Don't You Wish (26 page)

“Because you have a heart and soul.”

Very slowly he lowers the milk without having taken a sip. “All right, I’ll take you. But only because I got a new babe who lives near the Doral, and when I tell her I’m such a great big bro, she’ll invite me and my guns …”—he flexes a bicep—“over for a ride.”

Even Tillie has to snort at that, but I scoop up my phone. “Whatever it takes, big boy. Just drive.”

Trent spends most of the ride on the phone arranging a booty call, so while he makes caveman conversation with some girl, I think a lot about what he said, what Tillie and even my mom said. And of course, Charlie.

Some people in this alternate world are starting to depend on me. If I leave, will the old Ayla return? Or can I leave enough of my soul behind to be sure things go the way I want them to go here on Planet Perfection?

I don’t know, but I hope Charlie can give me some answers.

“Dude lives in the armpit of Miami,” Trent says after he hangs up with his late date and cruises into Charlie’s neighborhood.

“It’s not that bad.”

“So, you seeing this homeless kid?”

“He’s not homeless, you jerk. Can’t you be better than those kids?”

“Of course I am. I take after Mom, remember? You’re the one who’s all Monroe.”

“Not all.” I look out the windows at the flickering lights of a Cuban sandwich shop, unable to read almost any of the Spanish signs.

“You can have the business, by the way,” he says. “I got another plan for my future.”

Where did that come from? “I don’t want the business,” I tell him.

He gives a dry laugh. “Well, ain’t that rich? Dad’s bribing us with promises of power, and neither one of us wants it.”

“I thought you were being groomed for the top spot.”

“Mom and I are talking about starting a little real estate business. She’s getting her license. Bet you didn’t know that.”

I didn’t, and it tweaks me. “She’ll be good at real estate,” I predict confidently. “She has a knack for it.”

He throws me a look of total WTFery. “How would you know?” he asks.

“Just an educated guess. Turn here. Third house on the left.”

He follows the directions, tapping the steering wheel in time with the classic rock on the radio. “You know what, Ay?”

“What?” I brace myself for insult
and
injury. After all, this is Trent.

“This guy’s been a good influence on you. I’m giving him all the credit for the new and improved, highly tolerable, and almost likable Ayla Monroe.”

Charlie doesn’t deserve the credit, but I let him have it. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

Trent slows down at the driveway, and I see Charlie on the side of the house holding a mirror and a flashlight.

“What the hell is he doing?” Trent asks, leaning down to look out the passenger window.

“Science experiment. He’s a total geek.”

Trent gives me a smile. “Whatever blows your skirt up, I say.”

“Enjoy your, um, date.”

“I plan on it, Sister.” As I open the door and climb out, I pause, kind of expecting some kind of brotherly advice.

He burps, and I just laugh. I miss Theo in the worst way.

“He gonna bring you home?”

I look over my shoulder at Charlie. “Home is exactly where he’s going to take me.”

Trent narrows his eyes at Charlie, then nods approval. “Use protection, shit-for-brains.”

“Screw you, dirtbag.”

“Ah. There’s the Ayla I know and can’t stand. I knew she’d be back.”

I’m still looking at Charlie and the mirror that reflects some moonlight. “Don’t be too sure of that yet.”

Because I’m not sure where I’m going, if I’m going … or why. Not anymore.

Charlie’s so engrossed in what he’s doing, he doesn’t even look up when I approach.

He’s kneeling over the mirror, surrounded by tools and circuit boards and multiple flashlights. On a stack of textbooks, his laptop is open and a YouTube video is playing with no sound.

I drink in the scene, my knees almost buckling with the impact of still more homesickness. Will it never stop?

I suddenly want my family so much, it steals my breath. My mom—the one with a wrinkle in her brow and a little too much width around her waist. My burping exclamation-pointed brother, because Trent the Tool isn’t as evil as I thought, but he isn’t my obnoxious little brother.

And Dad. I miss Dad so bad because Mel Nutter kind of
belongs
in the middle of this all-too-familiar tableau of miscellaneous junk gathered together for an “invention.” In a freakish twist of irony, he’d love this.

