Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “I’ll manage,” Ginny said. She smiled at her granddaughter and patted her leg again.

  Then she lost the smile and switched back to that tough tone Halli was used to. “Better get to it, then. This boat isn’t going to row itself.”

  16

  It was Monday back in my world, and Halli showed up to my school covered in sweat.

  “Overslept again, huh?” Winslow Henry said with a smirk.

  “Excuse me?” Halli answered. She’d been just about to walk in to my first-period class—Algebra I—when this short, scrawny guy started talking to her.

  “You’re sweating again,” Winslow said. The last time he’d seen me like that was a few weeks before, when I was still trying to deal with the time zone difference of meeting Halli in the Alps every night. On one of the mornings after, I accidentally slept through my first two classes and had to race to make it to school by the third. I showed up all sweaty and breathless. And since Winslow is in both my first and third periods, he knew that I’d missed. And since Winslow is Winslow, he enjoyed giving me a hard time about it.

  But Halli had plenty of time to get to school that morning. It’s just that in her case, she chose to strap on my backpack and run all the way there instead of taking the bus or asking my mom for a ride.

  Not that she felt any need to explain that to Winslow. But she did see the opportunity he presented. She followed him into class and decided to stick close. Maybe if she kept him talking, she could pick up a few hints about what she was supposed to do.

  Most of the desks were already filled, but there were a few empty ones toward the back. Winslow sat in his usual spot, and Halli picked a desk across the aisle.

  “Why are you sitting there?” Winslow asked.

  Halli shrugged. “Felt like it. Where do you want me to sit?”

  Winslow scoffed. “Like I care.” But Halli saw his eyes dart to the desk behind him. Winslow is one of those people who needs things always to be the same, predictable. I know, because I’m usually one of those people, too.

  Halli casually picked up my backpack and switched desks. She could see Winslow relax.

  He and I have a strange relationship. Not exactly friends—in fact, not at all—but more like two people who recognize a fellow sufferer.

  Some people’s brains just don’t accept math. I have really come to believe that. And obviously Winslow’s and my brains are completely resistant. Which is fine, if you view algebra as a disease, which I do. Not fine if you need the math credits to get accepted into an elite college you’ve had your eye on for years, or even into a semi-elite college like the one Winslow’s parents want him to go to. As a result, he and I have been like two crabby inmates who strike up an unlikely friendship, but never really like each other.

  The bell rang, and the teacher began. And for about the first ten minutes, Halli was sort of interested. Interested in her surroundings, at least.

  She gazed around the room at my fellow classmates. Took in the kind of clothes they wore, the way they did their hair here on my home planet, the kinds of personalities she could see, just by how people sat in their chairs. She could tell which people were afraid of being noticed and called on, and which ones hoped they would be.

  Halli wasn’t afraid of math. Not the way I am. It’s just that she didn’t think of it as “algebra” or “geometry” or any other formal discipline. She used it like she used anything else in her life: for practical purposes. She could calculate distances, plot out angles and trajectories—anything she might need for navigation.

  So she sat in class the way I never do, unafraid, relaxed, just taking in everything around her.

  And Ms. Gonzales obviously noticed. Maybe she assumed from Halli’s confident posture that I knew the answer for once.

  “Audie?” It took Halli a second to remember that meant her.

  “Yes?”

  Ms. Gonzales pointed to the formula on his white board. “The solution?”

  “I don’t know,” Halli said pleasantly.

  “Well, give it a try.”

  “I really can’t,” she said.

  Ms. Gonzales wasn’t used to that from me. Usually I’ll torture myself through some problem and at least try to find the answer. But Ms. Gonzales knew she’d reached a dead end, and she wasn’t going to keep badgering me, just to make me look stupid. She isn’t a bad person, she just teaches a bad subject.

  “Okay, how about you, Winslow?”

  His voice came out squeaky and high. “Uh...y equals...six?”

