Amalia's house was just as empty as we had left it. The white sheets still draped the remaining furniture, and the walls echoed with faded outlines of missing picture frames. It was almost like no time had passed at all, and yet I knew from Kieren that it had.

I'd been gone for five weeks, and one glance out the window into Amalia's backyard told me that spring had come to Boston. A blue jay flitted from branch to branch on one of Amalia's imported cherry blossom trees, the pink buds of which were just beginning to sprout.

Kieren stepped up behind me and gently rubbed my arm as he headed to the front door, with Mom staying a few feet away, examining Amalia's deserted house like it was a mausoleum.

There was nothing to say, so I simply watched Mom from the middle of the room. I tried to remember what it had been like when Robbie and I had visited this house as kids, with Mom and Amalia laughing over some shared joke on the sofa. I flashed on a vivid image of myself, standing in this very spot, blue one-piece bathing suit with little mermaids on it and orange flip-flops on my feet, ready to head to the beach. Robbie whining from the door that he was ready to go, that we were taking too long.

A bucket full of plastic shovels and a beach umbrella leaning against the wall.

Dad waiting in the car.

We were happy then, our family.

Is that what Mom was thinking about now? Or was that never real in the first place?

"Mom?" I asked.

She turned to me, her eyes blinking like she was waking from a dream.

"Have you already done it?"

"Done what?" she asked, a sliver of annoyance working its way into her tone, like it always did when I would try to talk to her after Robbie left us.

But I cleared my throat, refusing to waver. "Destroyed the doors...under the high school."

Her mouth fell open slightly, an audible breath seeping its way in and then back out. "Yes."

"When?"

"Last month." She looked at me briefly before continuing. "I told you, I hadn't realized people were still using the doors. I had been toying with the idea of destroying them ever since I discovered how it could be done."

I could feel my eyebrows scrunching together with anticipation, waiting for her to continue.

"They're just a sustained nuclear reaction, after all. And you can stop a nuclear reaction with—"

"Cooling rods," I realized, sighing deeply. "Something to draw the neurons away from each other."

Mom smiled, chuckling to herself. "You were always good at science, Marina. Even as a little girl. The constant questions—'How did the glaciers make mountains? How do black holes work?' It never ended. And I never knew half the answers. My friend George was the one who figured it out. He—honestly, he kind of reminds me of you."

"What kind of rods did you use?"

"Boron, I think. I don't know. George designed them."

I stroked my hands through my hair, angry at myself suddenly. Why hadn't I thought of that? And yet something else was bothering me, a question that remained unanswered.

"Why?" was all I asked. "Why a month ago? What happened to—"

"A young man showed up in Portland. The one I wrote you about. And when I saw his face—a face that looked exactly the same as it had twenty years ago when I first met him, well... That's when I realized people were still using the doors. And so George and I came up with the plan to close the doors for good. I didn't realize it would trap everyone in that future. I just—I didn't realize."

I nodded. The best laid plans in Down World never seemed to work out the way we had hoped. It was a game that couldn't be won.

But my mother had just revealed something else as well: she really had no idea that Adam and I knew each other; she hadn't seen him in 20 years. She had no idea that Adam and I had traveled to the world under the lake together—the one where she was so corrupt with power. So maybe that version of her was really gone.

And all that was left was this virtual stranger standing in front of me.

"Car's here," Kieren called from the front doorway, and he motioned his head over his shoulder towards a waiting ride-share car. I kept my eyes on Mom for a moment longer, but she looked away, done talking about it. So I headed for the front door.

Halfway to the brownstone, Kieren put a hand on my knee. A sudden surge of exhaustion took over me and I rested my head on his arm, a gesture which I hoped he wouldn't misinterpret. Nothing had changed between us. The sting of knowing he had left me for another girl was still raw. And besides, I hadn't given up hope of finding Adam somehow.

Somewhere.

But I rested my head on his strong shoulder anyway. And just like when I was a kid, I felt so calm knowing that he was close.