Charlie melts me with that smile. “How was the party?” he asks.

“Pretty lame, but I am flying to Pittsburgh on a private plane Friday morning.”

“Cool.”

Is it? Hard to tell how he feels about that. “What are you doing?” I ask.

Charlie doesn’t answer immediately, adjusting the mirror a little and angling the flashlight, which is super bright, like a halogen bulb. “I did some more research, and decided to attempt an experiment.”

“What kind?”

He fiddles with the electronics some more, moving wires on a circuit board. “I thought we could test the arrangement of matter and energy.”

“Good times,” I say with a laugh.

“It could be. I have a Geiger counter that can help detect the movement of quarks and gluons.”

“Gluons? I take it you don’t mean fake nails.”

He chuckles softly and flicks the flashlight back and forth, adjusting the mirror. “He must be smart, your dad,” he says.

“He is smart. And funny, and kind, and makes the best chocolate chip pancakes in the world.” I sigh, and can’t help adding that other bit about my dad. “He’s also … a collector.”

“What’s he collect?”

“ ‘What doesn’t he collect’ is a better question.” I settle on a strip of stiff Florida crabgrass, a cloying honeysuckle smell hanging in the air just like the word I don’t want to say. “I think there’s another, less flattering name for him.” I pluck at a sturdy blade that doesn’t want to come out. “He’s kind of a hoarder.”

Charlie gently rests the mirror against the side of the house to give me a quizzical look. “Like on the TV show?”

“Not quite as bad. But …” Our house had been getting close. “Still, it’s embarrassing.”

Charlie looks hard at me, considering that. “Were you upset about it the night this all happened?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it … upset.”

“Was it on your mind?”

I try to go back in time—and space, evidently—and remember exactly how I felt that night. “I was more upset about my parents fighting, I think. Why?”

“Because what was on your mind, like exactly your emotional state, seems to be key to getting you back to that universe.”

“So you said. But even something like that?”

“Here. Watch this.” He guides me over to the laptop, and we sit in front of it while he starts that YouTube video from the beginning. It’s a quantum mechanics physicist talking about parallel universes on some shaky home video taken in a college classroom, with particularly bad sound.

Charlie turns it up, and we lean close to listen.

Honestly, I don’t get half of what the lecturer is saying. Until he gets to the part about the power of thoughts—
powerful enough to move us between two universes if all the other external factors happen to be lined up.

“In the instant when you have a fleeting thought, your whole body makes a quantum leap into a whole different dimension,” the guy says.

Charlie pauses the video. “I think if we can somehow figure out how to spark the right light over the right mirror at the right time, you have to cooperate by having the right thoughts. That’s why what you were feeling that night is so important.”

I drag my legs up to wrap my arms around them and rest my head on my knees, thinking hard. “I had a lot of emotions going on that night,” I admit. “I was feeling … cheated.”

He waits for me, giving me some time to gather my thoughts and put them into words.

“I wanted a better life,” I finally say. “Kind of like my mom, when she saw the magazine article about Jim Monroe. I wanted my life to just be … better.”

“And is it?” he asks softly.

“In some ways, it is,” I say. “Obviously, on the outside, it’s better. I’ve got money and looks, and all the kids want to be me. Who doesn’t want that?”

Charlie lifts an eyebrow, the minuscule gesture saying it all for him.

“You’re different,” I say quickly. “Most teenage wannabes crave more of that stuff.”

“And that’s what you were thinking, when the lightning struck? I guess it would make sense that you landed here, then.”

“You mean, if I’d been thinking of something totally
different, I might have gone to some other universe? Like, if I’d been obsessing over …” I try to pull something out of the air. “My grades?”

“You might have landed in that universe where you have a one-hundred-and-eighty IQ.”

“Getting bumped to fifth chair in orchestra?”

“You’d arrive in virtuoso universe.”

“My pathetic love life?”

He grins, which sends a shower of chills all over me. “Maybe that would have dropped you into my lap.” Before I can answer, he adds, “All I’m saying is, what’s going on in your head is as important as where the electrons fly. Now look at this.”

