When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (25 page)

Tom seemed nervous, tapping his finger on the steering wheel and chewing his bottom lip, like a schoolboy waiting for the principal.

He stopped to check for traffic at the corner, careful to look past me instead of at me. I leaned forward, trying to catch his eye with a small smile on my lips, but I may as well have been the breeze from the air vents.

“Um…” I started, and then stopped. I had a billion and one questions to ask about his grandmother – what had she said? What was she going to do? What was he going to do? When? Where? Why? How? – but I was worried about the answers, given his uneasiness and the manner in which he changed gears rapidly, like I might grab his hand if he came too close.

“Um…” I paused again and then followed up with a burst of inappropriate laughter that belied my nerves. I looked out the window at the grasses that waved in the wind, like a rolling ocean beneath the snow-filled clouds.

As we drove through the railroad crossing, the tires hit the tracks with a thud-thud that sounded like gunshots. It seemed to rouse Tom from his reverie and he spoke suddenly, the words rushing out of his mouth like he was ripping off a Band-Aid.

“My grandmother is an evacuee,” he said. “A merged evacuee.”

I waited for him to go on, but he had returned to chewing his bottom lip.

“You found your family,” I said hesitantly. My mind was racing through the scenarios. Maybe his grandmother knew what had happened to his parents, I thought, deciding on a positive outlook. Maybe Tom had been wrong and they were here as well. A family reunion.

“The two of us have crossed paths before,” Tom said, like he was reading my mind. “In my seventh dimension.”

The Seventh Dimension. I scratched my jeans with my fingernail, like a nervous twitch.

“She let us…” Tom paused, casting his eyes to me for a moment. “I mean she let Lillie and I live at Rose Hill.”

My fingernails dug into the denim. Dig. Dig. Dig. Lillie. And. I.

“I had no double in my seventh dimension,” Tom explained. “My father had been killed in a motorbike accident as a teen, which meant I was never born. My grandmother pulled a few strings and created an identity for me so I could have a life.”

“And so you could get married,” I said, as I imagined Lillie walking through the formal gardens in a flowing white dress. No. Not imagined, remembered. I could see Tom waiting next to a gazebo, dressed in a black tuxedo. His smile was broad and his eyes sparkled like cut diamonds as I walked towards him with Sylv at my side. There was no Jo.

“She wants me to go with her to England,” Tom suddenly said, bringing me back to the present.

A family reunion in London. My heart ached at the thought of losing him for a day, let alone a week, but did he mean… “Forever?”

Tom glanced at me. “Lillie, she wants me to merge with her grandson. The Tom from this dimension.”

I hissed, the sound like the seal being broken on a soda can.

“My grandmother is part of the Circle,” he explained.

“Like Mr Green?”

Tom nodded. “How do you think she knew I was here? He let her know as soon he saw me in the café. He was out looking for me the night she arrived. The night I was with you.” He squeezed the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white before he released his grip, giving up. “My grandmother has me booked on a flight to London on Monday.”

“Is that what you want?” I asked, realizing this was not one of those dimensions where Tom had his grandmother wrapped around his little finger.

“Of course not.” He turned to me, his eyes flashing like lightning. “I am not a murderer.”

I looked at him, wide-eyed, knowing this was another fork in the road, but neither direction led to a destination we wanted.

His nostrils flared as he stared straight ahead at the road. “I have to slide.”

He may as well have driven the car into a brick wall, splattering my heart against my ribcage. “Stop.”

“What?”

“Stop the car!” I fumbled with the door handle, gasping for breath. It was like the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs. I took off my seat belt and opened the door, letting in a rush of wind and sparking a warning signal from the dashboard.

“No, Lillie. Wait!” Tom slammed on the brakes and the dusty road that rushed like a raging torrent beside me became a steady stream.

I jumped out and ran along the narrow strip between the trees and the road. My feet swished through the uncut grass, which slithered around my ankles like snakes hissing the word “slide”.

“Lillie!” Tom shouted.

