The Thread by Ellyn Sanna

Author:Ellyn Sanna [Sanna, Ellyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-09-18T05:00:00+00:00

14

Callie

We’re back in time. My mind keeps getting stuck on that thought. I stare down the street at the cars parked along the curb, the cars Kirin says are all from twenty years ago or more. They just look like cars to me, but there’s something strange about the street, something . . . subtle.

Subtle, types out that stubborn little part of my brain, the part where the old Callie is sending her e-mails. Subtle: from a fourteenth-century word having to do with something with a thin consistency, something that is delicately woven. Is time like a fabric, with the same thread running through it all? Has the thread pulled us backward, to an earlier moment in its weave?

Then my brain gives a little jump, and now I’m back to staring at the boy, trying to comprehend that this skinny kid has to be the one who took Kirin’s brother. He’s the same boy Safira saw all those years ago.

What’s happening?

Kirin glances up at me, and his face is so pale, almost gray, that I’m scared he’s going to fade away, like a ghost, leaving me here alone with the boy.

I don’t want to be alone with him. He looks harmless enough—he’s just a kid, smaller than I am—but he gives me the creeps.

Maybe the whole thing is a dream. Maybe I’m really back in bed sleeping.

“What’s your name?” Kirin’s voice makes me jump. How can he care about the kid’s name when the boy has just confessed to what he did? I take a step down into the stairwell, trying to see Kirin’s face, trying to understand. I feel so slow and stupid, that sort of underwater feeling you get in dreams sometimes, as though the air is thick and your feet are like lead.

This has to be a dream.

And then I realize what Kirin’s doing. He’s solving the crime, he’s finding out how this thing happened. If we’re actually back in time . . . if this kid really was the one twenty-one years ago . . . then maybe he’s grown up now, and he’s the one who took Ayana. When we get back (how do we get back?), we can find him, tell the police . . .

“Come on, kid,” Kirin is saying. “What’s your name?”

The boy hunches over, as though his belly hurts. “Ricky,” he mutters. “I’m Ricky.”

Kirin leans down, looking into the boy’s face. “So this little kid, Ricky? Is it a girl or a boy?”

The boy turns his head away. “Dad always wants girls,” he mutters. “Only girls.”

Kirin’s staring at the boy. He starts to say something, stops, then starts again. “Ricky, what year is it?”

The boy doesn’t answer him. He just clutches his stomach and moans, and Kirin lets out an impatient breath. But his voice stays calm as he asks, “Ricky, where’s this little kid now? Can you show us?”

The streetlamp’s pale light washes over the boy’s face when he turns toward Kirin. He has a ring of dirt around his mouth, and his hair sticks up around his head like a spiky helmet.

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