His eyes were so warm—so concerned—and my heart rose into my throat at the realization of how much he cared for me.
Except that Zac didn’t know me. He cared about Annabelle—not me. I couldn’t let myself forget that.
“So you believe me?” I asked.
“I want to believe you.” He sighed and rested his hands on his knees. “But it’s difficult, since you don’t have any proof.”
“That’s why I had to talk to you both now,” I said. “Because you’re wrong. I do have proof.”
Claire opened her mouth, looking like she was about to protest, but Zac silenced her with a single glance.
“Good.” He nodded. “What kind of proof?”
“Knowledge,” I said. “You see, at the Halloween dance, a huge group of guys were dressed as the Bath Salt Zombie.”
“What’s a Bath Salt Zombie?” Claire asked.
“You don’t know now because it hasn’t happened yet.” I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair, watching them both carefully. “But after it happens tomorrow morning, it’ll be all over the news. Everyone will be talking about it.”
Zac’s forehead creased, his eyes lighting up as he put it together. “If you’ve already lived through this week, you know about more than what happened on Friday night,” he said. “You know about all the days leading up to Friday, too.”
“Exactly.” I smiled. “I can tell you what will happen before it happens to prove that I’m telling the truth.”
“Back up.” Claire held her hands in the air. “You’re saying that you can predict the future?”
“Only through this week,” I told her. “After Friday night, I’ll be as clueless as everyone else. And only with things that aren’t affected by how I’ve changed in this life.”
“What do you mean?” Claire asked.
“My mom’s accident changed me,” I explained. “I’m different here than in the life I remember. For instance, I knew what Ms. Bunnell would say to us today as she passed back our tests—about how it was only the first test of the year, and not to be upset if we didn’t do as well as we expected. But I didn’t know what my grade would be. In my life, I got a 104 on the test. Here, I only got an 88.”
Claire scrunched her eyebrows. “So your mom’s death made you a better student?”
She said it so casually, as if my mom’s accident hadn’t actually happened. At first I was stunned, but it wasn’t fair to blame her. To her and everyone here, my mom was still alive. The horrible reality that I’d lived in these past few months didn’t exist to them at all.
“I think there are a bunch of different factors.” I focused on explaining this logically, since laying out the facts was the best way to get through to them. “The main one is that after my mom’s accident, I got fixated on wanting to go to her alma mater, Cornell. To have a chance of getting in, I need straight A’s this semester.”
“That’s why you mentioned Cornell this morning,” Zac said, relaxing a bit. “It came out of nowhere. I was so confused.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I used to want to stay in Florida for college. Here, I must have never veered from that path.”
“Hmm.” Claire poked at the remains of her salad. “I guess that makes sense. Sort of. But what about that proof you mentioned?”
“The zombie guy,” Zac reminded her. “The one that everyone will know about soon.”
“The Bath Salt Zombie,” I corrected him. “He wasn’t a ‘real’ zombie, obviously. But on Tuesday morning—tomorrow morning—he’ll be all over the news.”
“Okay,” Zac said. “But who is he, exactly?”
“That’s what I’m about to tell you.” I crossed my legs, thinking back to the news report. “Tomorrow morning, a man in Miami is going to attack some woman with his teeth. He’ll growl at the police like a zombie, and it’ll take a few shots to take him down.”
“It definitely sounds like something that would happen in Florida,” Zac muttered.
“Yep,” I agreed. “It’s all because he got high off bath salts, which apparently makes people act crazy. Everyone will be joking about it tomorrow. They’ll still be talking about it on Friday—enough to want to dress as this guy for Halloween. And there’s no way I could have known this unless I’m telling you the truth about already living through this week.”
“Assuming this all happens like you claim it will,” Claire said.
“Of course it will,” I said, but that didn’t stop the doubt from trickling down my spine.
Because what if I was wrong, and every single event here wouldn’t be the same as what I’d already lived through?
But this was all I had right now, so I had to go with it.
“It’s going to happen,” I said, wanting to drive the point home. “And once it does, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
“Either way, we meet back here tomorrow during lunch, and we keep everything we just talked about to ourselves,” Zac said. He focused on Claire during that last part—as if he were afraid she might tell someone else. “Deal?”
“Okay.” Claire twirled a piece of her hair and chewed on her lower lip. “But Annabelle—maybe you should go to the nurse and ask if you can go home for the day.”
“This isn’t something I created because of stress.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair, dropping my hands to my sides. What more could I say to get her to believe me? “This is all real. You’ll see tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to bring as little attention to myself as possible.”
“Either way, this has to be stressing you out,” she said. “And people have noticed that you’re acting different. If you go home sick, they’ll assume you weren’t feeling well and will brush it off.”
“That’s a good point,” Zac said.
“Except I’m not really sick,” I said. “The nurse will be able to tell that I’m faking.”
