Twilight by Meg Cabot Page B

down. Hummingbirds flitted from hibiscus blossom to hibiscus blossom. Tourists snapped away with their digital cameras.
    So what was up with the goose bumps?
    “Why?” I demanded, my throat suddenly dry. “Because you’ve done it?”
    “Not yet,” he said, casually. “But I will. Soon.”
    “Yeah,” I said, fear making me sarcastic. “Well, maybe you could travel back to the night you stole Mrs. Gutierrez’s money and not do it this time.”
    “God, would you let it go already?” He shook his head. “It was two thousand lousy bucks. You act like it was two million.”
    “Hey, Paul.” Kelly Prescott broke away from her clique—the Dolce and Gabbana Nazis as CeeCee had taken to calling them—and sauntered over, fluttering her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. “You coming to lunch?”
    “In a minute,” Paul said to her… not very nicely, considering she was his date for next weekend’s dance. Kelly, though stung, nevertheless pulled herself together enough to send me a withering glance before heading for the yard where we dined daily, al fresco.
    “So I don’t get it.” I stared at him. “What if we can travel through time? Big deal. It’s not like we can change anything once we get there.”
    “Why?” Paul’s blue eyes were curious. “Because Doc from Back to the Future said so?”
    “Because you can’t… you can’t mess up the natural order of things,” I said.
    “Why not? Isn’t that what you do every day when you mediate? Aren’t you interfering with the natural order of things by sending spirits off to their just reward?”
    “That’s different,” I said.
    “How so?”
    “Because those people are already dead! They can’t do anything that might change the course of history.”
    “Like Mrs. Gutierrez and her two thousand dollars?” Paul’s glance was shrewd. “You think if you’d given it to her son, it wouldn’t have changed the course of history? Even in some small way?”
    “But that’s different than entering another dimension to change something that already happened. That’s just… wrong.”
    “Is it, Suze?” A corner of Paul’s mouth lifted. “I don’t think so. And you know what? I think this time, your boy Jesse is going to agree. With me.”
    And suddenly, it seemed to get even colder than ever under that breezeway.

Chapter

six
     
     

    Please be home, please be home, please be home , I prayed as I waited for someone to answer the doorbell. Please please please please…
     
    I don’t know if someone heard my prayer, or if it was just that invalid archeologists don’t get out that much. In any case, Dr. Slaski’s attendant answered the front door, recognition dawning when he saw that it was me who’d been ringing the bell with so much urgency.
    “Oh hi, Susan,” he said, getting the name wrong, but the face that went with it right. Sort of. “You looking for Paul? Because far as I know, he’s still in school—”
    “I know he’s still at school,” I said, stepping hurriedly inside the Slaters’ foyer, before the attendant could close the door. “I’m not here to see him. I stopped by to see his grandfather, if that’s all right.”
    “His grandfather ?” The attendant looked surprised. And why shouldn’t he? For all he knew, his patient hadn’t had a lucid conversation with anyone in years.
    Except that he had. And it had only been a few months ago. With me.
    “You know, Susan, Paul’s grandpa isn’t… he’s not real well,” the assistant said slowly. “We don’t like to talk about it in front of him, but his last round of tests… Well, they didn’t look so good. In fact, the doctors aren’t giving him all that much longer to live….”
    “I just need to ask him a question,” I said. “Just one little question. It’ll only take a second.”
    “But…” The attendant, a young guy who, judging from his sun-bleached dreads, probably used whatever spare time he got to hit the waves, scratched his chin. “I mean, he