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

by Ingrid Jonach

  I pushed open the front door and waved over my shoulder.

  When I turned I saw my mother rushing up the hallway, a blur of color in a psychedelic poncho. “Lillie! How dare you disobey me so deliberately?”

  Dawn stood in the kitchen doorway and behind her was Blaze. Like I said, they were the sleeping-on-the-couch-for-a-month kind of visitors. “We thought you had been in another accident,” Dawn said.

  I glared at her and then at Deb. “Sylv would have told you where I was. I suppose you sent her home?” I said, looking around as if I needed a witness.

  “Yes, I did,” Deb said, folding her arms under her poncho. “And, yes, she did. She said you were out with a boy.”

  “You met him the other night. Remember? Tom?”

  “I thought I told you not to see him again,” she said coldly.

  “Really? I don’t think–”

  “No, Lillie. You don’t think. You don’t think at all.” She pointed down the hallway. “Go to your room.”

  I scowled. What was I? Five? My maturity increased ten-fold when I slammed the door behind me, the drywall shuddering with the force.

  I slumped onto my bed “Ow.” I pulled out a hardcover book from underneath me and as the pages fanned out I saw a slideshow of Australia. I checked the name on the front: The Geldings.

  I doubted Sylv had been looking through it. Had Deb?

  24

  Deb dragged me to Tree of Life the next day, even though it was dead on a Monday. I joked that we could have set up shop at the cemetery and sold a thousand spirit boards instead of the one gemstone we sold to an eight year-old kid and the handmade card we sold to his mother.

  I wondered if there was a gemstone for a sense of humor when Deb responded by handing me a cloth and telling me to polish the glass shelves. They were an inch deep in dust. My mother liked dusting about as much as she liked duck hunting and, let me tell you, the entire Northwest Nebraska knew about her hatred for duck hunting. Last season, she had been arrested for running around naked at a local ranch, covered in red paint.

  I headed for the shelves, knowing she was watching me like a hawk. I was on around-the-clock surveillance, having to ask permission to go to the bathroom and basically sneeze.

  When midday arrived I was given five minutes for lunch, which was more like a bathroom break than a lunch break.

  I sprinted to the bakery like I was trying out for track, the key on my necklace hitting my chest with each footfall. The bell tinkled above my head as I barreled through the door and into a pair of strong arms.

  “I have five minutes,” I told Tom breathlessly, resting my head on his chest. The warmth of his sweater made me feel like I was bundled up in a quilt. “Four and a half minutes,” I corrected myself.

  He stroked my hair without a word, letting me catch my breath, which was easier said than done while wrapped in his arms. “Shall we order?” he finally asked. “We could have a pie-eating competition. I once ate a pie in three minutes flat.” A boyish grin spread across his face and, in that moment, he was seventeen, instead of immortal.

  I let him order me a sandwich and a soda, but managed about one bite and three sips before Tom tapped the face of his watch, which had been ticking like a time bomb.

  “One more minute,” I begged, but he shook his head. “Thirty seconds,” I pressed. “Twenty? Please?”

  “Less time today. More time tomorrow,” he said sagely.

  I stopped to read a poster in the window of the Ezy-Buy as we walked to Tree of Life, and then browsed the bargain bin at Muse, which specialized in vintage records.

  Tom pulled on my hand. “Lillie,” he said sternly.

  “But they have a limited edition ABBA vinyl,” I said, brushing the thin layer of dust from its cover and holding it up as if I was an avid collector.

  I dropped it back into the bin when I saw Jackson. He was about fifty yards down the street in front of the supermarket, sinking into the backseat of a sedan. He was wearing his suit from the Masquerade Ball and black sunglasses. His short wavy hair was slicked back and parted as if it were photo day back at Green Grove Elementary.

  “Dammit.” I slapped my forehead as the penny dropped. “Jackson had his court date today. Do you mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a rhetorical question,” I said, walking towards the sedan.

