The Art of Saving the World

by Corinne Duyvis

  She frowned, apparently taking my words more seriously than I’d intended. Or maybe exactly as seriously as I’d intended.

  “Nine months,” Rainbow said. “Only nine months ago, we would’ve been indistinguishable.” She ran her fingers down a wet, red lock of hair by her cheek. “It’s as simple as talking to the hairdresser.”

  “It’s not the hair,” I said. “I know that I could cut and dye mine and we’d look the same. The difference between us is: I could, but I didn’t. You did.”

  Rainbow watched me, a towel over her arm and a toothbrush in her hand. “Nine months ago, I would’ve said the same thing. Dyeing my hair had always been a maybe-one-day sort of thing.”

  Maybe one day. Do something bold, something different, something that would make me smile at the mirror instead of flinch.

  Maybe one day, when the thought wasn’t so terrifying.

  Maybe one day, if I had somewhere to escape to if it all went wrong.

  “What changed?” I asked.

  “I went ahead and did it.” Maybe Rainbow saw the disappointment on my face, because she went on. “I’m sorry. It really was that simple. Which doesn’t mean it was easy. The first time I talked to Mom and Dad about wanting to dye my hair, they scoffed. I spent the whole night crying.”

  Just the thought of what Mom and Dad would say made me hot with discomfort. They’d be disappointed. They’d say I was following a fad, that I shouldn’t let myself be so easily influenced, that I was better than that.

  “What made me ask them was that I’d found a diary from summer break before high school. I’d written down resolutions with a neon-blue gel roller: ‘High school will be better. I won’t be so awkward. I’ll do homework first thing every day. I’ll do color-coded notes and keep my handwriting neat. I’ll buy cooler clothes. I’ll dye my hair. I’ll be different.’” She shrugged one shoulder. “I felt like a coward reading that years later, knowing nothing had changed. It turns out Red and Four kept the same diary, though, and wrote the same things. Red found the diary again at the same time I did, felt the same way, and never asked Mom and Dad. Four found the diary but didn’t read it.”

  “So how the heck do we know?”

  “Know what?”

  I fumbled for words. “Which part is us? Which part is our actions? Which part is our situation? How do I know you really were like me nine months ago and the only difference is that you walked up to Mom and Dad and asked, or if there’s some core difference between us, a difference that made you read the diary and made Four decide not to? A difference like my rift and like Red’s health condition? The hair isn’t all that sets you apart. You act different, too.”

  “I wasn’t always like this.” Rainbow was unusually quiet. “It was tiny decisions. A few moments here—convincing my parents. A moment there—stepping into the hairdresser’s. Another moment—saying the words and showing example photos on my phone. Then it’s done. A handful of moments happen and you look in the mirror and suddenly you’re different.”

  But how do you know they’re the right decisions? How do you know you’re not making a mistake? I kept quiet. Rainbow wasn’t finished yet.

  “People see you differently, anyway, and that makes it easier to act different. Cooler, wittier. The kind of person who can deal with looking like me in a place like West Asherton.

  “I thought I could be that person. But maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m more like the old me than I thought, because I’m—I’m still scared. I’m still stressed all the time. I’m always nervous I said the wrong thing, that I was mean instead of funny, that I slipped up and someone will see through me, and I’ll just”—she tugged at the lock of red she’d been playing with—“I’ll just look pathetic for trying so hard.”

  “At least you are trying. That’s more than the rest of us. More than most people, I think.”

  She adjusted the towel on her arm. “I guess.”

  And I wondered—

  What would’ve happened if, one morning, I’d looked around for fan art and messaged the girl who drew it?

  What would’ve happened if I’d told Dr. Gates that sometimes, after a bad day, I spent twenty minutes in the bathroom waiting for my jaw to unlock before I could brush my teeth?

  What would’ve happened if I’d looked at Marybeth and thought, I want to kiss her, and been OK with it instead of terrified?

