And that played into the observer problem. Because how could it be that the scientist could force something as impersonal as light to choose whether to be a particle or a wave?
And then Mr. Dobosh told us a strange story. Strange, in part, because it’s the kind of thing I might normally read outside of class, in a book like Professor Whitfield’s or one by Professor Hawkins. It was a little too fringe for Mr. Dobosh, but he thought it was so interesting he couldn’t resist telling us.
There’s a quasar, the center of a dying galaxy, whose light has finally reached us from something like 13 billion light years across the universe. Which means the light began its journey that long ago, and has only now reached a point close enough to us that we can see it with our best equipment.
And what scientists can see is that between our galaxy and the quasar is another galaxy, with its own gravitational field. And to get around that gravitational field, the particles of light from the quasar have to veer off either left or right, and then go back to a straight line heading toward us.
But if you watch the whole thing through an instrument that measures the wavelike properties of light, you see something very different. Instead of having to decide whether to go left or right, the light just flows around both sides at the same time, like water slipping around a rock in the stream.
But here’s the part Mr. Dobosh couldn’t get past: that light had to navigate around the gravitational field billions of years ago, and yet it was now, long after the event already occurred, when the scientists’ choice of instrument made the light choose which way to behave. Someone in the present was affecting the past. It wasn’t just that someone was perceiving things a certain way, he or she was making them be that way.
That’s what all came together for me, sitting there in a quiet room watching Halli Markham about to die. If a physicist could change the past, then maybe I could change the future.
Because why was Halli’s wave pattern in the room with mine when our bodies were somewhere else? Because someone was looking for waves. If they’d been looking for particles, maybe they wouldn’t have found either one of us. In that moment, the entangled particles known as Halli and Audie had been off in the Alps in Halli’s universe. Their waves had stayed entangled in mine.
But now Halli was over there and I was here, and there wasn’t time to move our bodies around. Too much mass, I always told her. Too slow. Bodies take too long.
But maybe Albert was right: it’s all just information. Nothing is real, nothing is solid, it’s all just what we perceive. Habits of thought, Professor Whitfield called them. Not laws, just habits. Maybe life is more fluid than I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’ve been stuck in my ways too long.
And most of all I’ve misunderstood this one incredibly vital thing—everyone’s misunderstood, if you just look at what they’ve called it. It’s not the observer problem, it’s the observer power. We’re the ones who decide. We’re the ones manipulating the universe. We’re the ones who can make things happen.
It all washed over me in an instant—ideas, decisions, conclusions. But now Halli was out of time. In another fraction of a second she’d be dead, and I’d wonder whether I could have saved her.
I didn’t have time to tell the professor. Couldn’t say goodbye. Couldn’t tell him to call my mom or tell her not to worry and that I loved her very much. Didn’t have time to ask him if he thought it would work, but it didn’t matter because it had to work, it was going to work, and we could sort out the reasons for it later.
The time was now.
So I gave up being a particle. Instead I became a wave.
67
I slammed into Halli with such velocity, I’m surprised her body didn’t break apart. I felt the force of it exploding us off the mountain, into space, away from the wind and the snow and the danger, into someplace quiet and dark and warm.
I wish I could describe what happened next. I’ve tried to piece it together, but it’s lost to me. The last thing I remember was sweeping Halli away to safety. We didn’t speak. I’m not even sure we could feel each other physically there. It felt more like a pressure, like something bearing down on me or pushing me—pushing us—and I suppose that was me, the wave of me, scooping us both up and churning us the way a whirlpool catches people and holds them under the water. I know I didn’t breathe for a while—didn’t even think about having a body to breathe with. I was just motion and purpose, doing whatever I had to to get us both out of there and into safety.
I have no idea how much time passed. It could have been minutes or hours or days. But then finally there was light again.
And cold. But not cold like before. No wind, no snow, just a slight chill that was easy to fix. I reached down and pulled the covers up over my shoulders. And thought about going back to sleep.
I snapped bolt upright in bed. Not my bed. Not my room. Not my dog, although I was overjoyed to see him.
“Red!” He thumped his tail on the mattress and belly-crawled up to where he could lick my face. I hugged him hard. He was alive.
But I . . . I felt wrong. Like I should feel bruised and battered and exhausted by what I’d just been through, but I didn’t feel any of that. I felt fine, in a way. But still wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
I pulled down the covers and got out of bed. Stepped onto the warm wood floor of Halli’s Colorado house. Opened the door to her bedroom, padded out into the hall. Turned in to the bathroom, bent over the sink to splash water on my face.
I looked in the mirror.
My face, but not my hair. Not my shoulders or arms or torso. Not my strong, sturdy legs. Not my feet—my own feet still had blisters.
I stood there not believing it. But I knew it was true. The garment didn’t fit. It didn’t feel right. It was bigger than I’m used to, with a lot more bulk and muscle to it. And there was no denying the hair. That was Halli’s hair, and would never be mine.
I pivoted toward the toilet just in time. I threw up whatever that body had eaten last. I felt ill, desperate, terrified. Red stood there and wagged his tail.
