Fair Coin

by E. C. Myers

  Ephraim went back to the bedroom and waited for Zoe.

  “Did it work?” Zoe said behind him.

  Ephraim jumped at her sudden appearance. “I'm going to have to get you a little bell if you keep doing that,” he said. Then he hugged her. Zoe tensed up at first, but gradually he felt her relax in his arms.

  “I think I made it.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “If this isn't home, then it's really close enough.”

  “Splendid,” Zoe said. “So what now?”

  “I want to show you something. Oh! Guess we'll need this.” He retrieved the coin from the floor where it had dropped, and pocketed it.

  “Don't forget these,” Zoe said. She held out his wallet and keys.

  “But I have my—” He checked his other pockets and came up with a duplicate wallet and keys.

  “Where did you find those?” he said quietly.

  “Just over there on your desk.” Zoe pointed.

  He grinned. His mother must have returned those to his analog when she got home from the hospital. Zoe was holding the proof that he'd really made it home.

  She came to the same realization.

  “Oh,” she said. She opened the wallet.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She sniffed and slipped the wallet into her pocket. “Yeah. You said you had something to show me?”

  Ephraim scratched at his neck where a branch was tickling him. He and Zoe were hiding behind a tree and watching Jena's house across the street. It was already morning, the world covered in a gray light from an overcast sky. It looked like it was going to rain.

  “Why are we spying on my house?” she said.

  “Wait for it,” Ephraim said. He was conscious of her breathing right next to his face, the closeness of her arm to his.

  The front door opened. “There,” he said.

  Linda Kim turned to close the door, then stooped to retrieve the newspaper. She tucked it under her arm and walked to the driveway, jingling a key ring.

  “Momma?” Zoe said. She half-rose. Ephraim put an arm on her shoulder.

  Mrs. Kim paused and peered across the street at their hiding place. She walked to the edge of the lawn and looked directly at them for a moment.

  “She can't possibly see us,” Ephraim whispered. Zoe didn't say anything.

  Mrs. Kim finally turned and got into her car. She backed the vehicle out of the driveway and drove right past them.

  Zoe clung to the trunk of the tree. “I've only seen her in pictures,” she said.

  “I thought—”

  “I appreciate what you tried to do for me, Ephraim. Thank you.”

  “You're upset,” he said, disappointed.

  “I'm happy I got to see her, but…” She took a wavery breath and looked at the front of the house. “This is all just too much. It's been one thing after another. I'm tired.”

  Ephraim wasn't sure if he had done the right thing, bringing her there.

  “I'm ready to go home now,” Zoe said.

  So soon? Ephraim thought.

  Zoe flipped open the controller. “Actually…how do we get me home?” she asked, staring at the little display. “This thing won't take me back on my own, and the coin won't work for me.”

  Ephraim nodded. “Now that we have the coordinates of this reality…” He paused so he and Zoe could confirm that was just the case. “I'll just take you back to your own reality with the coin and the controller, then pop back here on my own with just the coin. Unless…”

  Zoe tossed her head back, and her hair flipped over her shoulder. “What?”

  “Unless you think you'd want to stay?” Ephraim tried to keep the neediness out of his voice, but when he failed, he thought it best to go the whole way. “I really like you, Zoe. You're the one thing I'll miss from all of this.”

  “Oh.” Zoe smiled a bit sadly. “That's tempting, but you said it: we all belong in our own universes. There's no room for me here.” She glanced up at the house. Ephraim turned, and saw Jena staring at them from her open window.

  He still couldn't get that image of Jena's floating body out of his head, but here, in this reality, right now, she was very much alive.

  Ephraim turned back to Zoe.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “Okay. If that's what you want, let's take you home,” he said.

  Zoe scrolled back to her universe's coordinates, at the other end of the list. They were so many worlds apart. Ephraim popped the coin into place. It had barely stopped spinning when he took Zoe's hand in his left. He led her behind a tree blocking them from Jena's view. Then he closed his right hand over the coin.

  Zoe looked as relieved to be home as he must have. She looked around as though checking off things against her memory of them.

  “Such a gentleman. You walked me back to my home dimension.” She squeezed his hand.

  “My pleasure, madam. It has been an honor traveling with you.”