  What would’ve happened if I’d sneaked out and investigated the buildings on my lawn, and come across a dragon or another me?

  It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Rainbow was just braver than she realized.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. I’d made my choices—even if I made them by not making them—and right now, visiting a hairdresser or kissing Marybeth wouldn’t solve any of our problems.

  “In the car,” Rainbow said, “you said you could recognize parts of yourself in Four and Red. I tried to deny it, but I—I recognize all three of you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Every single part.”

  “Guys?” a voice said.

  We turned toward my bedroom door. One of the other Hazels hovered there. She’d taken off her glasses and changed into borrowed pajamas.

  “We’re done with the bathroom. If you still need it.” A smile flitted over her face, then she went back inside.

  Rainbow’s eyes met mine. “Was that Red?” she whispered.

  “I thought Four?”

  “This is embarrassing,” she whispered, and we dissolved into giggles together.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  A knock on the door woke me.

  “Yeah?” I mumbled drowsily.

  Mom opened the door and peered in. “It’s two p.m. Dr. Torrance wants you for more research.”

  I pried my eyes open. Four was already up, sitting cross-legged on Rainbow’s bed. “Just me?”

  “All of you.” Mom’s stance was different than usual. Unsure. As strange as this was for all of us, having your older daughter suddenly multiply couldn’t be easy, either.

  “They have food in the vans. They want to leave within half an hour.”

  “Got it. We’ll be downstairs soon.” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. As wisps of my dreams faded into nothingness, memories of the past two days slowly resurfaced. The reality of the situation hit me all over again, so hard and sudden I nearly whimpered. Jesus, the rift—

  And there was Alpha, and Philadelphia, and I somehow had to—

  I inhaled sharply, shakily. My eyes fixed on the ceiling. Having slept in my own bed again should’ve made it easier to keep it together, but instead, I felt ready to crumble before I’d even gotten out from under the covers.

  Mom watched me. “Are you all right?”

  “Y-yeah.” Did my voice sound normal enough?

  “If you have any doubts . . .”

  “No,” I lied. Truthfully, I added: “I want to do this.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.” Mom closed the door behind her.

  The others turned to me.

  “It’s two p.m.? It feels like five in the morning,” Red complained from next to me. We shared my queen-size bed, since the past days’ chaos hadn’t helped her pain levels; she’d needed a proper mattress. “Whyyyy.”

  “Mom waits for an answer after knocking?” Rainbow didn’t even lift her head from her pillow. “I’m lucky when she knocks at all.”

  “Privacy is important when you’re a science experiment.” I forced myself to push aside the blankets. “Let’s get ready. Maybe the MGA fixed the rift while we were asleep.”

  “I wish,” Four said glumly.

  We spent the next few hours getting carted around Philadelphia and surroundings. Researchers no longer placed bets on where the rift would open next. They compared readings from drones and tensely discussed potential weak spots.

  More than once, I ended up hunched over my phone in one of the vans, feverishly reading forum discussions and articles from people who claimed to know what they were talking about. I kept a small note
book I’d brought from home, filled with scribbled brainstorming about the rift and ways to close or block it.

  Sometimes us four Hazels were together, sometimes apart. Sometimes out in the wind, huddling near one another for warmth, and sometimes inside a van where they’d take blood, fingerprints, and measurements.

  “That was the last one.” A doctor I’d never met before rolled up the measuring tape he’d used to check Red’s height.

  She went from standing ramrod straight to slumping.

  “Most of you are five eight, give or take a quarter inch,” the doctor informed us. “Only the other girl, Alpha—that’s what you called her, right?—is two inches shorter.”

  “How does any of this help close the rift?” Red asked. “Don’t we only have days left? Hours?”

  I sipped my tea. It was just the three of us inside the van.

