But there’s something more important going on here, and it needs to be said.
“Seriously,” I tell him, “don’t you think we’re beyond hiding things from each other? After everything we’ve seen and done, do you really think I would make fun of whatever weird thing you’re interested in?”
“No, I actually don’t think that,” Daniel says. “I’m sorry. Keeping it secret has become a habit. But I know it shows a certain lack of faith.”
“It’s more than that,” I say. “It’s just such a waste of time. I don’t want to have to pretend with you—I’m doing it enough with everybody else. I want to know that when we’re together we can be totally truthful. Because the truth is, we don’t know how much time we’ll have together.”
I can see that Daniel doesn’t like the sound of that. But he also can’t deny it.
“We’ll find a way,” he says.
“How? Maybe a way to let me live—that would be more than spectacular. That’s my main goal right now. But it doesn’t change the fact that this …” I gesture to myself and the space around me. “… isn’t right. I don’t belong in this body or this universe. Survival is just the first part of the equation. What am I supposed to do about the rest of it? How am I supposed to put it all back together the way it was?”
There’s a light tap on the door. Red perks up his ears. A quiet voice says something I can’t quite hear.
I get up and open the door. Sarah is standing there with a plate of warm cookies.
She’s staring at me with a wild look in her eyes.
Now I know why I couldn’t hear her before. Her voice is barely a murmur. The hand holding the plate is trembling. Sarah looks like she’s in shock.
“Who,” she whispers, “are you?”
22
I quickly hustle her inside and shut the door.
“Sit down,” I tell her, leading her to the bed. I take the plate of cookies before she drops it.
Sarah looks from me to Daniel. “You know?” she asks her brother.
Daniel is careful. “Know what?”
Sarah points at me.
I kneel down in front of her. I take her hands in mine. She flinches, which isn’t a good sign, but at least she lets me hold on.
Sarah licks her lips as if she’s just crawled for days across a barren desert. Her voice sounds that dry. “You’re not Halli, are you?”
I hesitate, but then shake my head.
Sarah closes her eyes and lets out a sigh. “I knew it.”
I grip her hands. “How? How did you know?”
Sarah looks at me right the eyes. Really looks at me, like she’s trying to see the person behind. Then she lowers her gaze like she’s a little embarrassed about what she’s about to say.
“You’re fonder of me than she is.”
I prove it by giving her a hug. “Oh, Sarah. You’re one of my favorite people ever. You know that, don’t you?”
“If you’re Audie, then yes, I do know.” She smiles at me. “You are, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“How long have you known?” Daniel asks her.
“Since last night.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.
Sarah barks out a laugh. “Such as? ‘Pardon me, Halli Markham, but I believe you are a fraud. I suspect you are another girl entirely.’” She shifts her gaze to her brother. “Mum and Dad may be bonkers about the supernatural, but I doubt even they would believe this one. Especially if I’m the person who told them.”
“When last night?” I ask. I feel like I’ve been playing hide and seek and had the best hiding place ever, and now someone easily found me. I want to know what I did wrong.
“Oh, Audie—shall I call you Audie?”
“NO,” Daniel and I answer together.
“It’ll be easier if you don’t,” I say. “That way you won’t slip up.”
“I suppose he calls you Audie, though?”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But he probably needs to be more careful, too.”
I shoot Daniel a look that says Don’t argue. I don’t really think he’d make a mistake, but there’s no reason for Sarah to feel like I’m singling her out.
“I’m not stupid,” Sarah says.
“I know that,” I answer automatically.
“No, really, I don’t think you do. Budge over,” she tells the dog, then she sits at the head of the bed with her back against the wall, legs crossed under her, and Red’s head readjusted onto her lap. I sit down in the space leftover down at Daniel’s end.
“It’s true I am not a scholar like my brother,” Sarah says. “But I do have eyes. I have ears. And I pay attention to people. You haven’t been yourself since we came to find you yesterday afternoon. I didn’t understand why, but I felt it. The way you carried your body. The way you looked at Daniel—or really, refused to look at him. That was so strange.”
Busted. Again.
“But … and I mean no disrespect to the real,” she mouths Halli Markham before going on, “but she always treated me differently than you did.”
“How?”
“As if I were more foolish than I really am.” Sarah smiles, but I can see the hint of hurt behind it.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” I say. “I never have. I think you’re funny and clever and wonderful.”
“Thank you,” Sarah answers, unusually shy for once. “Mutual.”
“How much do you want to know?” Daniel asks her.
“This is enough for now,” she says. “I needed to know I’m not crazy. And please tell me, is she all right? The real …?”
“As far as I know,” I say. “I saw her a few days ago and she was fine.”
Sarah nods. “Good. I’m a huge admirer, as you know.”
“I do know.”
“But you’re the one who should be with my brother. So I’m glad you’re here. Is there anything I can do to help? I heard what you said about survival.”
“I might need a lot of things,” I tell her. “Thank you, Sarah. I might need a whole lot of your help.”
“Finally!” she says, throwing her arms dramatically into the air. “I can be the apprentice of Halli Markham.”