When we got to my house, he held the door open for me and Mom, and I walked in first. "Hello?" I called.

I heard a shuffling in the kitchen and so I headed in that direction, only to find Robbie at the counter with his head buried in a cup of coffee, Piper by his side with a gentle hand on his back. They both looked up to see me enter, and an ocean of relief took over their faces.

"Oh, thank God," Piper muttered as Robbie shot up out of his chair.

Before I could speak, he had me wrapped up in his long arms, squeezing the life out of me.

"I'm sorry," I said, though I doubted he could hear it with my mouth buried in his sleeve.

"Don't ever do that to me again."

"I'm sorry."

"I mean it."

I let him hold me for another second, then disinterred myself to find that Piper was standing right there, waiting for her turn. She grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the door, allowing Kieren and Mom to enter behind me. I noticed Robbie shaking Kieren's hand, a sight which filled me with an overwhelming flood of happiness, before Piper cornered me over by the window.

"What did I tell you?" she demanded.

I shook my head, trying to catch up.

"I warned you about Adam. Didn't I?"

"It wasn't him."

"Bullshit, Marina. I told you what would happen with him."

"Piper, please..." I scrunched my eyes shut, trying to figure out how to explain it to her—that it couldn't have been Adam's fault. Because he was dead. Or, at least, in the future he was dead.

But I didn't have to find the words because now Piper had me in her own embrace, her fingers reaching up to her cheek to wipe away a tear. "You really scared us," she said.

"I know."

After another minute, she took my hand and led me towards the others, and my brother offered me a cup of coffee. They all started talking, with Kieren explaining how he'd found me trapped in a future portal, and Mom interrupting to tell him not to reveal too much. Before I knew it, Mom had taken over the conversation with some story from when she'd gone through the Today door in high school, and the others were listening in rapt attention.

But I felt like I was floating away from the room. It was surreal the way Mom and Robbie acted around each other; the ease of their body language, the way he retrieved a packet of artificial sweetener from the highest shelf in the cabinet so she could add it to her coffee.

This was how I had left them—with Mom raising Robbie in Portland, and the two of them becoming an inseparable unit. It had been my gift to them, in a way, and I knew it was selfish of me to be jealous of my own gift.

But still, it tore my heart apart to see them like that. Mom continued with her story, not even looking at me.

All the times I had missed her so achingly. All the mornings I had woken up and for a brief moment, I had forgotten she was gone, expecting to find her in the kitchen.

Didn't she miss me at all?

I started to inch my way toward the door, but Robbie noticed and caught my eye. I held up one finger to let him know I'd be right back and ducked out into the living room.

The talking and occasional laughter from the kitchen continued behind me as I looked around the room for any trace of Adam.

His coat, which had been draped over the sofa most of the time he'd been here, was gone. The slight scent of his shampoo that had filled the air from his morning showers, the one he'd taken pre-dawn after a rigorous workout, only to then sneak back into bed before I woke up—it was gone too.

I made my way up the stairs to my bedroom, hoping I'd find something—anything—to prove to me that he'd been here.

But the room was empty. The bed neatly made. The curtains drawn open to provide a view of the budding branches of the tree outside my window.

I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the bed, my feet sprawled over the comforter, twirling Sage's diamond ring on my finger. Hot tears burned down my cheek, landing on my pillow to either side of my head, as my brain formed the inevitable conclusion: Adam must have died when he crossed over.

He had landed on the other side of the dome, and had been unprotected from becoming one with his other self—his dead self.

But then another thought occurred to me as I stared at that diamond ring, remembering the moment Adam had put it back on my finger on this very bed.

"I'm not dead," I said aloud, letting the thought work its way through my exhausted brain.

When I had taken the train to the Dead Zone—the place where my adult self was apparently dead as well—I hadn't become one with her. Surely they had buried me in the local cemetery when I'd died, in the family plot. So I should have become ashes or something the moment the train had left the dome and crossed to the other side.

But I didn't.

