When the World was Flat (and we were in love)

by Ingrid Jonach

  My daydream was interrupted by a rumbling out front, followed by the explosion of a car backfiring. I walked up the hallway, peering through the window beside the front door. A man with dreadlocks was pulling a duffel bag out of the trunk of a station wagon and behind him stood a woman in a long skirt, who was plaiting her hair and looking up at the sky as if searching for signs of rain. There were none, of course.

  “Visitors,” I sighed and we were not talking cup-of-tea-and-a-biscuit kind of visitors. No. I could tell from the size of the duffel bag and the junk piled up on the back seat of their wagon that these were the sleeping-on-the-couch-for-a-month kind. Deb!

  I grabbed my camera and macro lens and opened the front door as the pair stepped onto the porch. The man had a set of bongo drums under one arm, along with the duffel bag.

  “Lillie,” the woman said in a breathy voice and when she saw my eyes widen she added, “We dropped in on your mother at the shop. She told us you would be home.” She gestured towards herself. “I’m Dawn. And this is Blaze.”

  Blaze gave me an awkward wave as he balanced his belongings.

  I nodded an acknowledgment before stepping out of the doorway and onto the porch. “I have to pop out, but make yourselves at home,” I said, as if they needed an invitation.

  I guessed Deb had told them about my incarceration when Dawn shifted her weight, skirt swaying, and started with, “You see…” and “I think…” before Blaze put a hand on her arm and shook his head.

  “Thanks,” he said to me as he moved through the doorway.

  “You too,” I responded with a begrudging smile.

  The sun was shining, but my breath fogged as I walked to the park. I decided to photograph the fall leaves scattered under the trees before they rotted and turned brown, which meant I was lying flat on my stomach on the sidewalk next to the bleachers, snapping shots of the colored tapestry when I heard a vehicle coming down the street.

  It was the Benz. My heart suddenly thudded against my ribs, like a prisoner rattling a cup against the bars of a cell. Clang. Clang. Clang. Tom. Tom. Tom.

  I watched as the sleek black SUV slowed to a stop. Then I sat up on my haunches, brushing at my stomach, sweeping away dirt and fragments of crushed leaves. You have to love being housebound, I thought sarcastically, as I heard the engine cut out and the vehicle door open and close. I looked up and my breath formed a cloud in front of my face, blocking my view.

  When it cleared, I saw Tom walking towards me, looking like he had stepped off a runway in Milan, as usual. He was wearing a light charcoal sweater today with a darker charcoal scarf swaddling his neck. I brushed at my top again, but it was going to need a three-hour soak in Tide Stain Release. I suddenly remembered my hair was in a ponytail and I yanked the band out, letting it fall around my shoulders, covering my pointy ears.

  “Why?” Tom asked from thirty feet, his expression like a thunderstorm.

  “Why what?” I asked, wrapping my camera strap around my hand nervously.

  “Why did you confess?” He was a few feet in front of me now, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. “There was no need. I took the fall.” He shook his head as if wondering why he had bothered.

  I wondered why he had bothered as well, but instead of asking the question I shrugged, pulling the strap tighter, like a noose. My fingers throbbed as the circulation was cut off. I released the cord and watched them turn from purple to white and finally to a pale pink. “I wanted to ditch school for a few days?” I joked and was reminded of Deb asking if I thought this was funny. When I saw his face contained the same question, I added, “I did the crime. I should do the time, as they say.”

  “What about Jackson?” Tom scowled. “He did the crime and you let him off the hook.”

  “Off the hook?” I flared up. “He goes to court on Monday.” I could feel hot patches rising like the midday sun on my neck and cheeks. “Is this about Jackson? Because if it is you should have stayed in your car. It would have been warmer.”

  I know it sounded like Tom was jealous of Jackson, but this was looking like a pride parade, as if he were a silverback beating his chest. Tom had stuck his neck out at the railroad crossing and then I had made up with Jackson. Now, he had taken the rap about the Masquerade Ball and it had been thrown back in his face again. Maybe I can mess with his mind too, I thought smugly.

