long as I had the phone, Russ 2.0 would keep rampaging around. He’d get more and more erratic. No doubt he’d show up at the Silver Bullet anyway, since he wouldn’t know if Savannah texted him or not. And that would ruin my plan.

Still, I needed that phone. It was my only connection to the Pastime Project. My only possible source of answers. After all, Video Russ wouldn’t have sent me back here without an escape plan.

“Russ, come on. You’re messing with the timeline,” Connie said.

“All right, all right,” I said, and snatched for the script. Connie resisted, but I couldn’t blame him for his lack of trust, especially since my grabbiness was a slight-of-hand trick meant to distract him from seeing me delete Savannah’s message with my thumb. When Russ 2.0 got the phone back, there would be no trace of her text.

I offered the cell over, and Connie took it, letting go of the script as he did.

“How are you going to explain having it?” I asked.

“I know your—
his
combo. I’ll slip it into the mess of papers at the bottom of his locker. He’ll think it just fell down there and he missed it the first five times he checked.”

“You think I’m that dumb?”

“It’s kinda more believable than the truth,” he said.