Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  I got up, went to my computer, opened up a new document on my screen.

  EXPLORATIONS IN PARALLEL UNIVERSES, by Audie Masters.

  Then I gave it a catchy subtitle: THE HIDDEN SECRETS REVEALED.

  I pictured it in book form one day, my own photograph on the back. And down beneath that, the review from Professor Hawkins:

  “Audie Masters is one of the greatest cosmological explorers and experimental physicists of our time. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her research that she was destined to become one of the greatest students I’d ever have. Explorations in Parallel Universes is one of the most eye-opening, thought-provoking treatises I have ever had the privilege to read. I look forward to great things from Dr. Masters.”

  I started typing the introduction: “I’ve always been an admirer of Dr. Hawkins . . .”

  I knew somewhere in there I’d need to mention Professor Whitfield, too. Give him a really big part. Clearly he deserves it.

  Wonder what Professor Hawkins will think about that?

  37

  I’d already told Halli that since it was Friday night I could meet her a little earlier and then sleep in later. I never knew how much I could love a weekend until I started messing with my sleep this way.

  So instead of setting my alarm for the middle of the night, I just stayed up until I knew my mom was asleep. I told Halli that would probably be around 10:00 my time—6:00 AM hers—and I wasn’t far off.

  I changed into my long underwear and made the journey. Soon to be tackled by a big yellow dog.

  “Good boy, Red, hello!” It took a few minutes to wrestle him off me, and by then I was covered in fur. Not that I minded at all.

  “Where are we?” I asked Halli.

  “Paradise,” she said.

  Close enough.

  Green, green, green. After all those miles of nothing but rock, this place was like an oasis. Green trees, green grass, even green paint on the wooden beams above the rustic stone hut.

  There was fog rising from the ground. And some weird, eerie sound coming from the forest around us.

  “Hirsch,” Halli explained. “Red deer. They’re bugling to each other.”

  Once I knew what it was, I thought the sound was beautiful. Not weird or eerie at all. Just . . . nature. Part of being outdoors. Part of a life I’ve never even been interested in before. But now I can see why people do this. It’s a lot more interesting than just watching nature shows on TV.

  I was happy to change into the clothes Halli handed me—this place was cold. I wondered if we were higher up.

  As I pulled on the warm pants and shirt, I looked around some more.

  We were hidden at the side of a small white building that looked more like the hermit’s hut I’d imagined. But off in the distance, across a meadow of high grass, I could see the real hut—the stone one with the green beams.

  There were several long wooden tables set out in front of it, and I could see a bunch of people sitting at them, drinking coffee and eating their breakfasts. This place was much more primitive—and pretty—than where we’d spent the night before—or was that two nights ago? I’ve completely lost count. The main hut was maybe only a quarter as big, too. Instead of the place holding hundreds of people, it looked like there were maybe only thirty or forty.

  But enough of admiring the scenery. I had a parallel version of me to cross-examine.

  “Start talking,” I told Halli as I laced up my boots.

  “About what?”

  “You know about what. All of your adventures. All the things you apparently weren’t going to tell me, and I had to find out from strangers.”

  “Audie, it’s really not—”

  “No. No excuses. Tell me everything. Start with rowing across the Atlantic.” I added, “Please.”

  Halli sighed. “We only rowed it once.”

  “Ha! Only once! No wonder you didn’t tell me.”

  “Audie, you don’t understand . . .”

  “Then tell me,” I said. “I want to understand.”

  Halli drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on top.

  “What no one seems to understand,” she said, “is that it was Ginny, not me. She was the adventurer. Once I showed up as a little baby, she just kept on going and brought me along.”

  “Kept on going where, for instance?” I asked.

  “The North Pole—”

  “North Pole,” I repeated.

  “Antarctica—”

  “Of course.”

  “Some South American rivers—”

  “Oh, like the Amazon?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So you traveled down the Amazon.”

  “Yes,” Halli said.

  “And you didn’t think I’d want to know that?”

  “I’m sure there are lots of things I don’t know about you,” Halli said.

  “There’s no comparison!” I said. “I’ve hardly left my house.”

  Halli shrugged. “Like I said, those were really Ginny’s adventures.”

  “A twelve-year-old girl rowing with her grandmother across the Atlantic? I’d call that your adventure, too.”

  “All right,” Halli said, smiling reluctantly. “I guess it was.”

  But then her expression changed. “You have to understand, Audie. All of that feels like a different life to me now.” She motioned toward the crowd in front of the hut. “All these people up here who recognize me? Who think I’m famous? I’m only famous because of Ginny. We were a pair. And now she’s gone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

  “But you came here,” I said. “Alone. I mean, except for me every now and then, but obviously I’m not doing anything but following along. You did this by yourself.”

  “Yes, but so what?” Halli said. “With Ginny everything was . . . different. She was so brave. So confident we could do anything together. And she made me believe it, too.”

  I didn’t say any of the obvious, like, “But you’re brave, too. You can still do these things on your own.” I could tell she didn’t want to hear it. Maybe she didn’t believe it. It wasn’t my place to try to talk her out of her feelings. I had no idea what it had been like to be her before, or to be her now, without Ginny.