“That’s exactly what I’m making you,” I say. “Thank you for the suggestion.”
I’ve been holding back on something. Despite what Daniel and I agreed to about not having any more secrets. I haven’t known how to broach the topic. I’ve been worried about Daniel’s reaction. But now with Sarah here, I think I’ll have a better chance.
I stand up and dig into the pocket of my jeans. I pull out a large wad of cash. Then I set it on the bed near Daniel.
“What’s this?” he asks.
I glance at Sarah, who seems to have gotten it right away. Her eyes are bright, and there’s the beginning of a smile tugging at her lips. Good.
“I should have done this last time,” I say.
“Last time?” Sarah asks.
“It’s a long story,” I say, borrowing Daniel’s excuse. “I’ll tell you later. Anyway, this is for you two.”
I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to withdraw money from Halli’s account. If it involved a password or a PIN, I knew I’d be out of luck. But I also saw a memory of Halli’s where she paid for groceries by having the cashier scan the microchip beneath her collarbone. And it turns out that’s all it took to get cash from this universe’s version of an ATM. The machine had a built-in scanner, and all I had to do was pull my shirt to the side and expose a little bare skin.
Daniel looks from the money back to me. “No.”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s mine.”
“It’s Halli’s,” he says.
“I’m Halli. I decide what I do. And she would give it to you herself if she were here. You have no idea how much she has. This is nothing.”
“I won’t take it.” He tries to hand it back. “Thank you, but no.”
I clasp my hands behind my back so he can’t return it. “Use it for coll
ege. Or your dad’s party. Or a car. Or something else nice for your family. I don’t care. But it’s ridiculous to have so much and not share it.”
Daniel stands up and gently pulls my hand from around my back. He presses the wad of money into my palm. “Thank you. It was a kind offer.” Then he kisses me very sweetly on the cheek.
I transfer the money to Sarah. She wraps her hands around the bills and keeps them.
“No, Sarah,” Daniel tells her.
“Yes, Sarah,” she answers. “Halli Markham has given us a generous gift. I gladly accept for our family.”
“And that’s not the last of it,” I tell her. “I’ll bring more tomorrow and the next day—however long I’m here.” Just like the ATMs I’m used to, there’s a limit to how much I can withdraw every day—even though the limit here is pretty huge. Still, I suppose I could actually go into a bank and withdraw much more. I might look into that.
“We can’t accept any of it,” Daniel says. “Sarah, give it back.”
“Don’t you dare,” I say. “Daniel, you don’t understand: I’m poor where I come from. My mom and I barely scrape by every month. And paying for college … I understand about that. It’s why I’m here right now. I knew I needed a scholarship if I had any hope of going to Columbia—if they even admitted me—so I had to come up with something really extra extraordinary, like finding a parallel universe.”
“Parallel universe?” Sarah says. “Is that what this is? Sweet mother of pearl ...”
“And obviously I’m grateful for that,” Daniel tells me. “But if Halli tried to give you thousands of icies—”
“Which she couldn’t,” I point out, “because we spend dollars, not international currency. Her money wouldn’t do me any good.”
“But if she could,” he says, “would you take it? Honestly? Because I don’t believe you would.”
It’s a fair question. And I know I probably would have had a different answer to it a few weeks ago than I do right now.
“Yes, I would,” I say. “And I’ll tell you why. Because sometimes people want to be generous. It makes them feel good. And even though you think you’re being noble and polite by refusing, it’s actually a really unkind thing of you to do. Daniel, I want to help you. I want to help your family. I love you—”
“Well, now!” Sarah says. “Be still my heart! What do you say to that, big brother?”
“I say I love her, too, but I still won’t take her money.”
I’d love to just revel in all this love talk for a few moments, but I can’t allow myself the distraction.
“Then look at it this way,” I say. “I’m paying my apprentice from now on. I can set her pay however high I want. And she can decide what she wants to do with her earnings.”
“If you’re very sweet to me,” Sarah tells her brother, “I shall share my fortune. Otherwise, it’s all for Mum and Dad and me. You can continue thriving on bread and jam.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Daniel says.
Sarah bounds up from the bed, still clutching her cash. “Until then, I have a secret treasure to bury. Don’t worry, Halli Markham. Your fortune is safe with me. No one will ever give it back.”
23
Even after Sarah leaves, I can see that Daniel still wants to argue with me about the money. But it’s time I shut that down, once and for all. I didn’t want to say it in front of Sarah, but now I can.
“Daniel, I might die again.”
“You won’t,” he says firmly.
“We don’t know that. We still don’t know what happened to the other Dr. Venn.”
Daniel doesn’t look happy about the reminder.
I reach over and take his hand. “No matter what happens, I don’t want to waste another lifetime here. I’m Halli Markham and I’m a millionaire—a multi-millionaire, maybe even a billionaire. Whatever it is, a few hundred thousand dollars—icies, whatever—isn’t going to make any difference to me. But it will to you and your family. So I’m doing it and I’m not going to argue with you about it anymore. I’ll give it to Sarah for safekeeping if I have to. But I’d be just as happy to give it to you, and I hope you’ll stop being stubborn. There. Done. Next topic.”
