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  Just as the elevator settled at my floor, I became conscious of the music playing over the speaker. I could hear the song clearly. I would have known it anywhere, although this was the first time I had ever heard it in my home loop, here, in this time.

  I steadied myself, grabbing the door of the elevator as it opened to my floor. I held my hand against the door to keep it from closing, and stood there, staring up at the ceiling, up at the everyday, gray-metal elevator speaker, transfixed. I listened for a good thirty seconds or so as the song came to a close. The same lilting, graceful chords of an acoustic guitar, playing those same four notes as the song ended, the sad—yet somehow hopeful—voice of a male country singer finishing with the words I knew so well. “You’re my home.”

  “My song,” I said to myself.

  In a few hurried moments, I was back in my room, clicking on iTunes, looking up my song.

  Deep down, I think I had known somehow.

  Even though I had been humming it, whistling it, and singing it since probably 2008, James Eugene Sawyer wrote it in 2012, recorded it in 2012, copyrighted it in 2012, and it was brand-new to iTunes this month.

  I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand.

  “How’s that for time travel?” I said aloud to myself. My voice rang against the hospital room walls, a hollow, lonely sound.

  Seven

  I left unceremoniously early in the morning, the first Wednesday in December. I called a cab from the hospital, and I simply slipped into our apartment, with my dad gone to work, and packed my duffel bag and backpack with the necessities— some warm clothes, my painting supplies, my new purple notebook—and I left.

  I was completely alone on this new adventure, probably my last, and you know what?

  It didn’t feel that different than usual.

  The hum of the Greyhound bus lulled me toward sleep, but I fought it so as to hopefully keep from looping. We drove along Route 31 north, up to the Upper Peninsula, up toward my impending freedom. I pulled out my new notebook and turned to the first page. I dated it and wrote two words: Esperanza and freedom. Then I wrote it all down. I listed everything I knew about Esperanza, all the facts, and then I listed everything that seemed to be pointing me here from my loops, anything that might be construed as a clue, everything that had happened since my future version of Dad had told me that things were going to scare me, things were going to happen.

  “Nine,” I said out loud. “Nine what?”

  I thought of the heron then for some reason, and I watched the scenery pass outside the bus window. Every now and then the bells in the Christmas wreath that the driver had fastened onto his steering wheel would jingle and jerk me from my thoughts, and I would catch a snippet of conversation here and there from the passengers around me. I tried not to eye everyone suspiciously, but I felt so close to being free. And I kept picturing a neatly dressed and blank-faced orderly suddenly appearing and toting me back to Dad.

  I knew I was being overly dramatic. I shook my head and stared out the window, leaning my forehead on the cold, icy glass. I sensed the dip in the temperature, not only by the feel on my skin but by the way the wind whipped around us as we drove, making whistling and groaning noises, passing through various crevices and slats in the bus.

  We drove over the Mackinac Bridge, and I figured we were getting close. The Lake Michigan waters were gray and unfriendly beneath us. Excitement swirled in my belly as we crossed that bridge, like I was entering a new world. I kind of was.

  It took us about eight hours total to reach Esperanza, with all the other passengers having gotten off at their stops, save for myself and a little, blue-haired old lady. She offered to give me a ride to where I was going when we both got off at the small bus station. I politely declined, feeling like I wanted to do it all on my own. Plus, it was hard to find the words for what exactly I was doing here.

  Yes, I was running. But it was more than that. I was being beckoned, called here. Of this I was absolutely sure. The boy wanted me to come here. So, yes, Little Old Lady, I’m running away from my mad scientist father, and I was told by a small boy in another time to hop aboard a bus and find this town. Want to help me out?

  In the end, I asked the lady if she could give me directions to the town square I had read about. She happily complied, and I dutifully followed Savoya Avenue through a small residential neighborhood. It was only a quick two-minute walk, lined with modest homes—brick bungalows, larger trilevels. Lawns were clutter-free, the shrubs trimmed even in this cold season. And there were no paint-chipped houses, no screen doors with holes. This was a place that people took pride in. I liked it.

