by Julie Drew
“And?” Finn prodded, his impatience clear.
“And, I think it’s possible that somehow, traveling in time together has…intensified the connection between you and Tesla—and it’s continued to get stronger. The theory of quantum entanglement says that everyone is connected to everyone else, everywhere and everywhen, if you follow me, in ways we aren’t aware of. But what if you and Tesla are connected now in a way that you are aware of? You feel the connection, emotionally and physically. Because it’s been—you know, amplified.”
“We’re…entangled?” Finn asked, the first trace of fear in his voice. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea,” Bizzy said, a wide grin splitting her face and making all her face-jewelry sparkle with delight.
“Bizzy, that is terrifying,” he said. “You get that, right?”
“No, not at all!” she countered, standing up to pace and waving her arms around while she spoke. “It’s amazing! We can actually look at this phenomenon, examine it, document it. We can—”
“Yeah, we’re not doing anything until I talk to Tes,” he said, standing up quickly. He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her in and kissed her once on the top of her spikey head, and he was out the door, calling back over his shoulder, “Thanks, Biz, you really are the brightest witch of your age!”
CHAPTER 5
After the movie, Tesla and Sam walked through the park situated in the middle of downtown. As always, Sam had been great—he kept things casual, made her laugh. He hadn’t even tried to hold her hand in the darkened theater, and Tesla was surprised by her disappointment. She stole looks at him as they walked and talked. It was a chilly night, and his heather gray Irish fisherman’s sweater with the rolled collar and cuffs was big and thick and made her think of a cozy night in front of a fire. His faded jeans and motorcycle boots, the bit of white T-shirt that peeked out below the hem of his sweater were perfect. And that thick black hair, the dark, sultry eyes had always been hot but now—with the newly grown goatee and little soul patch just below his lower lip—Tesla was beginning to realize that moving on might be kind of fun.
“So, you agree or you disagree with my movie review?” Sam said. “Hello?”
“Sorry,” Tesla said quickly. “I partially agree. I like a good explosion as much as the next girl, but I actually need a little character development. Otherwise, how am I supposed to care who survives the hand grenades, the C4, the car chases and automatic weapons, and who doesn’t?”
“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “How could you not care about the fate of…you know, that guy with the gun—okay one of the guys with the guns, I forget which one. I’m pretty sure he was the protagonist.”
Tesla laughed. “Yeah, if I don’t know his name, I’m out. They had good stunt drivers, though.”
“Yeah, but I agree, that’s not enough,” Sam said. “I like the action, I like a fast pace, of course, but there has to be something at stake for somebody that I have a stake in, because the film has made me care. It’s always about the characters—what they want, what they need, what they’re willing to sacrifice.”
Tesla considered that a moment, a small smile playing about her mouth as she thought how much he sounded like Max.
“It builds empathy,” he continued. “Which is crucial, even if it’s complicated. You know, to imagine how the other person feels.”
He’s really a good guy, Tesla thought. Smart. Gentle. They walked in companionable silence in the least manicured part of the park, through a small wood of oaks, maples and birches, the fallen leaves a riot of color under their feet. The only sound was the brittle crunch under their boots, when Tesla paused and Sam continued on a step ahead of her. It was an impulse, she knew, even as she did it, and she might very well regret it, but she reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled him to a stop.
Sam turned and faced her, his eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.
“Come here,” she said softly as she pulled him by the hand until he stepped in close. She could see her breath in the cold, night air as she exhaled softly, the fingers of both her hands now entwined with his. She looked up and searched his face. There was just enough moonlight for her to see that his eyes—deeply, darkly liquid—peered intently into hers, and that he waited. He had made his position clear months ago. If she wanted their relationship to change, Tesla would have to be the one to do it.
She shivered once in the cold as she rose up on the toes of her boots and pressed her lips to his mouth, gently but with conviction. His mouth was firm, his lips soft and warm. She pulled her hands from his and laid them on his shoulders to steady herself, and then pulled back to wait for his reaction. Tesla’s hood had fallen back and the November wind lifted her hair from her neck and swirled it around her shoulders. An unexpected shiver ran up her spine and she felt a sudden urge to turn and search the darkness between the trees, certain, for no apparent reason, that they were being watched.
“I’m not sure I know what this means,” Sam said, his voice low and steady.
“I’m not sure I do, either,” she admitted, surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. “I wanted to kiss you. So I did. We hang out all the time—we’re close, I think, and—well, we’ve only ever kissed that once.”
“No, we—” he started to say and then abruptly stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he seemed sad. He reached up and gently removed her hands from his shoulders. Disconnected them. “Tesla, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Oh,” she said, taken completely by surprise. “I thought—I mean, you know, you said last summer—”
“I remember,” he said firmly. “It’s just that—why tonight, Tesla? Why now?”
“God, Sam, I don’t know. It was just a kiss! I’m sorry I did it,” she said, embarrassed. This was the second guy she’d kissed today, and he was also the second one to make her feel like a fool for it. She turned and began to walk back the way they’d come.
