“After finals and winter break…after I’m back to full strength, we’ll go get Preston. Whether Mom and Abby and Joe and Townsend like it or not, we’ll go get him. And then…” I trailed off. “And then we’ll finish this. Next semester, this thing ends.”
Walking back to the room that night, I tried not to think about all the things I still didn’t know. Like where Dr. Steve had gone, or how to find him. Or who the asset was that my dad had met at the circus and how she’d gotten a copy of Gilly’s list. I didn’t let myself fixate on exactly where and how Summer Me had messed up and let herself get captured.
Those questions would come back eventually, I was sure. But not then. Then, there were other questions on my mind. Like what was going to be on our Countries of the World final and exactly how much fudge Grandma Morgan was going to make me eat over winter break as soon as she saw how skinny I was.
The seventh graders ran by, one semester older. Just like us. And it hit me: they hadn’t gotten smaller. I’d just gotten bigger. Stronger.
And then I let myself realize the one fact I’d been too afraid to admit: no one is chasing me anymore.
Now, even as I write this, Gilly’s list is still in my mind, crystal clear and waiting. For me to be rested. For us to be ready. For a new semester and a new chance to finish the work that Gilly and my father started so many years before.
Now I know that, from this point on, we’ll be the ones doing the chasing.
And I like it.
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