by J. Q. Coyle
“Once,” I whisper, “he made a snowman with me.”
Alex runs his knuckles slowly down the side of his face. “Is that what you’re going with? One flimsy memory?”
“That’s all I need,” I say, and it’s true. All I have are tiny bits and pieces of a man. Maybe it’s all anyone ever has—just pieces of a person. “I’ll always choose my father. Every time.”
Alex’s cheeks stiffen. He swallows hard. He seems to swell with anger. He looks different suddenly, taller, more angular. His eyes flood with tears, but they stay locked there, shining. “You want to see your father? Is that what you want?” He walks to the computer and taps a few keys.
An image appears on the screen from what seems to be a surveillance camera. My father is strung up by his wrists. He’s been beaten. Shirtless, his body twists by the cords bound to a ceiling not in frame; I see his chest, his arms, part of his back—blood smeared over his black tattoos—branches curling in all directions, up his arms, and snaking down his back. His head is bent. His swollen face looks dead.
“Is he alive?” My voice is barely a whisper, and then I scream, “Is he alive?”
“We’re trying to save him,” Alex says. “If he would just give up, we wouldn’t have to…”
My father lifts his head as if he can hear us. And in that moment he doesn’t look weak to me. He has refused to give in. Whatever he’s holding on to, he’s willing to die for it.
His eyes fix on an image—a screen? Can he see me? “Alicia,” he says, his voice barely there.
“Yes,” I say, looking into the computer’s embedded camera. “It’s me.”
His eyes squint and well up.
I want him to know I’ve branched, that things have changed the way he said they would, but I don’t want Alex to know. I say, “I remember.”
The edges of his lips curl up slightly. He knows what I mean: pieces of our lives together in other worlds, my childhoods, are coming back to me.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, my voice strangled by emotion. “I didn’t get lost and stay lost.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t.” Don’t apologize or don’t hide?
“Ask him about the atlas,” Alex whispers to me.
“He doesn’t know where it is.”
“I think we have a win-win, here,” Alex says to us, and his voice sounds different. It sounds real and honest, it has an edge, as if all of his concern and worry for me has been peeled off. Gone. And what’s left is a broken man—sick and twisted—but real. “Let’s give her a couple days to find the atlas, or we kill you, Ellington. Meanwhile, you can save her by telling us where it is at any time.”
“Don’t do this to her,” my father says. “Don’t.”
“I’ll do what’s best for Alicia,” Alex says. “And she belongs where she belongs.”
My father lets out a guttural scream. His hands look like bloodless claws over his head. And then, with what seems like the last burst of his strength, he pushes his legs back and then up and over his head, kicking the camera so that it jerks away from him.
There’s a crash, the camera toppling, and now all I see is a hotel room—a bed pushed against a wall, a broken lamp, blood spattered on the walls and a set of curtains, light slicing through a one-foot break in them, the small view of circular window panes. Someone jerks the camera and my father is back in frame.
My father stops fighting the ropes. His body sways. He says, “Alex, leave her alone. Let her go. I don’t know where the atlas is, Alex. I don’t. Let me go and I’ll track it down; please, listen—”
Alex hits a key and the screen goes dark.
I can’t take my eyes off it. “You heard him. He doesn’t know where the atlas is,” I say. “He’d have told you already. If my mother knew what you were doing…”
At the mention of my mother, all his old soft tones come rushing back into his voice. “But she won’t know,” he says. “She’s already been to see you. She saw you were in good hands. After all, you ran away and took a gun with you. I’m sure you can understand that she would prefer to keep you contained for a while. Who would believe you, Alicia? Troubled in school, on all kinds of meds, therapy—it’s not likely you’d get far trying to report any of this to anyone.”
I close my eyes. My chest aches for all the trouble I’ve caused my mother. But I have to convince Alex to let my father go.
“This atlas. What if he’s the only one who can find it? If you’ve got him locked up like that, he never will. Don’t you see that?”
