Chaos (Lanie Bross) - Lanie Bross Page 0,37

shirt. There were more people now, some standing in line, others crowding the tables. The windows were fogged up from the heat of their bodies.

It was wrong. All wrong.

Intuitively, she glanced at the stack of newspapers by the door again.

Cleanup Efforts Continue. Search For Survivors Continues, Day Two.

Monday, October 15.

She froze. Was this a joke?

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. She looked over her shoulder to see if the girl was watching her. It had to be a trick—some hidden-camera, practical-joke kind of thing. Maybe it was a new reality TV show. But the girl didn’t even glance her way.

A man in a dark suit started to push past her, a large to-go cup in his hand.

“Excuse me.” Jasmine licked her lips nervously. Her throat felt parched. “Could you tell me what day it is?”

The man looked at her curiously. “Monday.”

“Are you sure?” she blurted out.

“I had to go back to work today. So yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He pushed out the door and jogged to a car double-parked at the curb, using a newspaper as a makeshift umbrella. Jasmine followed him out onto the sidewalk, mindless of the rain. She barely even felt it.

She breathed in deeply, like the school counselor, Mrs. Cole, had instructed her to do when she felt overwhelmed. If she wasn’t caught up in an enormous conspiracy of practical jokers, that left only a couple of possibilities:

She was crazy.

She was jumping back and forth in time.

Time. Ford had said something about time. He was talking about Miranda. Time was always an obsession of hers.

And the note she’d found in the hidden room: Find Ford. He’ll know what to do.

Luc had mentioned that Miranda was responsible for what had happened to Jasmine on Friday night.

It all kept coming back to the same woman. Maybe Miranda was the crazy one.

Maybe Jasmine would be okay. She had to believe that.

Jasmine stepped back from the curb as a bus rumbled by. If it was truly Monday—again—then Ford would be at the rotunda. Maybe she could get him to take her to Miranda.

Jasmine ran down Jackson—noticing, again, how easily she took the hills, despite the fact that it had been hours (days?) since she’d last eaten—past the park and the gym where she’d seen Ford boxing. She caught the bus at the next stop and slipped loose change from her pocket into the slot where the driver sat.

She made her way to an empty seat.

The voices of the passengers around her slugged through her mind, distorted and deep. The constant lurching of the bus, the starting and stopping, sent spikes shooting into her head. She felt sick to her stomach. Time travel. Christ. It was something out of a science-fiction book. It was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

When the bus shuddered to a stop near the Palace of Fine Arts, she exited quickly, staring at the ground. She couldn’t have been on the bus that long, but with so many streets still without electricity and the sky filled with deep gray clouds, it looked darker than before. She estimated it must be around four p.m., about twenty minutes later than the first time she’d met Ford at the rotunda. She hoped he would still be there.

Jasmine walked in the direction the bus had gone, her head down and hands in her pockets. Divisadero was familiar enough to her that she knew where the rotunda was.

Rain ran under her collar, soaked her shirt, and made her long hair stick to her face. But it felt true, and real. It convinced her she was real.

The debris had been cleared away from in front of the hidden staircase. What did that mean? Had Ford discovered the hideout himself? A strong feeling of dread washed over her. The attack. It was here she’d felt a hand grab her ankle; it was here she’d blacked out.

Suddenly, she realized that if it really was Monday again, that meant her attackers would pursue her here, to this very spot, again. She was an idiot to have come.

She froze when she heard footsteps. A familiar figure moved into the light. Ford.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

She came down the stairs toward him. His face was in shadow. “Leaving,” she said. She seized his hand. “And you’re coming with me.”

“I thought I told you yesterday—” he started, but Jas cut him off.

“Yeah, I know. Different sides and all that. But you have to trust me on this one.”

Ford wrenched his hand away from hers. “How did you know where to