  But I did know this:

  “Halli, if what you told me before is true—if your grandmother really did try to keep you from following her the day she died, so you wouldn’t see it happen—then don’t you think it’s because she wanted you to go on? Wouldn’t she be sad to think you’d stopped all this?”

  Halli shrugged. “I’ve had a whole year to think about what she might want. But you know what? She should have told me. She shouldn’t have just sneaked away like that. I don’t know if I’m supposed to continue like this alone, or completely change my life and do something different.

  “I like maps,” she said, looking at me with an intensity I wasn’t used to. “Ginny and I lived by our maps. Why didn’t she leave me something? A note, a sign—anything?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered quietly. I petted the thick neck fur of the dog lying beside me. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t, either,” Halli said. “Which is why I don’t talk about it much. It always ends up in the same place—not knowing.”

  She reached over and scratched her dog’s ear. “Ready to start the day?” she asked me. “How much time do we have?”

  “Until I’m too tired to stand up any longer.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then let’s start by sitting down.”

  38

  Breakfast was already over, and some of the hikers were heading down the trail to wherever their next destination was, when Halli and I finally came out of hiding. As we approached the hut, I could see Gemma/Sarah sitting at one of the tables next to the guy called Martin. I didn’t see the injured Daniel anywhere.

  Sarah called to us and waved us over.

  I groaned. Then I realized I�
�d completely forgotten to tell Halli who Sarah was.

  “There’s this guy,” I said, “back in my world.” I hesitated before saying the next part, but then figured I might as well. I couldn’t accuse Halli of holding back information from me if I wouldn’t share my own.

  “This guy I’m completely in love with,” I went on, my heart pounding because I never, ever say that out loud. Halli’s eyes got wide. She smiled at me.

  I waved her off. “No. Forget it—he doesn’t like me. It’s hopeless. Anyway, Sarah is his girlfriend, but her name is Gemma there. And she’s the most annoying person I’ve ever met. I kind of hate her guts.”

  Halli nodded toward Sarah. “But she doesn’t seem that bad.”

  “Wait till you get to know her,” I said. “I’ll bet she’s horrible.”

  But I was forgetting my physics. Forgetting what I’d already discovered about parallel universes. Halli wasn’t exactly like me, so why did Sarah have to be like Gemma?

  Still, it was hard for me to look at that girl’s face, no matter how friendly she was acting.

  And she was acting very friendly.

  She insisted that I sit next to her, with Martin on her other side. Then she scooped up my hand in hers and pressed it firmly against her cheek.

  “I’ll pay you a million icies,” she said, “to stay with my brother so Martin and I can run away.”

  “Uhhh . . .” I wasn’t quite sure if she was joking.

  “Two million,” she bargained. “You don’t even have to feed him. Just watch over him, give him water when he moans, and I promise we’ll come back for him after we’ve had our fun. Right, Martin?”

  “Right, love.”

  Sarah turned to Halli. “Or I’ll pay you two million if you heal him today so we can continue with our holiday.”

  “Can’t,” Halli said. “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. I looked at his ankle this morning—he’s not going anywhere today.”

  Sarah collapsed her head onto the table. She knocked her forehead twice against the wood. Then she went back to wooing me.

  “Beautiful Audie, I can see that you’re a generous soul. My brother is a wicked, hateful person, but I do love him, and he did pay for this trip for me, so I can’t really abandon him, can I?”

  I was starting to catch on. “No.”

  “But you see, Martin and I—” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you see why the two of us need to run away together immedjetly so we can be free of our escort and see if we really are compatible.”

  I smiled. “I see.” No matter how much I didn’t want to like her, I was having trouble sticking to that plan.

  She picked up a limp clump of my hair. “May I cut this?”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  She picked up even more of my hair and sort of bounced it in her hands. “Right about . . . there.” She pinched the hair between her fingers a little bit above my shoulders. “This is where the stalk starts thinning. You should let me cut it. I’m an expert, aren’t I, Martin?”

  “If you say so,” he answered.

  “Are you a hair stylist?” I asked.

  I glanced across the table at Halli, who seemed to be greatly enjoying the whole exhibition.

  “Not by profession, but by inclination,” Sarah answered. “I see beautiful things and I need to—”

  “Cut them, obviously,” Martin finished for her.

  “Make them even more beautiful,” Sarah corrected, sending him a withering look. “So please let me cut it. Or really, just think of it as pruning.”

  It was weird how she almost read my thoughts from the previous day—about me being the weaker plant, and Halli the strong one. Maybe some pruning was exactly what I needed.

  “What about my hair?” Halli asked, bringing her long ponytail in front her shoulder for inspection.

  Sarah held her hand to her heart. “Never! Put that back—back! Don’t touch it—ever. But you—” she said, turning back to me. She wasn’t going to let it go. “Martin, do you still have that knife?”

  He shook his head and laughed, but still fished it out of one of his pockets.

  “Is it sharp?” Sarah asked.

  “Sharp enough for hair,” Martin said.