“I have people depending on me. There’s so much opportunity out there, things we can do that will help the prime.”
“Like unleashing global epidemics? I think the universe could use a little less of your help.”
He stares at me for a moment as if he’s adding something up in his head. “Can you still see your other self in the branch you created? Typically spandrels can.”
I look back at him, silent.
“You know, that other Alicia is just as real as you are. It would be too bad if something happened to her.”
I take a deep breath. It’s true that the responsibility I feel for her, and for that world, is huge. My chest hurts thinking of her, my mother, Hafeez in that world, vulnerable.
“I can’t help you,” I say. “I don’t even know where to start looking.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. So you’ll stay locked up here where you can’t run. And your father might hang in there another day or two. Or maybe you’ll decide to help him out.”
My head is pounding again, my heart racing at the thought of being trapped here indefinitely. And letting my father suffer. “Those pictures,” I say, “they’re mine. You can’t take them.” I want to hold on to the truth.
Alex shakes his head as if he’s really tired and then walks to the door, pauses, and, without looking back, he says, “You know, I introduced your parents, way back when.”
My voice comes out shaky. “You did?”
He nods. “I’d regret that too, but then there’s you. You’re the upside of all that, Alicia. Where would I be without you now?” He flashes a smile, a sad one, and leaves.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I NEED to find Jax. His mother knew where the atlas was. Before my father knew she was dead, he wanted me to tell her that if the world was about to die, she needed to get the atlas out and that he wouldn’t be able to help. Maybe she told Jax where the atlas was before she died. No matter what, it’s the only lead I have.
And I’ve got to have blood. My wrist is cuffed to the bed railing, and, where the railing can be raised and lowered, there’s a sharp metal lip. It’s hard to make myself do it, but I scrape my skin against it, managing to open a small cut just under the heel of my hand.
I concentrate on the blood. I hope it gets me where I need to be. Then something shifts, my body pulses with pain. I wedge my shoulder under the bedrails and push my collarbone against the metal. The pain zeros in.
I see red, widening, widening.…
* * *
… I’m kneeling on pavement, picking up pill bottles as fast as I can and shoving them into a canvas bag. I’m near a loading dock, behind what seems to be a strip mall.
“Hurry up!” It’s a guy a little older than I am, lean, unshaven. He’s gathering pill bottles, too.
And then a beam from a flashlight pops up.
“Run!” the guy shouts.
We take off down the length of the strip mall. The man with the flashlight starts running after us, big heavy strides.
We run into a thin strip of woods. The ground is rutted and pocked. A pair of headlights shines on the other side, a pickup truck waiting for us.
The guy running with me reaches the truck first and tosses the bag to the driver and tells me to get in.
“What about you?” I ask him.
“I’ve got more to do out here.”
The driver leans toward the open door. “So, Pynch, how’d she do?” It’s Jax, wearing what might have be
en a dress shirt, but it’s worn thin, cuffed up above his elbows. He’s smiling a little, and I haven’t really seen his smile before.
“Pretty good for a rookie,” Pynch says, and then he claps my back.
I slide into the passenger’s seat. Pynch slams the door, taps the hood, and gives a wave before darting back into the woods.
Jax shoves the truck in reverse then pulls the wheel hard and drives off across a stubbled field. “Glad you guys are okay.” His face is lit by the dashboard, the profile of his jaw and lips, the glint of his eyes.
“I’m not me,” I say quickly.
“I didn’t think so,” he says, glancing at me. “There was something about—I don’t know—your expression, your eyes. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
“So you know what’s going on?” I say. “You know about spandrels?”
“My mother told me everything before she died,” Jax says. He bumps the truck up onto a narrow country road.
“Have you—”
“Branched? No, but I know it’s coming.” His eyes look a little glassy. “This place forces you to make hard decisions.”
