Because here’s the thing about Will:
No, here’s the thing about me:
I have been in deep, desperate love with that guy since he was a four-year-old boy riding his Big Wheel around his driveway. And not just because I wished we could have afforded a Big Wheel.
He’s amazing-looking, yes. Lots of guys are. The thing I love about Will is his heart.
He hasn’t taken a paycheck from our mothers for years, even though he’s always done all the computer programming and maintenance since we were in sixth grade. He says he doesn’t need their money—he makes enough from his consulting business. Besides, whatever he made from our moms, he’d probably feel compelled to give back at the end of the year as part of his annual Day of Philanthropy.
Will doesn’t just set aside ten percent for charity, like many generous people. And not just twenty percent, like really generous people. Will is a fifty-percenter. He keeps half for himself—for fast food, the occasional item of clothing, and now dates with the wonderful Gemma—and gives all the rest away.
He opened his first checking account when we were eight. And ever since then, he accumulates whatever money he receives during the year—whether from birthdays or Christmas or neighborhood yard work or now his thriving business—and every December he writes out three huge checks to the charities of his choice.
He’s helped establish schools for girls in Niger. Paid for a water and sewage system in a small village in India. Helped equip a medical facility in Guatemala. Sent an Albanian widow to nursing school.
And the best part—or the worst, depending on whether you agree with him (Lydia does not)—is that Will does all of it anonymously. He had our moms set up a private account for him through Build a Fund for Good, and the checks come from that account without Will’s name on them. So every year three lucky people or organizations get checks for them ranging from $40 (when Will was eight) to $6,000 apiece (last year), with an anonymous note asking them to continue doing good in this world.
How could you not love a guy like that?
I have the feeling Gemma doesn’t know. And I have a pretty good feeling if she did, she’d think it was stupid. Which is another reason I hate her. She doesn’t even know how great of a guy she has.
Will’s one of those people you wish could be in charge of the world. He’s also the kind of guy who would never want to put himself in that position. He likes doing good in secret. He’s like that old man in Cincinnati or wherever who dresses up like Santa every year and goes around handing out cash to homeless people.
Thanks to the invention of fire, no one will ever know how many notebooks I’ve filled over the years with stupid, pathetic love notes and poems and even songs (they are so, so bad) about William Aristotle Stamos-Valadez. Or how many thousands of times I’ve written “Audie Stamos-Valadez. Mrs. Will Stamos-Valadez. Dr. Audie Masters Stamos-Valadez.” That takes up a lot of paper, let me tell you.
But if Will were ever doing that—ever matching my name to his—he’d probably think of it as recognizing me for who I am to him: another sister. I’m smart enough to see me versus Gemma. Me versus Lucy, the girl he dated before Gemma. Me versus any other girl in the universe.
Which makes me wonder: would he feel the same way if he ever met Halli? Would he be like Red is with me—just give her a sniff and accept her, and right away start treating her as if she were me? Or would he see her the way I wish he would see me?
So many questions. So many possibilities. That’s why I love science.
Too bad science can’t really love me back.
But then it’s not like I’ve been writing “Mrs. Audie Masters-Science” in my notebooks all my life.
Will glanced at his watch. “I gotta go. Got a client on the east side.”
“So they’re . . . still not fixed?”
“I’ll get you some new computers by Tuesday,” Will said. “Promise. Cheap,” he added before I could ask.
“Okay, thanks.” Thanks and I love you. Thanks and please dump Gemma. Thanks and did you notice I’m wearing your company shirt? The one with the sick computer with the thermometer in his mouth, next to the strong computer flexing his big computer muscles?
“I’m wearing your shirt,” I said, pointing to it. Because I am a DORK.
“Oh, yeah,” Will said with a smile.
“How come you never wear yours anymore?” I asked. “When you’re out on repair calls?”
“Gemma said it looks stupid.”
HAIRBALL.
18
Halli and I planned on meeting at 7:00 tonight. I had a few hours before that, and decided to spend them as productively as I could—diving back into Hawkins.
So much of what I’d read in his new parallel universe book had just seemed academic at the time. Interesting, but not specifically relevant to my life.
Now I read it like it was an instruction manual.
I went back to the section that had started me down this path in the first place—the part where his colleague had made that comment about vibrations.
Here was the section:
“After a long morning of listening to various presentations at the conference, several of us decided to go out to lunch to relax and discuss what we had heard. The mood was rather jovial; it might surprise people to learn that physicists can be a fun lot when we decide to let down our hair.
“Among the group were my colleagues from Columbia University, Drs. Anspaugh and Steglow, and a rather humorous fellow from a little college out west, a Dr. Whitfield, a man to whom I had been introduced several years before, and whom I knew always to be good for a laugh.
“And once again, Dr. Whitfield did not disappoint.
“As our quartet discussed some of the ramifications of the current research on superstring theory, M-theory, and three-branes, Dr. Whitfield suggested that we look for a solution to all three by attempting to coordinate the vibrational pattern of the superstrings with that of any vibrational field that might divide one universe or one dimension from the next.