  Mrs Murphy was standing on the sidewalk talking to a man with a briefcase who looked like a lawyer while Jackson sat in the sedan, staring out at the road. When I tapped on the window he spun around, startled.

  “I forgot about your court date,” I said apologetically as he lowered the window. “What was the verdict?”

  He hesitated, biting his lip before he spoke. “They gave me community service and suspended my license until next summer.”

  “Sorry.”

  Jackson ran a finger along the seam of his seat nervously. “They told me the train was going sixty miles an hour. It was carrying more than two thousand tons of grain.” He looked up and I could see myself reflected in his lenses. “I could have killed you, Lillie.”

  I could have told him that in another dimension he had killed us both, but Mrs Murphy had finished her conversation and was walking around the hood of the sedan. I stepped backwards onto the sidewalk, as Jackson pushed a button and raised the window.

  An arm wrapped around my waist and I leaned against Tom. In our reflection in the car window I could see he was staring daggers at the boy in the backseat.

  I gave him a nudge. “What is up with you and Jackson? Do you have a history with him in another dimension or something?”

  “No,” Tom said, as he watched the sedan drive down the street. “But you do.”

  “Oh.” I blushed. “Really?” My mind went to Jackson and how his smile made me feel like I was standing in the sun. How he made me laugh, made me forgive and forget his flaws. If I closed my eyes and searched the deepest, darkest corner of my mind I could imagine myself in his arms, instead of here with Tom.

  Being late to Tree of Life cost me my break the next day. I shook my head at Tom as he passed by the front window twice, my hand pressed up against the glass.

  Deb handed me a cloth. “Fingerprints,” she said, clucking her tongue.

  I spent the afternoon trying to get a glimpse behind her left ear for a tattoo, but when she restacked a shelf of massage oil I saw that she was tattoo-free. Maybe this was her latest hobby – being a mother.

  That night a set of headlights lit up my room, flashing like Morse code. Dash. Dot. Dash.

  I dressed with the speed of a shopaholic in a dressing room, pulling on a red sweater and a pair of jeans and snow boots. The tips of my boots scraped on the weatherboard as I climbed out of my window, making noise enough to wake the dead.

  I crouched beside the house, the cold dirt beneath my hands as I waited for one of its occupants to switch on a light. I imagined a window sliding open on its rotting tracks and my mother poking her head out into the night, but I knew that was happening in another dimension.

  In this dimension, I scaled the fence and slid down the other side to meet Tom.

  We could have stood there for hours, two lovers canoodling on the sidewalk, but Tom folded me into his coat and we walked down the street towards his SUV. Our breath fogged on the frigid air, reminding me of our walk home from ice skating in his first dimension.

  I was thankful for the heated seats as I climbed into the Benz. The clock on the dashboard flashed a few minutes past midnight. Green Grove was asleep, but we were wide awake.

  I looked over at Tom as he pulled out onto the road, wondering how I could sleep if we shared a bed night after night. I smiled fondly as I thought of baby Rose. I guess sleeping had been an issue for Lillie from the Seventh Dimension too. I held a hand to my chest as the jealousy stabbed at me again, twisting like a knife in my heart.

  A lone pick-up truck idled at an intersection, its headlights sweeping across us as we passed. A moment later, it pulled into our l
ane, filling the interior of the SUV with light.

  Tom checked his rearview mirror as we turned another corner and his jaw clenched. “Shit.”

  “What?” I turned and looked through the back window, but was blinded by the headlights.

  “We have company.”

  “Do you think Deb hired a private eye?” I asked with a laugh.

  He glanced in his rearview mirror again. “You buckled up?” he asked and, without waiting for a response, he pulled into a side street with a sharp turn that had me hanging onto the edge of my seat.

  “Tom!”

  “Sorry.” His eyes went to the rearview mirror again, but I could have told him the truck was behind us, its headlights bouncing off my side mirror as it took the corner with the same speed as we had, its tires shrieking as they skidded slightly.

  My skin prickled. “Who is it?” I asked and then yelped as Tom took another fast corner onto Wyoming Crescent. He flicked off the headlights and the road in front of us sank into darkness, broken up by pools of light from the streetlights.

