Fair Coin

by E. C. Myers

  She looked like she wanted to say something else, but Nathan pulled her arm.

  “Ow,” she said.

  “Come on, chica,” Nathan said. “I'm hungry. Let's get some wedges.”

  Ephraim trailed after Mary, trying to think about what he could say to make things better, but coming up short.

  He caught up with her in front of the post office. “Mary!” She finally slowed and leaned against a mailbox. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched away. She wouldn't turn around, so he moved in front of her.

  She glared. “Were you just playing with me?” she said.

  “Mary, I'm sorry. I've just been a little preoccupied-”

  “I see that.” She spat her words at him now. “You're interested in my best friend. Why not chase my sister while you're at it?”

  “Nathan would kill me.” The levity didn't disarm her the way he'd hoped.

  “You don't want to go out with me though, do you?”

  “It's not that,” he said. “You're terrific. I like you.”

  “But?” She stood up straighter.

  “You're very attractive…” Ephraim said.

  “Just admit that you'd rather be with Jena.” Mary squared her jaw, and she put both hands on either side of the mailbox, clenching it so tightly he wasn't sure if she was bracing herself on it or trying to tear it out of the ground so she could hit him with it. An elderly man approached with a handful of letters, glanced at them, and turned around to head into the post office.

  Ephraim plunged his hands into his pockets. His fingers grazed the magic coin. He didn't have to hurt her, he thought. She didn't deserve this. I wish—

  He withdrew his hands. “You don't really like me,” he said. “It's hard to explain, but what you're feeling…it isn't real.”

  “I should know who I like and don't like.” She took a step away from him. “I think you're the one who's confused. You've changed somehow, Ephraim.”

  “I seem different?” What about all of you? He laughed.

  “See, the Ephraim I know wouldn't find this funny. You should have been honest. You aren't being fair to me. Or Jena.”

  “It's more complicated—”

  “I'm sure it is. But that doesn't mean it's better to feed me bullshit just to make it easier on you.” She took in a deep breath. “I thought you were a nice guy. But you're just a different kind of jerk, the kind who pretends he isn't.”

  Ephraim swallowed. “That isn't fair either. I just didn't want to hurt your feelings. I'm being honest now.”

  “Thanks. Good job.” Mary let go of the mailbox.

  She walked past him. Ephraim thought about stopping her, but he couldn't say anything that wouldn't make things worse.

  Well, you handled that well, he said to himself. He could do something about this, but there was no guarantee the coin wouldn't make it even worse.

  In the meantime, breaking up with Mary might at least make things less awkward with Jena. Unless, of course, she sided with her best friend. Maybe things would become even more of a mess from here.

  Either way, Ephraim had to try to figure out how the coin worked before he dared to use it again. Then he would find a way to fix everything.

  Ephraim returned to the library and settled himself at a computer terminal. He typed search terms into the library catalog database: “magic quarter,” “wishes,” “coin flip,” “Puerto Rico.”

  Zero hits.

  Well, he hadn't really expected it to be that easy. He tried again, cutting out “Puerto Rico,” and a short list of books scrolled onto the screen. He printed the list and hunted them down.

  Ephraim was dismayed to find most of the books were children's books, collections of fantasy stories, or academic essays on fairy tales. He collected them all and sat down to look through them anyway.

  Jena followed his actions from her desk while he hunted for his books. Every now and then he picked his head up from his reading and caught her watching him.

  He stacked his books and belatedly realized he couldn't just leave them on the table for someone else to put away—it was his job now. None of them had turned up anything useful. He had run across references to cautionary tales about wishes: variations on a story called “The Monkey's Paw,” stories about genies and lamps, Doctor Faustus, and an amusing kids’ novel about a sand fairy. They all seemed to agree that it was impossible to make a wish and have it turn out the way you intended. In story after story, the wishers tried to trick their way to what they wanted and inevitably failed. That wasn't very encouraging.

  Jena appeared at his side. “How's it going?”

  “I'm sorry, I know my break is over. I'm just putting these away.”

  “Your break ended an hour ago, but you were so focused I didn't want to interrupt you. Don't worry. It's really slow this afternoon. I can handle it.” She gestured at the books on the table. “This looks pretty important.”

  Ephraim hesitated. “It might be.”

  She picked up his stack of books. “Keep doing what you're doing. If it picks up, I'll call you. You're done with these?”

  He nodded.

  “I'll put them away.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Sure.” She wandered away with his books, and he realized she probably just wanted to know what he was researching. At least she was talking to him again. He would take curiosity over animosity any day.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon typing in different search strings on the computer, but he didn't come up with much of anything new. Jena caught his eye once and smiled encouragingly. What was going on with her? He hadn't made another accidental wish with the coin, had he? Her frosty demeanor had thawed considerably over the course of the afternoon.

  She snuck up behind him again but had the courtesy not to lean over his shoulder. “Can I help?” she said. “You look stuck.”

  “It's kind of…personal,” he said.

  “I understand. But I saw the books you were reading. I read a lot of fantasy, so I'm something of an expert on magic and fairy tales…are you writing a paper? I didn't know you were taking summer classes.”