“Look, Tesla, don’t take it like that,” Sam said as he caught up to her, his boots crushing the fragile, brittle leaves beneath his heels, scattering the ones just out of reach. “It’s just—look I can’t explain, okay?”
“Hey, no explanation necessary,” she said as cavalierly as she could. “Trust me, it’s no big deal.”
They were silent as they left the park and headed, without consultation, to Tesla’s house. Sam stopped on the sidewalk, and Tesla turned to him when she was halfway to her door.
“Don’t you want to come in?” she asked. He always came in. They always watched TV after they went out.
“Not this time.” His discomfort was obvious, so obvious that Tesla felt her face flame in response.
He turned and walked quickly away, just left her standing there—Sam, whom Keisha made fun of for his devotion and Max called ‘your lover-boy,’ in that maddening, sing-song voice that little boys reserve exclusively for their sisters.
What is it with this day? Tesla thought. With these boys? She had no answers, so she went in the house, up to her room, and flopped down on the bed to stare morosely at the ceiling. What is wrong with me?
The question was a wail inside her head, a keening that was about her confusion and embarrassment over Sam and Finn, but so much more. That one question encompassed everything, the parts of herself she didn’t understand, her sense of being different, isolated from everyone around her, and the indisputable fact that she was left utterly alone to figure it all out by herself.
She wished, for the ten thousandth time, for her mom.
All Finn could see as he stumbled back to the old Victorian house was Tesla, draped in some long, dark sweater that hugged her body, a loose hood over her hair, grabbing Sam’s hand as they walked a winding path among the trees, in and out of the pools of light cast by the park lamps spaced at intervals along the various walking trails. She had stood on tiptoe to kiss Sam on the mouth, her hood falling back and the wind picking up her fiery hair that put to shame the faded colors of
the leaves that moved restlessly at their feet. Finn had stood, a few dozen yards away, stunned and unable to look away.
He shouldn’t have been there, of course. She’d told him she was seeing Sam, and he either should have waited to talk to her tomorrow, or been prepared for the sight of…well, of that. Finn told himself he hadn’t been spying, not really, he’d been waiting for Sam to pack it in, for Tesla to finally be alone so he could talk to her, tell her about this thing, this entanglement of theirs. It was too important to wait, right? Of course it was. Despite what she’d said, she and Sam weren’t together, not really—how could they be? Sam was such a stiff—a prig, as Joley would call him—with no sense of humor, especially about himself, and Tesla was too alive somehow, too changeable and complicated for it to make any sense to him.
Of course, Sam was also smart, and good-looking, and he treated Tesla like she was made of glass, which set Finn’s teeth on edge, but maybe Tes liked it. Liked being somebody’s princess or something—and right on the heels of that thought Finn remembered that he himself had been a jerk to Tesla that very afternoon when he’d kissed her after fencing and then walked away from her like it was nothing, tossing off a joke of some kind to cover the way he’d felt, the heat and the light that had engulfed him when he’d touched her, her body caught between his own and the unyielding wall behind her, her mouth anything but unyielding, returning every bit of his own intensity.
He shook off the memory as he walked into the Victorian house and closed the door behind him, but the conviction that it was clearly his own fault if Tesla was interested in someone else remained.
Finn entered the kitchen, unaware that he was scowling. He barely registered the fact that two of his roommates were already there, lights blazing despite the late hour, and remained oblivious, even when Beckett asked him a question—twice.
“What is your problem, Finn?”
Beckett’s tone of complete exasperation finally got through to him.
“Which problem would that be?” Finn asked, though he didn’t really care.
“The one where I talk and you ignore me?” she asked, one eyebrow raised pointedly, a cold slice of veggie pizza poised midway to her mouth.
“This is a phenomenon you’re only now noticing?” Joley asked, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Who’s noticing what?” Bizzy walked into the room as she tried to stifle a yawn.
Becket jumped lightly down from the counter where she’d been sitting, tossed the uneaten pizza back on the plate that had sat beside her, and stretched like a cat, her tiny, cropped T-shirt riding up on her ribs, her drawstring pajama pants barely hanging on. This of course gave everyone in the room ample time to admire her flat stomach and the tight little muscles that ran across her hip bones and disappeared beneath the plaid waistband.
“Becket was noticing that Finn doesn’t really listen when she talks,” said Joley, the oldest in the house except for Jane Doane, their boss and landlord, which meant he felt entitled to be amused by everyone else. “Weren’t you paying attention, Biz? It was scintillating.”
“Old news,” said Bizzy. “Besides, I just came in for a glass of water. I was falling asleep over quadratic equations—which actually are scintillating. I’m going to bed.”
“Whatever,” said Beckett. “I’m off, too. Any of you wannabe-agents care to join me at the range in the morning? I was trying to ask Finn if Tesla’s anti-gun weirdness was fading at all. You guys are no competition whatsoever, but I’d love to go head to head with her in marksmanship. Her aim is—well, you know. Annoyingly perfect.”
Finn looked up from the spot on the floor he’d been staring at, a blank look on his face. “What?”
Beckett rolled her eyes and left the room.
“I do see Beckett’s point,” said Joley. “Care to explain?”