  A heartbeat later the truck swung onto the same street, its headlights like a searchlight.

  “Lillie,” Tom said, as he pressed down on the accelerator. “When I pull up around the next corner I want you to get out and run home.”

  “What?” I looked out of my window and saw we had performed a lap of east Green Grove. My house was on the next street. “No.” I turned to him, pleadingly. “Let me stay. Let me help.”

  “Lillie,” Tom said through gritted teeth. “Let me handle them.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “The Circle,” Tom said.

  The panic bubbled up like a fountain. “What do they want?”

  Tom grimaced. “They want me to merge.” He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. “Dammit! I should have known when I saw him at the café…” his voice trailed off as he pulled the SUV over, the tires scraping the curb. “Get out, Lillie,” Tom said, sounding like Jackson at the railroad crossing.

  “No.”

  “Lillie,” Tom said with desperation. “Please!” He leaned over and unclipped my seatbelt. “Go!”

  There was a roar as the truck overtook us and skidded to a stop, blocking our path. “Oh my God,” I whispered, as I recognized the vehicle and then its occupants.

  Tom threw the SUV into reverse, spinning the tires as he backed up the curb and did a 180-degree turn. We screeched up the street, the acrid smell of burning rubber blowing through the vents.

  “Put on your seatbelt,” Tom ordered, as I was thrown around like a doll, in too much shock to hold onto anything. “Lillie! Put it on!”

  “It was Mr Green,” I said dully. “Mr Green is part of the Circle?” I thought about his face, staring out at me with an expression that was nothing like the man who had dressed up as Santa Claus each Christmas until we were thirteen. Yes, thirteen. And with him, in the passenger seat, had been the girl from the Duck-In Diner. I was in a goddamn town of Evacuees.

  I managed to pull myself together and clicked in my seatbelt as Tom launched the SUV across the railroad crossing, giving the suspension a workout.

  We were heading into the Open Valley where Tom knew the roads like the back of his hand. Thank God, because we were driving in the dark, the light from the crescent moon glinting on the markers in the middle of the road.

  A set of bright headlights illuminated the interior again as Mr Green and the girl from the Duck-In Diner played catch-up. I watched the speedometer climb to seventy as we slid around another tight bend.

  I was tossed from side to side. Left. Right. Left. This. Is. It, I thought, as we lost the headlights one second and found them the next. “Tom! Slow down!” While he was a cat with a billion lives, I knew I had one life to live and one death to die.

  He eased off the gas, looking in his rearview mirror again as the headlights vanished for one second, two seconds, three seconds… I looked back at the black strip of road bordered by the shadows of the trees. “We won!” I shouted and then laughed like a maniac.

  “Maybe they turned off their lights,” Tom said, checking over both shoulders, as if the truck would come crashing through the woods. He pressed down on the accelerator again. “I need to get them off my scent,” he said. “The chauffer at Rose Hill will take you home.”

  “What do you mean ‘get them off your scent’?” I asked. My throat closed up and I choked out my last words. “Are you leaving Green Grove?”

  I leaned forward, pressing a hand against the glove compartment for support, as I began to hyperventilate. No. I had to hold it together. I straightened up, sucking in a deep breath. “What can the Circle do to you?” I asked. “What can they do that would make you leave Green Grove?” I stopped short of saying “leave me.”

  “They have an antidote,” Tom said. “For our condition. It stops us from sliding.” He looked at me, his eyes glinting in the soft glow from the dashboard. “They can kill me, Lillie.”

  I frowned. He had told me they were immortal. “Like kill kill?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And I would be like dead dead.”

  I blinked as I remembered having seen a syringe filled with the antidote. I waded through the memories, diving for the memory like a diver for pearls, but it sank like a stone.

  “I would have taken it time and time again and ended this limbo,” Tom said, his hands gripping the steering wheel as we turned another corner, “but I had to keep you safe from Evacuee Lillie.”

  “But I am safe. You said so yourself.”