“Go away!” I choked against the wind, my throat thick with emotion. I could taste the tears coursing down my face. He was breaking my heart again, because he was breaking his promise again. I groped through my memories, looking for a promise that I knew had been both made and broken.

“Listen to me.” Tom grabbed my shoulder. The contact was like a knife in my back. I fell to my knees and he crouched beside me whispering my name in time with my ragged breathing.

“I want you to come with me, Lillie.”

I looked at him sideways, as if waiting for a blow to the head.

“I want you to slide too,” he begged. His voice was strained and I realized was scared. Scaredy Tom-Cat.

“I can do that?” I asked, my hair flying around my head like Medusa. “I can slide?”

“Did you really think I would leave you, Lillie? I would rather merge than slide into another dimension without you.” I watched his chest rise and fall under his sweater as he took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something,” he said and then shook his head. “No. Let me show you.” He stood up and offered me his hand.

I let him help me to my feet, leaning on him like a crutch as we walked back to his SUV.

The Benz was parked lopsided, half off the road with both front doors open, shuddering with each gust of wind. It looked like a prop from post-apocalyptic film and its warning signal grew louder we approached, sounding through the valley like a homing beacon. Beep. Beep. Beep. This. Is. It. I knew we were about to reach another twist in the book and, like last time, I wanted to skip ahead to the last page.

“Look,” Tom instructed, guiding me towards the SUV and pointing at the side mirror.

I leaned in to look at the pale-faced girl in its reflection.

Meanwhile, Tom reached in through the door and pulled the mirror from the visor. He lifted this second mirror behind my head and carefully drew back my hair from my face as if it were a curtain made of antique lace.

I closed my eyes as his fingertips brushed my ear, blushing to think he would see their pointiness. But then I realized he would have seen them countless times in other dimensions. I wondered if Lillie from the Seventh Dimension wore her hair in a ponytail, not needing a shield like me.

I opened my eyes. “No,” I whispered when I saw my reflection again.

“Yes,” Tom said.

“No!” I straightened up, my back as rigid as a washboard.

“Lillie,” Tom said, catching my arm before I could run. “I told you I had saved you in eight dimensions, but had been too late in four.” His eyes begged for forgiveness, his pale blue irises like shimmering lakes. I wanted to submerge myself in them, sink to their sandy bottoms and drown. “This was the fourth dimension, Lillie.”

I wanted the wind to whisk away his words, but it had died down, leaving us in the eye of its storm.

“She killed me?” I asked, but it was more a statement than a question. I had seen the black tattoo myself, the mix of numbers and letters behind my ear, which marked me as an evacuee. I lifted the veil of hair that had hidden the truth and touched my tattoo. My fingers ran over the smooth skin, feeling the heat that made my cheeks burn like I was blushing. I looked in the mirror again and saw that my cheeks remained ashen, despite my rising temperature.

My mind went back to that night six months ago when Evacuee Lillie had leaned over my bed. I had thought it a dream and then a memory from another dimension, but it had been neither. “She killed me,” I said again, thinking of my nosebleed and my muddled memories over the past six months. And then there was my constant blushing that I had put down to having a crush. My voice became accusatory. “You said she was gone. You said I was safe.”

“She is gone, Lillie,” Tom said. “For the first time it was Evacuee Lillie who was killed in the merge. You lived.” He offered the smallest of smiles. “You won.”

I shook my head, holding my hands over my ears, like I could block it out. “No,” I whispered.

“Yes. How else could you remember our ice skating accident as if it was your own memory? Before you merged it would have been like looking through the peephole. You would have only had part of the picture. Lillie, the merge has opened the door to other dimensions.

“And what about your memory of us getting married?” he continued. “It will be another five years before that happens in the other dimension.” He clenched his jaw and I knew he had been reliving the date of her death over and over again in the three hundred-odd years since his seventh dimension.

My tongue touched my chipped tooth, which I now realized had been inherited during a merge with the me of another dimension.

Tom went on to explain how he had followed me around after the merge – not to protect me, but to spy on me.

