Free The Girl & the Machine by Beth Revis Page A

Franklin asked, glaring at her. “Have we met in the past?”
    Heather smiled slowly, but again there was no mirth in her look, not like before. She shook her head. “We didn’t meet in the past,” she said. She stepped closer to him, and her hands shook as she reached for his cheek, her fingers barely brushing along the edge of his jaw.
    “Then how did we meet?” Franklin asked. “How do you know so much about me?”
    Heather’s eyes did not leave Franklin’s. “We met in your future.”
    Franklin jerked back. That was…impossible. He didn’t pretend to be an expert in his own ability to travel through time, but he was the only person he knew who could actually do what he did. He had started travelling through time by accident. When he got older, he was able to gain a certain level of control over his ability, but even so he had limits. He’d never traveled forward into the future, and he had never traveled past his own timeline. The most back he could go was the day he was born, and no matter how much he tried, he could never go into tomorrow—he always landed in today. And he had tried—many times. He had tried for greed, in an effort to learn the winning lottery ticket numbers. He had tried for curiosity, to find out his own future, and the world’s. But nothing he ever did worked. His future was as cloudy as everyone else’s; only his own past was clearer.
    And yet… Here was this girl who knew his secret. Who knew him. And as much as he did not want to believe her, he couldn’t see any other way she could know about his ability.
    As the realization that Heather was speaking the truth dawned on him, Heather started to smile. It was a ferocious smile, the same kind of smile a predator has when it first sees its prey.
    “I have known you for a very long time,” Heather said. “More than six years. And throughout that time, I have been waiting for this day.”
    “And what happens today?” Franklin asked, apprehension seizing him.
    “Today’s the day when everything changes,” Heather said. “Today’s the day we change the world.”
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    “ T his is so weird ,” Franklin said. He pushed his small suitcase back and forth on its wheels, focusing on the whisper of the sound of the plastic wheels sliding along the cold tile floor. He ignored the rush of people around him. Heather had arrived at the airport before him. She seemed to have no trouble believing that he would absolutely follow her here. When she had left him at the greenhouse, after telling him everything, she had just handed him a plane ticket and walked away. He’d considered tossing it. But in the end, his curiosity had won out. He had no idea why he trusted this girl. He couldn’t explain it. But she seemed familiar to him. She felt like an old friend.
    She felt like someone he could trust.
    Still: “It’s just so strange,” he repeated.
    “Weirder than the ability to time travel?” Heather asked with a smirk.
    For Franklin, yes. Having a girl approach him while studying on a random Tuesday afternoon and telling him his entire life story and informing him casually that he was going to change the world today was definitely a new experience. Time travel was tame in comparison. Time travel to him was nothing more than an afternoon adventure. He used travel to steal extra naps during study sessions or to get away from the pressures of college. Very, very occasionally he actually used it to help him be a better history major. He was restricted to his own timeline, but he was able to enhance his report on terrorism by actually watching 9/11 happen in real time. He had won an award for his portrayal of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina from the history department, and no one had ever known that his sources were all firsthand.
    For everyone else on earth, time travel was surely an anomaly. He could see why so many people would find it fascinating, including Heather. He’d asked her dozens of times, and she confirmed every single