“After all of us had a good laugh I asked him, ‘And how would you propose to do that, Skip?’ He said he would leave it to ‘the greater minds of my colleagues to the east,’ and asked if we would mind paying for his lunch since he had forgotten his wallet back at the hotel. As I said, the man never disappoints.”
And that was all Professor Hawkins had to say about Dr. Whitfield.
I flipped to the index on all the rest of Professor Hawkins’s books, but couldn’t find any more mention of Dr. Whitfield. I did a quick Internet search, and found him: a physicist and neuropsychologist with degrees from the Universities of Montana and Colorado and also Yale, and currently teaching at a tiny little college called Mountain State in what looked like the equally-tiny town of Bear Creek, Colorado.
There was a photo of him on the college website. He looked about my mom’s age, and more like a lumberjack than a physicist with his red flannel shirt and short brown beard. His faculty bio said in addition to teaching physics, he also taught a course on backcountry skiing.
What was a guy like that doing hanging out with Dr. Herbert Hawkins—one of the most famous and respected physicists in the world? Maybe it was like Professor Hawkins said: he invited Dr. Whitfield along as comic relief.
But the thing is, Dr. Whitfield had been right—the secret really did lie in vibrations. Was that just a lucky guess?
By now it was almost 6:00, and I needed to get ready for the evening.
I had a little dinner, checked in with my mom, and then dug out our old camcorder from the closet. Last time I checked it still worked, although the battery life has always been pretty iffy. The most I could really count on was about thirty minutes of recording. Which meant I had to wait until the last possible minute to turn it on, and then hope I could quickly relax and get to the right vibration before time ran out. No pressure there.
Next came dressing for the evening. I wasn’t sure how cold it would be where Halli lived—it was still in t
he mountains—so I donned my same outfit from the morning: flannel shirt, jeans, big coat, thick socks, the whole business.
At about 6:50 I set up the camcorder on my desk and aimed it at my bed. Then I stuck my headphones on, took a deep breath, and pressed Record to start the filming. I sat back against my pillows, closed my eyes, and tried to relax into the proper wavelength.
I was so deep into meditation I didn’t notice I was there until I heard her snicker.
“Warm enough?” Halli asked.
She was dressed in purple flannel pajamas and red fuzzy socks. And sitting on a celery green couch with a white blanket and a big yellow dog draped over her lap.
She lost the dog right away.
“I missed you, too, Red!” I laughed as he tackled me flat on the wooden floor. Somehow I had landed there instead of on the really soft, cushy-looking lavender chair right next to Halli. I have to work on that.
But the floor actually felt heated, which I didn’t even know was possible, so it really wasn’t bad at all. If you didn’t count the hundred pounds of wagging, licking dog on top of me.
“Red, that’s enough,” Halli told him. “Off.”
And off he went. He sat in front of me instead, just panting and wagging.
Now that I was free again, I could look around. I got up and brushed the dog hair off my chest.
“You can take your coat off,” Halli said. “You probably won’t need it.”
I left it on the lavender chair, then kept on wandering.
It was a large wooden cabin, two stories high, sparsely furnished and exactly the kind of home where I’d love to live in my own or any other universe.
“This place is amazing,” I told Halli.
“Thank you. But really, it’s Ginny’s. She left it to me.”
“She left it to you? You mean you own it?”
Halli nodded.
I almost said, “You’re lucky!” but then realized how awful that would sound since the only reason it had passed to Halli was that her grandmother had died. I swallowed that sentence and instead went with, “Can I look around?”
“Sure,” she said. “I did at your house.”
As if there were any comparison between her house and mine, other than the fact that they both had floors and ceilings and walls.
Start with that—the walls. Every available inch of them covered in maps: maps of cities, maps of countries, hiking maps that looked like they’d been rained on and stepped on and stuffed into pockets.
“Have you been all these places?” I asked.
“Ginny and me.”
Over between the twin bookcases there was a huge map of the world, and it had colored dots all over it which I assumed must be places they’d been. The map was so covered with them, it would have been easier to figure out where they hadn’t been.
I dragged my eyes away from the walls and took in the rest of the place. The bottom floor was one continuous room, living room on one end, kitchen on the other. There was a staircase about midway through the room, and a short hallway leading away from the base of it.
There wasn’t much furniture in the living room. Just the couch, the chair, a low table, two large bookcases filled to capacity, a few rugs, a few lamps. In the kitchen there was one long counter with all sorts of shiny silver boxes sitting side by side, and a small square table with two wooden chairs.
I started down the hallway, but then turned to Halli to make sure it was okay. Red was back on her lap. She scratched him behind the ear and waved me on.
There were two doors, one on the right and one on the left. I chose the right door first: a bathroom. But really, heaven.
The room was huge—almost as big as the kitchen. And she needed all that space, because inside that one room there were: a claw-foot bathtub, a separate glass shower the size of an old-fashioned phone booth, a chaise lounge-looking chair with a reading table next to it, a bronze sink balanced on top of a log (the faucet was shaped like a swan. Water poured out of its beak. I checked), a little garden patch with a fountain and ferns and some plant I’ve never seen with heart-shaped leaves, two hooks holding a white terry cloth robe and a blue satin one, and two more hooks holding the softest, thickest towels I’ve ever touched.
