Slowly, it dawns on me: I’m back in the right place and, more importantly, in the right time. To my amazement, I’m neither wounded, crushed, nor killed, although my muscles ache as if I’ve been working out for six hours with a personal trainer from hell. Smoke curls up from my clothes. I must be dangerously hot. I’m too tired to care. But then the memories flood back: the Flintstones, the medieval party, the war hospital, the picture wars, and the fighting.
I shoot up and start rattling off. Too fast, too loud, too incoherent. “Williams, this school is out of control! It jumps through time—it attacked me! "You need to close it. You…” But when my eyes meet his, I stop abruptly, caught off guard by the warmth and understanding in his gaze. In that instant, I realize Williams will keep me safe. Finally, I feel how truly tired I am. I lose control of my limbs. My body sinks helplessly back to the floor, but before my head hits the tiles, he catches me.
“I understand what you’re trying to say, Miss Kwintens, but I have to disagree. Whatever you think the school did, it didn’t. The school can’t do anything. I had hoped you would have figured that out by now,” he smiles benevolently. “If it had been the school, more people would have been affected, don’t you think? Students wouldn’t have stopped talking about it. The corridors would have been buzzing with rumors and speculations. But did you hear a single complaint, apart from you or your friends? You saw how easily everyone forgot what had happened right after it happened, right?” I look at him vacantly, trying to process what he's saying, and then finally, the realization hits me. Of course, how could it have been the building? It’s me.
“So... do you mean... that I... that something snapped... inside my head?” Williams smiles.
“What a marvelous creature you are, Miss Kwintens. A gem among men. Your modesty is exemplary. Others with your talent would have caused all sorts of trouble out of sheer arrogance or overconfidence. They would’ve hurt the people around them... badly. You, however, only hurt yourself. You’re a much better person than you give yourself credit for.”
I’m flabbergasted. How am I supposed to respond to something like this? Williams, meanwhile, goes on undeterred, pretending not to notice my confusion. “The truth is of course that the school can’t do anything by itself. It can only react. There’s only one person who caused all the chaos and destruction. You.”
“Me? Is that a talent too? How many people are able to do that?”
“Nobody, Miss Kwintens. Not now, not ever. In all of history, only one person has been able to do the same, and she met an awful end—burned at the stake in the late Middle Ages.”
“Good to know,” I mumble, trying to digest what I’ve just heard, with little success. “Even if it’s true that I did all this, I don’t have a clue how,” I say apologetically.
“Yes, that’s a problem,” he answers brightly and quite unconcerned. “When you don’t develop control over your talent, it will control you. Your subconscious, which is not exactly a holiday resort at the best of times, will take over.”
“Alright, alright. No need to rub it in.”
“I have to, Miss Kwintens. We already knew that your growing unrest was causing bigger and bigger problems, but tonight was something else entirely. You must have had quite a panic attack to conjure all that up—battlefields, different periods of history clashing together. That’s a completely different level of...”
“Crazy?” I add, trying to be ironic.
“Ability,” he continues undeterred.
“And being able to return to us from that nightmare is a big sign of...”
“Failure?” I suggest.
“Love, Miss Kwintens. You followed your heart home. Finally, I might add.” I feel my cheeks blush, but for the first time, I smile.
“Armies,” I mutter, “Scroptz’ posters and paintings.”
“Ah, very good. It finally dawns on your unstable teenage brain what you’re capable of. I’m confident you realize by now how important it is to have more insight into, and control over, your subconscious?”
“Mmm, you sound like Shadow. She goes on about control... like... all the time.”
“Then maybe it’s time to start listening to your friends, Miss Kwintens. You do realize that you have friends, don’t you? Even your most hostile and obnoxious behavior hasn’t turned them away. An admirable sign of true friendship, don’t you think?”
That shuts me up. Williams observes with obvious pleasure the effect his words have on me, but then the wrinkles between his eyebrows rearrange into a serious frown. “I’m afraid the time of blissful unawareness is over, Miss Kwintens. The training wheels are off. Even the best and most well-intended efforts of your father and grandmother to keep you away from all this can’t protect you from your destiny anymore. With a loud bang, you’ve become the most important card in the deck, the joker—the card that can change the game by not following the rules, for better or worse. It makes me sadder than you can imagine and happier than I can explain. Sad because of the trials and hardships that await you. Happy because it means there’s finally hope. You see?”
Actually, I don’t see anything. I only know that I’ve been called a joker for the second time in one night. But in what game? There’s still no proof I can do anything. I haven’t achieved one single thing. Nothing tangible. Nothing real.
At that moment, a third voice—Shadow’s—breaks the silence. “Look! The list! Max has the list! How is that possible?”