Now That You're Here (Duplexity, Part I)

by Amy K. Nichols

  I glare at Warren, then roll my eyes over to Danny. “Are you making this up?”

  Danny looks incredulous. “You know I’m not.”

  “See?” I cross my arms. Warren tosses the cube again. And again. And again, until all I want to do is cram the stupid thing down his throat.

  Danny breaks the tension. “What happened to you with the locker was wrong.”

  Warren stops tossing the cube.

  “Listen, I don’t know what to say or how to make you believe me,” Danny says, “but that wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have done that to you. The truth is, I don’t remember ever seeing you before Monday morning.”

  Warren swivels back and forth in his chair, just staring at him, for a long, long time.

  Time to get down to the business at hand. “Danny,” I say, “tell Warren how you got here.”

  Danny clears his throat. “I was climbing over this fence—”

  “Why?” Warren interrupts.

  “Because I needed to get to the other side.”

  “What was over there?”

  “A parking lot. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know, does it?”

  I sigh. “Warren, just let him tell the story.” Warren holds his hands up in surrender, then goes back to flipping the cube.

  “Let me start over.” Danny sits forward and moves his hair out of his face. “It was Patriots’ Day and there was a parade by the mall. Lots of people around. My friend and I were there on our skateboards. Suddenly there was an evacuation announcement over the sound system, and everyone scattered. Including me. There was a chain-link fence around the parking lot, and instead of finding another way around, I decided to go over it. So I’m climbing over and suddenly there’s this huge explosion. Just massive. Then before I could even react, there was a second one, closer this time, that hit me like a wave. Everything went white. The force sent me flying and I landed hard. Smacked my head. It felt like my body was on fire. Then the ground sort of, I don’t know, gave way. Like it just disappeared under me. I was falling and I thought, game over. I’m a dead man. But then, next thing I know, I’m sitting at a desk. And she’s there next to me.”

  “It was freaky,” I add. “He gasped like he couldn’t breathe.”

  Warren rests his chin on tented fingertips. “You said you hit your head. How do you know all of this isn’t just some kind of amnesic episode?”

  Danny shrugs. “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “But your Phoenix isn’t like this, right?” I ask.

  “That’s for sure.” He runs his hands through his hair and closes his eyes. “I keep thinking maybe Red December had something to do with it.”

  This is new. “Who?”

  Danny looks back and forth between us. “You know, the anarchist group. Car-bombed the Fed building downtown a few years ago? Hacked the stock exchange back in October? Tanked the market in minutes flat.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. From the look on Warren’s face, he can’t either. Danny climbs out of the beanbag and begins pacing.

  “Who’s the president?” Warren asks.

  Danny makes a scoffing sound. “President? There hasn’t been a president since my parents were kids. I mean, they have elections, but everyone knows they’re just for show.”

  Warren leans forward, the Rubik’s Cube forgotten in his hands. “So, who’s in charge?”

  “Coradetti. But it’s pretty much agreed he’s just a puppet.” Danny stops pacing and looks at us. “You have a real president?”

  The hair on my neck prickles. Warren swivels around in his chair. “Okay,” he says, his fingers typing on a keyboard. “Definitely not from around here.”

  “I tried that,” Danny says. “Searching for answers. Didn’t get anywhere.”

  Warren snickers. “This isn’t Google. This is the Dark Web.”

  “Dark what?”

  “Google it sometime.”

  “What’s google?”

  Warren stops typing. “Serious? Okay, never mind. Tell me about the explosion. Did you feel heat?”

  Danny takes a step to look over Warren’s shoulder. “A little. But it was more like getting shoved really hard. After, when I was lying there, I felt like my chest was gonna explode.”

  “Flash of light,” Warren mutters. “Maybe it was some kind of dirty bomb.” His fingers type like mad, then he punches one last key and turns around in his chair. “There. I posted a thread on the Outer Regions board. Maybe someone’s heard of this Coradetti, or an explosion at a mall.”

