One Past Midnight (2 page)

Her eyes lit up. She took hold of her long strawberry-blond braid hanging over her shoulder and swayed. “Really? Me? You wouldn't mind?”

“Hey, you're the best rabbit drawer I know. You think you can draw one of those bouncy ones you showed me the other day?”

She nodded vigorously. I could already see her picturing it in her head.

“Cool. I'll make sure no one else draws on this section and tomorrow afternoon it's all yours. But you better go back to bed before Mom catches you!” Of course I could already see Mom out of the corner of my eye in the kitchen doorway, but experience had taught us all that it was easier if I got Maddie to sneak back to bed by herself. I gave the top of her head a ruffle and she flung her arms around my waist, carefully avoiding my bad side.

“Love you, Binie.” Her squeeze tore at my insides. Getting through days without her was one of the hardest things. I squeezed back.

“See you in the morning,” I said lightly.

They were the same words I'd said to her so many times. And every time I finished the sentence in the silence of my mind:
the day after tomorrow.

• • •

Mom had her back to me when I came into the kitchen. “Tea?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, slumping into one of the tarnished wooden chairs at our chipped kitchen table. Our less-than-perfect kitchen fitted in well with our coming-apart-at-the-seams house.

Mom filled up the kettle using a massive plastic gallon bottle. It was the same one we'd been using in the kitchen for the past two weeks. The problem wasn't that the pipe was clogged; the problem was that, after one too many drinks, Dad had tried to fix it. Big mistake.

Mom searched through the mugs, pulling out her favorite rose one followed by my preferred Daffy Duck mug.

“What happened?” she asked, barely taking her attention away from her task. Even at this time of night, it wasn't a surprise to see her still dressed in her work clothes, her graying hair pulled back in a tight knot, her heavily starched shirt tucked in at her slender waist. Mom and Dad were all about appearances. Mom, in particular, needed her family functional and firing on all cylinders.

“Subway stairs,” I answered.

With her shoulders set, she finished making the tea and sat across the table from me. “You should've called.”

I adjusted my sling, glad that I would only have to wear it for a few days—the cast wrapped around my thumb and
covering half my forearm was bad enough. “You would've just wanted to come and help.”
And take over
, I thought. “There was no point dragging Maddie out of bed just to sit in the stupid waiting room at the medical center. Anyway, Capri was with me.”

Mom pursed her lips as she passed me my mug. “Such a comfort. Don't suppose she's discovered the many uses of a hairbrush yet?”

I shrugged and blew on my tea. “She has a look going, Mom. She's happy with it, so what's the problem?”

Mom stared at me as if the answer to that question was oh-so-obvious. She'd prefer I hung with a different crowd. Sometimes I wished I could tell her that I did. I stared into my mug as once again I considered that, given the choice, Mom would probably want my other life for me rather than this one. But that kind of thinking was never worthwhile.

“Dad still at work?” I asked.

Mom nodded.

Dad worked long hours. He kept the drugstore open late Tuesday through Saturday, which meant he was rarely home before midnight. The drugstore would be a good business if they actually owned it, but instead they'd signed into a lengthy—and unprofitable—management contract. Even with extra staff, Mom and Dad split a heavy workload. They saw little of us and even less of one another. But they were relent-less, determined to send Maddie and me to a good college.

At least that was one thing I could do for them. Going through school twice does help in the smarts department. Last year I'd pulled out the brain gene in Roxbury—much to Capri's disgust—and even cashed in last month with a partial undergrad scholarship to Boston University.

The thing is, I'm not even excited by the whole college thing. School twice is bad enough:
college
twice will suck—and God knows I won't be able to avoid it in my other life, so I'd been hoping to skip it in this one. But when it came down to it, I just couldn't do it to Mom and Dad. Or face the wrath that would follow.

Pleasing everyone in my two lives has left me feeling raw at times. And frustrated. And exhausted. And . . . well, a lot of things I tried hard not to admit. There was no point.

“If you're hungry, there's leftover cake in the fridge.”

I shook my head. For the past week, we'd been work-ing our way through the gigantic chocolate cake Mom had

made/massacred for my eighteenth birthday.

“I grabbed something earlier,” I mumbled, looking away.

“I could've called Dr. Meadows,” she said, still hurt I hadn't contacted her.

“Mom, don't worry. Everything's okay now.” I flashed her my arm and an I'm-just-fine smile. “Wrist broken, forearm in a cast. There's nothing else anyone could do. In a few weeks it will all be back to normal.”

And that's when it dawned on me.

“Shit!” I barked, catching a mouthful of tea in my good hand. I'd been so thrown by the glitch, by seeing fruit-stand guy, I hadn't even considered the real problem.

“Sabine!” Mom snapped.

That was one thing my moms had in common: the no-swearing rule. But right then I didn't care. Mom was lucky I hadn't let the F-word fly.

“Sorry, Mom. I just . . . I remembered my final history essay is due on Monday and I haven't finished it.” I straightened my back to strengthen the lie. The days of feeling guilty about lying to my parents were long gone.

Mom looked at me skeptically. “Since when do you do homework on a Friday night?” She gestured to my arm. “And I'm sure your teacher will cut you some slack.”

“No, it's fine. I'm almost done.” I wiped my tea-wet hand on a dishcloth and grabbed my mug. “I'll go finish it now so I won't have to worry about it all weekend.”

I wove through the kitchen and up the stairs, my mind scrambling to figure out exactly how I was going to handle this one.

Broken wrist.

Two lives.

This had never happened before.

It was close to 10:00 p.m.