  “Are you cold?” Tom suddenly asked, unwrapping the scarf from around his neck in a fluid motion.

  He held it out to me and we stood there motionless, like statues in the park – he, a marble god carved by one of the masters, and me, a lump of plasticine molded by a toddler – until I took it, slinging it around my neck awkwardly. The wool was soft against my skin, with a hint of his familiar cologne.

  “Why did you take the fall?” I asked quietly.

  The clouds cleared from his expression. “Because I cannot stop saving you, Lillie.”

  He reached out and put his hand on mine. When I looked down, I realized I had been twisting my camera cord around my fingers again. The cord loosened and the blood pumped into my purple fingers. Throb. Throb. Throb. Why? Why? Why?

  “I wanted to give you a second chance,” Tom whispered, answering my unspoken question. “I wanted to give us both a second chance.”

  I frowned. “Is this about the girl in the photo? Is she… Is she really me?” His lips were inches from mine. I could lean forward on my tiptoes and–

  “Do you want to go for a drive?” he asked and then, as if his question had been ambiguous, he added, “I think we should go for a drive.”

  I rocked back on my heels, considering his proposal. Deb would probably make me take up yoga or drink a ton of green tea while chanting to the Goddess of Self-Control, but I nodded and followed him to his SUV as if attached by an invisible thread. The Goddess of Self-Control can go screw herself, I decided.

  My feet rustled through the leaves, which seemed to whisper, “This. Is. It.” It was like reaching the last chapter of a good book. I wanted to skip ahead to the last page. I had all the questions and I knew Tom had all the answers.

  He opened the passenger door and I looked down at him as I climbed up into the heated leather seat. The clouds had closed in again on his expression, as if he were battening down the hatches in preparation for our drive.

  We were on the road from nowhere to nowhere, headed out towards the sandhills, when Tom finally spoke. “I heard you slapped Melissa.”

  I blushed. “She turned in Jackson.”

  “Loyal,” he observed. “Loyal Lillie.”

  My eyes flew to him. Loyal Lillie had been my nickname in Elementary. Deb had started the trend when I was in first grade and came home wearing one shoe. “I gave one to Jo. Hers had a hole,” my seven year-old self had explained. I liked it when Deb told me that story. It reminded me that I used to be a good girl.

  “Who are you?” I asked Tom, fed up and flicking to the last page.

  His expression darkened and in that moment he looked older than his seventeen years. “How long have we known each other?” he asked, looking at me sideways.

  “A couple of months?” Six weeks, seven days, three hours, I thought.

  Tom shook his head. “Longer,” he said, like we were playing the game Hot and Cold. I imagined myself throwing numbers at him for hours and receiving the responses “warmer… warmer… colder.”

  I frowned, thinking of the woman in the balaclava standing in my bedroom six months ago. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, like soldiers standing to attention. Maybe it had been Tom after all. “How much longer?” I asked, my eyes scanning the pastures, looking for a farmhouse or an emergency telephone, but finding cow after cow instead.

  “I stopped counting at four hundred and thirty-two,” Tom answered.

  “Days?” I asked. My mind somersaulted with the calculations and my fingers flew in my lap – one year and…

  Tom shook his head. “Years.”

  There was no hint of a smile, as his jaw c
lenched and unclenched.

  Years? my mind echoed. Years? And I thought parallel dimensions were a stretch. My eyes flickered to the door handle and I wondered if it was locked.

  I could jump out, I thought, leaning towards the window and watching the road whooshing beneath us like water. I guessed we were going about fifty miles per hour. In my mind I saw myself opening up the door and launching myself out. I heard the sickening crunch of my skull against the asphalt and felt my skin being scraped from my flesh as I rolled towards the ditch at the side of the road.