  He swivels to face me. “Solomon, remember in ‘Mirror, Mirror’ when the Federation was replaced by an evil empire?”

  “You mean Spock with the beard?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about it?”

  He points at Danny.

  “You think Danny’s been replaced by an evil empire?”

  “Exactly. I mean, no. Well, sort of.”

  “What?” Danny asks.

  I can feel my brain starting to cramp. “You’re saying he’s…”

  Warren holds both hands palms down, side by side. “Parallel.”

  And that does it. My brain goes into gridlock. “But Mac says there’s no way to cross between parallel worlds.”

  “Maybe Mac’s wrong.”

  I laugh. “Mac? Wrong?”

  Warren ignores me and pushes his goggles up onto his forehead. He’s moved right from speculation to celebration. “Solomon, do you realize what this means? Can you fathom the implications if somehow he’s slipped the bonds of space-time?”

  I glance at Danny standing there confused out of his skull and think of what he’d said about the museum.

  He’s a different Danny.

  Who kissed a different me.

  I try to break in, but they’re locked on some scientific something I’m not even going to pretend I get. Eevee’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of her head. Warren, though. He’s all smiles. “This is huge, Solomon,” he says. “Life-changing.”

  “Wait a second, guys.” They’re not listening.

  “This could open the doors to the top colleges. Research labs. NASA. You name it.”

  “Wait,” Eevee says.

  Warren doesn’t wait. “Heck, we’ll be in demand on the international scene.” He falls back into his chair and spins around like a kid.

  “Wait a second!” I grab one of Warren’s figurines, threatening to snap it in two.

  That gets their attention. Eevee nods to Warren. “You explain it, Brainiac.”

  Warren hops up from the chair. “I’ll make this simple. Try to keep up.”

  I hold out the action figure. Warren snatches it back and checks to make sure it isn’t damaged before setting it down on a shelf.

  “There’s a theory—not proven yet, thus theory—that ours isn’t the only universe.” He clasps his hands behind his back and paces. “That there are, in fact, numerous universes, coexisting alongside ours. Together they’re called a multiverse. Are you with me?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “Okay. So in theory, quantum events spawn off new universes, creating parallel realities. The most famous example, of course, is Schrödinger’s Cat.”

  “Whose cat?”

  “Erwin Schrödinger. The physicist…?” Warren pauses, apparently baffled by my lack of knowledge. He heaves a sigh as he explains. “Schrödinger suggested that if you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison gas and a trigger mechanism to release the gas if certain conditions are met, as long as the box remains sealed, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.”

  “Wait. I’m lost.” I look at Eevee for help. “What does a cat in a box have to do with me being here?”

  “What he’s saying is, when there’s a decision point—say, someone getting sick—that point branches the universe into two, one for each outcome. So in the example of the sick person, in one universe the person gets better, and in the other, the person doesn’t.”

  “So the unive
rse branched, and now there are two Phoenixes?”

  Eevee shrugs. “Or more.”

  Warren jumps in again, talking excitedly in my face. “The number isn’t what’s important here. It’s the fact that you traveled from your universe to ours.”

  Sometimes when Warren’s excited, he spits when he talks. I take a step back. “And that part—the traveling bit—that’s not supposed to happen?”

  “Not according to the laws of physics.” Eevee sits down again on the stool. “There aren’t any known connection points between universes.”

  “There is now.” Warren smiles.

  “No,” Eevee says.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “He’s a person, Warren.”

  “Of course he’s a person.”

  “We have to be careful here. We can’t say anything to anyone.”

  “Not even Mac?”

  Eevee stares hard at Warren, drumming her fingers on her knee, thinking.

  “Eevee,” Warren whines, “we have to tell Mac.”

  Finally, she nods. “Okay. But only Mac. And we tell him together.”

  “After class tomorrow?”

  “Deal.”