I sat on the edge of the tub and cried. My mother was gone. My life was gone. Maybe Halli—the real Halli who belonged in this body—was gone. I had screwed up in the biggest way possible. I had done something no law of physics should ever allow. I wanted my habits back. Wanted to believe the universe behaved in predictable, normal ways. One person shouldn’t be able to throw another out of her body and get stuck in there herself. Impossible and horrible and wrong.
“Halli!” I shouted. But of course no one answered back.
I went to her bedroom and climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. Maybe it was a dream. It had to be a dream. I’d undergone some trauma, and this was my brain’s misguided way of handling it. I would just go to sleep again and wait for the dream to pass. When I woke up, I’d be back in the lab in Bear Creek, with the professor and Albert waiting for me. Halli would be . . . safe. I had to believe she’d be safe. It was all okay.
And then I sat up again. Of course. It was all just fantasy in the first place. I couldn’t see the future—that was impossible. I’d made up the whole thing just to impress Professor Whitfield and Albert. Everything I thought had happened was still three days in the future, if it ever really happened at all. This was just a mistake. None of it was real. The future hadn’t happened yet.
Such relief gushed over me, I think I fell back asleep on the spot. It was that sick sort of sleep that isn’t really restful, but feels more like passing out from a fever. It feels gross when you wake up from it, like I did—not refreshing at all.
Red stood at the side of the bed, whining. I reached back to feel my hair—still long and thick and Halli’s.
Red whined again and pawed at my arm.
I got up. There was nothing else to do.
I followed him to the front door, and when he whined there, I let him out. He immediately ran out into the dirt at the side of Halli’s house and took the world’s longes
t pee. Poor guy—I have no idea how long I’d kept him cooped up.
He came back in, and went straight to the kitchen. He stood patiently beside his bowl.
“Food?” I asked. “I don’t know where Halli keeps that.”
Red just wagged his tail and waited.
Dream or not, you still have to play your part. If it’s a flying dream, you flap your arms and go. If it’s a chase dream, you run until you wake up. You still have to perform your role.
So if I had to pretend to be Halli until the end of this dream, then I might as well do it right and feed her dog. I searched the drawers, the cabinets, the pantry.
“Here it is,” I told Red, and he seemed thrilled. I had no idea how much to feed him, so I just filled the bowl. He attacked it like he hadn’t eaten in days.
And maybe he hadn’t.
How had both of us ended up back in Colorado? Had I swept him off the mountain, too? But then how did I get us back here? Why weren’t we still in Europe somewhere? What were the rules? How did this whole thing work?
I sat on the kitchen floor in Halli’s purple flannel pajamas and watched her dog devour his food.
“Where’s Halli?” I asked him, but he just kept eating.
And where am I? I wondered—the other I? Was my body still out there in the cosmos, floating in the wave I created? Or had it broken apart into a million little fragments, just like I thought Halli’s might have? Maybe there was just this one body now, this one universe, this one . . . being. Maybe the real Halli was gone, and my real body was gone, too, and somehow Halli’s shell and I found each other in the churning whirlpool of the moment.
A physicist looks for answers. A physicist looks for clues. A physicist tries to solve the mysteries of the universe with every bit of knowledge at her disposal.
Obviously I had a lot of work to do. And no real idea where to start.
But all of that would have to wait anyway. Because just then Red lifted his head from the bowl and growled. His hackles shot up. He raced to the front door.
As he stood there barking I looked out the window to try to see what had set him off. I hadn’t heard anything, and couldn’t see anything that might be wrong.
But then in the distance, far up the road from Halli’s house, I could see a plume of dust. A car was coming. And it was coming here.
I stood there for a second more, wondering what I should do. What would Halli do? Was I supposed to pretend to be her? I had to, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to suddenly start announcing that I was Audie from another planet, trapped inside Halli Markham’s body.
There wasn’t time to change out of her pajamas, but I remembered the robes hanging in her bathroom. I threw on the thickest one and then quickly brushed my teeth—Halli’s teeth. I had to remember that as I stuck someone else’s toothbrush into my mouth.
Then I went back to stand by the door. The car was almost there. Red was barking his lungs out.
And then there he was. Pulling up in front of Halli’s house and getting out of the car. I watched him from the window, not believing my eyes.
He knocked on the door. Red went wild.
“It’s all right,” I told the dog, still feeling like I was in a dream. “He’s a friend.”
I opened the door. And standing there, looking even better than he does in my world—
—was Will.
******
******
BOOK 2: CAUGHT IN THE PARALLEL
1
I am sitting on a plane.
A private jet.
Someone has put a glass of fresh pomegranate juice in front of me, but I haven’t taken a sip.
I’ve been asked questions: “Are you comfortable? Do you need anything? Are you still jet-lagged? Does the dog need anything? Would you care for an asparagus soufflé?” and I either nod or shake my head. I’ve barely said ten words in the past two hours, probably for the same reason I haven’t tasted that delicious-looking pomegranate juice: my throat seems to have closed up. I’m afraid if I open my mouth I might scream. Because nothing—and I mean NOTHING—is right about this scene.
