Unraveling

by Elizabeth Norris

  “I hit Poblete in the face freshman year,” Ben says out of the blue.

  “What?” He can’t possibly be serious.

  But he nods. “It was still, like, the first or second month of school, and I was dealing with a lot of anger issues. We’d figured out what happened, and I knew what we had to do in order to get back home, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. And the whole thing was my fault. I was the one who tripped.”

  “Please, it didn’t sound like it was anyone’s fault.”

  He shakes his head. “No, it was my fault. But school seemed like such a waste then. I was spending every waking moment reading about what people here considered pseudoscience, and no one would teach me the things I wanted to know. Plus, the home I was in then was pretty bad, and Reid and I were going through a phase where we hated each other.”

  “Reid?” I ask with a laugh. Elijah seems more hateable to me.

  Ben nods and offers me a small half smile. “I never actually liked him much—as a kid, I mean. Our parents were friends, so we had to be friends. Then we got here and we became close, you know, but he adjusted so easily. I hated him a little because of it.

  “So I acted like a jackass a lot. I didn’t get into that many fights, that was always Elijah’s thing, but I talked out in class, corrected teachers when they messed up, just made myself a general nuisance. I pissed Poblete off daily. I’d come into homeroom late, no one would ever excuse my absences, I’d swear for no reason, move her shit around, whatever. One time I even lifted her classroom keys so I could check out the faculty bathrooms.”

  “Why were you so lame?” I laugh.

  Ben shrugs. “I could tell she’d get pissed at me. But then the next day when I’d come in, it was like a clean slate. She never stayed mad.”

  “Not even after you hit her in the face?”

  He shakes his head. “I was being an idiot, and I had grabbed her yardstick and was carrying it around. Twice she told me to put it away, but I swung it at someone’s water bottle cap, like it was a baseball bat. And the cap nailed her right in the face, like, an inch under her eye.”

  I bite my lip to keep from laughing, and Ben smiles.

  “She told me not to let the door hit me on the way out and kicked me out of class, and I stood outside, sure that I was done. She was going to tell admin, and since I’d already been in trouble plenty I’d get suspended or expelled. My foster parents at the time were already threatening to send me to a group home. So after homeroom ended, I went back into class and apologized, and I meant it. She had this red welt on her face from where the cap had hit her. I felt terrible. But after my apology, she just looked at me and asked what I wanted.

  “No one had ever asked me that,” Ben whispers. “So I told her about metaverse theory and everything I wanted to learn. She went to college at Duke, and they used to have a parapsychology department. She got me in touch with a retired professor who got me in touch with a couple other people, and that’s how I started to put it together.”

  “So Poblete is one of the reasons you ultimately figured it out?”

  “Yeah,” Ben says, but the laugh that comes out is bitter. “She’d just love to know that she’s one of the reasons I’ve been opening portals to another universe, one of the reasons people are dead, one of the reasons we just got hit with probably the worst earthquake San Diego has ever seen.”

  My throat tightens. I hadn’t thought of all that. “You can’t know—”

  “Have you ever felt an earthquake like that?” he asks, and then he shakes his head. “It’s not a coincidence. When we were sitting there, I thought that was it, it was over.”

  Which explains why he didn’t move to get under the table.

  I feel sick to my stomach, like I might not be able to stop my body from spasming and expelling the lunch I just had. Because the enormity of it feels like it’s squeezing my insides—my heart, my lungs, my stomach, my soul.

  Because Ben is right. I’ve never felt an earthquake like that. And I’ve lived here my whole life.

  08:03:09:40

  The earthquake was an 8.1 on the Richter scale.

  The biggest earthquake to hit San Diego. Ever. In fact, it’s the biggest to ever hit California.

  The known death toll is already at least two hundred people. And rising.

  My cell phone service is out, and I can’t call Jared to make sure he’s okay, but according to the PA announcements, there’s been nothing but a few minor injuries from broken glass or things falling on people.

  They start evacuating the school by classroom, and when we’re finally allowed to get up and leave, I grab my stuff and bolt out the door, relieved to finally get some air. Only when I get outside, I’m struck by how serious this is. There are downed palm trees everywhere, and the quad is covered with palm fronds. The front of the library has cracks going up the walls, and the fountain at the front of school is just a pile of broken stones.

  I don’t stop moving until I’m in the girls’ bathroom, standing over a toilet. I haven’t even caught my breath, and I’m bracing myself with a hand on the stall and vomiting.

  Until there’s nothing left, and I’m just dry heaving.

  My eyes water and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, my nose is running, and drops of sweat slide down my side, even though I’m freezing cold.

  This is real. Alternate universes. Portals to other worlds. Universes colliding and destroying each other.

  My shoulders shake, and I feel myself starting to lose it.

  “Janelle?” Ben’s voice calls. “Are you in here?”

  I don’t answer. Instead I hold a hand over my face and try to smother the crying.

  “Are you okay?” Ben asks, and this time his voice is closer. I’m pretty sure he’s actually in the bathroom with me.

  I hold my breath and wipe at my face with the back of my hand, before opening the bathroom stall.