  “More information can never hurt,” he said. “These tests will tell us just how similar the five of you are. Like identical quintuplets? Does it go further? Does anything about the alternate Hazels set them apart from people native to this dimension, especially our own Hazel?” He nodded at me. “If there is a difference, is it tied to the rift? Learning about your connection to the rift in turn tells us more about the rift itself.”

  “I don’t think there still is a connection,” I told him honestly.

  “Of course there is.” He leaned against the counter that ran along the side of the van. “They’re still running analyses. There’s something, that’s for sure, even if they can’t pinpoint what or whether it’s useful. It’s why they’re still bothering with this research.”

  After leaving the van, I questioned every researcher I could find about those analyses and that connection. Some researchers I’d already known for years, some I’d only met yesterday. Several looked at my presence like an annoyance. I supposed it was. What good could I do here? I got a B+ in science on a good day. I didn’t know how the Power expected me to be more successful at closing the rift than a team of experts working on a limitless budget.

  All the while, the rift pulsed in the air. Sometimes close, sometimes far.

  I knew what it was now.

  I knew why it did what it did.

  I’d seen more of the rift in the past days than I had all of the sixteen years I’d lived alongside it, tied to it like a dog on a leash, and it confounded me now more than ever.

  By the time we returned home, evening had fallen.

  I stalked across the lawn, my hands jammed into my pockets. The way the researchers grew curter by the hour, the way the agents were constantly talking into their earpieces, we couldn’t have much time left. Maybe we needed to flee. Give up on this shitty plan of mine and escape the continent. It’d only be a matter of time before the rift’s destruction spread to the rest of the world, though.

  Red was on my heels. I slowed and studied the lawn. The barn that held Director Facet’s office wasn’t far. Perhaps I could impress on him how badly we needed the MGA’s data. Or perhaps . . .

  My eyes lingered on the rift barn.

  That morning, the doors had been open. It’d jumped out at me instantly. Now, they were closed. Irregular tire prints streaked the mud in front of the doors. I didn’t remember seeing those, either.

  The MGA had brought something heavy into the barn while we were gone. Maybe something too large to fit into the others.

  I looked up. The sky was a solid stretch of gray. For the first time since our return, it was quiet. No movement. No whirring sounds.

  “No more choppers,” I said softly.

  “What . . .?” Red said.

  I leveled a steady look at her. “They caught Neven.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  “We have to free her,” Rainbow said.

  “How?” I huddled near the tree line with the other Hazels, all of us squished under two umbrellas. Rain splattered down on us, and the wind was biting cold—but we couldn’t talk about this in the house. The MGA could be listening in.

  “I dunno.” Rainbow frowned. “If you had your knife, we could distract the MGA while you free her. We’re the reason Neven got caught. It’s not right.”

  An engine roared in the distance. A van tore out of the gate and down the driveway. The lawn was busy: agents jogging to and fro, cars parked indiscriminately on the lawn. Several researchers were in a heated discussion.

  I could hazard a guess what they were talking about: The world steadily fraying. The imminent rift expansion. Time wasted on me with nothing to show for it. A pissed-off dragon they didn’t know what to do with.

  “It isn’t right,” Red agreed, “and besides, we need her.”

  I shook my head. “I want Neven out, too, but if we sneak around or go up against the MGA—if we’re anything other than cooperative—they will catch us.”

  “A lot of cameras got damaged the night we arrived,” Red said. “We might have a shot. Especially with everyone focusing more on the rift than on security.”

  “Focusing on the rift means focusing on us. We’re their biggest clue. They can’t afford to lose us.” Some busted cameras didn’t turn this place into a free-for-all.

  “So we leave Neven there?” Four bit her lip as she looked toward the rift barn.

  “We don’t have time,” I stressed. “We need to fix the rift.”

  “We’re not exactly making progress,” Rainbow said sourly.

  “All the more reason not to get distracted.”

  I sounded so callous; I hated it. The Powers That Be had made it clear that we needed to make tough decisions for this to work, though.

