When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (21 page)

Tom looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“Another dimension,” I realized. I should have been celebrating at the thought that she had left my dimension, but the thought that she could return put the cork firmly back in the champagne bottle. “For how long?” I pressed. “She could slide back in tomorrow.”

Tom shook his head. “You are talking about another dimension. In this dimension she has been and gone.” He elaborated when he saw my blank look. “Evacuees slide into a dimension together on the date of the Evacuation, which means we can only visit a dimension one time and one time only. If we slide out, we slide out.” He made a cutting motion with his hand.

“Really?”

“Do you think I would have chased her out of eight dimensions otherwise?”

I looked at him for a long time, our eyes connecting across the table. “I think you would have chased her out of a thousand dimensions over and over again to save my life,” I said.

He nodded soberly.

“How do you make her slide?” I asked, unsure if I wanted to know.

“I think your lunch break finished about ten minutes ago,” Tom said quietly.

“Do you kill her?” I persisted.

He leveled his eyes at me and I thought he was going to say we had to call it a day. “You cannot kill an evacuee,” he said.

I blinked. “What?”

“When we die we simply slide into another dimension.”

“What if you have a heart attack?”

“I would slide.”

“What if you are hit by a truck?”

“I would slide.”

“Drown?”

He looked at me as if asking if really wanted him to repeat himself and then he looked at his watch again. “We can talk about this tomorrow,” he said.

“But Tree of Life is closed on Sundays,” I whined like a child, “which means I will be under house arrest again.”

He lifted my hand and brushed his lips against my skin, sending a rush of adrenaline through my body. “I'll be at the park at noon,” he murmured. “In case you get paroled.”

And even though I knew we had spent hundreds of years together, I started counting the seconds until tomorrow anyway.

 

23

 

When the girls turned up for our Sunday session the next morning, Deb was like a levee at the front door. She sprung a leak though, under the weight of the reasoning from Jo and the sass from Sylv.

“One visitor,” she told me.

“Sylv.”

“Jo?”

“No. Sylv.” Of course Deb thought I would ask for my best friend – and I would have if I could have – but that girl on the porch, stamping her feet in the cold was an evacuee, like the Lillie in my nightmares.

I pressed my hand against my bedroom window, my nose inches from the pane, as I watched Jo walk out the front gate and down the street. Her hair had been dyed brown again and the ends of her ragged bob had been trimmed. She turned, as if sensing my gaze, and I hid behind the curtain.

“Good God,” Sylv said as she walked into my bedroom.

I spun around. “What?”

“Deb puts you in the hole for a couple of days and you turn into a nutcase, like that busybody Humpback Harding.”

“What do you mean?” I asked indignantly, swiping at the curtain a few times, as if I were dusting the fabric, instead of using it to hide from my former best friend. “I'm like a hundred and ten percent sane,” I said, pushing thoughts of parallel dimensions and evacuees out of my mind.

Sylv raised her eyebrows and ran a hand through her hair, which was now blond with bright blue and green streaks. “A hundred and ten percent? I rest my case.”

I raised my own eyebrows in return. “A math lesson?” I laughed. “You think a hypotenuse is an animal in Africa.”

Sylv rolled her eyes. “Hypotenuse. Hippopotamus.” She perched on the edge of my desk, looking like a macaw.

“I like your hair,” I lied.

Sylv grinned. “Turnip told me to get rid of it by tomorrow. Should I shave it and give him a heart attack?”

“Only if you want to get suspended like me.”

“That jerk said he would expel me.” She sighed dramatically and then brightened. “Jo let me dye her hair last night.”

“I know,” I said, with a nod to the window.

“Aha!” Sylv shouted, pointing an accusing finger. “You have totally turned into Humpback Harding.”

I smiled. “OK. I might have turned into her for one second.”

Sylv frowned. “Is everything OK with you and Jo?”

“Why?”

“Because you just kicked her in the guts, Lillie. She had one foot in the door before she realized Deb had said Sylv, instead of Jo.”

I hesitated. Jo and I were as good as gold. It was evacuee Jo I hated. “I kind of need a hand with sneaking out,” I finally said. “You know Jo. She would give me a lecture.”