  I found a stone bench on the edge of the town square, and I dropped my duffel and my backpack. I took a deep breath. It was cold. But not scary, ridiculous cold like I had read about on the Internet. And there wasn’t even much snow, just enough to make that homey crunching sound underfoot. But it was only December. If I was here in January, in February, I might then know what the term cold really meant in the Upper Peninsula. Would I still be here in January or February? Would I even still be alive?

  I bit my lip hard and made myself think about the here, the now, what I was doing in Esperanza.

  I looked around. The town square was picturesque, and, not for the first time in my life, I was reminded of the film Back to the Future. There was even a clock tower across the square from the bus station, atop what looked to be the post office.

  A woman walked by in a yellow beret and yellow scarf, pushing a stroller. Two young children, boys, followed her, holding each other’s mittened hands.

  “Hello,” the lady said as they passed.

  “Hi,” I answered.

  I laughed to myself quietly as I realized that I was searching out the faces of each of the children, hoping that one might be my boy, that he might just skip up to me here in the square and tell me exactly what I should be doing.

  A bakery sat across from the clock tower. HEAVEN AT BETSY’S, the sign read. FRESH EVERY MORNING.

  My hand went to my mouth. I gasped. Blinked a few times to make sure I was reading it correctly.

  “Holy crow,” I said out loud, another one of my boy’s sayings. I could not take this in. I mean, was this how it was going to be now? My home loop and my other loops crossing, intersecting, freaking me out? This would take some getting used to.

  I stared at the bakery sign for a long time in disbelief. Finally, my stomach rolled over and got me moving, made me snap out of it. I started toward the bakery, deciding on a cup of hot chocolate and a donut, and I would ask there about a nearby motel, or maybe a bed-and-breakfast. Esperanza really did seem like bed-and-breakfast material.

  Betsy’s was warm and softly lit, the smells every bit as welcoming as I had hoped they would be. The bakery was small, mostly taken up by a large glass display counter, showing off cookies, éclairs, donuts, scones, cakes, and pastries of all kinds. I sat down at a little bistro table in the corner, next to a small Christmas tree complete with a pink satin ribbon garland. I smiled as I realized that each ornament on the tree was a miniature cake, cup of coffee, or something to do with the bakery. Elvis’s Christmas album played over the speakers.

  My pink frosted donut tasted light and sugary, melting in my mouth with each sip of hot chocolate. Two college girls sat at the table nearest to mine, their heads leaning toward each other, deep in discussion. I sighed then, trying to resist the feeling of betrayal that was washing over me.

  Gia.

  The woman behind the counter came over and asked if I needed anything else. “You should try a pasty,” she told me. “We yoopers are famous for them, potatoes and vegetables, all wrapped up in a yummy crust,” she said with a smile.

  “Yoopers?”

  “That’s what we call ourselves,” she said. “We live in the UP—so we are yoopers.”

  “Oh,” I said, getting it finally. Duh. “Um, no thanks,” I said, feeling her eyes upon me, feeling that sudden raising of my hackles, as if everyone wa
s in on things with Dad and I had a tattoo across my forehead that read RUNAWAY.

  “You’re not from around here, eh?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” I answered, my eyes stealing a glance at the woman. She was tiny and round, with shiny, dark hair cut at her chin. JEANNETTE, her name tag said.

  I felt my ears burn scarlet. Did I look like I was running away? I frantically searched my mind for some clue that I could have possibly overlooked, some sliver of information that might lead Dad to Esperanza Beach.

  My hand shook as I reached for my hot chocolate, and the cup clanked against the saucer. The waitress gave me a concerned look, and then she patted my shoulder and let me be.

  Get ahold of yourself, Emery, I told myself. No one knows you. Dad’s reach is not so long. There is no GPS chip surgically implanted in your hip. The thought actually made me stop for a moment, but I pushed it away.

  No one knew where I was. I was here on a mission, with a mystery to solve. And I was here to figure out what to do with myself, with my time … with my life, no matter how little might be left.

