Page 133 of Sweet Nightmare

DO WORSE

The second the yo-yo touches her, Ember grabs her shin and jumps about three feet. Seeing the skeptical, normally too-cool-for-school phoenix freak out is extra amusing.

Everyone else rears back as she loses it, even before she books it back across the room to the rest of us.

“Okay, so maybe Clementine knows what she’s talking about after all.” She shudders violently. “What did that kid hit me with anyway?”

“A yo-yo,” I answer as I struggle not to laugh.

She still looks more than a little freaked out when she settles back down on the ground.

“So you can see things that previously happened or that will happen in whatever place you happen to be in,” Simon recaps as he ticks off the point on his finger. “Which you’ve never been able to do before.” He moves to the second finger. “And at the same time you became able to see these things, the rest of us became able to feel them.”

“Pretty much,” I agree.

“It’s like the two different time periods or dimensions or whatever are brushing against each other,” Mozart says in awe.

“I have no idea if they’re brushing against each other or not. I just know that what Simon described is happening.”

“Okay. And—”

She breaks off when Jude holds up a hand. “Is that it?” he asks me.

“Isn’t that enough, man?” Simon exclaims incredulously. “Your girl is seeing things that aren’t actually there—”

“Oh, I’m not his girl—” I start but then stop abruptly when Luis, Ember, and Mozart all make half-choking, half-laughing noises, all of which I’m pretty sure are sounds of disagreement. Luis throws his hands in what is definitely an I-just-call-’em-like-I-see-’em gesture. Remy and Simon are studiously avoiding my eyes, while Izzy is rolling hers so hard, I’m a little insulted.

I glance at Jude out of the corner of my eye, only to find that ridiculously small smile of his playing around the corners of his lips. “Careful or you’ll break my heart, Yuzu.”

“What the fuck is a yuzu?” Luis asks blankly.

Jude and I answer at the same time.

“A citrus fruit,” we say.

This makes everyone laugh even harder. And my cheeks go red with utter mortification.

“It kind of tastes like a grapefruit,” Jude answers, which only makes it worse. I give him a disbelieving look.

“What do you do? Just sit around researching fruit?” Simon heckles.

He shrugs. “Maybe I just know a lot about fruit.”

“Maybe you just know a lot about messing with me,” I shoot back.

For the first time in maybe ever, the corners of his mouth curve up into what can only be described as a half smile. “Maybe I do.”

I just stare at him, speechless, mind completely blank. Partly because his smile turns his whole face from gorgeous to I can’t even describe the glory and partly because I haven’t seen this version of Jude—the one who looks at me with warmth in his eyes while he teases me—for a long time.

All I can do is stare at him with a little lopsided smile.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Simon continues, breaking the awkward silence, “maybe we can find out when you started seeing the past and the future all at once.”

I snap out of my trance. “The past and future thing happened about the same time the tapestry broke.”

All amusement drains from Jude’s face in an instant. “What do you mean it broke? Like it started to unravel?”

“No, I mean it went all wonky, almost like static on a TV screen. Just a whole bunch of dots with no picture in it at all. It was really weird.”

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