  “No, sorry,” Ms. Gonzales said, then she gave up and called on some girl who’d been waving her hand in the air.

  Winslow Henry kicked his foot backward against Halli’s chair. Usually that’s my signal to kick him in return.

  Instead Halli leaned forward and whispered, “Is this how it is every day?”

  Winslow half-turned in his seat and gave her a sour look. “Yeah, genius. What kind of a stupid question is that?”

  Halli looked at the clock. According to the schedule Albert had sent her, she still had forty-four minutes left to sit there.

  Her life was slipping away.

  Three days after she made the decision to keep rowing, Halli knew she’d made a mistake.

  It wasn’t the physical labor—as impossible as that was, she was doing it.

  It was Ginny: she was getting worse.

  “I think your foot’s infected,” Halli said once she removed the bandage to inspect it. The wound looked red and swollen, and the skin around it felt hot. The rest of Ginny felt too warm, too, like she had a fever.

  “I’ll be fine,” Ginny said. “Get some sleep. Did you eat?”

  Halli nodded, even though she hadn’t eaten in hours. She’d been rowing harder and longer since that morning, when she first suspected Ginny might be sick.

  Halli searched through the first aid kit for any kind of pills that might help. “Take these,” she said, handing a few to Ginny.

  “How much farther?” Ginny asked, swallowing them down with some water.

  “Not far,” Halli said. Which was far from the truth. Halli had spent the whole previous day rowing into a stiff wind. She barely made any progress.

  “How many more days?” Ginny pressed.

  “Just a few.”

  Ginny closed her eyes and leaned back onto the bed. “Good girl,” she said softly. “Keep going.”

  She reached shore on day 92. Her arms looked like balloons. She could barely bend her wrists anymore. The skin on her palms looked ripped and raw. She was dehydrated, malnourished, badly sunburned from head to toe, and exhausted beyond all measure.

  Ginny was a wreck, too.

  And the history reporters were there to meet them.

  “Virginia Markham! Halli Markham!” one of the reporters shouted, filming them through a camera that looked like square binoculars. Halli didn’t know it at the time, but that reporter was named Bryan Stewart, and I was going to meet him later—just a few weeks ago now—at Halli’s parents’ private island, where he came to report on their board meeting. It was Bryan who, along with Jake and Sarah, ended up bursting into the room where Daniel and I were hiding while I tried to contact Halli again.

  The world is a circular place. We all seem to come around to each other again.

  “Halli Markham!” he shouted. “How do you feel?”

  Halli didn’t have words to spare. She let the race workers at the dock help her and Ginny off the boat, then she stood on rubbery legs trying to get used to the feeling of stable, unmoving land.

  “We’re taking your grandmother to the clinic,” one of the race people told Halli. “You should go, too.”

  Halli nodded. Then collapsed to her knees. She had used up absolutely every ounce of energy she had rowing them to shore those last few days. But she’d done it: completed something she knew Ginny wanted completed.

  “Halli Markham,” Bryan tried again, “anything you want to say to all the people out there?”

  But H
alli was already asleep on the rough wet wood of the dock.

  That was the girl who currently sat in my algebra class. World adventurer, world explorer, confined to a hard, uncomfortable desk in a rundown high school classroom, sentenced to listening to my teacher and my classmates discuss whether x=y for nearly an hour.

  I’m surprised she even lasted that long.

  When the bell finally rang, Halli got up with the rest of the students and left class.

  Then she kept on going. Down the hall, out through the double doors, out onto the campus.

  She glanced around her, saw that no one was particularly watching. Why would they? I was nothing to most of those people.

  Which was a good thing for Halli. She wasn’t used to being anonymous, and she was starting to really appreciate the advantages of it.

  She shouldered my pack and took off at a run.

  17

  Halli treated herself to a long and satisfying run. The weather was perfect: sunny and a little bit cold. It was the kind of autumn morning when Halli loved being out in the wilderness, just hiking alone with her dog.