“She’ll let you go home,” he said. “Claire and I will walk you there and vouch for you.”
My instinct was to say no—I’d never been good at faking sick. Probably because Mom could see through it since she was a doctor.
Is a doctor.
I smiled at the realization that I didn’t have to think of her in the past tense anymore. She was here, and alive.
I still hadn’t scrapped the possibility that this was a dream, and that I would wake back up in the world at any second. But I wanted this life to be real. I wanted it to be mine. And I’d done a terrible job this morning of pretending to be Annabelle.
If I went home early, I could investigate more into who Annabelle is, to figure out how to be her without tipping people off that I’m not her. I could also try to find out what was going on with me—how I’d gotten here, what “here” was, etc.
“Fine.” I stood up and grabbed my bag. “I’ll go to the nurse. As long as you both vouch for me.”
They assured me they would.
Then, on our way to the door, Zac reached for my hand. He was so casual about it, as if his touching me was the most natural thing in the world.
I pulled away and shoved my hand into my back pocket.
His face crumpled, and he flexed his fingers, glancing down at them as if wondering what he’d done wrong. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, his voice low. “Whatever it is, you know you can trust me, right?”
I couldn’t meet his eyes, because what could I say? I’d already thrown so much at him. Once he believed me about what was going to happen on Friday… then I would tell him that I had no memories of our relationship.
It was going to crush him. Just thinking about telling him made my stomach twist with dread.
“Would I have told you what I just did if I didn’t trust you?” I asked.
“No.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But something more is going on. You seem… different.”
“Of course I’m different,” I said. “Where I’m from, my mom died seven months ago, and last night I was in a school shooting. Things like that c
hange people. A lot.”
“I know.” He swallowed, his eyes locked on mine. “But you’re still my Annabelle. And I’ll be here for you no matter what.”
Monday, October 27
The minute I got home, I realized how glad I was to not be in school. Someone there was the shooter who would strike on Friday. They could be chatting with friends, turning in homework assignments, getting back tests… and I had no idea who they were or how to stop them.
At least I had Zac and Claire on my side. Well, I thought I had Zac. I wasn’t as sure about Claire, but she would have to believe me once she saw the news tomorrow morning.
Since no one was home, I was able to research what had happened to me without any interruptions. The closest explanation I could find was the many worlds theory. This theory said that whenever someone makes a decision, the universe splits so each result can play out in a different world. This meant there would be an infinite numbers of universes. It was mind-blowing.
The split of my world and this world must have happened at that coin toss on the night before my mom’s accident—when we were figuring out which restaurant to go to. In my world, I picked heads. Here, I picked tails. Both of the worlds had played out, unaware and separate of each other. Parallel universes. They were supposed to continue on like that forever, side by side, never touching.
Somehow, I’d traveled from my world to this one. But no matter how much I researched, I couldn’t find information about how that had happened. Every website said that it was impossible to travel between universes. What had happened to me was unique.
Or if it had happened to others, they’d kept quiet about it.
I also wondered—what happened to the Annabelle that had existed in this world until this morning? Was she now in my world? Was she gone forever? Could she come back at any second, knocking me out of this world and back into mine?
Thinking about it made my head spin.
When my mom finally got home, she came upstairs and knocked on my door. “Annabelle?” She peeked inside and held up a package. “Your Glossybox arrived.”
Hearing her voice and seeing her in front of me was the best part of this crazy day. I was the luckiest person in the world for being able to have my mom back and alive. I might not know how I’d gotten to this world, but I knew that I wanted to stay here.
In the meantime, she was waiting for a reaction from me about that package, so I had to say something.
“Thanks.” I eyed the pink box in her hand. I was probably supposed to know what it was, but I was clueless.
“Usually you jump up and open them immediately.” She sat down on my bed and placed the box in front of me. “What’s going on with you today? It’s like your mind’s somewhere else.”
There was so much I wanted to say—so much I wanted to tell her—but I wouldn’t be able to handle it if my mom thought I’d gone crazy. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted this life to be mine.
So I shut my laptop and wracked my brain to decide how I would normally reply if this were a regular day after school.
“We got our physics tests back,” I said, since it was the first thing that came to my mind. “I got an 88.”
“That’s not terrible,” she said. “But it sounds like you’re unhappy with it?”
“Of course I’m unhappy with it,” I said. “I can do better.”
“I know you can.” She glanced down at my bedspread, as if unsure she should say more, and then continued, “B’s aren’t bad, but until this year, you’ve always been a straight A student.”
“I’m going to do better from now on,” I said. “I promise.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “I know you’ve been busy since starting to date Zac—and you know I like him, so this is nothing against him. But if you spend less time out with him and your friends, and if you spend more time studying, your grades will improve.”
“I know,” I said. “I need to do that. Especially since I want to apply to Cornell.”
She sat back, shocked. “When did you decide you wanted to apply to Cornell?”