  I decided to stay in the vehicle, but two seconds later we slowed to a stop anyway. We had reached a crossroads and although my chest was straining against the seatbelt I decided to continue my journey with Tom.

  21

  We took the road that led to a rock formation called The Ox.

  We climbed up its stone hide, sitting between its horns with our legs hanging over the ledge. It was afternoon and long shadows stretched between the undulations of the land like deep pools, but there was no water in the sandhills at the moment, even though their rainfall was twice that of Green Grove.

  I was holding the photo of Tom and my identical twin. I squinted at the couple, as if I could dredge up the memories from the depths of my mind. “Is this photo from another dimension?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that you?”

  He nodded.

  My stomach somersaulted as I pointed at the girl. “And is that really me?”

  “That photo was taken more than three hundred years ago,” Tom said, looking out over the sandhills. He closed his eyes for a moment and then sighed. “Let me start from the beginning,” he said. “Let me explain parallel dimensions.”

  Another science lesson, I thought, but this time I was taking notes.

  “In your dimension, parallel dimensions are considered science fiction,” Tom said, “but I studied them at school. I learned they are created whenever a person makes a decision, like choosing whether or not to have butter on their toast, or whether or not to push a button that ends the world. The dimension splits.”

  “Like being cloned?” I asked, recalling the program I had seen that morning on cloning. I looked at the girl in the photo again.

  He nodded. “But in one dimension the person would have butter on their toast and in the other they might have peanut butter instead.”

  I wondered what the girl in the photo had for breakfast. “What if they decide to have coffee instead?” I asked.

  “Then the dimension splits again. Three times. Four times. Five times.”

  I pictured the lifeline on my hand, which Deb had read when she was going through her palm-reading phase.

  “You have a life-changing decision ahead,” she had told me, tracing the line on my palm and pausing at a fork. “If you choose correctly you will have a long life.” Her finger had indicated the deep line that ended at my wrist. “But if not…” She had brushed the short line, which trailed off into smooth skin.

  Tom held his hands behind his back. “Pick a hand.”

  “Right. No! Left!”

  His left hand emerged empty, but then he revealed his right, which was holding a small wildflower. I reached out, but he lifted it above his head and shook his head. “In this dimension you picked my left hand.”

  “Does that mean I chose your right hand in another dimension?”

  He nodded. “You probably also chose not to pick a hand at all, knowing your pig-headedness.” He twirled the purple flower between his fingers. “Do you feel like God?”

  “Like God?”

  He shrugged. “You just created at least two worlds.”

  The weight of his words fell on me for a moment, but then I had a thought that made me smile. “What if this is the dimension where I get to choose both hands?”

  He laughed and handed me the flower. It was as small as a button and I held its stem between my thumb and index finger, its petals resting on my finger like a butterfly.

  “I think I created another dimension earlier,” I said, thinking of how I had opened the passenger door in my mind and… I shuddered.

  “Lillie, dimensions are being created left, right and center. They are as infinite as the universe.” He saw the look on my face, as I felt my skin being ripped off by the asphalt. “Are you OK?” he asked, touching my arm. The contact gave me a hot flash in the chill of the late afternoon. “I should have known not to dump it on you like this.” His voice lowered, like he was talking to himself. “And they say practice makes perfect.”

  I hugged my knees to my chest, as I took deep breaths in and out. “Do you think this is what it was like when they found out the world was round?” I asked.

  Tom shrugged helplessly. “Like I said, I was taught about parallel dimensions when I was a kid. For me it was like knowing the sky was blue or that summer followed spring.” I heard a hint of a smile in his voice as he added, “I was also taught that the world was hexagonal.”

  My eyes widened for a moment, before he chuckled. “Hilarious,” I said with a strained smile, as I pushed the thoughts of myself lying in a ditch by the side of the road out of my mind. “Sorry,” I said, stretching my legs out over the ledge again. “I need to put my imagination on a leash.”

  Tom grimaced and I knew he was about to hit me with another bombshell. “Lillie, there is no such thing as imagination.”

