Page 114 of Sweet Nightmare

But before he can answer, one of the other students starts shouting and spinning around in circles. I can see that she’s walked right through a group of future Calder Academy students, but she can’t, and she is completely freaking out.

As are a number of the other students surrounding us, screaming and scratching at themselves and looking completely possessed to everyone around them as they lash out at nothing.

Or, at least, what looks to be nothing to everybody else. To me, it looks like somehow—some way—they’re suddenly feeling, but not seeing, the people from the past and future that surround us.

But I can see them, and everyone who is freaking out is doing so because they’ve just brushed against or walked through or gotten too close to someone who was either exactly where they were in the past—or who will be, one day in the future.

It’s the wildest thing I could ever have imagined, and to see it happen right in front of me is even wilder. Plus, it’s made a million times worse by the fact that the island’s ghosts have decided to join in the melee. They’re shuddering and complaining about the rain, but they’re here in all their nondescript grayness, nonetheless. Probably because every ghost I’ve ever met has a terrible case of FOMO. They all know something strange is going on here, and they don’t want to miss out on whatever it is, even if it means braving the worst storm to ever hit the island.

But their presence makes a complicated situation infinitely more complicated, though—at least for me. Because not only can I see decrepit old Finnegan as he waves to me, I can see past Finnegan as well. I can’t help but stare at the guy in a peacoat and work boots who is floating along behind him, a wide smile on his very handsome face.

This is what Finnegan looked like when he was young?

As if he can read my thoughts, young Finnegan shoots me a wink and a thumbs-up.

And, just like that, I give up on even trying to figure out what is going on in this shit show that has become my life.

Caspian hasn’t, though, considering he looks straight at me and demands, “What is happening here, Clementine?” as he shudders nonstop.

I reach out and grab his hand, pulling him several feet forward—and away from the young girl with ponytails and a teddy bear that he was literally standing halfway through.

I don’t have time to explain it, so I just say, “Get right behind me and follow in my footsteps exactly.”

“Umm, why?” Simon asks.

“Because she can see ghosts!” Caspian tells him.

Simon’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?”

But I’m too shocked to answer him. “You knew? But I never—”

“Carolina told me!” he says, rain streaming down his face. “She wanted to make sure I could watch out for you if she wasn’t around.”

His words hit like body blows, and I nearly go down.

It’s too much. It’s all just too much.

Too much grief.

Too much pain.

Too much struggle only to lose again and again and again.

It never stops, and I don’t want to do it anymore.

I can’t do it anymore.

I’m so tired. So hurt. So broken beyond repair.

I just want it all to stop.

But then I look at Caspian, and I can’t help thinking that he’s kept my secret all these years. That, in his own way, he’s protected me all along, and I didn’t have a clue.

I take a deep breath and do my best to fight off the sorrow that presses down on me with the weight of the whole ocean. Because I can’t give up. I can’t let anything happen to him—or to Simon, or to anyone on this path with us. I have to get them through the tangle of time that stands between them and the beach.

Them and the portal.

So I shove the grief and the horror back down to a place I don’t have to think about right now. And then I run straight for the fence that surrounds the whole island and normally cuts the students off from the beach and the docks.

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