Shit.

Only two hours to figure out a plan.

I wouldn't be sleeping tonight. In either life.

I hated problems that flowed over—it meant I wouldn't be able to sleep before the Shift. I could already feel my palms getting clammy. It always scared me, being awake

at midnight.

I tiptoed past Maddie's room. Right then, I couldn't cope with her; I didn't have a brave face at the ready.

After loading up the pillows on my bed, I sat down, resting my arm on top of the pile.

“I am the master of my own world,” I chanted to myself. “I manage what happens to me. I can do this.” But my words were false and quickly fell away as the truth slammed into me and held on with an iron grip.

I've broken my wrist.

I. HAVE. BROKEN. MY. WRIST.

“Idiot!” My stomach tightened with fear and I tried unsuccessfully to slow my breathing.

Usually I have a built-in radar for this type of stuff. The cans and can'ts. How it all works. It's pretty simple really. My body, and anything inherent to my body—my mind, my memories—goes through the Shift. But that's it. Material things—clothes, jewelry, even nail polish—get left behind. The only other thing that stays with me is my name. For reasons I can't explain, both sets of parents called me Sabine.

Bottom line, if I cut my hair in one life, it will be changed in the other. I dyed a hidden section of hair pink once, and
although the dye didn't travel, the pigment of my hair was affected enough to look different in my other life—I've never dared to experiment further. If I'm sick in one life, then I'm sick in both. If I get a tattoo in one world—not that I plan to, much to Capri's disappointment—I'm almost certain it would only be visible in that life. Ink won't travel, though the healing pains would be felt in both. If I had my nose pierced, the hole would exist in both lives, but the ring would stay in only one.

I pressed my fingers to my temples. I hated thinking about this stuff. Most of it was just weird and made me feel . . . wrong. Like
I'm
wrong. To avoid mistakes, I was careful
all
the time—trimming my hair only when I needed to, keeping it long and its natural boring brown, never giving it the kind of style either of my worlds would really approve of. Hovering somewhere in between. Safe. That's where I stayed, all the time. Safe. Prepared. Alone.

I have two lives and yet I'm a ghost.

In less than two hours I'd be in my other life and I'd have three
very
big problems. One, I'm not supposed to have a broken wrist there and have no reason to have broken it. Two, the cast won't come with me; it's a material object. And three, it's my belated eighteenth birthday party tomorrow night, and a broken wrist will not go with my dress. At. All.

I lay back, stared at the paint peeling off the ceiling, and tried to figure out a solution. The only one that made any
sense was going to hurt. A lot. But throwing myself down the stairs when I woke up was the only way I could be sure to convincingly fake the same injury.

About half an hour before the Shift I changed out of my clothes, shimmying my fitted mini off with one hand and wriggling into my oversized T-shirt nightie. I ditched the sling; it was more hindrance than help. I left my black Doc Martens for last, wincing as I gave a one-handed pull to loosen the laces before using my feet to kick them off.

I relied on rituals. Found comfort in the patterns I'd developed over the years. I settled into bed, ignoring the sheen of sweat on my forehead and the sick feeling in my gut as I arranged myself against the pillows as usual, making sure there would be nothing out of the ordinary to return to tomorrow night.

I almost made it too.

But with only minutes to go, my mouth started its telltale watering. I had to bolt to the bathroom to throw up before hurrying back to bed before midnight struck.

The last thoughts that slipped into my mind marked the beginning of the change in my worlds.
How could this have happened? How has nothing like this happened to me before?

I knew the Shift had happened.

I'd been asleep in this life, so it took me a while to rouse my body, despite my live-wire mind. It's an awful, drugged feeling, willing your eyes to open.

The second lucidity took hold, I sat bolt upright in bed and felt the panic flood my chest. I should have known better. Eighteen years of going through the Shift, I shouldn't have been so frightened . . . but I was. Every. Single. Time. It petrified me.

I concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths. My good hand slid out over warm silk sheets that exposed no signs I'd been somewhere else for the past twenty-four hours. Nothing about this world was aware I'd been cheating on it, living another life. Without looking, I knew it was the exact same time it had been when I left.

My eternal enemy . . . midnight.

I'd done all sorts of things to prove it, to document the truth. When I was fifteen, I filmed myself through the midnight minutes. Not so much as a
Blair Witch
moment. One second I was there, the next I had a confused look on my face.
I
could tell something about me was different in that blink of an eye, but there was nothing that would prove it to anyone else.

Then there was the time I lit a match a couple of seconds before midnight to see what would happen. That was not a good idea. My bed—with me in it—almost went up in smoke. I just wasn't quick enough to pull myself together after the Shift and blow it out before it touched my fingers.
Hey, you live and learn.

I slipped out of bed and made my way to the bathroom to wash my face. But with still-sleepy legs my judgment was off and klutz mode set in. I staggered into the door frame, my bad arm taking the brunt of the impact.

I froze, dreading the shooting pain that would follow. But after a few stunned seconds I was still waiting for the agony to set in.

“No way,” I gasped, slowly letting my not-so-broken—actually not-hurt-at-all—arm straighten and move about. I fisted my fingers over and over.

“No. Way.”

• • •

I wanted to spiral.

I wanted to press all internal panic buttons and scream for help.

I wanted to understand for once.

No, that wasn't it. What I wanted . . . it was the same thing I'd always wanted, just in different packaging.

I wanted this not to be my life.

I wanted
this
—whatever it was that made me this two-lives person—not to be the definition of who I am.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “And you can't do anything about that,” I scolded myself, letting out a resigned breath.