  Jeannette looked like a mom, a charming, cherubic, smiley-faced mom. She wore a pink Christmas sweater, one with a large embroidered Christmas tree bedazzled with sequins and beads, as well as a white partridge perched at the top.

  I steeled my nerves and lifted my face to the counter. “Ma’am?” I asked.

  “Yes?” she replied, coming around to my table again.

  “I’m new around here, and I really could use some help finding a place to stay. Something out of the way, or …”

  “We don’t have any motels, but over the Mackinac Bridge there’s—” She tapped her chin. “Let me just give you the address of the Realtor down the street. He’ll be able to get you something, I’m sure. How long are you staying?”

  She was already writing down directions on her waitress pad as she bent her head over the counter.

  “I don’t know for how long. Maybe a month or two,” I answered.

  “I heard Roy Genk at the diner saying just yesterday how no one’s stayed at Dala Cabin in winter for months. Can’t rent that thing—”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Roy at the diner.”

  “No, the cabin … What kind of cabin?”

  “Dala Cabin. It’s a little place out by the lake, lonely.… Nearest neighbor is the lighthouse.”

  I felt goose bumps break out all over my arms now. This was weird. Beyond weird. “Dala? Like the little Dala horses?”

  “Yes.” Jeannette nodded.

  Of course. The boy had showed me. “I want to stay there,” I said.

  Jeannette looked a little confused. “Well, I—”

  “Will this Roy be able to rent that to me or—”

  “I’m not sure, but—”

  “I have to stay there,” I said, feeling a rush of excitement, a thrill that, yes, these loops were real. Confirmation. I was right about all this, my loops, about coming to Esperanza, about being needed by this boy.

  Jeannette gave me a quizzical look. “Well, sweetheart, sure. I’m sure Roy’d be glad to help you out if he can.”

  I realized I probably sounded a little crazy. But I smiled, and Jeannette smiled back at me.

  I felt my heart beating a bit faster. Now I just needed to find the nine … the nine what? I was getting closer. The cabin was the first step.

  I found the cabin easily, although Roy’s map turned out to be quite useless. I felt all Nancy Drew, paying Roy in cash and giving him a false name. In the end, all I could think of was Emery Smith instead of Emery Land. I nearly laughed out loud as it came out of my mouth. I was sure Gia would’ve come up with something much more romantic—Emery St. Claire, Emery Monalisa.

  I ended up asking for directions at the post office, and I got a quizzical stare from the gray-haired guy manning the counter. He had an underbite and the bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen. I tried not to stare as he offered me a few simple directions to “catch” a footpath that would cut right out toward the lake. I just had to find Red Rock Creek, behind Winging Stables.

  “Welcome to these parts, miss,” he said. “Although I just don’t know why a young girl wants to stay all alone out at Dala Cabin, eh?”

  “Right by the lighthouse,” I said, ignoring his question.

  The man nodded and offered to give me a ride. I declined.

  “We got a bowling alley here in town,” he told me with a very serious expression.

  “Okay,” I said, unsure of the appropriate response.

  “A nice one with electronic scoring.”

  I still didn’t know what to say. “Okay …” We just stared at each other. “Thanks,” I told him quickly, turning for the door, happy to be on my way.

  The short trek through the woods was beautiful. Thick pines lined the footpath, a light dusting of snow beginning to fall as I walked. The moment I stepped into the forest, onto the path, a hush seemed to come over the place. The noise from the town square, the stables—traffic and voices—seemed to dissipate more quickly than it should have, and there I was under this canopy of pine and falling snow.

  I heard the lake first, before I saw it. As I followed the path’s easy-to-miss curve toward the east, I saw the lake and the lighthouse, just like I had expected, just like I had imagined it. It was gorgeous. I would have to paint it.

  And there was the cabin. It was nothing special, a gray clapboard square with flaking white-painted shutters. But the location, the circumstance of this little cabin, it was extraordinary in that it was even here still, built too close to the bare, rocky shore, the Michigan winters having beaten the paint off three-quarters of the place with winds and water and life. If it stood here too much longer, I would be surprised.