Daniel frowns. But at least he lets it go, for now.
“I do have another topic to discuss,” he says. “It’s about tomorrow. I don’t mind missing classes again—that isn’t a problem, I can always make up the work—but Wednesdays are my tutoring sessions with Professor Lacksmith.”
“Oh, Daniel, you have to go to that.”
“I thought so, too, but I didn’t want to abandon you with Dr. Venn.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I have my trusty dog. But if Professor Lacksmith can tell you anything that might help …”
“My thinking precisely,” Daniel says. “I find it curious that he’s never mentioned that conference before or his testing of some machine of Dr. Venn’s. He’s told us scores of other stories from his career, and he’s spoken of Dr. Venn as a colleague, but never anything about what we saw on that film.”
“Do you think he’ll tell you if you ask?”
“I don’t know. I have to try. At this point we need as much information as we can find.”
I nod. But already my mind is drifting. Something Daniel just said is gnawing at its edges. Wednesdays are my tutoring sessions …
Right now it’s Tuesday night. I feel like I’ve lost all sense of time. So much has happened in just the last day and a half.
But I know what happened on the other Tuesday night. It’s when everything started going wrong. Which means that by now back in my old world, I’d already made contact with Halli and she knew I was still alive.
But that didn’t happen this time. So what does Halli think now?
I explain to Daniel what’s on my mind. And why it matters.
“She made a lot of decisions last time based on the conversation she and Professor Whitfield and I had earlier that day. We told her the original Halli was dead—that there was no going back to that body. After that, it’s like she went into full survival mode. Everything she did was because she knew she was on her own. She had to completely remake my life into something that worked for her. She wasn’t just holding it in place until I could come back.”
“So what do you think she’ll do now?” Daniel asks.
“I really don’t know. Last time she’d already been waiting a whole week without any word from me. She wasn’t even sure I was alive. So now, if she still doesn’t know, and pretty soon she’ll have to start going to my school as me and take over my job …”
The more I go through it, the more clearly I can see: Halli will still make her choices to survive. She still won’t be able to pretend to be me much longer. She doesn’t understand my school work, she doesn’t understand my job, and she’ll still lose patience with my mother trying to have any say over her life.
Halli is going to run again. I know it. Especially if she goes to the ball a few nights from now and meets Daniel’s parallel version, Colin, again. He’ll plant ideas in her mind and she’ll see her way out.
“It’s not just me we have to worry about,” I tell Daniel. “I can’t let Halli do the same things she did last time. I know it’ll break my mother’s heart. And she’s messing up my future—if there really is any chance I have a future back in my old life.”
I sink back onto Daniel’s bed and use the snoring Red as a pillow. I stare up at the ceiling. “I only have a few days, I think. She started getting antsy on Monday, made her plans to drop out of school that afternoon, and quit my job on Wednesday. If she’s still three days behind me like last time, it means I only have two days before all of that starts happening again.”
I sit back up. “I’m not going to let her do it again, Daniel. I’ve worked too hard all my life to get where I am, and she doesn’t get to throw it all away in just a few days. You and I both need to find out as much as we can tomorrow. I need to stop her. I want to save both of my lives: this one
and the one I left behind.”
“You know I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Good,” I say. “Because we’re running out of time.”
24
“How did you tell him?” Sarah asks. We’re working at either sides of her gel-filled bean bag-looking chair to stretch it out flat into a bed. I lay in a chair just like this at Sarah’s parents’ history studio when I did my meditation session with Daniel. I know the gel molds around your body like you’re slipping into a bubble bath without getting wet. It’s hard to explain. But it’s super comfortable, and knowing that that was Sarah’s alternative when she offered to let me have her bed last night made it a whole lot easier to accept.
“I didn’t tell him,” I say. “He told me. He figured it out on his own.”
“It must have been a shock,” Sarah says. “To him, I mean.”
“Oh, he’s seen more than a few shocking things from me.” The worst of which was probably the first time, when I disappeared right in front of him and left just a pile of empty clothes. Probably after that, everything else seemed more normal.
“You didn’t seem all that surprised, though,” I say. “Once I told you who I was.”
Sarah shrugs. “I’ve grown up at my parents’ studio. I’ve seen things most people would never believe—phenomena even Daniel doesn’t know about. He’s never been as keen as I am to spend time with my parents’ researchers. I find it thrilling. I think he finds it … unnerving.”
“Why?”
“He likes things that can be explained. He wants scientific facts. He doesn’t approve of mystery.”
I can see what she’s saying. When Daniel first suspected that I wasn’t Halli’s cousin, the way she and I had been telling everyone, he laid out all his facts proving it was a lie. Then he calmly waited for my explanation. Whereupon I vanished. And then when I came back from that, Daniel wanted a detailed, rational explanation for who I was, how I’d gotten here, and every other nuance about my travels between our two universes.
Sarah is right: Daniel is more comfortable with facts than mystery.
“I notice you haven’t asked me any questions yet,” I say. “Like what’s going on, how did it happen …”
Parallelogram Omnibus Edition Page 78