“It’s been on the back of my mind for a while,” I said. “Since you went there, and it has such a fantastic pre-med program, I figured I should apply.”
“Perhaps…” She played with her lower lip—a habit when she was deep in thought.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “Are my grades so bad that you think I won’t get in?”
“It’s not that,” she said. “You have enough time to pull up your grades. And if the rest of your application is strong, you’ll definitely have a chance.”
“So why the pause?” I asked.
“It’s such a competitive environment, and the weather there will be a huge shock to you,” she said. “I thought you were set on staying in Florida?”
“I’m still applying to Florida schools,” I told her, since obviously I needed backups. “But I want to apply to Cornell too.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, even if this does seem like it’s coming from nowhere,” she said. “We’ll set up a weekend to visit there soon.”
“Okay.” I smiled at the idea of walking through the Cornell campus with my mom. It was too good to be true. “That sounds perfect.”
“Now, I think you can take a studying break so we can get that ice cream we talked about this morning, right?”
“Right,” I said, although guilt twisted in my chest, since I hadn’t been studying—I’d been researching parallel worlds.
But maybe I should stop worrying about how I’d gotten to this world, and just appreciate that I was here at all. Because here, my mom was alive. That was all that mattered.
I might not know how or why I was here, but I did know one thing—there was no place else I’d rather be.
Tuesday, October 28
“Two guys from the team were just running through the halls like they were insane, screaming that they were ‘on bath salts,’” Zac said the moment he joined me and Claire in the library. “It’s safe to say that Annabelle was right.”
“Tell him what you were just telling me,” Claire told me. “About the multiple worlds theory.”
I caught them up on everything I learned in my research yesterday, and they listened as they ate, hanging on to every word.
“Let me get this straight,” Zac said once I finished. “Every time we’re faced with a decision, both possibilities play out, and we’re only aware of one of them?”
“Yep.” I nodded. “That seems to be the basic theory online.”
“So there’s a world where instead of throwing the winning pass last week at the game against Olympic Heights, it was incomplete and we lost?”
“Exactly.”
“And there’s a world where I didn’t ask you out during my Memorial Day boat party last summer? Or a world where you didn’t say yes?”
I lowered my eyes, unable to look at him. Should I tell him that he didn’t ask me out because I hadn’t been at the boat party at all?
That was the truth, but I didn’t imagine him handling it well.
Still, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. He and Claire had put aside their doubts and believed what I’d told them so far. It was only fair of me to tell them everything in return.
“In your world, I did ask you out that night, right?” he asked, on edge now. “And you said yes?”
“Zac,” I said his name slowly, bracing myself for what I had to do. “In my world, my mom passed away in March. It changed… well, it changed a lot.”
“How much?” He swallowed so hard that a vein in his neck looked like it was about to pop.
“I dropped out of the dance squad,” I started. “I was a mess, and I barely left the house except to go to school.”
“But I was there for you, right?” Claire asked.
“You tried,” I said with a small shrug. “But you were busy—you still had dance practice, and you had your own life to live.”
“So I abandoned you?” Her eyes w
idened. “No way. I would never do that.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I assured her. “We drifted apart, but I didn’t blame you. I wasn’t exactly fun to be around during that time.”
“What about the summer?” she asked. “Going to Europe must have helped you get your mind off of everything?”
“After my mom passed away, my family had to be more careful with our budget,” I told her. “You still went to Europe, but I couldn’t go anymore.”
“I went without you?” Claire shook her head, looking more horrified by the second. “You stayed home all summer, going through hell, and I left you there alone?”
“I told you that you should go,” I said. “Because I didn’t stay home that summer. I got a job… working with Jake at that camp in Maine.”
“And where was I during all of this?” Zac asked. “Because I don’t believe for a second that I would let you go through all of that alone.”
“My mom passed away in March.” I waited for the realization to dawn on him, but it didn’t.
I was going to have to say it. It was going to disappoint him, but he deserved to know.
“I’m really sorry, and I don’t know how else to say it, but… we didn’t know each other in March,” I said, hating each word as it came out of my mouth. “After my mom’s accident, I dropped out of dance and stopped going to all of those parties. You never asked me out because I was never at that party at all.”
“No.” His eyes were full of intensity, like he was trying to get me to take it back. “I wanted to ask you out since February, when we worked on that lab together. I’ve been interested in you since middle school. We care about each other. We have fun together. We’re happy together. We would have found a way to be together.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, softer now. “In my world, you never asked me out. We never had a chance to get to know each other at all.”
“And in your world, you worked at camp last summer with Jake,” Claire said. “And when you saw him and Marisa together yesterday morning, you looked like your heart was breaking.” Her lips formed into an O, and she gasped as she pieced it together. “Jake was still one of your best friends in March. But it became more than that, didn’t it? In your world, he didn’t end up with Marisa. He ended up with you.”
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