  Despite not understanding most of what they said, I’m hopeful. This feels like the first step toward getting back home. And that is the best news all day.

  I push Dad’s door open, and Danny follows me inside. He’s happier than I’ve ever seen him—either as this self or his other self. He’s talking nonstop about how he can’t wait to get back to his family and all the things he’ll tell them when he gets there, about this Phoenix and the foster home and about me. I don’t have the heart to remind him all we have is a theory, not an instruction manual for somehow transporting him back home.

  We walk into the kitchen and I pull a bag of veggie puffs from the cabinet. The bag crinkles open. I hold it out and sing the jingle. “Muncha buncha puffs, the puffs made only from good stuffs.”

  Danny takes a handful. I eat one, then another, and try to shake the unsettled feeling sweeping over me.

  “Did you understand all that stuff?” He crunches a puff.

  “Most of it.”

  “I knew you were smart,” he says, “but dang. It was like you guys were speaking another language.” He goes on and on about how he thought he was decent at science but never learned any of the stuff we talked about at Warren’s and…and…and…Then he stops talking and asks, “Are you okay?”

  I look down at my hands and realize I’m strangling the Muncha Puffs bag.

  I’m not okay.

  “If this is true,” I say, “we’re talking a total game changer. If you really are from a parallel universe, then what happened to you could happen to any of us. Somehow you crossed from there to here. What’s to stop that from happening to me? Or Warren? What does that mean for the stability of our universe?”

  He’s silent. He clearly doesn’t have the answers either. I continue.

  “And what about the other Danny? The one who usually lives here. Where is he now? And what if word about this gets out? If we’re not careful, you could end up a lab rat. You saw the look in Warren’s eyes. Don’t think for a minute he won’t sell you out. Danny Ogden, you are the missing link in the unified theory.”

  His jaw is set tight, his bubble burst. I hold out the bag. “More?” He shakes his head, so I put the Muncha Puffs back in the cupboard, then straighten the dish towel by the sink.

  All of those things I said are true. All of them are huge problems, so big they could swallow us whole. But they’re not what’s really bothering me.

  What’s really bothering me is her.

  The other Eevee.

  She’s the creeping feeling I can’t shake, though I don’t know why. I again straighten the towel that doesn’t need straightening. “My dad’ll be home soon. I should probably go get my homework done.”

  “Wait,” he says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Can I ask you something first?”

  “Sure.” I brace for another bombshell.

  He shakes his head so all that hair falls in his face. “Will you cut this off?”

  “What?” Okay, I totally didn’t see that one coming. “No. No way.”

  “I can’t take one more day of this shit hanging in my face.” He blows a strand away from his mouth.

  “Why don’t you ask my dad when he gets home. There’s a QuickCuts over on 51st. He can drive.”

  “I was thinking you could just do it.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “I’ll make you look like a freak.”

  “Eevee…” He musses the hair and makes a face.

  He has a point.

  I hear myself say okay. Watch myself pull a towel out of the linen closet and scissors from the bathroom cabinet. They’re small and sharp. They’ll do the trick.

  He sits in a chair in the middle of the kitchen with the towel around his shoulders, his hair hanging down over his face. I walk around him three or four times.

  “What are you waiting for? Chop. Chop.”

  I laugh to cover the fear. “No pressuring the artist while she works.”

  “Oh, excuse me, Monet.”

  “Better Monet than van Gogh.” I snap the scissors twice by his ear and he ducks.

  I have no idea where to start. I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before. Well, that’s not entirely true. I chopped off my Barbies’ hair when I was little. Those poor dolls looked tragic when I was finished with them. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Sure as I am about anything.”

  “That’s not saying a whole lot.”

  I pull the comb through his mop. It’s longer than I realized. Rattier, too. “Have you ever had your hair cut?”

  “This isn’t my hair, remember? I keep mine short.”

  Of course he does. In his universe.

