Mirror in the Sky (7 page)

“I . . . I guess. I don't really know.”

“Didn't you see it? You should report her to Mrs. Treem.”

“No. I didn't actually see the accident. And telling on Sarah isn't going to bring that poor dog back to life.” Tears began to pierce my eyes as I thought of it.

“Are you okay, Tara?” She looked around uncomfortably for a minute.

I closed my eyes tight, shaking my head, certain that I didn't want to start crying in front of Veronica. First Meg leaving, then the dog. If the past forty-eight hours were any indication
of what this school year was going to be like, I was really in for it. And yet there was nothing I could do. I couldn't move away, or stop going to school, or get out of any of it. I was stuck.

“That was really nice of you to stay with him,” she said quietly. “Most people, they wouldn't have done that. They would have just kept walking.”

I opened my eyes, surprised at this revelation. “Most people are horrible.”

“No doubt.”

“I can't stop thinking about it. He was this cute little Lab . . . just a puppy. He was running—you know, the way puppies run. All enthusiasm, not even looking. And then that stupid car came out of nowhere and . . . He had no idea that the day would end like that, that his life would end like . . .”

“But you were there with him, Tara. He was lucky to have you sit with him those last few minutes of his life.”

“Why do people keep saying that? He was all alone.”

“That's not what Nick said. He said that you sat there in the middle of the street for close to an hour. That when the ASPCA came, they told you to leave, but you wouldn't till they had euthanized the poor thing.”

“It was heartbreaking . . . the way his big eyes kept looking at me like they were asking me to help him, begging me to take away the pain. He could barely breathe. He just . . . he wanted to die,” I told her. “I've never . . . that's never happened to me. I don't have any pets; I've never watched someone or something die.” I closed my eyes, trying to pull it together. I couldn't believe it was Veronica, of all people, whom I was
revealing everything to. I was rarely this open with people. Not even with Meg.

I thought she'd jet out of the hallway as quickly as possible, make a run for it while she still could. Smile that false smile of hers and tell me her family was waiting, but instead, she continued to linger in the hallway with me, her head leaning against the wall.

“Look, all I'm saying is, you were there, not like that horrible Sarah, who just zipped off in her Porsche. And I think Nick was glad that you were. You were so thoughtful. You're a sensitive one, I can tell.”

I had barely spoken ten words to Veronica in the five years I had known her. She thought I was sensitive? And yet when I looked at her now lingering in the hallway, I had to wonder if in another world, in another dimension, we might be friends.

“Seriously traumatic first day of school. Listen, come by and say hi to my parents. They heard what happened. I think they'd want to see you. And . . . there's a party at Halle's on Saturday. You should come,” she said before she walked away.

When my father came out of the kitchen, he wanted to know why I looked like I had been crying. “Is it about Schrödinger's cat?” he asked. I shook my head. I was still sad, but some of the sadness had left me, and I felt oddly grateful to Veronica. But after I said hello to her parents and her younger brother, after Amit nodded goodbye to my dad, promising he'd close up, after we had loaded my bike into the back of the car and merged onto the Post Road, I had to wonder about a fire drill,
a tiny dog, Nick Osterman in his Jeep, Veronica in my father's restaurant . . . was this what my mother meant when she talked about the fluttering of wings, the migratory patterns of small creatures? A series of events—large and small—that seemed to be creating a new path for me, too fast for me to understand how or why.

NINE

I
T
reminded me of the “spot the difference” game we used to play as kids, the one in the back of
Highlights
magazine. Two images side by side, and you circled the things that were missing, or a different color, or added in. Except none of those games sent a trail of goose bumps up my arms.

It was after midnight. I was already in my pajamas, about to go to bed, when the alert popped up on my phone. It was Meg. My heart sank when I saw her name, but I was also curious what she might have to say to me. I opened up Instagram and saw the message:

Megz23
mentioned you in a comment:
@TKrish
, isn't this insane?! It's all anyone's talking about in Buenos Aires. Hysteria here over Terra Nova!

