Page 18 of Echoes

“Lydia, it said people died for this thing or from this thing. I don’t want to bring you into this.”

“I’m your best friend, El. You go, I go. Right?” Lydia smiled shyly.

“No, not right. I don’t ever want anything to happen to you. Why do you think I pushed you away all those years ago? I want you safe always.”

“Hey, I’m never going to leave you, so your logic back then still makes no sense. You needed to work through some things, and I get that, but Eliza, I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old. If you’re involved in something crazy, I’m right there by your side.”

Eliza stared at her then and said, “‘Friends Forever’wason our bracelets.”

“Yeah. Right,” Lydia replied, but there was something in her look that told Eliza that she hadn’t meant the kind of friendship love with her words.

“Lydia, I–”

“El, we–”

They started saying it at the same time, but Eliza would never know what Lydia was going to say because the device had been on the bed between them, and when Lydia moved to turn to Eliza more fully, she’d brushed it with her hand, and then, she was gone. Lydia had disappeared. Eliza blinked her eyes rapidly. She looked around the room. She stood up and ran out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and around her entire house, both inside and outside, but Lydia wasn’t there. Eliza ran back upstairs, understanding now that when she’d been transported by the device earlier, she must have literally disappeared from where she’d been in the storage room. This time, though, Lydia was the one triggering the device, so she must have gone somewhere else, too.

Eliza’s heart was racing. Had she done something to get her friend lost in time somewhere? Was Lydia dead? Would she come back? If so, when?

Eliza decided to sit next to the device and wait, careful not to press the button or even move the thing in case it needed to remain perfectly still. She remembered that the day they’d gone to the storage unit, Lydia had told her that she’d been gone a little more than an hour, so that meant Eliza had probably been gone a little less than that. Maybe Lydia would be gone for the same amount of time. Maybe it would be longer. Either way, allElizacould do was wait, so she just sat there and watched the clock on the cable box under her TV as the minutes ticked by.

Fifty-six minutes later, Lydia reappeared, but not in an instant flash. She reappeared as if she’d been beamed down from a spaceship, as if she was rematerializing.

“Oh, my God! Are you okay? Lydia, are you okay?”

Eliza moved the device out of the way then, setting it back in the metal box on the floor, before she refocused on Lydia and gripped the woman’s shoulders to check and make sure that she was really there.

“I get it now,” Lydia said softly.

“Are you okay? What happened? Where did you go?”

“You broke up with her forme,” Lydia added.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Melanie.”

“What about her?”

“She asked you to move in with her.”

Eliza froze for a moment. She hadn’t told Lydia about that conversation with her ex-girlfriend.

“Yes,” she offered finally.

“You said no.”

“Yes.”

“She said she loved you and asked you if she could move in with you because it had been seven months, her lease was up, and you owned this place. You two were sitting on the couch downstairs. She was holding your hand. You were wearing blue.”

“You went back tothat? You weren’t even there. Why would it take you back to me breaking up with my girlfriend?”

“Eliza, you told her that you couldn’t love her because you loved someone else.”

“Oh.”

“She asked you who.”