  I’d gotten a second chance. I doubted I’d get a third.

  “It’s not just about freeing Neven,” Red said. “If we snoop around, we might find rift data. There has to be a lot they’re not telling us.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  My head snapped up at movement near the house. Mom stood in the kitchen doorway, bathing in the cool glow of a nearby spotlight. “Hazel?” she called across the lawn.

  “One minute!” I yelled automatically.

  “No. Now.”

  A second shape joined Mom in the doorway. That stance, that height—it was Director Facet. “The rift expanded again,” he called out, one hand on the doorpost. “It’s getting too risky. We’re evacuating the farm.”

  Director Facet gave us time to pack our things. The MGA’s evacuation plan was to buy us time by flying us out of the immediate danger zone—to South America? Europe?—and resume work there. Our van would leave for a nearby military airport in fifteen minutes; if we weren’t strapped in by then, agents would drag us to safety at gunpoint.

  Those weren’t his precise words, but we understood the meaning.

  Even in the short time since we’d heard the news, the lawn had started to empty out. Cars and vans took off toward the road. A helicopter rose into the air, weighed down with equipment that’d been carted out from the barns.

  Rainbow and I were in my room, tossing clothes into a suitcase while Mom did the same in her own bedroom. Red and Four were looking for Torrance to wheedle information from. Once the evacuation got underway, we might no longer be able to speak to any researchers.

  We might no longer be able to free Neven, either. And we had to. The MGA wouldn’t evacuate her, I knew that already: It’d be dangerous and time-consuming.

  Leaving her trapped like I’d argued for was bad enough, but leaving her trapped and alone in a situation dire enough that the whole area was being evacuated . . .

  I couldn’t simply pack and climb into that van like Facet wanted.

  I leaned in and shoved some T-shirts into the suitcase, my bedroom carpet soft under my knees. My mouth was right by Rainbow’s ear. “I need to get my knife,” I whispered, my voice barely more than a breath.

  Rainbow mouthed, Where?

  “Outside.” After Damford, I’d hidden the knife to prevent the MGA from getting their hands on it, but I hadn’t told the others where. Too much chance of b
eing overheard.

  That risk still existed, but I had no choice. This might be my last chance to get the knife.

  Evacuation. My stomach churned. The MGA wouldn’t evacuate—and bring their research to a grinding halt—unless we were at serious risk, even an hour outside Philadelphia.

  I slipped downstairs, light on my feet. I’d done this often enough when I couldn’t sleep to know which steps and boards to avoid.

  Although my instincts yelled at me to stay low and hunched, I made myself walk upright across the lawn, arms casually by my sides. I wasn’t doing anything dodgy. Acting sneaky would only draw attention. We weren’t expected at the vans for another several minutes, and most agents seemed occupied with the evacuation, anyway. I kept a nervous eye on them.

  The grass squelched underfoot. Here, past this barn. Around that barn, where I’d have sight of the ambulance—

  Which was still there.

  A breath hissed out through my teeth. I wasn’t too late.

  Last night, while we were at the hospital with Dad, the MGA had brought Alpha to West Asherton using the same ambulance we’d transported her in from Damford. As I’d hoped, the MGA had kept the vehicle, leaving it parked beside several vans right outside the medical research barn where Alpha lay comatose. One wall had gotten damaged on the night of my birthday—scorched stains spread across the bricks, and ugly cracks marred one corner—but aside from that, the building was in good shape.

  I squinted as I studied the roof. Two cameras on the scorched wall had gotten damaged. A third one on a nearby building might still be functioning, but I could avoid it.

  The medical research barn was on the outskirts of the lawn. The area was empty for now, but people would be coming any moment to evacuate Alpha.

  I started toward the ambulance, then promptly ducked back into the shadows between nearby barns.

  Two agents were stalking across the lawn. They walked with purpose. Urgency.

  And one of them was dragging along Red.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE