Now That You're Here (Duplexity, Part I) (22 page)

There's a chair, but I can't sit still. On a wooden pallet lies a mess of copper wire and computer parts. I stay away from it, standing as close to the door as I can.

“You doing okay?” Warren yells.

“Yep,” I answer, because what am I supposed to say? That I'm scared? Of leaving. Of staying. Of Eevee finding out the truth about me and Red December.

Warren's voice comes again, starting the countdown. “Three.”

I close my eyes and imagine her. Dark hair. Sweet smile. If this goes bad, I—

“Two.”

—want my last thought to be of her. Oh God. I don't want to—

“One.”

—leave.

I press myself against the wall and wait for it….

The sound of an alarm pings into the silence. I pull the goggles off. Everything inside the cage is the same, except for a simple wisp of smoke rising from the cell phone.

I'm still him. I'm still here.

The EMP went off and I'm still here.

The door rattles, opens. Warren runs in as I run out.

Eevee rushes toward me and I catch her in my arms. Hold her tight. Look at her beautiful face. “I don't want to leave you.”

She smiles as Warren shouts, “The EMP worked! Corban's phone is toast!”

In the days after our homemade EMP fails to send Danny back home, I find myself leafing through the women's magazines my mother has accumulated. According to
Strut!
magazine, there are seven sure signs you're in love with another person:

Danny and I spend as much time together as we can. I cut out of class early or skip school altogether. He comes to my window late, after Dad has gone to bed. It's a dangerous game, but now that we're together, we don't want to waste a single minute.

We go to the mall one afternoon, share a pretzel and look at the window displays. He tells me how different everything is from the mall in his Phoenix. I show him the geocaches Warren and I have found. As we walk toward the exit, we pass a jewelry cart in the center walkway, loaded with bangles and earrings, scarves and sunglasses.

“Hey, check it out.” Danny points at a square pendant hanging from a leather thong. “This looks kinda like the necklace my mom gave me.” He turns to the saleswoman. “How much?”

While he talks to her, I read the tag.
This necklace is structured from pure bismuth. Bismuth crystals are known for their stunning iridescent colors and unique stair-step structures.

Danny takes the necklace down from the display and clasps it around my neck.

When we do go to school, I'm distracted. Danny is all I think about. I have a difficult time carrying on simple conversations, even with Warren (though I suspect he's happily having his own concentration issues, thanks to Missy). Sitting through classes, I struggle to focus, counting the minutes until I can see him again. Einstein called time a “stubbornly persistent illusion.” He couldn't have been more right. And it's never more stubbornly persistent than those last five minutes before the bell rings.

We sit side by side in the backyard, me looking at the necklace around my neck and him looking at me.

“Did you choose this one because of the fractal pattern?”

“Yes,” he says, shaking his head no.

“Look at it closer.” I hold the pendant out toward him. “See the stair-step formation? Everything is constructed in patterns. Leaves. Tree branches. This crystal.” I let it drop back to my neck and look up at the sky. “I think even the stars must have a fractal structure. We just haven't found the right vantage point yet to see it.” I take his hand and point to the creases in the curve between his thumb and index finger. “Even we have fractal patterns.”

He holds his hand up to his face for a closer look. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“I don't know. I just like understanding how things work and why.” I take his hand again and hold it in mine. “Your turn. Tell me something I don't know.”

He makes a thinking face. “Ah. How's this? My middle name is Winchester.”

“Like the gun?”

“Yep. It was my great-great-grandfather's name.”

“Daniel Winchester Ogden.” I smirk. “Makes you sound dangerous.”

“I am dangerous.” He tries to look tough, but cracks into a smile. “What about you? Why do you spell your name that way?”

“I like the symmetry of it.”

He looks at me for a moment, then shakes his head. “Most people I can figure out right away. But not you.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Not you.”

Sometimes he catches me off guard and kisses me when I least expect it. Just outside the school gates. Over homework with my dad barely ten feet away. Every kiss feels like a new, unexpected thing. And after every one, I pray that feeling never ends.

But one time he kisses me and it's different. His lips press harder, his arms hold me tighter, his hands wander.

I pull away. “Tell me. About her.”

At first he looks hurt, but then he flops back on the couch and says everything I already know.

He tells me how she was. With him.

The other Eevee is so different from me. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She isn't controlled by anyone.

“I can see why you like her.”

He scowls. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Whatever. It doesn't matter.”

I hate being jealous of her. I hate hating her.

Hating myself.

Working on English homework at Dad's, I whisper, “Don't you think it's strange that you met me in your universe, and then just
happened
to end up next to me here in my class?”

“No,” he says, not looking up from his paper. “I think it's awesome.”

“I'm serious. Isn't that a bit too coincidental?” I tap my pencil on the table. Every system has an underlying order. Every microcosm is a reflection of the macro. In an ordered system, is there room for coincidence?

Unless…

“What if you're a nonlinear complication in our deterministic system?”

He looks up. “Are you even speaking English?”

“If you're nonlinear here, are you nonlinear in every parallel system? But if you're consistently nonlinear, then that would make you linear.” My brain starts to cramp.

He puts his pencil down and stretches. “I have no idea what you're saying.”

“What if Eevee and Danny meet in every universe?”

He grins. “Sounds perfect.”

We sit at her dad's kitchen table after dinner. Sid's in the other room, keeping an ear out, I'm sure. We've been spending all of our time together,
relishing
all of our time together. I don't know who's happier I'm still here, her or me. All that time I was fighting to get home, I never realized what I had right in front of me. I miss my family, and Germ—how could I not?—but I think if they saw me now, they'd understand. They'd want this for me, too. They'd want me to embrace this life, now that I'm here.

She taps my foot under the table.
Tap tap.
I don't look up from the textbook. This time we're reading “The Lottery” for that crazy Fish she-troll. I'm at the part where Mrs. Hutchinson finds her husband and kids in the crowd.
Tap tap.

“Shhh.”

She folds her arms on the table. I pretend not to notice her smiling up at me through her eyelashes. I turn the page. She taps my foot again.

“What? I'm reading.”

She reaches out to cover the pages with her hands, but I pull the book away. “You're totally going to flunk if you don't pay attention.”

“I don't care.”

“You lie.” I start reading again just to drive her crazy. “ ‘A sudden hush fell on the crowd as…' ” The words on the page blur. Static fills my head. I feel the book fall from my hands as the pulsing takes over. Through the confusion, a woman's voice.

…can't believe you're seriously considering this.

Mom?

Two figures emerge in the haze. I can barely make them out. But then, Dad's voice.

I don't see any other way. Do you?

I fight to push through, but that other force pushes me back.

Danny? What's wrong?

They're almost in focus. My chest goes so tight I'm gonna die. I ease up, let the pulsing pound me. Cold shivers through me, and then, there they are.

Here I am.

Kind of.

The living room walls glow. The whole place hums, shifting in and out of focus. I'm so close.

Then the force slams into me, races through me, pushes me back. My world swirls into a haze and I'm falling, flailing.

The kitchen chair catches me. My chest burns, my head spins.

I was there.

I was actually there.

Across the table, Eevee stares at me, too stunned to speak.

I'm stunned, too, and not just because it happened again. That force that pushes back? I think I know what that is. Or rather, who.

It's him. The other Danny.