  They unclasped hands at the same time.

  “So,” Zoe said. “I guess this is good-bye. You'll be seeing another me in a minute, but I'll never see you again, will I?”

  Ephraim raised his hand and brushed some hair away from her cheek.

  “She isn't you,” Ephraim said.

  Zoe closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them she smiled. “Well, then, you'd better leave. Before something else happens.”

  Ephraim didn't think he'd be upset with what she was suggesting, but he knew the longer he stayed, the harder it would be to leave—not this place, but her.

  He nodded until he trusted himself to speak. Even so his voice sounded thick.

  “So, just set the coordinates for my home reality. There's no one back there to swap with me, so you don't have to worry about dealing with another one of me.” He licked his lips. “But just to be safe, I want you to destroy that controller when I'm clear. It's the only way to make sure it can't be used again, by anyone.”

  “Nathaniel said you might want me to do that. I think he was a little disappointed, thinking we might follow in his footsteps.”

  “We have to follow our own paths,” Ephraim said.

  He flipped the coin once, and it flashed in the early morning sunlight. He caught it.

  “I wish—” he began.

  “No more wishes.”

  Zoe guided his hand to the controller, and he slipped the coin into its slot. Zoe turned it on, and when the coin stopped spinning, he looked straight into her eyes. A dozen things to say ran through his head, but in the end all he could say was, “Good-bye, Zoe.”

  “Be seeing you,” she said.

  He took the coin.

  Ephraim heard a short shriek. He looked up and saw the girl he'd just left behind in another universe. For a moment he thought maybe he hadn't gone anywhere after all. Maybe the coin had stopped working, or he hadn't wanted to leave badly enough…

  But it only took a moment to confirm this wasn't Zoe. She pushed up her glasses, eyes wide behind the lavender frames.

  “Jena,” he said.

  “Ephraim?” she asked. She sounded scared. “How did you do that?”

  “Sorry if I startled you. It's…complicated,” he said. There was no way he could convince her it was just a magic trick, when he'd appeared a few feet right in front of her. He didn't want to lie to her, anyway. That had gotten him into trouble with her elsewhere, and she'd proven herself more than capable of handling the truth.

  “I thought I saw someone with you a second ago. A girl,” Jena said. She looked around. “Where'd she go?”

  “I can explain, but it'll take a while. And you might not believe me,” he said. Especially since he couldn't prove any of it this time with a demonstration. Then again, he still had Nate's camera, which was full of pictures of other universes. “Do you think we could talk?” he asked.

  “I was just about to leave for work.”

  “I'll walk you to the library and tell you everything,” he said.

  “Okay. I exp
ect this will be interesting.”

  “Maybe you can also fill me in on a few things I've missed.”

  She looked puzzled. “You say that like you've been gone for a while.”

  “I have been.”

  “But I saw you last night,” she said. “What's that in your hand?”

  “A souvenir,” he said. “A coin.”

  Ephraim opened his hand. The coin was only a polished silver disc now, cold and ordinary. Pushing him through to his own universe without swapping him into an analog had drained its charge completely. And by now, Zoe would have destroyed the controller—cutting his only link back to her. Now they'd never see each other again.

  He looked at Jena and wondered if they could ever have the kind of relationship that Zoe had shared with her Ephraim.

  He couldn't be satisfied with things simply returning to normal, not after seeing all those possibilities. If he made the right choices, he knew he could get his mother the help she needed and improve his friendship with Nathan. He could tell Jena how he'd always felt about her, confident that there was a good chance she felt the same way.

  He flipped the coin and caught it.

  “Heads or tails?” Jena asked.

  Ephraim rubbed his thumb over the smooth disc. He glanced down and smiled when he saw the blank face of it.

  “Heads.”

  E. C. Myers was assembled in the United States from Korean and German parts and raised by his mother and a public library in his hometown of Yonkers, New York, on which Summerside is loosely based. He has worked as a doorman, food server, security guard, web designer, software consultant, technical writer, video editor, tape librarian, digital media manager, and blogger, and he now writes copy for a pediatric hospital. E. C. attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005 and is a member of Altered Fluid, a prolific writing group in New York City. His website is www.ecmyers.net.