  “We should go to the grass,” Sarah said. “People won’t want clippings in their tea.”

  After a few more minutes of Sarah’s charm and cajoling, I had to give in. I mean, why not? Maybe she really could make it look better. Plus I was starting to get into the spirit of this whole thing being an adventure. If Halli could go to the North Pole and down the Amazon, I could let some strange Englishwoman who looked like my most hated nemesis chop a few inches off my hair.

  Although it was more than a few inches. When I saw big clumps of brown hair falling into the grass, Sarah sang, “No worries! I do this all the time.”

  “Where?”

  “At school,” she said. “We all cut each other’s hair. Practically every week.”

  Whoever cut hers did a pretty good job. I only hoped Sarah had the same skills.

  After a while, she said, “Feel it.”

  I reached back, nervous to find out exactly how short it was. But it wasn’t that short—a little below my shoulders. What mattered more, and was obviously the cause of the huge smile on Sarah’s face, was the fact that when I touched my hair now, it felt thick and fresh. Not limp and sad.

  “How does it look?” I asked.

  “Brilliant.”

  I couldn’t take my hands off it. It felt thick and heavy and . . . Halli-ish.

  Thank you,” I said. “So much. I really appreciate it.”

  Sarah waved away any gratitude and folded up Martin’s knife. “If we really have to stay here a whole week because of Daniel, I may have to cut it again just to fill the time. I may cut everyone’s hair. Or else run away with Martin.”

  “How long have you been dating?” Not that it was any of my business, but I liked the way the two of them were together. SO different from how Gemma is with Will.

  “Oh, we’re not dating,” she said. “We only met a few days ago. He’s a chum of Daniel’s from school.”

  “But, I thought . . . I mean, the way you were acting . . .”

  Sarah laughed. “I go to an all-girls’ school. Forgive me if I’m a bit invigorated being around someone of the opposite sex for a change. My parents would prefer I didn’t even know they existed. Luckily Dan has always been male and tends to have friends who are, too.”

  I had to laugh. I couldn’t believe it—I actually liked this girl. As in, would have liked to have been friends with her. Here, though—not ever at home.

  If only I could have told her! “You wouldn’t believe how horrible you are in my universe.” Somehow I think Sarah would have really enjoyed hearing about Gemma’s antics. Compared to how smooth Sarah was with her flirting, Gemma is obviously an amateur.

  But I couldn’t tell Sarah, could I? I couldn’t tell any of these people the truth. I didn’t want to be responsible for blowing some stranger’s mind. Some scientific discoveries are meant to be broken to the public in a gentle way. Not by suddenly announcing, “Hey, I’m from another universe, and there’s another one of you over there, too.”

  As we came tromping back through the grass, Red ran out to greet us, wagging and acting like I’d been gone for hours. Sarah patted him on the head and then called out to the group, “What do you think?”

  First Martin applauded, then Halli and Daniel—who was now at the table with them—joined in. Some of the people at the other tables looked up and offered some light applause, too, even though they probably didn’t know what they were clapping for.

  Sarah paused to take a bow. I, on the other hand, felt completely shy. I was used to being more invisible than this. And I didn’t have my usual curtain of long hair to hide behind.

  “So, the invalid awakes?” Sarah said to her brother as we rejoined the group. Daniel sat on the
bench next to Halli, his leg outstretched between them. Sarah and I joined Martin on the other side of the table. Sarah flung her arm around his shoulder and offered him her cheek, which he kissed. Then she dropped that same arm under the table, and the two of them joined hands. It was very sweet, and actually made me feel a little lonely. Not achy, angry-lonely like I do when I see Gemma and Will together. Just plain . . . alone.

  “I’ve been awake,” Daniel answered his sister. “I was sitting inside, watching from the window.”

  “Always watching, our Daniel,” said Sarah. “Very mysterious. Is he like this at school?” she asked Martin.

  “We call him The Professor,” Martin answered. “Always studying and thinking.”

  Sarah sighed. “So different, we are. No wonder our parents prefer me.”

  I had to laugh at that.

  Martin pulled up their joined hands and kissed Sarah’s knuckles.

  “Don’t fall for her, mate,” Daniel warned.

  “Too late,” Sarah told him. She turned toward me and ran her free hand through the ends of my hair. “What do you think, Dan, isn’t she beautiful?”

  Across the table Daniel smiled at me and nodded. He had nice eyes. This sort of light brown, like oak furniture. He had a nice face, too, with a little bit of light stubble going. And a nice smile—actually, a really nice smile.

  But then he had to go and ruin it.

  “So, Audie, where were you last night?”

  39

  “Oh,” I said, snapping out of my analysis of his face. “Umm…”

  Halli stepped in. “She got a little lost on that other route. By the time she showed up there wasn’t any more room in the mattress lager. They had to put her up in one of the outbuildings.”

  “What outbuilding?” Daniel asked in a friendly enough way.

  “There.” Halli pointed to the little hermit’s hut off in the distance. “How was it in there, Audie?”

  “Nice,” I said. “Very comfortable.”