  He looked at me with a softened expression. “I have another reason to live now.”

  A set of headlights suddenly came over the crest ahead, turning our world white.

  “Tom!” I shouted, as the truck came at us head on.

  Tom pushed down on the accelerator. “Brace yourself, Lillie.”

  I put my hands up in front of my face, thinking of how in another dimension I had probably decided to stay at home in bed instead of sneaking out with Tom, but I knew deep down it had not been an option. The dimension had not split. I was here in the car with Tom and that was that. I snuck one last look at him though my fingers, knowing I had no regrets.

  We were both about to lose the game of chicken when Tom flicked his lights back on high beam, blinding our opponents. He then turned the wheel sharply until the SUV lurched sideways and we slid past the truck on two wheels, low hanging branches scratching the roof.

  I was thankful I had buckled my seatbelt, as I hung sideways, suspended somewhere between my seat and Tom.

  I hit my head on the ceiling as the tires reconnected with the road. “Ow.”

  “Are you OK?” Tom asked, glancing between me and the road.

  I nodded, holding a hand to my head and turning in my seat to watch as the truck lost control. It spun wildly, its taillights like lightning bugs and its headlights swinging through the forest until we heard a loud crash. The air seemed to vibrate with the collision, like rolling thunder.

  “I think the question is, will Mr Green be OK?” I whispered.

  Tom pressed down on the accelerator again and shrugged.

  The lights were on at Rose Hill, lampposts lighting up the drive and floodlights illuminating the gardens.

  “I thought you said you were OK,” Tom muttered as I climbed down from the SUV. He brushed his fingers across a graze on my forehead.

  “I am.” I tilted my head until his lips were inches from mine. “As long as you stick around.”

  He smiled and leaned down to kiss me. I kissed him back desperately, holding onto him as if we were a couple of kids standing on the edge of a high dive.

  We were pushed into the deep end when we entered the foyer.

  “Are you the boy claiming to be my grandson?” a voice asked.

  The Red Queen, I thought as I took in an older woman wearing an expensive looking red pant-suit. A cream-colored silk scarf was knotted around her neck and in her lobes were drop earrings; pearls, of course.


  I glanced at Tom. His face was waxen as he stared at Mrs Windsor-Smith.

  His grandmother regarded me with an arched eyebrow, like I was running around her estate in my underwear. “I think the girl should go home.”

  Tom blinked, as if a spell had been broken. “Come on, Lillie,” he said, putting a protective arm around my shoulder.

  “Wait,” she said. “Lorraine!”

  Lorraine poked her head out from an office behind the reception desk like a gopher from its hole. She looked at Tom and then at me, chewing her red lips nervously.

  “Call the chauffer. For the girl.”

  “For Lillie,” Tom corrected.

  His grandmother waved his words away. “Lorraine,” she barked again and Lorraine let out a squeak and picked up the phone to call the chauffer.

  Tom drew himself up, but I squeezed his arm and shook my head. He was going to have to charm the pant-suit off this woman and that was not going to happen with me at his side.

  I patted his arm as it slid from my shoulders and nodded a farewell to his grandmother, before walking out of the door and down the front steps of Rose Hill. It was like leaving home for the first and last time.

  There was no conversation from the chauffer during the car trip, except to ask my address. I told him a couple of doors down and then snuck back into my bedroom via the window.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, moonlight from the window falling across me like a crisp white sheet. Who can say when I fell asleep? Three? Four? But when I woke up, fully dressed on my duvet, the light was tinged with gray.

  I kicked off my shoes and crawled under the covers, dozing until the light turned yellow. Then I rolled out of bed and went to the landline, creeping through the house, which was full of the sounds of sleep. I could hear Blaze snoring loudly in the back room and a softer snore from Dawn. I knew Deb would be doing much the same in her bedroom.

  I flipped through the phonebook and dialed the number for Rose Hill, listening to it ring out over and over again. The sound was shrill, as if the line was screaming his name in my ear. Tom! Tom! Tom!