Meg was always sending me messages over Instagram, and I wondered for a second if this was her way of apologizing for the way she had acted before she left.

I clicked on the image. At first, it didn't make sense. It was two images, small and side-by-side. They looked identical. One of them was blurry, but not so blurry that you couldn't make out what it was. A street market of some sort. Most of the faces were obscured, but you could clearly see a woman's face in the crowds. She was looking toward the camera, smiling, wearing a big blue raincoat. All around her, street vendors sold fruit and toys. Signs and billboards written up in an undecipherable language.

On the right, the same image, but as I looked closer, I realized that it wasn't the same. It was slightly different. The signs were in a different language. The woman was wearing a red coat instead of a blue one. A vendor sold apples instead of what looked like pears.

I looked at NASA's comment.

On September 1, 2015, NASA decoded the bitmap image received from B612. The image appears to be that of a street market on Terra Nova. We posted this image on our feed right away. On September 2, NASA was contacted by a follower from Tokyo, Japan, alerting us to an Instagram photo taken a year ago of the Ameyoko Market between Okachimachi and Ueno Stations. As you can see, the images are
near-identical. The picture on the left, the image we received from Terra Nova, shows a woman at a street market. The composition, the colors, even the location look surprisingly similar to the image from Tokyo, with a couple of small variations. In the image on the left, from Terra Nova, the woman wears a blue coat. Behind her a vendor sells pears. We have not been able to decipher the language on the billboards and signs, but linguists are currently investigating. The image on the right, from Earth, shows a woman wearing a red coat. The vendor behind her is selling different fruit, but the similarities have raised a number of questions.

I looked at the image on the left, the decoded bitmap from Terra Nova, and then back at the image on the right, from Tokyo, Japan. From Earth.

In freshman-year biology, we watched a video of an amoeba splitting into two—pinching in half, its nucleus dividing till there were two identical organisms where there had once been only one. From this day onward, that was how I would feel—physically, I was still the same, but in some part of me, I had become divided. Just the thought that maybe there was another Tara somewhere in the universe made me half of a whole now, not just one. How could this not change everything about my world?

I dropped my phone to the floor, my hands shaking.

TEN

A
T
school the next day, everyone was talking about it.

“Oh my God, and they're, like, trying to track down that lady in the picture.”

“I heard she's already come forward but they're, like, interrogating her or something?”

“That's, like, so stupid. Why would NASA interrogate her?”

“Not NASA, like, the Japanese government.”

“Nuh uh. The Japanese government can't hold her hostage. She hasn't done anything wrong.”

“Not like a hostage, you idiot. They're just questioning her.” This was Veronica, getting impatient with Alexa again.

“They have, like, Instagram, dude,” Jimmy Kaminsky announced to everyone.

“What, the Japanese?”

“No, the aliens, you idiot.”

“Don't call me an idiot, you moron. And there's no way to confirm that. It's just an image.”

It was just an image, but it had left me tossing and turning in my bed, scouring the Internet on my phone for information all night. But there was nothing new to report. Even the experts were perplexed. Who would have ever thought that my mother, of all people, had been right?
Maybe they are us
, she had said, her eyes wide, a conspiratorial tone in her voice. But she was right. I felt certain, somehow, that there was another me up there—the only other person in the universe who knew what it was like to be me. I wished I could talk to her. I wondered if
her
mother was acting strangely too.

When I left for school that morning, my mother was still perched in front of the TV, her eyes rimmed red.

“Mom, you're going to work today, right?”

She waved her hand at me. “I can't call in sick forever.”

But I was dubious. And rightfully so, because just then, she turned to me, a grin on her face.

“Unless you want to stay home with me today . . .” she said. “We could order in and watch this stuff together. It'd be so much fun!”