  She missed Red. She knew he was alive—I’d told her so—and also knew that I would take as good care of him as I could.

  What she didn’t know was that the two of us were currently separated—that in the chaos of me being taken to the hospital, I’d lost track of him somehow and now I wasn’t sure where he was. I had some vague memory of Daniel promising to take care of him, but I wasn’t sure if that were really true, or just wishful thinking. It was probably best that Halli didn’t know anything about it. With Ginny gone, that dog was her only real friend. And Halli felt as protective of him as Ginny used to feel about her.

  It had been a week since Halli rowed the Team Red boat ashore. She wandered alone in the marketplace searching for some treat to bring back to Ginny, who was still confined to the clinic.

  Halli stood at one of the stalls examining earrings made out of shells when she felt something soft brush against her bare foot. She looked down and saw a small yellow creature. She crouched to get a better look.

  It was a puppy, maybe just six or seven weeks old, so small she could almost cup him between her hands. And so skinny she could see every one of his ribs. A thin rope hung around his neck, tying him to the base of the stall. Halli stroked the puppy’s soft head. He gazed up at her with goopy, sad eyes.

  “You like him?” the merchant asked.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Halli asked.

  “Nothing wrong! Very young—like you! You like him? He likes you! You should buy.”

  Halli sat cross-legged on the ground. The puppy instantly crawled into her lap. He curled up in a little ball while Halli continued softly stroking his head. His little body trembled against her legs.

  “You like him?” the man asked again. “You should buy.”

  Halli stared down at the tiny bundle. She understood Ginny’s policy about animals—it was the same as her policy about anything in their lives: If you have something, use it. If you don’t use it, don’t have it.

  Halli had already had to make a hard choice once about an animal she loved.

  When Halli was little, she had a horse named Samson. She adored him. She spent hours every day riding him, brushing him, even lying on his wide back as he rested in his stall. But over time, as Halli grew older and she and Ginny began going on longer and longer expeditions, Samson had to be stabled where there were other horses and people to take care of them.

  “Is that fair to Samson?” Ginny asked her young granddaughter. “He loves you, but you hardly see him. Don’t you think he might want some other girl to be his friend now, and ride him every day and love him the way you do?”

  Reluctantly, Halli gave him away. And she hadn’t felt the urge ever to go through that again with any other animal.

  But she’d never held such a small creature in her hands, an animal whose eyes seemed bigger than his body, eyes that were staring straight into hers now.

  “How much?” Halli heard herself ask.

  The man named his price. It sounded ridiculously high.

  “I don’t have that much,” Halli said.

  “You Halli Markham?” the man asked.

  Halli nodded, hoping he would be like so many of the other islanders who had treated her so well over the past week, giving her free food and lots of little gifts.

  But the man obviously saw an opportunity. “Halli Markham is famous. You want, you pay.” He stuck to his price.

  The dog was panting now, still looking at Halli with those deep brown eyes.

  “I have the money in my room,” she said. “I’ll bring it right back.” She started to untie the rope around the puppy’s neck.

  The man stopped her. “You leave him. You bring money first.”

  Halli could see there was no negotiating with the man. She gently set the puppy back on the dirt. “Don’t give him to anyone else,” she said.

  The man laughed.

  Halli took off at a run. The puppy yelped at first, then the yelps turned into a mournful howl the further she ran away.

  “I’ll be right back!” Halli shouted to the puppy, but his howl grew even more desperate.

  She raced back to the inn where she was staying, and into her small seaside room. She rummaged through her bag until she found the coin purse she’d hidden inside one of her socks. She counted out the money, poured it into a different sock, then raced back toward the marketplace and the stall at the end of the row.

  The man laughed when he saw Halli tearing toward him. The puppy yowled with a voice so big it seemed impossible his little lungs could produce it.

  “He say he want to be on Team Red!” the merchant laughed. Halli didn’t think it was funny. She just wanted to get the puppy and herself away from that man as soon as possible.