  “I'm not in summer school,” he said. “This isn't an assignment. I was just curious.”

  “Just, in general?” She put a hand on his shoulder. “What are you looking for? I think I can speed up the search a little.” She stood up straighter. “I am a librarian after all. In training.”

  Maybe the coin could help Ephraim without him needing to make a wish. This was his chance to take some action of his own, make things happen without the use of magic.

  He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. He turned to face Jena, her face close enough to kiss. “I'll tell you about it—over dinner.”

  She stepped back.

  “Is that such a horrible prospect?” Ephraim asked.

  “I can't,” she said. She twisted her thumbs in the belt loops on her jeans.

  “I'm not dating Mary, if that's what you're worried about,” he said.

  “She told me. That's the problem. It wouldn't be right for me to go out with you so soon.”

  “I can honestly tell you that I'm not interested in Mary. Despite what she might think, what happened between us, I never was. I can explain it all tonight, I promise. Don't look at it as a date. You're just helping me with a research project.”

  She tilted her head, considering. Then she smiled.

  “You're on,” she said.

  “This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I asked you to dinner,” Ephraim said.

  They were sitting in Jena's living room. The last time he'd been here was for her party, which already seemed ages away even though it had been less than a week ago. This time it was just the two of them, which he much preferred, though he knew they weren't truly alone. Mrs. Kim was skulking around the kitchen, and Jena's father was resting upstairs.

  “I thought it made more sense to meet here, since we're doing research,” Jena said. She patted the MacBook on the couch beside
her. “I have my computer and wireless Internet, and all the books in my room.”

  Ephraim wondered what her bedroom was like, but Mrs. Kim's close monitoring made it clear that it was off-limits. Not that it seemed likely Jena would invite him up there anyway.

  “And this way you can truthfully say that we didn't go out together,” Ephraim said.

  “Bingo,” she said.

  She was acting normal, friendly even, though he wasn't sure if she saw him as a potential boyfriend anymore or if her curiosity was simply piqued. Returning to her house reminded him that she had liked him once, and he hoped she would again.

  “So, tell me what you're looking for.” Jena bit into her chicken taco and leaned back. She propped her bare feet on the coffee table beside the take-out containers.

  Now that he was here, he was afraid to tell Jena about the coin. How would she react? As much as she liked fantasy books, was she capable of believing in real magic?

  “Come on, Ephraim,” she said quietly. “Let me help.”

  He put down his burrito and rubbed his hands clean on his denim shorts. He retrieved the wishing coin from his pocket and placed it on the glass tabletop.

  Jena leaned forward to examine it. “A quarter. You want to find out if it's rare or something?”

  “No, I'm already pretty sure it's rare. It's…” He took a deep breath. “It's magic.”

  “Magic?”

  He nodded.

  “A magic…quarter?” she said.

  “I'm not sure it is a quarter really, but it looks like one.”

  Jena stared at him. “You aren't kidding.”

  “No.”

  Jena picked up the coin and turned it over and over in her small fingers. She stared at the reverse side. She rubbed at it with a thumbnail, then held it up to her face and squinted at it with first one eye, then the other. She smiled, and Ephraim was worried that she thought it was all a joke.

  “‘The Enchanted Island,’ huh?” She glanced at it one more time before closing her fingers over it. “Well, where else would you get a magic coin? So, what does it do?”

  “That's what I hope we can figure out,” Ephraim said. He told her about how he'd found it and the first time he'd used it: about the dead body that everyone had thought was his, the note in his locker telling him how to make a wish, and the changes he'd seen in his mother. Jena listened silently while he explained, wiggling her toes from time to time. He couldn't read her intent expression, but he knew how it must sound.

  Jena looked him in the eyes. “You know that's all a bit hard to accept,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “But I always try to be open-minded.”

  “You believe me?” Ephraim asked.

  “I didn't say that. I think you're either telling me the truth or you believe you're telling me the truth,” Jena said. She examined the coin again.

  “So it's magic, or I'm crazy? Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  She didn't seem to hear him.

  “You never saw this other body at the hospital?” she asked.

  “No, but my mother did. And Mrs. Morales confirmed it was there, before my first wish. After that, no one remembered it but me.”

  “You don't have that note anymore, either. Which means there's nothing and no one to corroborate your story.”

  He shook his head. This was just how it had gone when he told Nathan about the coin. Then he remembered.

  “Wait. I still have these.” He pulled out his wallet and showed her the two identical library cards. She examined them carefully side by side.

  “Not to be a stickler, but you could have printed a second card at work,” she said. She passed them back to him. “Sorry.”

  “With the same barcode?” he asked. “The system wouldn't let you do that.”

  “You're right. But those cards have different barcode numbers.”

  He checked them again. She was right. He'd never compared them, just noted that his name was printed on both.

  “That doesn't matter. The coin rearranges things when I make a wish.” He squeezed his fingers around the cards, the plastic edges digging into his hand. “It changes things…and people. I know I can't prove any of it—”

  “Now, don't get all defensive. I'm just trying to reason this out. So, if you made a wish about your mother being out of the hospital, why would it make your body disappear?”