Because apparently you can't become one with ashes. Kieren had explained this to me once, how if your molecular structure has changed too much, you don't join with your other self. It's why Robbie didn't become his child self when we'd crossed the Yesterday door to Portland.

And the same was apparently true for a corpse.

So if Adam didn't die when he'd crossed over, that left only one possibility: he'd left me on purpose.

Obviously, he'd gotten to the future and seen what would become of us, that I would be the cause of so much misery, so much death, and he realized that I wasn't who he thought I was.

Did his brother Jonah get into his head, telling him what I'd done?

Or his nephew?

Did he hate me now? Wherever he was?

I was thinking of taking that ring off my finger and burying it back in its forgotten jewelry box when I heard a timid knock on the door. It was my brother, a look of concern plastered on his handsome face.

"Hi, Robbie," I smiled, scooching over to make room for him to sit on my bed.

"Watcha doin' in here?" he asked as he sat down.

"Just thinking."

He nodded, his eyes drifting to the floor by his feet.

"Are you still mad at me?" I asked.

He shrugged, swallowing down whatever words he couldn't seem to form. Finally he spoke, his voice barely a whisper. "Will you tell me what happened, please?"

I swallowed hard, unable to look at him. "No," I finally responded. "I can't tell you this. It's just something I have to deal with, but it's not your problem."

He nodded bitterly, his lips clenching shut in frustration.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"So that's it, then?"

"Look, I didn't mean to leave like that. I would have left you a note, or—"

"Yeah, whatever," he cut me off. "Glad you're back." He got up as if to leave, and I pushed myself up against the headboard, anxious suddenly.

"Hey, wait."

He stopped, but his gaze was still glued to the floor. I could have sworn I saw tears starting to form in the rims of his deep brown eyes, threatening to spill over onto his dark lashes.

"Robbie?" I asked.

He swayed a bit before he talked. "You know, every day I was on that train—all four years—I kept thinking about what I would do with one more day in the real world. Sometimes I thought about just sitting in my room, strumming Dad's old guitar or something. Or eating one more meal at our table."

I nodded, waiting for him to continue with a sudden knot in my throat.

"Mostly I thought about you. How I'd left you all alone. And who was gonna be there to protect you now?"

His words were like a vise clenching my heart. I couldn't bear to hear about his pain.

"There were so many voices in my head. That was when they started. They got louder and louder the longer I was there. And they said the same thing over and over again."

"What's that?" I asked.

"'You blew it.' That's what they said. 'You had everything. And you blew it.'"

"Robbie, please..."

"You were my family, M. We had each other."

"We are still family," I began to protest.

"Are we? Because you act like I'm not even here. You act like you have to do everything by yourself. You keep everything so secret. And I know you're going through something right now, and you won't even tell me what it is."

"I can't tell you this."

"You can. You are not alone, M!" His eyes finally shot up to me with that last sentence, all the pain and anger bursting out of them. "Because I'm right here. And if you think I can't understand what you're going through, then you don't know me at all."

"I didn't want to make it your problem. You were starting fresh."

"We help each other, M. We save each other. You and me. That's been our deal. Or is that over now?"

I shook my head, guilt overwhelming me. "Of course not."

He nodded, shaking his head. "You scared me so much."

We stayed in silence for a moment. I knew it was my turn to speak, but I was terrified to tell him what I'd discovered in the future portal. Terrified that my brother would never be proud of me again once he found out about the terrible thing I would invent; the war and the despair that it would cause.

Yet I stood up to meet him in the center of the room, clearing my throat to tell him to the truth about myself. My hand reached for my temple, about to pull my hair away and show him the new permanent addition to my brain.

But before I could do it, Piper's head appeared in the doorframe.

"Guys?" she asked quietly, clearly having overheard at least part of our previous exchange. She looked sheepish as her eyes flitted from me to Robbie and then back again. "I'm sorry to interrupt. Um, M, there's someone at the door for you."

"What?" I asked, my mind racing to figure out who would even know to look for me here.