He reaches for a penlight on the ground and flicks it on. It emits a thin red beam. “Low-beam laser,” he says. “Hold it and shine the light onto the mirror.”

I do, and a few other red dots appear around it. “What are they?”

“The same particles of light going to multiple places at the same time. And some of them we can’t see.” He looks up at me, the red lights casting a soft glow on his face. “They’re in a different dimension.”

“I can’t believe you figured all this out already.”

“Not that much science involved, and I had help from Dr. Pritchard and the Internet. Now let’s make this more complicated and add you to the mix. Get in front of the mirror.”

When I do, of course, I look like Ayla. And I have an idea.

“Let me show you something,” I say, sitting back down
next to him. I take out my phone and flick to the photo I changed with the Famous Faces app. “Will this help?”

“Is that Annie?”

“Not exactly. But closer than …” I gesture toward my image in the mirror. “This.”

He studies the picture for a long time, and I realize I’m biting my lip. I’m so used to being pretty around Charlie. What will he think of the “real” me?

“You looked like that?” There’s no judgment in his voice.

“Worse. Add braces.”

He looks up at me. “I think I would love Annie.”

For a moment, I can’t speak, because everything in my body is up and running around doing a little happy dance. “You would?”

He smiles, a beautiful, sweet, honest smile. “Can you email this picture to me? So I have it?”

“Sure.” I take the phone and send the photo as an email to his address. “She’s kind of … plain. I mean, compared to this.” I gesture vaguely toward my face. “So it might be a bit of a disappointment for you.”

“Annie, it’s not the outside of you that I like.” He inches closer. “When are you going to figure that out?”

“Sometimes I still feel like the girl who gets asked to homecoming as a joke.” I laugh softly. “I was, you know. Right before I came here. Some jerk said, ‘Hey, homecoming’s Saturday. Maybe you’d want to go with me.’ ” I close my eyes. “And I was the laughingstock of my bus because, you know, I thought …”

“Hey.” Charlie puts his finger on my lips. “He didn’t deserve you.”

I’m frozen in the moment, in Charlie’s eyes, near his mouth. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to kiss him.

“So forget that clown, and think about me,” he says.

That’s all I think about. “I can’t believe this.”

“Believe what?”

“That I finally meet a really, really great guy and I’m considering leaving him.”

For a long moment, neither one of us says a thing. I can hear crickets and cars, wind in the leaves, and his next slow breath.

“You don’t have to leave … Ayla.” Reaching over, he puts his hand along my cheek and lightly runs his thumb over my lower lip.

Deep inside, things flutter around. All those things that were dead on the night with Ryder are very much alive and well and … fluttery.

“I like it better when you call me Annie.”

“I know you do. And you know where Annie belongs.”

Yes, I do. “No way I can go back and forth for a few years, is there?” I ask.

He laughs softly. “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not even sure you can go back at all. You may end up in some weird half-alive, half-dead state.”

I suck in a breath and back away from his touch. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Or you might have some random thought
about the queen of England and end up in London. But really, place is not the only variable that worries me.”

“What is?”

“Time. Time is so critical. You know those red light particles that we don’t see? They aren’t just in another place; they could be in another time. That’s what’s really important about this experiment—that you get to the right moment of time.”

I frown at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that for this to work, I think, you have to go back to that very moment when you were in your room, or at least the next morning, so that not too much could have happened without you in that universe.”

I shake my head, unable to look away from him, my stomach tight and my limbs heavy and my mind so completely boggled by it all. “How?”

“Time is a continuum,” he says. “So, for you to get to the right place, you have to more or less mentally erase everything that’s happened to you since then. Just wipe it out of your mind. This life, this experience, this new family and school. Me.”

“I could never do that,” I say quickly. “I could never erase you.”

He smiles. “Mind over matter, Annie. You can do anything.”

All I can do is sigh. Trying to get back to who and where and
when
I was seems more daunting than ever. “I don’t know,” I say skeptically. “What if I think the wrong thoughts and go flying back to Timbuktu five years ago?”