  She poured her coins into his open palm, then quickly untied the puppy. She scooped him into her arms, which immediately calmed him down.

  “You be nice girl to that dog now,” the man said.

  Halli turned away in disgust. She carried away her prize, cradling him close against her chest.

  “When’s the last time you ate?” she whispered to the puppy. “Huh? Let’s go get you some food and water. I’ll wash out your eyes. I’ll make you a nice soft bed. Then we’ll go visit Ginny—she’s going to love you. Everything’s going to be all right, little Red.” Team Red. “You’re mine now.”

  The puppy licked Halli’s chin. And that was it for both of them: true and everlasting love.

  I only wish I could say I was doing a better job of taking care of him for her. But I had my own problems at the moment.

  18

  “Halli? Can you hear me?” The doctor shined a light in my eyes.

  I moaned.

  “Halli? Miss Markham?” she tried again.

  It was too much trouble. Too much trouble to climb out of my fog, to stay awake, to open my eyes and deal with whatever was going on.

  “I think she heard you,” Jake said.

  “Halli,” Dr. Rios repeated more sternly this time. “You have to wake up now. I need to examine you. Look at me. Right now.”

  The woman was annoyingly persistent. Clearly she wasn’t going away. I slowly pried my eyes open, just barely enough to squint. Even that hurt my head. The room was so bright the light almost felt noisy. I groaned and shut my eyes again.

  “Halli?” Jake tried. “It’s me. I’m right here.” He sounded worried. Good. Served him right.

  “Where’s...Daniel?” I asked. Three syllables that felt monumental to get out.

  “No, it’s me, Halli. It’s Jake.”

  Yes, I know who you are. You’re not the one that I want. You’re the one who caused all this. You and your stupid jealousy over Daniel. Daniel’s no threat to you—he won’t even kiss me. Even though he knows it’s me inside here, he can’t bring himself to cheat on me with me. Not while I look like Halli. So go away. You’ve done enough.

  But the most
I could manage was, “Wah...”

  “Water?” Dr. Rios guessed.

  I gave her the slightest of nods. A nurse came around to the side of the bed and gently fit a straw between my lips. She told me to suck in and I tried, but it hurt too much. I gave up.

  “You can hear me now, yes?” Dr. Rios asked. I still couldn’t figure out her accent. Middle eastern or Mediterranean or something.

  “Yes,” I croaked in my gravelly voice.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Hospital.”

  “Very good. What city?”

  “London.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Rios said. So far I’d mastered her quiz.

  I had a question for her. “How...long?”

  “How long have you been here?” she said. “Three days.”

  Somehow that just sounded gross. Like I’d been stuck under a layer of mud for three days straight. Mud seeping into my eyes, my throat, my mind. I still couldn’t think clearly.

  And Halli’s body just wanted to sleep.

  “No, you need to stay awake now,” Dr. Rios said, seeing my eyes start to close again. “I’m going to examine you. Mr. Demetrios, you can wait outside.”

  Jake squeezed my hand. “I’ll be back, Halli. I won’t leave you.”

  “Get...Daniel,” I tried again.

  “Forget Daniel,” Jake said. “I’m here.”

  Aarg. So frustrating. But obviously I was asking the wrong person.

  I waited for Jake to leave. Then said the name again.

  The doctor was busy shining her stupid light into my eyes.

  I reached up and grabbed her wrist.

  “Daniel,” I said as clearly as I could. “Please.”

  But all that effort was too much. Halli’s body needed a nap. So it was back under the mud for me.

  19

  After escaping from my school, Halli ran for miles, hoping to clear her mind and come up with a better idea. This plan of Professor Whitfield’s that she sit in my classes every day while life went on without her wasn’t going to cut it. Just that short sample of it made Halli feel so restless, she thought she might jump out of my skin on her own, even before I came back to claim it. Halli was made for movement. School might as well have been a prison.