"Yeah, it's that guy Jin? Remember? Date from hell," she joked under her breath. But my ears were ringing with the sound of his name. "Yeah, he stopped by yesterday too. I guess he really wants to talk to you."

"Send him away," I said quickly, shaking my head involuntarily. "Tell him I'm not here."

"Okay, um..." she looked uncertain, stepping tentatively further into the room. "It's just, like, he brought flowers and everything. Are you sure?"

"I don't want to talk to him!" I burst out.

"It's fine, M," Robbie said calmly from the middle of the room. His eyes were closing like he was getting one of his headaches. "You should go down."

"I don't want to, Robbie."

"I'll tell him," Piper offered. "But I have a feeling he'll just come back tomorrow. He seems really determined."

Piper turned to go, but something wasn't right about this whole thing. Jin and I hadn't talked in weeks. Why would he suddenly be showing up at the door?

Unless...something new had happened while I was gone.

I ran past her before she could make it to the stairs. I barreled down to the first floor, where Jin was still standing in the doorway, a bunch of fluffy white flowers clenched in one muscular fist.

"Hey, there you are," he smiled, flashing those spectacular white teeth I had been hoping to never see again. "You haven't been in class. I was worried."

"I was sick," I said, keeping my distance from him, with one hand resting on the heavy front door as though I might slam it closed at any second.

"I heard," he nodded. "Um, these are for you."

I was vaguely away of an audience behind me, specifically a couple faces peeking out from the kitchen. But I didn't want to turn around and see if Kieren or my mother was watching this scene. I took the flowers, careful not to touch his hand, as though it might burn me.

"Listen," he said softly, bowing his head a bit so we were now in some kind of confidence. "I'm really sorry about the other night."

"It's fine," I protested, wanting to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

"It's not," he said, smiling warmly. "I was a jerk. I really blew it, huh?"

I shrugged.

"Yeah," he continued. "I don't blame you for being mad. Anyway, that's not really why I'm here. I mean, I did want to apologize, of course. But that's not the only reason—"

"Why are you here then?" I cut him off.

"Right. Um, can I come in?"

"We can talk right here."

He cleared his throat, adjusting his head to be even more secretive. "Okay. Guess I can't blame you for that. It's just, well, you remember a few weeks ago when we were talking? About the cochlear implants, and the Swedish and stuff. Well, I applied for a patent, submitted the idea for a couple contests. Didn't really think I'd hear anything back about it, but then last week, the craziest thing happened."

"What's that?" I asked, ice creeping up my arms at the way he was discussing it so casually.

"This guy called me up. Hedge fund guy. Totally loaded. Wants to invest in it. And I mean, he was offering a lot of money. Like private yacht kind of money, so..."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Well, it's just—I don't even know how he knows about you, but—well, he mentioned you. Like, specifically. He wants us to work on it together. Actually, he kind of insisted. And when I say lots of money, I mean, like, set-for-life kind of money. So I was wondering..."

"Stop," I said, feeling like my limbs had turned to steel. "What's the guy's name?"

"Oh, um, it's hard to pronounce. Hold on, I've got it written down." He pulled out his cell phone, scrolling through some notes. But I didn't need him to find it. I knew exactly who it was.

"Alexei," I muttered.

"Yeah, that's it!" Jin said, excited suddenly. "Alexei Popo-dona-vich... I don't know, I'm butchering it. So he talked to you, too, huh?"

I walked away from the door, meandering back into the living room where, sure enough, Kieren was standing guard by the kitchen door, watching me like a sentry.

Jin saw this as an invitation to enter the house behind me. "So," he said, a new burst of excitement entering his tone. "Are you in?" he asked.

And my eyes flashed on my mother, standing meekly in the corner of the room, not able to hold my gaze.

"Or are you out?"

***

Kind of a long chapter, but there was a lot of ground to cover! Thanks to everyone who chimed in with who they were shipping last week. The winners were... (ahem)... Kieren. And also sometimes Adam. And quite a few Bradys! No Jins. Sorry, Jin. Also several people said some variation of: "Men suck. I just want Marina to live."

I love you guys so much.