Relativity (27 page)

My eyes seal shut again. They need to stay closed for a long, long time.

“She’s over here!” Dad calls.

“You found her?” It’s Willow’s voice, strained with joy.

“Finally.” This voice sounds irritated, put out. It can only be Kandy.

Linda Bell’s brass nameplate is dangerously close to the edge of her desk. I nudge it back, away from the tug of gravity.

“Are you comfortable?” she asks. “Let’s sit by the window.” She motions to two oversized leather chairs.

I carry my cane, not needing to use it for such a short distance.

“How’s physical therapy going?” Linda asks once we’re settled into our seats.

“I walked ten minutes on the treadmill today,” I say.

“Great.” She follows my gaze out the window. “The mums are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Though they’re a reminder that it’s autumn, and the weather will be turning cold,” Linda says, leaning forward. Her blond bangs are cut precisely. A straight line, underlining the brim of her hat.

“Not many people wear hats.” In the corner there’s a rack, loaded with feathery, lacy, or jeweled caps. “Older women, mostly.”

She nods. “I like hats, and you like science.”

“Yes.”

“Physics? Chemistry? Biology?”

“All of it.”

We sit in silence. A wall clock ticks. I stare at the mums, orange and yellow.

“Do you remember our session on Friday?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t remember the hats.”

I glance at the hat rack. Of course I remember them. “I guess not,” I say.

“Have you been sleeping?” Linda asks.

“Yes.”

She waits for me to elaborate, but I don’t.

“Is it hard to motivate in the mornings, to get out of bed?”

“No.”

“I hear you’ve been to Cleveland, and you had a delicious steak dinner.” She says “delicious” like she’s in a commercial for the steakhouse.

“Yes.”

“How’s your appetite?”

“Look, I get it. You want to know if I’m depressed, if I’m sleeping all day, not eating, still interested in the usual stuff.”

Linda smiles. “Well? Are you depressed?”

“My head feels like it’s full of helium.”

“How do you mean?”

“Detached. Floating above my body.”

“How so?”

“Never mind.”

“And how does your leg feel? Does it feel detached, too, or are you getting used to it using it again?”

I tap the cane against my atrophied leg, finally free of its bandages and brace. “I’m lucky I didn’t lose it.”

“That’s a positive attitude.”

She waits again for me to say something. I admire the mums, notice a bowl of chocolates wrapped in silver-and-red foil.

“Ruby, we have a lot of time to talk. As many hours as you want, over the next month, or even year.” She opens her hands, palms up. “What we need to know now, for the police, is whether there’s someone we should be looking for.”

“Nope.”

“Your story …” Her voice trails off. “It’s missing a few pieces.”

“Of course it is. I got struck by lightning. I’m a little messed up. I can’t remember everything.” I cross my arms across my chest.

She sighs. The clock ticks. Outside, a truck backs up—
beep, beep, beep
.

“You don’t remember where you were? You don’t remember where you slept, or what you ate?”

Yes. But you’re the last person I’d tell. Do you want me to land myself in a mental ward? No thanks! “Sorry,” I say. “It’s all blank. The doctors are calling it post-traumatic amnesia.”

“Is it possible you’re pretending to have memory problems?” she asks.

“Not that I recall.”

She flutters her eyelids, stifling an outright eye roll. “Do you remember where you were going?”

“I was boldly going where no one has gone before.”

“Ruby.” She spits my name out, like it’s a gulp of sour milk. She’s lost her patience, same as last session when I used my “boldly going” line. It’s just so hard to resist.

“How many sessions have we had?” I ask.

“This is our fourth,” she says. “You were in the hospital a week, in a rehab center a week, and you’ve been home for two. Last week you started school again.”

I nod earnestly, like she’s telling me something I don’t already know.

“Please answer my question,” she says. “When you left home on Friday, the twenty-first of August, did you have a destination in mind?”

I shrug. “It’s too bad my digital camera got fried by the lightning. I bet that would’ve provided some clues.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“The face of my kidnapper.”

“Are you joking? I can’t tell.”

“I’m joking.”

Linda closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and blows it out slowly through her mouth. I can smell the morning coffee on her breath. “So you ran away. You’d had enough of the stepmother and stepsister, and the move to Ennis. You were heading back to Walnut Creek, California.”

