“You and everybody else on the planet,” I said. “I was just trying to figure out who they might be,” he said.
No one was allowed on the streets after nine except military and emergency vehicles. He was looking toward the rose bed, swirling the dregs of his coffee, his knee popping up and down so violently under the table that my cup jiggled. “I don’t care what we talk about,” he said. Or maybe I was mad at him for not being Ben Parish, which wasn’t his fault. Maybe I was really mad at myself for saying yes to a date with a guy I wasn’t actually interested in. For some reason I can’t explain, I was mad at him. I knew I was being mean, but I couldn’t help it. I pulled out my phone and texted Lizbeth: Cuticle care can tell you a lot about a person. It was one of the first things I noticed about him. “What else is there to talk about?” His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. Like I was the one who brought up time travel. “The point is that just showing up changes history,” he said. “Why would you want to kill your grandfather?” I twisted the straw in my strawberry Frappuccino to produce that unique straw-in-a-lid squeak. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather before you were born, then you wouldn’t be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather.” “They-I mean we-can’t go back in time and change anything.