“A jailbreak?” Sylv asked, her eyes glimmering like gemstones. “Woohoo! And here I was thinking I was going to go deaf before the day was out.” She tilted her head towards the sound of the bongos from the back room.

“I kind of have to go on my own,” I said sheepishly.

Her eyebrows shot up again. “Who are you meeting?”

My flushed cheeks answered her question.

“Tom!” she gasped. “Spill. I want the dirt.”

“I saw him on Friday,” I said cautiously, not wanting to spill dimension secrets. “He took me to the sand hills.”

“The sand hills?” She clicked her tongue stud as she considered this location. “Is there a lookout?”

I laughed. “I think you and Simon should stick to the reservoir.”

“Brandon.”

“Sorry. Brandon.”

For a moment it looked like Sylv was blushing. “We did the deed,” she announced. “After the Masquerade Ball. Down at the reservoir.”

I tilted my head, wondering whether, in spite of all her talk, Sylv had been a virgin like me and Jo. “And?” I asked, crossing my fingers she would spare me the details.

“OK. I guess.” She shrugged, chewing her bottom lip with a small smile as she thought about it. “What about you and Tom? Did you–?”

“We kissed,” I said quickly.

Sylv clasped her hands to her chest and sighed dreamily. I frowned. What was with the swooning? Sylv was normally a bag them and tag them kind of girl. I walked up to her without a word, turning her head and brushing back her hair.

“What the hell, Lillie?” she complained, as I checked behind her ear, but there was no tattoo.

“Sorry,” I said, but I had no excuse. “I have to work out how to get around Deb,” I said, changing the subject.

Sylv stared at me for a moment and then asked, “Has she put bars on your window or something?”

I breathed a sigh of relief, wondering if the dimension had split and there was a Lillie who had to explain herself to Sylv. “Not yet,” I said dryly.

Sylv smiled. “Well, I guess I could cover for you. If you get the TV in here and put on a decent DVD.” She put on a sugary-sweet voice. “Oh, hi Deb. Lillie just went to the kitchen to get popcorn like one second ago. You would have passed her in the hallway. No? She must be in the bathroom then.” She grinned, her nose crinkling, and I laughed, reveling in her lightened mood.

“Now,” Sylv said. “We have to get you glammed up for your date.”

It was my first opportunity to prepare for Tom. The past two times I had run into him on the hop, but this time I pulled on my good pair of jeans and a pale yellow knit Sylv had nicked from Deb. Sylv blow-dried my hair so it had a bit of shape and clipped back my bangs with a gold-colored hair clip. She tried to pull it into a ponytail a couple of times, but I slapped at her hands until she gave up.

“I wish I had proper make-up,” she said, appraising my dark circles.

“You know what they say about a poor workman blaming his tools.”

“What if his tools are a broken hammer and rusted nails?” Sylv complained, and then she perked up as she had a thought. “What about Deb? She must have make-up.”

“First her top and now her make-up? Do you want me to be locked up for life?”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Sylv said, which I thought was ironic, coming from an atheist.

Sylv found Deb in the back room, in the middle of a bongo lesson with Blaze. I could hear Dawn singing along to the beat, a weird wailing sound. It made the pan pipe sound like Mozart. The noise stopped and I bit my lip, wondering if Sylv was going to blow my cover. I heard her say, “Me and Lillie are giving each other makeovers. Do you mind if we borrow your make-up? I think your blue eye shadow would really suit her. You know, like mother, like daughter.”

A few minutes later, Sylv returned with an assortment of blush and eye shadow in a hand-woven basket.

“The colors are all wrong,” I moaned, pawing through the bright greens and blues.

“You think?” Sylv asked, applying bright orange eye shadow to her eyelids and batting them at me.

I laughed.

“Is that your mom?” Sylv suddenly asked.

My eyes snapped to the doorway, but Sylv was reaching into the basket. She dug out a handful of photos, the edges of which were curled with age. I snatched them from her and held them to my chest. Photos of Deb? Really?