“You figured it out!” I slap my hand on my knee. “Eureka!”

Linda bites her lower lip, looks out the window. There’s something familiar about that gesture. Ah, yes. That’s what Mom does when she’s worried. Dad rubs his temples, Mom bites her lower lip.

Linda takes a moment to regroup. Then, with startling enthusiasm, she tries, “I must know where you got that grape shampoo. It’s so much nicer than the brand I’ve been using. It’s wonderful. Do you know where I could buy some?”

“Not offhand.”

Linda strums her fingers on the arm of her chair. “We can’t trace the manufacturer. We’d like to know who carries that product so we can get some geographic clues as to where you were.”

I shrug. “I can’t help.” It’s the same sequence every session: she asks her rehearsed questions, I get annoyed and cop an attitude, she gets huffy. Repeat, repeat. I wonder how much she charges per hour.

“And what about that book of codes?” she asks. “Where did you get that?”

“At a used bookstore,” I say. “Back in California.” This is what I say whenever Ó Direáin’s journal comes up. “When do I get my stuff back from the police, anyway?”

“When they decide to stop the investigation,” she says.

I fold my arms across my chest and glower.

“I understand that you’re angry,” she says. “The way your father uprooted your life. You must miss California. What was it like?”

“Can we just skip the psychobabble?”

Linda straightens her posture and glares at me. “Fine. Then tell me about the photo. The one of you and your father, and the boy, and the woman who looks like an age-progressed version of your mother.”

“You can do anything on a computer. Photoshop is amazing.”

“Why would you want to create a family photo like that?”

“For fun?”

She smiles. “It’s not complicated. It’s a fantasy you’re trying to actualize. You want an ideal family, something you’ve never had.”

“I’m fine with the family I have,” I say emphatically. “Right here, right now.”

At least I’m working on being fine with it. I have to admit, autumn in northeastern Ohio is spectacular. I’ve added fall leaves to my list of jaw droppers conjured up by Mother Nature. Man, what George and his sketchbook could do with all those colors. And Willow took me to an apple orchard a few days ago. For the first time I tasted real, fresh, apple cider. I can’t get it out of my mind.

She goes on. “Tell me more about your magic tree. You believe the tree was mystical somehow.”

“I never said that.”

“You did,” she insists.

“I was confused when the search party found me. I was in medical distress. You can’t take what I said seriously.”

“So you don’t think it was a magic tree?”

“Magic? No,” I say. “But in the end it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Why not?”

“Because theories are just that—theories. And because it’s gone now. Burned to a crisp.” I picture the tree, what’s left of it: a sizzled, dead mass of skyward blackened fingers.

“You sound disappointed about the tree.”

“I think that everyone’s a little disappointed.” I reach into the glass dish and find a piece of chocolate labeled
DARK
.

“In what way?”

“You were hoping for a Satanic kidnapping. Something juicy.” I peel the foil wrapper off the chocolate, roll it into a ball between my fingers. A tiny bit of aluminum, a decent conductor of electricity. I look at the wall outlets, the ceiling fan, the computer on Linda’s desk. Electricity flows all around us. Strands of Linda’s hair jut at angles along the edge of her hat. Static electricity. Outside, in the atmosphere, the electromagnetic force. The ionosphere is pulsing with it. So much is powered by the invisible.

“Hoping for a Satanic kidnapping?” Linda almost lets an excited smile turn her lips. “Why would you say that? Is that what happened?”

“Did you know that electric eels can produce a five-hundred-volt blast?”

Linda smiles with a look of barely controlled patience. “How interesting. A science fact. Are you studying eels at Ennis High this week?”

“No.” I shake my head, close my eyes, savor the melting chocolate in my mouth. Chocolate is made of atoms. Atoms are made of electrons, neutrons, and protons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Quarks are made of vibrating loops of string. Vibrating and warping the fabric of space, producing black holes, tunnels, and shortcuts from universe to universe.

But of course, string theory is just that. A theory. An idea, a hypothesis, a big fat maybe.

“What did you say about strings?” Linda leans in.

“Oh, was I talking out loud? I didn’t realize.”