It feels so strange to talk to someone who gets it. I want to ask a million questions, but there’s no time. “Did your mother tell you about an atlas?”
He nods. “It’s hidden in a different world. She told me your father knows the trigger to get into that world.”
“I can’t exactly talk to my father right now to find that out.”
“I’m talking about your father in this world.”
“Alex?”
“No, your real father. He knows the world, its trigger. He just doesn’t know that he knows.”
How does he know Alex isn’t my real father? Did his mother tell him? “My real father’s dead in this world, isn’t he?”
He mutters, “One way of putting it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Listen, Alicia, here’s the thing: I don’t know what world the atlas is hidden in or how to access it, but my mother told me where to look once inside of that world.”
My hand starts buzzing. I try to fight it off.
“I’m supposed to get you out of here,” I tell him quickly. “My father wanted me to—and—”
“This is my world,” Jax says. “I don’t exist in the prime.”
“How is that possible?”
Jax pulls over. Through the open windows, I hear the groan and squeak of the nearby dying trees. He smiles. “You don’t know the whole story then, do you?”
“What story?” My lower ribs on one side start to ache. I try to ignore it, but I know I’m wincing with pain. “Tell me.”
“Look, it’s not your problem,” Jax says. “Your family’s done enough.”
Through the open window, I hear a tree fall—loud and heavy—and then another creaks like an old ship and it gives in, too.
I lean over trying to endure the pain in my ribs, willing it away.
“Where’s it hurt?”
“My lower-back ribs. God, I wish I could make it stop.”
“You don’t know how to stay in a world? How would you know how to piggyback someone from branch to branch?”
I shrug, a little breathless.
He reaches around my waist on both sides. I feel the electricity of his touch. “Give me your hand. Show me where it’s the most painful.”
His hand on top of mine, warm and dry, I point out the spot on my back, my lower ribs on my left side. “Here.”
“Okay then,” he says. He takes my hand in both of his. “To stop yourself from leaving a world, you have to find the pressure point on the opposite side of your body.” He moves my hand to my right side, the lowest rung of my ribs, and with my hand under his, he pushes. I feel my cheeks blush. The ache eases in my left side.
“That’s amazing!”
“Simple,” he says.
“Look, if I can figure out which world to go to, will you help me get the atlas out? You’re the only person who can help me and—”
“Without knowing how to get into that world, I can’t help you. And I don’t want to be rescued. I want this world to be saved. And it can’t be saved. So you can’t help me.”
“I guess not.” My ribs are buzzing again, and this time I let them. Why am I here? Why am I even trying? It’s all a lost cause. Wind kicks up some dust, and each individual speck catches in the headlights.
“What went wrong in this place?” I hear myself say.
“Don’t you know? The virus. There’s no cure.” I hear Jax’s voice through a haze of lit motes pulling and blurring. And I realize this might be the world Alex sold off for testing the RO2 vaccine.
“Wait!” I say.
“Alicia, go. There’s no helping us. Not here.”
He reaches around my waist again to my lower ribs, this time to the ones that ache. I don’t want to fade out of this world, especially not now, my eyes locked with his, the sound of the dying world wheezing and falling around us. “I have to be here. I’ll go down with this ship. You do what you can to save yourself.”
His face blurs as if he’s underwater, being pulled away from me on some invisible current.… I reach for him and keep reaching, but then I’m the one who’s gone.…
* * *
… Rumbling. Vibrations.
Hafeez is driving his mom’s ancient Volvo with its crappy muffler. We’re a few blocks from my house, driving away from it. It’s dark. “So which book do you like more,” Hafeez says, “The Hidden Reality or The Elegant Universe? Brian Greene is pretty good, right? I mean, he breaks it all down. He writes for the masses, but it’s solid.”
“Yeah,” I say, “Brian Greene.” I have no idea what we’re talking about. I pull down the visor and look at my chin in the vanity mirror. Stitches. I run my fingers over them. I’m in the world where I didn’t take the gun. My first branch. I don’t want to announce myself to Hafeez because I know he’ll freak, and it was weird between us last time, but I know I have to soon.