  “I just need a minute,” I say to him. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Hey,” he says, reaching out to me. “Don’t be upset.”

  But he doesn’t tell me it will all be okay. Because he can’t. And apparently Ben Michaels isn’t the kind of guy who lies to people. Even if it’s just to make them feel better.

  “How can you say that when the world might end in eight days?” I ask, wiping my eyes one more time.

  “We just need to focus on what we can do,” Ben says. “We have to find out who’s opening the portals and stop them. Then we’ll have more time, and we can go from there.”

  “Oh, piece of cake,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Maybe we should give up, just recognize that the next eight days will be our last, and I don’t know, live them to the fullest or something.”

  He gives me a half smile and pulls me into him. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  I lean into his arms and wonder why nothing has ever felt this good before. Which is my only excuse for the words that come out of my mouth next. “If all we have is eight days, why can’t we be together, even if it’s just for a few days?”

  “It would be too hard. I wouldn’t be able to handle leaving you.” His breath tickles my hair, and I wrap my arms tighter around him and try to memorize the exact feel of his body against mine.

  “If our worlds collide, that will be the least of your problems.”

  He nods against me. “I just can’t.”

  “But why?” I need him. I need this. I need something good in my life, something worth holding on to, worth fighting for, some reason not to lie down and say, “Wave Function Collapse, come get me.”

  “Janelle, your dad…”

  And he pulls away.

  “It’s my fault he’s dead. I killed him.”

  It’s like I’m stuck outside—like the world has just tilted off balance, like a wall of bulletproof glass has just shot up in between us so that even though we’re separated by only inches, we’re a world away.

  My mouth dry, I can’t form words. In fact, all my senses have j
ust turned off. My ears refuse to hear Ben’s words. My skin can no longer feel the heat. My nerve endings are all dead.

  I’m finally broken—more broken than I was days ago when my body lay dead on the side of the road by Torrey Pines Beach.

  Broken. There’s no other way to describe it. My insides are cracking apart, imploding. Nothing can give me life again—nothing can make me whole. Not even Ben.

  This is Just Too Much.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t even stand right.

  But when he reaches for me again, I can jerk away.

  Part of me wants to go back to the beach that day and go get Nick. Instead of playing Independent Woman, I could have just been Helpless Female and I never would have gotten hit by that truck. I never would have let Ben Michaels into my life. A part of me even wishes that Ben had just left me there to die after the truck hit me. What good has rising from the ashes of death and being resurrected even done me? My father is dead, Jared is devastated, and my mother needs to be committed. And the one good thing in my life—Ben—is actually the tipping point, the reason everything fell apart.

  Part of me even wishes I’d never pulled him out of the ocean that day to begin with. None of this would have happened, then.

  Or would it have happened anyway?

  “What do you mean?” I ask, forcing the words through.

  “I shouldn’t be here.” Ben’s voice breaks on the last word.

  “But you didn’t kill him?”

  “Not physically, no, but it’s my fault he’s dead.” He turns away.

  The relief that washes over me is a palpable thing, like a cool ocean breeze or a shot of pure oxygen. I can suddenly breathe normally again. Of course Ben didn’t kill my dad.

  “Don’t you get it? Every moment that I spend in this universe, every minute, every second, is wrong. I’m altering the course of events in a world where I’m not even supposed to exist.”

  “Ben Michaels, changing the world. Awfully self-important, don’t you think?” Even though I know exactly what he means, I can’t help myself. Mostly because I want him to belong here. With me. Because it wouldn’t feel so right when his arms are around me if he wasn’t supposed to exist here.

  Ben laughs bitterly. “I wish I were. I wish I were.” He pauses in his pacing and sits down on the couch before burying his face in his hands. “Butterfly effect: A seemingly insignificant incident can cause an infinite chain of events. Think of what a significant incident does.”

  “Your existence isn’t what killed my dad. A person killed him, and—”

  “I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t belong here.” He looks up. “Those people who died in that earthquake, that’s on me. All of this is on me.”

  “You don’t know that’s what this is!” I swallow and make an effort to lower my voice. “Chaos is the natural state of life. You can’t control chaos. You can’t control life—and you know it. You’re here now. You’ve been here for seven years. Fucking deal with it.”

  “But just my being here could mean everyone is going to die.”

  “You don’t know that!” I scream. Not because I don’t believe it. I see what he’s thinking. I get it. I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore, just that I need to scream at him, and then kiss him until I’m not scared anymore.

  Of course the logical part of me worries he’s right. But there’s another part of me that’s dead convinced he’s wrong. Because there’s another option. “What’s to say you coming through the portal and ending up here wasn’t what was meant to happen in the first place? What if you didn’t belong there?”

  Because the truth of it is I can’t imagine a world that says Ben doesn’t belong with me.

  08:00:01:38

  The weirdest thing I notice after the earthquake is that there’s water everywhere. Streets and sidewalks are awash with water that got shaken out of nearby swimming pools. Everywhere you look, you can’t see more than a handful of feet in front of you because of the combination of smoke from nearby fires and the layer of dust that’s just hanging in the air. Some buildings look pristine, like nothing happened, and then others—maybe ones right next to them—have their roofs caved in, or their garage taken out by a tree.