Finn looked back at his best friend, then looked at Bizzy, who merely raised her eyebrows and shrugged before turning to get a glass out of the cupboard.
Finn smoothed both hands over his full, long curls, flattening them to his head for just a moment before they sprang back up, straight out from his head and then down toward his shoulders, golden brown and utterly unchecked. He exhaled, long and loud, through his mouth, obviously preparing himself.
“Seriously,” said Joley, not without some alarm. “Best just to come out with it, isn’t it?”
“Okay, in a nutshell, it seems like something happened when I jumped back in time last summer with Tes,” Finn began.
“What do you mean? A lot of things happened when you did that.”
“Yeah, I mean something else, something I’m—something we’re—just beginning to realize,” said Finn, indicating Bizzy with a glance. “It seems that there’s a thing called entanglement, and that when we time-travelled together, Tes and I became, um, entangled.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,” said Joley.
“Biz, help,” Finn pleaded.
Bizzy finished filling her glass from the tap at the sink, then turned to face them both. “Quantum physics. They’re connected—Finn and Tesla—we think. Tangled up with each other—physically, emotionally. What happens to one is felt or experienced by the other, at the same moment. If we’re right about this, they each feel what the other feels, and then of course feel their own response to that. Which the other one in turn feels. It’s pretty complicated, really. Not to mention awesome.”
“Bloody hell—can that actually happen?” asked Joley.
Bizzy shrugged, then took a long, maddeningly slow drink of water. “Don’t know. It’s a hypothesis.”
“Well, bollocks.” Joley seemed, for once, nearly speechless.
“Exactly,” said Finn.
“And what does Tesla think? You know how she gets—‘you’re not the boss of me’ and all that. She cannot be happy about this.”
“She doesn’t know yet,” said Finn, and though neither Bizzy nor Joley could pinpoint exactly what had changed, some quality in Finn’s voice was decidedly different.
“You must be joking,” said Joley. “Don’t you think she needs to know—you have to figure out how to reverse it or something, don’t you?”
“Yeah, Joley, that does seem like a good idea,” said Finn with obvious sarcasm.
“Well bloody get on it, man, what are you waiting for?”
“She’s been busy.” Finn heard the glum, dejected sound of his own voice—pathetic, really—but he didn’t care.
“But that’s…” Joley began, and then his voice took on that stern, I’m-older-than-you-not-to-mention-British quality that always heralded a lecture. “Finnegan, you have to—”
Finn jumped in. “Look, the last time I saw her she was making out with Sam in the park. It didn’t seem like the best time to share the news that she’s, you know—quantumly entangled. With me.” He turned and abruptly left the room, offering them nothing more than a gruff, “Later,” tossed over his shoulder on the way out.
“Well that’s…strange,” Joley said, clearly surprised by his best friend.
“Right?” Bizzy agreed before she, too, headed off to bed.
CHAPTER 6
Tesla awoke with a start when her body jumped as if she’d fallen and couldn’t catch herself in time before she hit the ground. The house was silent around her. Max and their father were surely asleep, but she was alert, fully awake in an instant. She felt off, somehow. She hated waking up after falling asleep unexpectedly, the oddity of trying to place oneself correctly in time and space, but it was more than that. Her whole life felt off, and she was frustrated. She wanted to do something, fix it, but she wasn’t sure how. She got up and paced, walked to her dresser, swiped two dirty shirts onto the floor and picked up a book, put it back down, went to the window and looked out, but all she saw were dead leaves that blew down the street in the small pool of light made by the streetlamp. She checked her phone, saw that it was after midnight. Sleep was probably out of the ques
tion, and her restlessness quashed any hope of forgetting her worries in TV or video games, so Tesla slowly opened her door and made her silent way toward the attic stairs and her mother’s things, boxed up and hidden away by her father.
Just as she reached the top step, her hand raised to push open the door that was slightly ajar, Tesla froze, her breath caught in her chest and her heart beating double-time.
Someone was in the attic.
She took the last step, cautiously putting all of her weight onto her right foot, bit by bit, until she was certain no creaking floor board would betray her presence, and she leaned in the eight and a quarter inches between herself and the door jamb in order to peer, with one eye, through the two-inch crack left by the barely-open door.
Her father sat back on his heels, his back toward her, in front of one of the boxes of her mother’s things, old clothes, photographs, mementos and other odds and ends strewn about him on the floor as though he’d been digging through the box frantically, tossing items out in desperate haste to get to the bottom of it. He had paused, though—perhaps he had found what he was looking for—and held a photograph of his dead wife in his hand, studying it as if looking for a clue in her smiling face.
Tesla had actually taken a breath and opened her mouth to say—well, something. Maybe, “Dad, I miss her, too,” or “Let’s look at her things together,” or maybe even “Why don’t you ever let me see this side of you,” but before she could speak, he did.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the broken sound of it burned forever into Tesla’s memory. “I’m so, so sorry.” He sniffed once, and then squared his shoulders, and whatever internal battle he waged, Tesla knew that one side had won irrevocably when he added, “I did warn you, though. And I did what I had to do.”
