Rectification

Chapter 20

4 AM, Tuesday, August nineteenth.

Amity should have been asleep, but she wasn't. As soon as she'd shut her eyes on Monday night her mind had begun to spin, colors and images whirring in her brain that at first she couldn't comprehend. So after a few hours of restless tossing and turning, she finally gave up and groggily switched on the bedroom light.

Now she sat hunched over her desk, pen in hand, staring down at the diagram she'd made on a scroll of parchment that stretched nearly off the desk's edge.

June 2: Luz arrives was written at one end of the parchment in neat cursive. Using a textbook she drew a straight line from one end to another, and then just under the June 2, she drew a second line. This line represented the branching timeline that she'd created and was currently occupying. At the end of the first line, she wrote in slightly messier script October 18: Luz leaves. Moving slightly to the left- September 1: Luz's intended departure. And a little more in that direction: August 19: Portal is destroyed.

So what did this all add up to?

She placed the tip of her pen at the end of the second line. After a moment, the ink bled through the paper and created a dark, spreading splotch, so she drew it back. Then she wrote:

August 19th: Luz to Emperor's Castle. Tries to steal the healing hat but is caught by Lilith, leaving her as bait for Eda. Then she crossed out everything after the first sentence and replaced it with: Luz does not try to steal the hat because I tell her that it is fake. Eda undergoes her curse and is still left in a weakened state for Lilith to find her and capture her.

No, that wouldn't work either. No matter what, everyone lost.

She laid her head down on the desk. What could she do besides stand by and watch? Could she help Luz rescue Eda from the petrification?

And just as importantly, would the portal still end up being destroyed?

Did she want it to be?

Amity checked the clock. Five-fifteen. She'd been lost in her own spiraling thoughts for over an hour now. Sleepiness dragged at her eyelids, but her brain was still frantically working to put the pieces of the time conundrum together, and she found herself unable to focus on any one thing.

She stayed up pondering the timeline she'd made for a while longer, though she always came to the exact same conclusion. She'd end up right back where she began. Without Luz.

Eventually it was images of such a lonely world that lulled her into a fitful sleep.

~

She slept through her alarm.

Five minutes after eight, Emira poked her head into Amity's bedroom. "Turn off that infernal buzzing-" she began, but then her eyes landed on her little sister, who was snoring gently with her head resting on her desk and the extensively notated piece of parchment that lay across it.

That was when Amity drifted back into consciousness. "Huh..." she muttered, lifting her head. She rubbed her blurry eyes and squinted at Emira for a moment. "You..." Then her golden eyes stretched wide as a shot of adrenaline burst through her. "Oh, stars! The trip!"

Em blinked. "The trip."

"Yeah." Amity was already out of her seat and gathering her school uniform up in her arms from where she'd strewn it at the foot of her bed the previous evening. She waved her hand at Em. "Get out. Luz will be here soon-"

"But I thought Dad-"

"He never said anything about having humans outside the house." Amity pointed at the door. "Now go."