Page 111 of Sweet Nightmare

And I keep thinking I’m about to crash into one of the trees.

I throw a hand out to try to grab the railing that I know is there but also can’t see. Thankfully, my palm connects, and I force myself to go down the stairs that my brain doesn’t quite believe are there anymore as I finally say, “Jude told me.”

“He told you?” Now Caspian sounds incredulous. “Did he say why he did this? What did he think he was going to gain? Was he—”

“Stop!” I know I sound harsh, but I can’t take a bunch of condemnation being heaped on Jude right now. “Just stop for a—”

I break off as I trip over a huge crack in the sidewalk that I didn’t know was there. I catch myself and blink several times, trying to focus on seeing only the present. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.

I take a couple more steps, then jump to the side to avoid a bench—only to walk straight into a bike someone has abandoned in the middle of the center mall. I end up tripping over it and nearly fall flat on my face.

Caspian somehow manages to catch me, but he shoots me a very concerned look. “You okay, Clementine?”

I have nothing to say to that, so I turn around, trying to keep myself focused solely on the present. The inner tubes in the middle of the mall aren’t real. And neither are all the rose bushes. Only the cracks are real.

I step over a big one and start to congratulate myself for not falling on my ass, and then run directly into a dragon shifter.

She whirls around. “What the hell is your problem?” the present version of her says.

“Sorry!” Caspian steps in, pulling me away. “She hit her head pretty hard.”

“I didn’t hit my head,” I tell him. He’s got a firm grip on my shoulders now and keeps it that way as he steers me down the walkway.

“Well, you’re acting like it,” he says. “Just try to keep it together a little longer, will you please?”

“I’m trying!” I tell him. “It’s harder than it looks.”

I don’t know how to explain it—except everything keeps changing. Every time I move or blink or look someplace new, I have to try and figure out where I am all over again. And if I’m focusing on the past, the present, or the future.

If they lined up in the same order every time, it would be easier. But sometimes the future is first. Sometimes the present is last. And sometimes the past is in the middle, which really fucks me up because I keep thinking present day is always in the middle—which is exactly how I ran into that damn dragon.

“What’s going on?” Caspian asks, looking half concerned and half bewildered. “Seriously, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I grind out as I keep walking—and try not to dwell on how the word makes me feel. Now that I’m off the porch, I have more than enough to contend with in the open. Things have gotten exponentially harder because walking down the center mall with people existing in different realms of time is a lot like how I imagine bumper cars would be. Or a real-life game of Frogger.

I dodge to the left to avoid a Calder Academy student before realizing they’re not actually there before immediately diving to my right to avoid a woman in a short, yellow sundress and cat-eye sunglasses.

She gives a startled yelp and drops the drink she’s holding. The fruity concoction—it looks like a piña colada—goes flying everywhere.

What just happened? Did she actually feel me even though we’re separated by decades? How could that— My thoughts are interrupted just as something cold and sweet-smelling smacks me in the face.

Huh. Not a piña colada after all. A mai tai.

I’m so shocked by the revelation that this past woman and I can feel, see, and even spill things on each other that I totally miss the pink anemone bench in front of me. I crash into it so hard that I tumble to the ground as pain shoots up my foot.

“Clementine!” Caspian yells, half exasperated and half concerned. “What are you—” He breaks off when he sees what is directly in front of me. Bianca’s broken body, crumpled and bloody, beneath the bench.

I saw her earlier from a distance, but this—this is awful. Especially because a very lost-looking past version of her hovers right beside her, turning a transparent gray as the color slowly, methodically, leaches from her.

Like her roommate, her arms and legs are bent at an unnatural angle and her eyes are vacant, staring sightlessly into the distance. A huge puddle of blood has pooled beneath her head, protected from the rain by the big, plaster bench she’s stretched beneath.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hysteria becoming a crushing weight on my chest.

Because I did this. I. Did. This.

Oh, Jude blames himself, but I’m the one who was unmeshed. I’m the one he set the nightmares loose for. I’m the one he saved.

The guilt is overwhelming, and so is the sorrow.

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