“Can I live in your bathroom?” I shouted.
“Sure,” Halli shouted back. “I’ll stock it with food.”
I could eat her pancakes while I floated in the tub. Our tub at home is so small I can only lie down with half my body in the water. I have to switch off between shoulders and feet. So yeah, I’ll probably be moving into Halli’s bathtub just as soon as I can figure out the logistics.
I left my future living quarters and strayed across the hall to the other room. A bedroom—Halli’s, I guessed, based on the yellow hair on top of her dark red bedspread.
Not much furniture in there, either. Just the bed, a short bookcase beside it, a lamp on top of that, and a wooden desk and chair. Halli’s screen—her tablet—was sitting on top of the desk.
Halli and Red appeared in the doorway.
“I love this whole house,” I said. “It’s so clean and beautiful.”
“Thanks. I really love it here, too. I think it’s my favorite out of all of them.”
“All of what?” I asked.
“Ginny’s houses.”
“Hold on,” I said. “There are others?”
“Five,” Halli answered, plopping belly-down on her bed. Red hopped up to join her.
“Five more? You have six houses total?”
“And some apartments,” Halli said. “Ginny lived all over the world even before I came along. It made it easier for her to have someplace to live in the places where she went the most often.”
“India?” I asked.
“Yes, and Switzerland, Iceland, Germany—a few other places.”
Something had been bothering me for a while now. It was time to solve at least one mystery.
“Yesterday when you were telling me about your dot, and how people can track you, you said the government keeps track in case you commit a crime or you’re lost on Everest.”
“Yes.”
“Why is it called Everest here? Why do you have an India and an Iceland and a Switzerland, same as us? If the people’s names here are different, why aren’t the places, too?”
“I don’t know,” Halli said. “That’s a good question.”
“And Colorado,” I added. “We have that.”
“Do you have a River Grove?” she said, naming her town.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll have to check.” I should have thought of that before. “Hey, do you have someplace called Bear Creek here? Or Mountain State College?”
“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t heard of either of those.”
I was about to start going down a whole list—“Do you have Yale? Do you have Columbia? Is there a New York City? Is there a Herbert Hawkins?”—but Halli held up her hand.
“Food,” she said. “We need food first. Did you have dinner yet?”
I thought of the bowl of Cap’n Crunch I’d had at home, in honor of Will. I don’t even like that cereal. I’m more of a Cocoa Puffs kind of girl.
“Um, not really,” I said.
“Good,” Halli answered. “I’ll make us something nice.”
I was just about to follow her out when I noticed the door inside her room. “Is that your closet?”
“Yes.”
“Can I look?”
Halli shrugged. “Sure.”
I slid open the door and looked inside. Wow.
One dress. One skirt. Two blouses. Three pairs of shoes—including the hiking boots I’d already seen her in. One shelf for T-shirts, one for pants and shorts. That. Was. It.
“Where are the rest of your clothes?” I asked. “This can’t be everything.”
“Most of it,” Halli said. “I like to travel lightly.”
“But . . . there has to be more.” There was no way she could live her life, traveling all o
ver the world, and have that closet—while I, who rarely leave the house, have the mess that’s mine.
“There is a little more,” Halli said. “Coats, outdoor gear—those are all up in Ginny’s room. But for day to day, yes, this is it. I mostly just wear the same thing all the time—don’t you?”
She had a point. And the very thought of my closet right now was starting to make me sick. Definitely my next project.
“I feel like eating kiwi,” Halli said. “How does that sound?”
“You have kiwi? See what I’m saying? It’s all the same here.”
“What did you think it would be like?” Halli asked.
“I don’t know, flying cars, six-legged animals, people with three eyes—I’m not really sure.”
“And instead . . .” Halli sighed dramatically, “. . . you just get me. And Red.”
He thumped his tail at the shout-out.
“Food,” Halli said. “Right now. We’ll figure out the universes later.”
And if I thought our worlds were too similar, I was about to see how wrong I could be.
Hint: there was no Cap’n Crunch.
19
“Come pick out what you’d like,” Halli said. I followed her into the kitchen. But instead of stopping there, opening up some cupboards or a refrigerator (she didn’t even have a fridge, as far as I could tell), Halli led me through a door at the side of the kitchen. We stepped out into a cold walkway with bare white walls and a plain stone floor, and stood outside another door.
It turns out Ginny hadn’t left Halli just one house on that piece of property, she’d left her two. We were about to enter the second one.
“We leave our shoes here,” Halli said, even though she was wearing just her fuzzy red socks. She slipped on a pair of black fabric clogs sitting at the side of the door. “You can wear those.”
I took off my sneakers and stepped into the second pair of clogs, and realized they must have been Ginny’s. Which felt a little weird. I’ve never worn a dead person’s clothes before.
I told myself to pretend they were my Grandma Marion’s shoes, but that didn’t really help. She has some really gnarled up feet from wearing high heels too much when she was young. Every time I look at her feet I feel all the more attached to wearing flat shoes the rest of my life. I wasn’t too psyched about wearing anything her human foot-claws might have been inside.
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