I look behind us, wondering if we’re being followed. There’s another car. I memorize it.
“You get Schrödinger’s cat, right?”
“Kind of.”
“It’s just that the cat in the box can be either alive or dead but only until you open the lid and perceive its life or death form. It’s all about perception.”
“I see.” I don’t see. Hafeez turns and the car behind us does, too.
“Deepak says that perceptions create reality. You gotta love Chopra.” He smiles, flips on a blinker, takes a turn.
Perceptions create reality. The half-dead tree, the half-living tree. Jax’s world is dying because of a lack of perception. “Gotta.”
“I also came across this thing called a biocentric universe. Life creates the universe, not the other way around. We’re not alone, Alicia. The universe isn’t here for us or despite us, but because of us.”
I glance back again. Same headlights.
“I think someone is tailing us,” I say.
“Tailing us? Who says ‘tailing’ anymore?”
“Where are we going exactly?”
Hafeez whips around and looks at me. “Breaking and entering,” he says. “Jane’s office. Your idea. But it’s not you, is it?”
“It’s me—the other me, and I think we’re going to need to lose the car behind us. Get on I-93. The exit is coming up.”
He dutifully turns on his blinker.
“What the hell, Hafeez? You don’t use a blinker in a high-speed chase!”
“Has the high-speed chase started? Did you make an announcement? Because, if so, I missed it.” He gets into the right lane but seems to be hesitating.
“I don’t have time for your prissy driver’s-ed shit, Hafeez! Turn now!” I reach for the wheel.
“Okay! Shit!” He swerves onto the ramp. The bluish tint of the silver car’s headlights are still close behind.
“There’s a place with no barriers up ahead, right? Where they’re doing construction
and there’s a gap.”
“My mother will kill me if I ding this car!”
“This car? Didn’t she buy it pre-dinged?”
“Owning a Volvo was very important for my mother—asserting the American dream and all.”
“Volvos are Swedish!”
He has both hands tight on the wheel and has started to gun it a little, including some polite weaving through traffic. “Don’t mess with an American dream!”
I glance back over my shoulder. “Look, we’re in real trouble. This isn’t our old Sprowitz-in-a-lunch-line level of shit. This is men-with-guns, torturers, killers. That level.”
“Okay,” he says, and then adds a panicked, “Shit, shit, shit.”
I take a deep breath. “You can do this.” I speak as soothingly as I can. “I want you to drive through the gap, okay?”
The headlights are closer on us now.
“You’re going to slow down, not with the brake, just let off the gas, and then whip through.” He nods but I’m not sure he’s actually listening. “It’s coming now. No brakes, okay?”
“Screw you—you don’t even have a license,” he says angrily.
Now I know he can do it. Pissed is better than scared. “Here it comes.”
The headlights are on our bumper. I make out the gap ahead. “See it?”
He nods, whispers, “I don’t want to be a dead cat in Schrödinger’s box. I don’t want to be a dead cat in Schrödinger’s box,” and then he swerves. I brace.
He slides through, except the Volvo’s fender scrapes the barrier on the turn and the car fishtails. But he rights it quickly, pulling the wheel hard, and I see the silver car pass by. I hear the squeal of brakes and horns blaring.
“God damn it!” Hafeez shouts happily. “I’m good! Did you see that?”
“Get off at the next exit.”
“I can’t wait to tell you about it—the other you. I knew it wasn’t you. You just weren’t being the girl who kissed me.”
I remembered the kiss when I was in that world. It was a shadow of a memory, like a story told to you in a dream. But I don’t want Hafeez to know I remember. It might freak him out, so I play dumb. “I kissed you?”
“You didn’t, but the other you. But, yes, you did. Or I kissed you. Or something like that.”