I understood his demeanor now in those first few weeks. The brick wall he had built between us had hidden a love-hate relationship between him and the other Lillies. He hated Evacuee Lillie, but loved Lillie from the Seventh Dimension. And here we were like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Unholy Trinity.

“I wanted to be sure she was gone. I enrolled in school to be certain,” he explained. “I soon realized from your jokes that you were not Evacuee Lillie – or any of the other Lillies.” He managed another small smile and I remembered the look on his face when I had joked about the tampons and then there was his question in the car – “You like to laugh, don't you?”

But then I thought about the dreams of murdering or being murdered and realized Tom was wrong about Evacuee Lillie. She was alive as long as her memories were alive. I held onto the doorframe as she spoke to me through her memories, reminding me of the last time Tom had left her behind.

Tom and I had been standing in line for the Solution in Lincoln. It had taken us several hours to reach the start of the line and in that time we had speculated what we would find in other dimensions.

“Each other,” Tom had decided, pulling me into a hug.

I had leaned my head against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart beneath his T-shirt, letting the rhythm drown out the sound of the protesters, who stood behind barricades on either side.

“But will we be able to find each other?” I had asked hesitantly. “They say we can be split up, even though we are entangled.” I pulled away from him to retrieve the information booklet from my back pocket, flipping through the pages for information on the Solution.

Tom had pulled me close again. “I will find you Lillie,” he said into my hair. “I promise.”

But when we slid I had landed in a new dimension on my own. This was where the memories became dim, as if Evacuee Lillie had slammed the door shut on them, leaving a string of scenes that were like mismatched garments. I shuddered as I came across a memory of dying. And another. And another. It seemed she – I – had been killed over and over again by creatures that did not exist in this dimension. I scrunched up my eyes against the memory of my flesh being torn and the sound of my own screams, like the wail of a fire engine in my mind.

And then she found Tom. Years after landing in his seventh dimension, her eighteenth, she had spotted him in Lincoln and followed him back to Rose Hill.

“She had been looking for you for more than a hundred years,” I whispered, as we stood in the valley, “but you had broken your promise. You had given up.” The jealousy of Evacuee Lillie welled up in me again, as I thought of Lillie from the Seventh Dimension.

I shook my head, backing away from Tom.

“Lillie. Please,” he said. “I had searched for her in every dimension, but then I fell in love.”

“With another Lillie,” I spat, letting the hundreds of years of heartache for Evacuee Lillie wash over me in waves of bitterness. “A replacement. How could you?” I reached up to my neck, my fingers finding the cold metal of my necklace. “And you said Lillie from the Seventh Dimension was your first love.” I pulled down and the back of my neck burned as the chain slid across the skin and then snapped. I felt the weight of the key in my hand for a moment before I threw it at him. It hit his chest and bounced, landing at his feet. “I was your first love.”

We stared at each other as we realized I had said “I was,” not “she was.” I was talking about Evacuee Lillie in the first person. Tom hesitated for a moment before taking a step forward. It was a moment too late though, because by the time his wristwatch ticked over I had thrown myself into his SUV and pulled the door shut behind me.

“Lillie!” he shouted, but I slammed down the lock and turned the key. My foot pumped the gas as I threw the stick into first and lurched forward. The passenger door on the other side swung shut and I heard it lock automatically as I revved the engine again and eased off the clutch.

I had only ever driven twice illegally with Jo and one of those times had been a stick shift. Who fucking drives stick shift? I wondered, as I crunched the gears. I could guarantee this SUV had been custom-made. “Europeans,” I muttered.

Tom was pulling at the handle and yelling at me through the glass. He pulled his sweater over his head in a fluid movement and wrapped it around his hand, readying himself to smash the back window, but I lurched forward again, hearing the tires churn the loose gravel.

I forced the vehicle into second, the gears crunching, and then third as I sped up along the road. I could see Tom in my rearview mirror, growing smaller and smaller with each surge of the engine. This was when the levee broke and the tears poured down my cheeks, blurring my vision and making him look like a mirage in the middle of the road.