Page 1 of Intersect

1

QUINN

The woods behind Nick and Ryan’s house are finally free of snow. There are buds on the trees, tiny green shoots poking out of thedirt.

“I can’t believe your parents let you do that,” I say, watching Nick hammer a nail into the wood. Our treehouse steps took a beating over the winter, but my mother would never allow me to use a hammer like heis.

“My dad had a treehouse when he was a kid,” he replies. “And he built the whole thinghimself.”

“Does he still go in it?” Iask.

“Adults don’t liketreehouses.”

“I will,” I insist. “I’m going to keep coming up here, no matter how old Iam.”

He thinks for a moment and then shrugs, as if he’s announcing a decision he was already pretty certain of. “I think I’ll marry you when I grow up,” hesays.

I bite my lip to hide the sudden burst of delight in my chest. “Okay,” I tell him. “Sure.”

I go home to my mother and report what Nick has said as I’m falling asleep. “Maybe I’ll go to the future and see if it happens,” she says. She’s teasing me. The room is so dark I can’t see her face, but I hear the smile in hervoice.

“You’re not supposed to go to the future,” I remind her. The stories she tells me each night about time-traveling are always about the past, because she says jumping to the future is dangerous, and you may learn things you wish you didn’t know. She promises when I’m old enough she’ll take me with her, but until then, I can only live through her adventures. “Tell me about visiting the soldier. That’s myfavorite.”

“That’s my favorite too,” she says, her voice a little sad. “But you’ll have stories of your own someday. Betterones.”

My fears creep in. She’s so certain I can do what she does, but if she won’t jump to the future, how does she know for sure? “What if I can’t jump likeyou?”

Her laughter fills the quiet room. “Oh, sweet girl. Your abilities will make mine look childlike bycontrast.”

“But when?” Iplead.

She pulls the covers up to my chin and plants a kiss on my forehead. “You’ll jump,” she whispers, “on the day when you need itmost.”

My eyes open. I see moonlight washing over new Ikea furniture, a Monet poster in a plastic frame…my mother’s guest room, no more real to me than the room in that dream. If I close my eyes it’s almost as if I’m still there: the smell of my sheets and my mother’s perfume, the sound of tree limbs sweeping the roof overhead, the soft brush of a cat walking past the bed—they all still linger.Your abilities will make mine look childlike, she’dsaid.

Yet ithadto be a dream. The house was unfamiliar. We never owned a cat. And most of all, my mother can’t time travel. Even if shecouldtime travel, she would not. She’d be terrified of the ability, the way she’s terrified of pretty much everything that is outside the realm of the normal. I’m willing to suspend disbelief about a lot of things, but it’s a struggle to believe the woman in the darkness was mymother.

* * *

Tapping.

My mother’s voice outside the door wakes me. “Quinn?” she asks tentatively. “It’s 10:00 a.m.” I hear the worry that underlies her words.Quinn never sleeps this late, she is thinking. The brain tumor, unfortunately, has become the filter through which every unusual behavior must beviewed.

If she could see me at this moment she’d know that I do not look like a dying girl. In the mirror I see eyes that glow and a warmth to my skin that’s long been absent. Nick is undoubtedly responsible forboth.

And he is mine now. He’s mineagain, corrects some other, wiser voice in my head. I replay it all like a favorite movie montage—ending my engagement at the airport, his trip here last night. In twenty-four hours I changed my life, entirely for the better. Maybe I am dying, but if that’s true, why does it feel like my life has justbegun?

* * *

I walkinto the kitchen where my mother sits, clutching a cup of coffee between both hands. She offers me a weak smile, but the skin beneath her eyes is dark, smudged with the hours of sleep she didn’t get lastnight.

“I didn’t know you’d turned into such a late sleeper,” she says, rising from thetable.

“It was a pretty…difficult weekend.” My mother knows about the difficult part already. The magnificent part—the hours I spent with Nick at the lake on Saturday, our time together last night—will have to wait. If she learns I’ve already moved on from the man she considers a son, calling off my wedding will get a lot more divisive than it alreadyis.

She gets out a pan. “I can make pancakes?” she offers. “Or Frenchtoast?”

I could be sixty and my mother would still want to take care of me. That fact goes a long way toward easing my irritation about yesterday’s argument. “I’m fine,” I tell her. “I’ll get somethinglater.”

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