  I’m getting out of Alex’s car when Ben leans forward and says, “Maybe you shouldn’t go alone. Should someone sit in another booth or up at the bar to keep an eye out?”

  “This isn’t some undercover cop show,” I say as I shift my swimming backpack on my shoulders. “From my interactions with him, Barclay seems like a jerk, but he’s still one of the good guys.”

  Ben looks at Alex, like he’s not sure he should take my opinion without male corroboration, but thankfully, Alex knows who his real friend is, and nods. “She’ll be fine.”

  I slam the door without waiting to hear what one of them will say next. Jared is safely at a friend’s house for the next three hours, and Struz is dealing with fallout from the earthquake. Mission Valley, where the 5 and the 163 all meet the 8, suffered the most damage. Reports are coming in about the death toll climbing, and the beach towns are supposed to get hit extra hard too once the aftershocks start rolling in. Right now the biggest concern is whether the quake will create a tsunami. The news is predicting a couple of thousand deaths and billions of dollars’ worth of property damage.

  Chili’s in Mira Mesa is closed, of course, but luckily for me, Whole Foods is still open, and Barclay agreed to meet me there instead.

  Apparently Barclay is sort of a slacker, so he didn’t cancel on me to go put in time helping emergency responders, like Struz did.

  Power is out all over the city, and the fact that Whole Foods is dimly lit gives this meeting a sort of sinister, illegal feel that makes me shiver a little. That and the fact that every housewife within a ten-mile radius is here now or has been here already, rushing through the aisles, fighting over canned goods and bottled water and anything else that won’t go bad. Things they left—like economy-size packages of paper towels and crates of oranges—are overturned and strewn in the aisles. It looks like a tornado went through here.

  I step over some discarded and smushed fruit and head toward the café, where I’m supposed to meet Barclay.

  Alex, Ben, and Elijah all have the photo of alias Mike Cooper, and they’re going to attempt to drive around and figure out which gas station it is—but who knows how far they’ll get with all the traffic. Despite my objections, Alex and Ben are working together on all the gas stations north of University, Elijah is on his own on the south side, and Reid is apparently stuck at home with his parents.

  Barclay’s already waiting for me with a beer and a slice of pizza. “So Tenner, what’ve you got for this meet-up?” he asks as I slide into the seat across from him.

  It looks like he’s the only one in the seated café.

  I guess most people are taking the whole “go home and stay home” thing seriously.

  “My questions first,” I say, sliding the picture of alias Mike Cooper across the table. “Can you find this guy for me? He sometimes goes by the alias Mike Cooper.”

  Barclay glances at the picture and shrugs. “What do you want with him?”

  I debate explaining what I found on my dad’s computer, but if he doesn’t already know how alias Mike Cooper factors into the case, I don’t want to tell him. Barclay strikes me as the kind of guy who’d be likely to find Cooper and not tell me—just go for the glory and take all the credit himself. And he can have the credit, but unless the FBI is ready to jump forward leaps and bounds with what we know about science, it’s not going to do us much good in the scheme of things.

  Instead I say, “I just want to talk to him.”

  Barclay looks at the photo again. “He looks a little old for you. Is this about drugs?”

  I roll my eyes. “Stop being such a dipshit. Can you do it?”

  “Of course I can, but what do I get?”

  “These are the files my dad had for the current case you guys are working,”
I say, opening the backpack and retrieving them. I’ve already been through them forward, backward, and upside down, and there’s nothing here I haven’t seen yet. But I’ve made copies of everything just in case.

  “Case files? I have access to these at the office.”

  “I doubt that.” Dealing with Struz would have been easier if I thought he’d believe me—and keep me in the loop. “This is everything, plus all my dad’s notes. But if you don’t want them, I’ll just keep them.”

  “No, I’ll look at them.” He’s trying to keep up the nonchalant act, but I can see in his eyes how much he wants them. When he reaches for them, I pull back.

  “And you’ll find alias Mike Cooper for me?”

  “I said I would,” Barclay says. “C’mon, give ’em up.” When I do, he adds, “You should quit the whole junior-investigating thing, though, and leave this stuff to the people who know what they’re doing.”

  “You appear to be doing a bang-up job so far,” I say, because I just can’t deal with his condescending attitude. “Do you have any idea what did that to the people in that house—”

  “I told you to stay in the car, there was no reason you had to see that—”

  “—how to shut off that countdown?”

  He stops talking over me and reaches out and grabs my arm. His voice is low, serious, and a little frightening. “What do you know about the countdown?”

  07:23:29:17

  Gone is the arrogance and condescension, almost like he flipped a switch, and I realize I’m meeting Taylor Barclay, FBI agent, for the first time. Before this I was just dealing with a jerk who underestimated my intelligence and dismissed me, but this guy, with the tight grip on my arm and the fierce determination on his face—this is a guy I don’t want to mess with.

  I try to jerk my arm out of his grip, but he holds steady and pulls me across the table so I’m closer to him. “I said, what do you know about the countdown?”