Linda nods. “Of course you didn’t.” She scribbles something on her legal pad.

The clock ticks, and ticks, and ticks.

“If you’re not in the mood to share,” Linda finally says, “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

I stand up too abruptly and lose my footing. Linda lunges forward to help, and I get my cane underneath me just in time.

“Are you steady?” she asks.

“I’m fine. I did ten minutes on the treadmill today,” I say. “Did I mention that already?”

“Yes,” she says. “You did.”

Locker doors slam shut, and within seconds the hallway clears. I can’t remember the room number—again. Is art class in 106 or 109? I stare helplessly up and down the hall at the closed classroom doors. I heave my new backpack off and search through folders, looking for my class schedule. It’s not post-traumatic amnesia. It’s my seventh day of school, and I don’t have everything memorized yet. Ennis High has this crazy rotating schedule, and an army of substitute teachers. It’s a little disorienting.

“Over here,” Kandy growls impatiently. She’s behind me, a wave of perfume. “Hurry up before the bell rings.”

Ever since I came back home through the tree, Kandy has been civil. Not friendly, but at least I don’t feel like she’s ready to disembowel me with scissors. Yesterday, after I’d showered and was heading
to my room in my towel, I caught her staring at my bare, skeletal leg with a look of pity, or maybe disgust, or guilt.

The bell rings as I sit down and hook my cane onto the back of my chair. Mrs. Gambier flutters in, a commotion of file folders, wrinkled clothes, and a stained mug, which I sincerely hope is for cleaning paint brushes and not for drinking. She can’t find room on her desk for everything, so she dumps the folders onto her chair. Papers spill onto the floor.

“Give me a moment!” She’s breathless, as usual.

I sneak a glance at my phone. Contraband. But Principal Mather and Mr. Burton made an exception for me for the time being, so my caseworker can keep tabs on me. Or in case the police need to reach me with questions or information regarding my kidnappers. Here at school people don’t even bother whispering wild theories behind my back. I can hear them in the halls: She disappeared, was tortured for information with electrocution. Mafia, I’m telling you.

Yeah, that’s the running theory. The mob is after us.

No new text messages. I’m due for one from George; he’s been sending at least two a day. Faithfully. And I’ve been responding. Happily. While I was in the hospital, Dad called to tell him I got struck by lightning, but I haven’t said a thing about the tree or Ó Direáin or quantum physics, because I still don’t know how to explain.

I stick with safe stuff: hygiene-impaired lab partners, football pep rallies, and did-you-know science trivia. A cockroach can live a week without its head. I tell him that the themed cafeteria lunches aren’t so bad after all. One of the lunch ladies is Greek, so every once in a while we get a feta and spinach dream wrapped in phyllo dough. George’s
replies are super-quick, which makes me love him all the more. He tells me about what’s going on on his end: the East Bay Café is changing ownership and they’re taking the couches out. Aliens abducted coffee shakes & put pinot noir in their stead. I’m not fooled. He’s bombing chemistry and wishes I were there to help him. Back in 1789 chem class had to memorize 33 elements. Instead of 118. Screw progress!!!

Of all the things I want to tell him, I wish I could tell him we kissed. We kissed! On a park bench in downtown Ó Direáin, in Universe Four. And again outside Shanghai, after talking about LEGOs and wildflowers that only grow on Mount Diablo. And once again, in Universe Seven, under a ceiling painted with glow-in-the-dark stars. A love-buzzed feeling surges through me just thinking about his biceps.

My phone lights up, but it’s only a text from Willow. All okay today? She sends the same exact message, every day. Yep, I respond and tuck the phone away.

Mrs. Gambier claps her hands. “Attention!” She finally has her supplies precariously arranged on her desk. “Just yesterday, I had a wonderful conversation with Mr. Manning about something called dark adaptation. Has anyone heard of this phenomenon?”

Sure, I’ve heard of dark adaptation. I raise my hand, but she’s too excited to stop.

“When you go star gazing, you have to let your pupils adjust. After about thirty minutes, they go through dark adaptation.” Mrs. Gambier opens her eyes wide, as if to illustrate. “There’s a pigment called visual purple that builds up in the retina, and then you can see. You can see thousands of stars. Millions!”