  “Jena, I'm not dead. That body wasn't mine.”

  Jena frowned. “Obviously you're not dead yet, but he is. The other Ephraim, I mean.”

  “The other…? What are you talking about? There's only one me! And what do you mean by ‘yet’?”

  Jena slapped the quarter down on the glass top of the coffee table. “Calm down, Ephraim. You seem really certain of what's possible and what's impossible, for a guy who's trying to convince me he has a magic wishing coin.”

  Ephraim sighed. “Point taken.”

  “I'm just working this through, okay? That's why you asked for my help,” Jena said. “If you want me to believe you, you have to keep an open mind, too. Anything is possible if we're talking about magic. Or whatever power this coin has.”

  “I just don't see how there could be two of me.” Ephraim said.

  “The simplest solution is usually the truth. It seems like you had a twin, so you probably did.”

  “That's the simplest solution? How about it was just some poor kid who looked a little like me?”

  “Consider all the other clues: the wallet, the library card, the watch. I see at least two possibilities. Maybe he was from the future.” She tapped the back of the coin. “A future where Puerto Rico is part of the United States.”

  “He can't have been much older than me, if the hospital and my mother confused the two of us. Besides, the date on the coin says Puerto Rico became a state in 1998—which it didn't. That's historical fact. It'll be true in ten years as much as it is now.”

  Jena pouted. “That doesn't necessarily invalidate my theory. But it would mean you were going to die pretty soon, after wishing yourself back in time to give yourself the quarter. Which also implies that you're the reason you have the coin, which just opens this up to all kinds of temporal paradoxes. Okay, let's set that aside for now. Too messy.”

  “Sounds good to me. I don't want to have to worry about dying anytime soon, and I'm having a hard enough time buying into magic without throwing time travel into the mix,” Ephraim said.

  “Still, the coin came from somewhere. Some place where magic works, assuming that it's really magic.” She sat up straighter and tucked her feet under her bare thighs, momentarily distracting Ephraim from the problem at hand.

  “Well,” Jena said. “If not the future, then what about a parallel universe? One where magic works, where the US has fifty-one states.” She turned the coin over. “This Washington head is facing the wrong way, too. And if the coin's from a parallel universe, maybe that's where the other Ephraim came from, too!” Her words were coming faster as she got taken with the idea.

  “A parallel universe? That's just stuff for comics and movies.” He'd read stories about alternate universes: worlds where heroes were villains, or had never gained their super powers, or where history had unfolded differently.

  Jena took out her cell phone and snapped pictures of both sides of the coin.

  “What are you doing now?” Ephraim asked.

  “Checking to see if anyone has one of these,” she said. She tapped at the screen a couple of times and shook her head. “If they do, they haven't uploaded a picture to the Internet. So for now, I'll assume that means no others exist.”

  “Right. Because it doesn't exist if it isn't on the Internet.”

  “Hold on,” she said. “The image scan did get a couple of hits.” She scrolled through the text on her screen. “The bust of George Washington on your quarter matches a design by a woman named Laura Gardin Fraser. She won a contest and it was supposed to be used on all quarters starting in 1931, but they ended up going
with the design we're used to instead. Anyway, the only time it's ever been used in American currency is on the commemorative half eagle in 1999.”

  She tipped her phone toward Ephraim and he looked at the picture of the gold-colored Washington coin. The right-facing Washington head was identical to the one on his quarter.

  “So you think a Wikipedia entry proves the coin's from a parallel universe where…what? They went with a different coin design in 1931?” He passed the phone back to her.

  “Multiple worlds isn't science fiction, it's a legitimate theory. I'll get our physics textbook.”

  “I don't remember studying anything like this in class,” Ephraim said.

  “Like you were even paying attention. I read ahead in class when I'm bored. Which is often. There's a brief overview on the subject in the back, and I found some amazing books in the library. You know, learning doesn't end in the classroom.”

  He leaned forward. “Just summarize.”

  She pushed her hair back and braced her hands on her knees.

  “It isn't easy to explain, but I'll do my best. Okay. So, lots of physicists believe in what they call the ‘many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.’ There are several different theories about parallel universes, but the most popular suggests that for every decision we make, for every observable event, there are multiple outcomes. Each of those outcomes occurs in another world just like ours, and all those worlds exist in a collection of multiple universes—a multiverse—rather than a single universe.”

  “I…didn't follow any of that.”

  “I barely understand it myself.” She looked around the room for inspiration. “Here.”

  Jena opened her computer and typed in a Google search. As she read the screen, he munched on a cold burrito.

  “Let's try this,” she said. “You've heard of Schrodinger's cat? Everyone's heard of Schrodinger's cat.”

  “Yes!” Finally, something sounded familiar to Ephraim. “That's the experiment where they put a cat in a box with a gas pellet that either killed it or didn't.”

  “That's right, basically. It didn't really happen, it's just an imaginary way of illustrating a theory. According to quantum physics, until someone opens that box, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time.”