  Its little window looked at me, peered right back at me, as if it was waiting for me. It instantly welcomed me. I dropped my duffel and backpack in the clearing and ran up to the cabin, smiling. DALA CABIN, the sign said in blue letters, with little red and yellow flowers on either side of it. I traced the letters with my finger. I took a big breath of the brisk air and enjoyed how it burned in my throat. It was all mine.

  I pulled my long scarf, hand-knit by Gia, up over my ears and walked around the perimeter of Dala Cabin. I saw that there was a huge pile of firewood chopped and neatly stacked near the west wall, and I began to feel a bit nervous that possibly Roy had been wrong about the cabin, that someone else was already here. I could see footprints in the snow too, around the cabin, the woodpile.

  I tried the door and it was unlocked. As I pushed the door open gently, peering inside, I held my breath and half expected an orderly to jump into my view and cart me back to the hospital. I took a step forward on the threshold of the cabin, and a small pile of icy snow dislodged from the DALA CABIN sign and fell right onto the back of my neck.

  “Aaahh!” I screamed, unnerved. I wiped the snow off and stepped into the cabin, taking a deep breath. The place looked unused, lonely even. But it was just like I remembered it. Just like the last time I had been here. In the loop. In that instant, so much of my existence, my theories, my life, felt validated.

  The air in the cabin seemed to let out a sigh, as if it had been expecting me.

  The one room really was impeccable. Clean and well lit—homey, yet stark.

  I laughed, a loud and startling noise, as I saw the red Dala horse on the mantel that I had picked up and looked at in my loop. I noticed a photograph too on the mantel, a photograph that truly looked like an advertisement for Michigan summers. The lake in summer, blue and glistening, with the cabin in the background, everything green and blooming.

  I went back out to the clearing for my things. And then I dropped my backpack and my duffel right onto the hearth of the monstrous and beautiful fireplace and tiptoed around the little room. It smelled of coffee and earth, firewood and clean sheets. I was here, out of place, and stealing away a piece of this tranquility, but I so drank it up. Everything about the cabin calmed me instantly
.

  Everything about it told me I had done the right thing. This is where I need to be right now, I thought. At this time, this place was the right one.

  I didn’t know much about how things were going to go, about what exactly was in store for me, but I knew that being here, sitting down on this red-and-white-checked bedspread, felt right.

  I let my head flop back on the pillow and smelled a clean, soapy scent from the pillowcase. I inhaled deeply, and that was when I saw the tiny drawings, on paper no bigger than index cards, all lined up on the west windowsill—seven of them. Each one better than the last.

  I had to sit up and get a good look. They were each done in pen and ink, with many sharp angles and deep strokes: a sketch of the cabin itself, a blue heron—which I chalked up to coincidence—an empty bottle, a Dala horse, the heron again, and a portrait. It was a handsome young man, with a shock of dark hair and sad eyes. The last one, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be.

  The most recent tenant must have been an artist, I told myself. If I had only known.

  I took the last drawing back to the bed with me. I lay down and stared deeply into it. It was something very close up. There were lots of lines, scratching, the whole paper almost black with ink. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.

  I turned it around for a fresh perspective. And then I saw it: a woman’s face, agony, a scream. For a moment, it felt like the sound echoed in my ears.

  It was unsettling. I folded the drawing in half and shoved it in my pocket. I didn’t want to look at it again.

  I spent the afternoon sleeping. I have always been one to need things perfectly perfect in order to fall asleep—a hard mattress, darkness—but not today. My sleep was oddly deep, undisturbed by loops or dreams or otherwise. I counted back. It had been at least seven days since I had slept a whole night without looping. This peaceful nap seemed like a good omen to me, a good start. Could stress have been triggering the onslaught of loops at the hospital lately? I thought about it. Maybe. Maybe the cabin would help me to decompress, give me some time to think and figure all this out.