There were three black and white shots. The first showed a small girl holding a bunny rabbit. Even in monochrome there was no mistaking those large emerald eyes. The next was of a teenage girl, perhaps a year or two younger than me, who was dressed in a cheerleading uniform. A cheerleading uniform? I laughed out loud. Maybe that was when she had bought the ice skates. The final photo showed a more familiar Deb. She was probably my age. Her hair was long and flowing. Her smile was wide. And she was straddling a motorbike. Yep. A motorbike. And on the front was a guy in leather, his face turned from the camera. It could have been my father for all I knew.

I put the photos in my desk drawer, feeling like I had found a ball of twine that could lead me through the maze that was my mother.

I ended up sticking with my own brown mascara, but I did let Sylv put a bit of blush on my cheekbones and a dash of gold eye shadow on my lids.

“To draw attention away from those dark circles,” she explained.

I slipped on my gold-colored flats. “Do I look like an Oscar?” I asked, as I studied my reflection.

“You look like a model,” Sylv said, stepping back and surveying me like a proud mother.

Unlike Deb, I thought as I climbed out of the window, my legs like rigor mortis in my too tight jeans. I was letting her down left, right and center at the moment.

I snuck along the side of the house and climbed over the fence with a final wave to Sylv, who had agreed to watch a stack of Marilyn Monroe flicks after my search for non-musical DVDs turned up an instructional yoga video and a few PETA documentaries.

When I reached the park I scanned the dustbowl for Tom, my eyes skimming a handful of kids tossing a baseball in the diamond, their voices like the shriek of birds. I turned and surveyed the street, beginning to feel sick to my stomach as I wondered if he had decided to ditch our date.

It was like a shot of morphine when I saw the SUV glide down the street and perform a U-turn. I opened the door and climbed in within a second of it pulling into the curb, as if Evacuee Lillie was on my tail.

“Are you OK?” Tom asked, his blue eyes wide. Worried.

I lowered my gaze to his lips, which were slightly parted as he waited for my answer.

“Fine,” I breathed, letting my eyes go to the clock on the dashboard and feeling foolish when I saw it was noon on the dot. “Except I just broke out of Alcatraz. Deb must be a prison warden in another dimension.”

Tom smiled an easy smile. “You should meet my grandmother.” He waited for a delivery van to pass before pulling out onto the street. “She reminds me of the Red Queen. You know, from
Alice in Wonderland
.” He frowned. “Maybe she was the Red Queen in whatever dimension Lewis Carroll was channeling.” But then he shook his head. “The timing would be wrong. It was published in the 1800s I think.”

“1865,” I confirmed, surprising myself with this literary knowledge. “And his name was Charles Dodgson. Lewis Carroll was his pen name.”

Tom raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. “Well, Red Queen or no Red Queen, I could wrap my grandmother around my little finger by the time I could talk.”

“What a surprise,” I said sarcastically, wondering if anyone was immune to his charm.

Tom shrugged. “What can I say? You can get away with anything when you know how.”

“Murder,” I concurred, without thinking.

His hands tightened around the steering wheel and I knew he was thinking of his first love – Lillie from the Seventh Dimension. There was a pang in my chest as I thought about her too.

I looked out of the window and saw we were heading towards the railroad crossing; the houses were fewer and farther between here with trees filling the gaps. My spirits soared. I was looking forward to seeing Rose Hill with my new memories, wandering through rooms that had belonged to me in another place and another time.

When I saw the skid marks on the road I glanced over at Tom, recalling the look on his face as he had belted Jackson.

It suddenly made sense. Tom had chased Evacuee Lillie from this dimension, but then Jackson had come close to killing me himself. I closed my eyes, remembering my dream of being hit by the train and the coldness that had spread through my body. I shuddered, realizing that in another dimension Jackson had slammed on the brakes at the last minute and the dimension had split, leaving me alive and another Lillie dead.

I could see the funeral in my mind, my mother laying a Lily of the Valley on the wooden casket with a shaking hand. Tom was there too, standing in the background as I was lowered into the ground, his hands balled into fists at the side of his body, raging at the loss of another Lillie.

“Why were you at the railroad crossing?” I asked, remembering that he had said he had been off track.