On any other day, I probably would have joined her, or felt grateful that she had asked, but I shook my head, and she looked back at me with disappointment in her eyes. For a moment, I felt as though I was the disapproving parent and she was the child, which was odd, because we'd never been like that. My mother rarely expressed disapproval of me, and I felt uncomfortable with the judgments floating through my
head in that moment. But I couldn't stay home with her today. There was something depressing about sitting in front of the TV with my mother all day. And besides, for the first time in years, I was excited to go to school, eager to hear what people were saying. Plus, I wanted to see if Nick and Veronica would speak to me again.

I crossed the student center slowly that morning, making sure that I walked right by Veronica, Halle, and Nick's table. “Oh hey, Tara, come here,” Veronica called out to me now. I had been eavesdropping on their conversation, and I uncomfortably wondered if it had been obvious.

“Hey, girl, feeling better?” she asked me, giving me a slightly tentative hug. “Halle stayed home today, but she wants me to let you know she's super grateful to you. Oh, and . . . I totally forgot to send you the invite to the party, with all this Terra Nova news going on!” she said, pulling out her phone. “Where is it? Hey, Nick? Will you forward Tara Halle's invitation?”

I knew it for certain then—that Veronica's invitation to Halle's party wasn't an empty one, a sympathetic gesture that could easily be undone once she came to her senses, like untying a shoelace to remove a restrictive shoe. I felt a wave of excitement when I realized this, followed by momentary panic. Everything had somehow sped up in a way that I couldn't make sense of. I thought about Mario, running too fast around the bend. The joy in his eyes, his blind enthusiasm. Was I the one running too fast now? I was standing at their table, surrounded by Hunter and Jimmy and Janicza Fulton and Ariel
Soloway. I looked around the room then, realizing that I had never before seen it from this vantage point.

“Oh yeah,” Nick said, whipping his phone out of his pocket. I was the human equivalent of a pinball machine, finally landing on the unexpected and thrilling conclusion: I was actually invited to Halle's party. Veronica had invited me. Nick was forwarding me the e-mail.

“Dude, the last time Halle threw a party, I ended up drunk, naked, and spread-eagle on a diving board!” Hunter exclaimed.

“Hunter, when are you
not
naked and spread-eagle on a diving board?” Ariel asked.

“You'll come, right, Tara?” Jimmy asked me. He put his hand on my arm, his thumb stroking my wrist in a way that surprised me.

I hesitated for a moment. “Yeah. I guess so,” I said.

“Awesome,” he said, a grin on his face. “Gives me something to look forward to.”

“I'm bringing lemon bars,” Janicza announced. “I think they're good party food.”

“Yeah, at, like, a 1950s Tupperware party.” Ariel laughed.

“Laugh all you want, but you're going to be the first person gorging on those after a couple of drinks. Remember the first time we all got drunk at Halle's?” she asked.

“Oh my God. And, like, Sarah was wearing those pajamas with the hearts on them and she, like, puked all over herself?” Ariel laughed.

“Halle's so done with her,” Veronica announced.

“What do you mean, done?” Alexa asked.

“Well, you guys heard about the accident and poor Tara, right?” Ariel, Alexa, and Janicza turned to look at me.

“Did she really hit Halle's dog?” Janicza asked.

I opened my mouth to respond, but Veronica spoke for me. “She's been disinvited from the party this weekend.”

“What do you mean, disinvited?” Alexa asked. “How can you just disinvite someone?”

“Halle doesn't ever want to see her again. I have been asked to deliver the message. She doesn't even want to speak to her.”

Alexa raised her eyebrows at Janicza, who shrugged but didn't say anything.

I was in AP English when my phone buzzed. Meg never texted or e-mailed me during class. In fact, no one texted or e-mailed me during class, and so I was surprised when I saw the text from Veronica.

OMG. You have to see this
, it said. There they were, in my hand, on my phone—the e-mail about Halle's party, and a series of texts between Veronica and Sarah—like a primer on the social dynamics of the most popular group of people at school.