There is a dog sleeping at my feet.
Not my dog. Not my feet.
There is a guy sitting across from me, the best-looking guy I’ve ever known, the guy I’ve been in love with for thirteen years, since I was four years old.
Not the same guy. Just his face and body, skin and voice and hair.
He calls me Halli. I am not Halli. Halli might be dead. Halli might be lost. Halli has left this body—been catapulted out of it, thanks to my brilliant move, trying to save her life—and now it’s just me in here, Audie Masters, a girl with absolutely zero clue what I’m supposed to do now.
Not my body. Not my life. Not even my universe.
Oh, great masters of physics, help me.
2
Here is what I remember:
Me, sitting in a sound-proof room in Professor Whitfield’s laboratory. The professor and his lab assistant, Albert, explaining to me that time and the laws of physics are just habits of thinking—that things don’t really work the way everyone thinks they do.
Me, testing that theory by casting my thoughts three days into the future—three days and a whole other universe away—watching to see what my parallel self, Halli Markham, was doing at that moment. What she was doing was about to get herself and her dog killed by an avalanche in the Alps.
And then I remember this: me hurtling myself at Halli, across the gap between our universes, across the gap of time, me not really a body anymore, but more like a force, pushing Halli out of the way of danger, but pushing her . . . where? Into what?
Because the next thing I knew, it was me inside Halli’s body, waking up safe in her home, her dog peacefully sleeping at the foot of her bed.
How? How did we all get there? Me and Halli’s body and Red?
And where in this universe or any other is Halli? Did I really save her? Or did I just shove her out into some empty void, and it’s just me now, alone, trapped forever inside her body and her universe?
And where, for that matter, is my body? Is it just . . . gone?
“You all right?” Jake asks me.
I didn’t realize I’d been clutching my stomach. Halli’s stomach.
I nod and let my arms relax. Jake has been very nice. No complaints there.
Except for the fact that looking at him and hearing him talk freaks me out almost as much as any of the rest of this.
Because he’s Will. The parallel version of Will. His name is Jake Demetrios over here, but he looks exactly like the guy I’ve always secretly been in love with, sounds exactly like him, and even—I know this sounds weird—smells like him. Not that Dial soap smell I’m used to on Will, but something deeper, at the skin level. Which I guess isn’t a surprise since they have the exact same DNA, but you’d think a guy in a different parallel universe might slap on some cologne or use a different shampoo or do something to throw you off his scent.
But no, it’s that same smell I like to close my eyes and breathe in whenever Will isn’t watching and I can get away with it. It’s so real to me sometimes I feel like I could spread it on a cracker and eat it. Or swipe a fingerful of it out of the air and smear it behind my ears.
I’m not saying that’s normal, I’m just saying that’s how it is. And sitting across from this stranger right now isn’t really helping me keep a clear head and gather my wits.
Plus every time I look up, he’s staring straight at me, usually with this soft sort of half-smile going on that’s just too hot for words—I can guarantee that Will has never looked at me that way—and it makes it hard to remember that I have a boyfriend now, his name is Daniel, he actually lives in this universe of Halli’s, and at some point I’m going to start thinking about him a lot, I promise, it’s just that right now I have about a billion other things to worry about before I can even get to that.
Like, what is it—exactly—that went wrong? How did I make this happen? I obviously viol
ated every known law of physics, so were there unknown laws I somehow tapped into? And can I tap my way out and undo this whole mess?
And what happens to Halli if I do? If I somehow unravel this whole sequence, does that mean she dies after all? I wouldn’t be there to save her, so she and Red get buried in that avalanche?
The plane hits a little patch of turbulence, and Jake’s foot bumps into mine. I look up and he’s smiling at me again, in that way he really needs to stop.
“You’re different than I expected,” he tells me.
Oh, really? I want to say. Maybe because the girl who regularly inhabits this body is the fearless teenage adventurer and explorer that everyone in this universe seems to have heard of. Maybe if this were her in this situation, having to pretend she’s me, she’d be all over it and view it as some sort of exciting new challenge: Expedition Audie. Pretend to be that physics nerd who spends most of her time in her bedroom reading about quantum particles and probability waves. Oo—dangerous.
“Hm,” is all I answer, then I turn to look out the window. I figure the less I say, the better. Fewer chances to mess up and have people realize they’ve got the wrong girl.
Because I need these people. I need the information they have. And so if I can just fake my way through everything for a few days, maybe I can get out of this before anyone knows what went wrong.
Jake orders himself another glass of juice. “You need anything?”
Yeah, what I need is about five hours alone, all to myself. Time to think.
It’s been nothing but go, go since I woke up in Halli’s body this morning. I barely had time to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t me anymore, when Red started barking his head off because a car was coming up the road to Halli’s house. Then the car stopped, and the person who got out was exactly the last person I ever expected to see.
Parallelogram Omnibus Edition Page 25