  I start small and slow, taking a few inches off the back at the center. The scissors make a sizzle noise as they slice through the strands. I’m holding my breath. I think he’s holding his, too.

  With my foot, I slide a couple of locks along the floor into his view. “Nervous?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  I take the length up to his collar. At least four or five inches more. The hair falls to the floor without a sound. I cut all around the bottom, trying to keep it even. The result: a slightly crooked bob. It’s hard not to laugh, it looks so bad.

  I step back to study the shape of his head and also to buy time. Then I cut the bob shorter, to just below his ears. This is far worse than the Barbies.

  I keep going, though. I keep the scissors cutting, taking off more and more until finally something like a rhythm kicks in. I lose myself in the work. Instead of combing the hair down his neck, I drag the comb up, stopping just above the hairline, and chop. Drag it up again and chop more. Snip, snip go the scissors. Down, down falls the hair. The floor is a mess. I’ll have to clean it all up before Dad gets home or he’ll freak out.

  Soon jagged angles emerge. Tufts here and there, some long, some short. I don’t worry about lines, matching lengths or any of those things professionals do. I just fight my way through. Move his head as I need to without apology.

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  He’s right, but I don’t tell him.

  So, if careers in science or welding fail me, I’ll be a hairdresser. Maybe Mom’s magazines are getting through to me. “Close your eyes.”

  “You really don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you?”

  “This was your brilliant idea, not mine.”

  He closes those blue eyes and I snip a slight angle across the bridge of his nose. The hair falls away from his face.

  “Who’s Mac?”

  “Marcus McAllister. Teacher at Palo Brea. Probably the smartest man in the world. He used to be a NASA engineer.”

  “Can he help us?”

  “Maybe. Hopefully.”

  “You
trust him?”

  “Yes.”

  He shifts his weight and tucks his hands between his knees. “I found them, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “My parents.”

  “What? That’s great! Why didn’t you tell me?” I swoop his bangs out of his eyes. Then I see his face and understand.

  “Tell me about them,” she says softly.

  I’m looking at her face but all I see is the grave. Their names. The infinity symbol. I shake the image away and picture them instead at home. “Dad works for the city, at least he did, in infrastructure and planning. Mom volunteers part-time with kids. Helps them with reading.”

  But what they do isn’t who they are. Nothing I say will re-create them. They’re not here. She’ll never meet them. If I at least had a picture, that would…

  “Who do you take after?” She steps close again and works on my hair. My head feels about eighty pounds lighter. And I can see.

  “Most people say my mom. My eyes are definitely hers, but my nose is more like Dad’s.”

  She looks at my face. “I’m trying to imagine them.”

  I am, too. Friday morning before I left for Germ’s, Dad was already off to work and Mom was just getting her coffee. I yelled goodbye to her from the door. Didn’t give her a hug. “They’re older. Mom has a degenerative muscle condition that should have kept her from having kids. Doctors didn’t think either of us would live. She says I was a feisty baby, though. Calls me her miracle boy.”

  “I like that,” Eevee says, moving to stand behind me. “Miracle boy.”

  In my mind, I see Mom as she was that morning, standing by the kitchen counter, one hand on her cane. Red December blew up the mall. Did they hit other targets, too? Targets closer to home? I wish there was some way to know.

  “Hope they’re okay,” I whisper. She touches my shoulder and I feel my eyes well up. Good thing she can’t see my face. Time to change the subject. “What about your parents?”

  She grunts. “You’ve met them. What’s left to say?”

  “The two-houses thing is pretty interesting.”

  “Weird, you mean. But it works, I guess.”

  “How old were you when they got divorced?”

  “They were never married, actually.” She moves in front of me again. “They liked each other enough at some point, but decided they were better off living as neighbors instead of like normal people. From what they’ve told me—which isn’t much—having a kid was a matter of logic. Necessity. They’re both only-children. It was important to them to keep their DNA chains around. So here I am.” She laughs. “The archive.”