To: Alexa Vanderclift , Sara Hoffstedt , Janicza Fulton , Hunter Caraway , Ariel Soloway
, Nick Osterman , Jimmy Kaminsky , Veronica Hartwicke

On Sun, August 31, 2015, at 9:25 PM, Halle Lightfoot wrote:

My loves,

In celebration of my parents' anniversary (and their annual trip to the Vineyard), our promotion to upperclass life, and the discovery of Terra Nova, I invite you to join me for an Aquarian Age fete at the Farm! Hooray!

Time: 10:00 PM this Saturday

Place: 33 Upper Cross Road, Conyers Farm 06831

Bring: yourselves, your lovers, and something from your parental bars

Forward this: to anyone you deem worthy

Drive: slow and with your brights. Deer on the loose.

Let's show those aliens how we do it on Earth!

Much love,

Halls

I couldn't help myself. I read and reread that e-mail hundreds of times that day—in between class, in the bathroom,
once I got home. Again and again, feeling the same rush of voyeuristic intimacy wash over me with every read.

And then there were the forwarded texts between Veronica and Sarah.

Umm, can you believe this? She is such a monster! And seriously, the denial makes everything so much worse!

Just want to let you know, don't bother coming to Halle's on Saturday night.

Ummmm . . . why would I not come?

Because no one wants you there, you are an animal killer, and Halle hates you.

I don't know what you're talking about, Veronica.

We all know what you did. Nick told us. Come and I'll make your life a living hell.

What the hell, Veronica? You're being such a crazy bitch.

We're all through with you. Don't bother coming, or hanging out at our table, or reaching out to anyone. DO NOT try to talk to Halle. She's through with you. Seriously, Sarah. What you did was the final straw. Unconscionable.

What did I do?

You know what you did. You killed that dog. Halle is heartbroken. Poor Tara is traumatized. And Nick too. I care about my friends, and you only care about yourself. Bye.

What dog? Seriously, V. I don't know what you're talking about!!! And I don't know why you're always being Halle's henchman. Can't you see that she's ALWAYS using you?

Sarah. Stop. Seriously. Stop it right now. People are appalled at your behavior. You've changed.

Is this because of that thing that

But here the screenshot cut off. I was fairly certain I wouldn't see Sarah at Halle's party. I had seen the way Veronica snubbed people in the past. It was surgical, clean, the mess contained, if only because no one wanted a face-off with Veronica. She could be volatile, cold, or outright cruel, but once someone was cut from the group, they were gone for good. I had seen it happen to Jesse Ballantine last year, and he ended up transferring schools second semester, effectively erased from the halls of Brierly.

Everyone was acting in bizarre and strange ways. My mother was glued to the TV instead of dancing and worrying. Nick and Veronica were being nice to me. And I—me—Tara Krishnan—I
was invited to a party at Halle's house? It went against every notion of order and logic that overnight, Sarah Hoffstedt, one of the most popular girls at Brierly, had suddenly become an outcast, and I was invited to Halle's party. Against my better judgment, I sought affirmation from Halle herself.

The next day, I saw Halle warming up on the quad on my way to swim practice. She had been on the track team since freshman year, and she had that easy sprint you saw on Nike commercials. Her form was perfect and unlabored; even her face was serene as she circled the track. She was the kind of runner who made you want to take up running. Like everything else she did, she made it look effortless.

I approached her slowly, trying to think of what I would say to her. She was doing a quadricep stretch, her heel tucked under her backside, her lithe shoulders thrown back. The sun was catching the gleam of her shoulders just so, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was at once stately and special, yet still just a regular sixteen-year-old girl on the trajectory of her life. For a moment, her world was as open as a clamshell washed on the shoreline.

“Hey, Halle?” I didn't mean for it to come out like a question, my uncertain voice meeting her powerful stance.

“Oh hey, Tara. What's up?” She smiled, looking up at me and gently placing her foot back on the ground.