  “Huh?”

  “The human brain can record information, but it cannot make it up. What you call imagination is in fact your memories from other dimensions.”

  I frowned. “What about dreams then?” I asked stubbornly. “I used to have a reoccurring dream I was flying.”

  “Levitation. In a number of dimensions they have worked out how to harness the power of the mind.” He shrugged apologetically. “There are also dimensions that break the laws of physics. Flying elephants. Upside-down buildings.”

  My voice dropped to a whisper. “And what if you die in a dream?”

  Tom looked out over the sandhills. “It means you have died in another dimension.”

  I thought about Deb and her claptrap about new beginnings and a squeak of a laugh slipped out.

  Tom gave me a curious look, but went on to explain, “A cold shiver down your spine also means you have died in another dimension.”

  “What if…?” I asked Tom with a catch in my voice. “What if someone kills you in a dream?”

  His lips tightened and he picked up a couple of pebbles beside him, rattling them in his hand like dice, before letting them drop and scooping them up again.

  “And what if that someone is me?” I pressed. “What if I killed myself?”

  The pebbles fell, bouncing and scattering. Tom stood up. “We should go,” he said. “Your mother will be wondering where–”

  I climbed to my feet. “Tell me who I am, Tom. Am I…?” The words stuck in my throat like a jawbreaker. I finally managed to spit them out. “Am I a murderer?”

  I thought of the number of times I had run down that path at Rose Hill and felt the cold spread through my body. I thought of how I had been killed in my bedroom, the darkroom, the kitchen, the bathtub and countless other locales. I thought of the dream where I had pulled off the balaclava and had seen my own face. Memories. My head throbbed. Memories. Memories. Memories.

  Tom looked at me, his eyes as cold as the shadow cast by the rock. “Yes,” he said dully.

  My legs went like Jell-O and I fell forward, waiting to hear the crack of my knees on the stone. But then I realized I was being held up by strong arms in this dimension. Tom was holding me, pulling me into his embrace. I put my head against his chest, feeling the hard muscle under his sweater, and sobbed as I thought of another dimension, where Tom had decided not to catch me and I was lying on the ground with bruised knees.

  He stroked my hair and I buried my face in the crook of his arm. “They say…” I started, my voice muffled until I drew back my head. “They say you should take the road less traveled. You know,
when two roads diverge in a wood? They say it makes all the difference. But how can you make a difference when you take all roads?” I shook my head, trying to comprehend infinite roads and myself walking down each of them.

  “I used to ask myself the same thing,” Tom answered. “How do you make the toss count if you choose both sides of a coin, right?”

  I nodded, looking at him through blurred eyes.

  He cupped my face in his hands, his fingers caressing my tear-stained cheeks. “By falling in love,” he whispered, as he leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm against mine and filled with memories of the two of us, of our other lives together. I kissed him back, desperately, like a swimmer holding onto a life preserver in an endless ocean.

  “What did you mean when you said we had known each other for hundreds of years?” I asked Tom, one of a thousand questions I had been throwing at him as he drove me home. I now believed we had other lives in other dimensions, because the memories were floating through my mind like wisps of smoke, but I was sixteen, not five hundred and sixteen.

  “I have traveled through thirty-four dimensions,” Tom explained. “Thirty-five if you count this dimension. I have spent five minutes in some dimensions. And forty years in others.”

  “You look good for your age,” I said with a small smile.

  He returned my smile, but I think he had heard the joke before. “When I slide I go back to being seventeen,” he explained. “That was my age when I started sliding between dimensions during the Evacuation.”

  I suddenly realized that with all this talk about infinite dimensions, not once had I asked about his dimension.

  “What was the Evacuation?” I asked, my chest tightening as if I knew the answer, which, of course, I did. It was heartbreaking. The theory of everything had led to the destruction of his dimension and everyone had been evacuated. “No,” I whispered. “The children. They left the children behind.”