“No,” I gasped, surfacing. “It’s not home.”
“Well done.” Faraday’s words stroked my aching back, as the wormhole’s dark iris snapped shut and disappeared. “How do you feel?”
I relaxed into my bed of foam. “Better. Now.”
“Take a couple of minutes,” said Faraday. “And then, if you’re ready, we’ll try again.”
. . .
By the time we’d opened and closed six more wormholes, I was exhausted. The effort of holding myself together was so enormous that I felt ready to shatter.
“There has to be another way,” I panted to Faraday.
“If I could give you one, I would.” He spoke levelly, but even through the walls of the box I could smell his worry, his guilt. “Tell me to stop, Alison. That’s all you have to do.”
“You are doing amazing, Ali,” Tori told me, her voice clogged with tears. “I know you can do this. Just—hang on a little longer. Please.”
I didn’t answer. I just lay there, staring at the inside of the helmet, as the beam streaked purple across the blackness and tore open the rift again.
This time I didn’t even brace myself. I was too weak for that. I was a dry reed, a spent candle, insubstantial as a breath. My life was meaningless, my thoughts futile. If the universe wanted to erase me, in all its eternal and infinite might, who was I to resist?
In my mind’s eye I saw Faraday leaning heavily on the console, his eyes shut in anguish and his unruly hair tumbling over his forehead. I saw Tori slumped against the side of my crate, one arm slung across the lid as though she could hug me through its metal surface, and give me comfort. And I saw Mathis, disheveled and furious, smashing a chair into the door of his room again and again until it buckled, and began to give way—
Sensations poured over me, into me, filling me up and spilling over. I could feel my shell of sanity cracking, my worst fears and darkest memories trying to break through, but I had no energy left to try and hold myself together. My only thought now was for Tori and Faraday—and what would happen to them if I failed.
So instead of fighting, I surrendered. I abandoned all dignity, every pretense of shame or self-control, and threw myself wide open to it all.
The emotions poured out of me, a torrent of sobs and tears and rage, a babble of all the words I’d never spoken, all the thoughts I’d never dared voice. I loved my mother, even though her fears had haunted my childhood and left me afraid to get close to anyone. I hated my father for teaching me to avoid confrontation, and to hide from the truth instead of facing it. I missed Mel, the closest friend and worst betrayer I’d ever had. I envied Tori her popularity and her self-confidence and her loving family, even though it wasn’t her fault she had all those things and I didn’t. And I was terrified of losing Faraday, a soulmate so perfectly made for me that even now I was half afraid I’d invented him.
As the past few weeks of my life raced through my memory, I saw with painful clarity how ignorant I’d been, how many foolish mistakes I’d made. I’d resented Dr. Minta for misdiagnosing my problems and forcing medication on me against my will. I’d pitied Sanjay for living in a fantasy world, and I’d avoided Micheline because her angry cynicism and lapses into self-injury made her the last kind of person I wanted to be. But the truth was that I had no right to judge any of them, not even Kirk. Because even if I hadn’t inherited my grandmother’s schizophrenia, I was still full of ignorance and delusion and buried rage, and I needed help.
I had no idea if I was only saying these things in my mind, or right out loud for Faraday and Tori to hear. But it didn’t matter, because I’d finally reached the end of myself, all my self-reliance and denial and pride unraveling into nothingness, leaving only a blank Alison-shaped space behind. It was finished. I was done.
But just as I felt myself dissolving on the tide of my own self-condemnation, the dark waves receded, and I floated into a celestial calm.
I saw the whole universe laid out before me, a vast shining machine of indescribable beauty and complexity. Its design was too intricate for me to understand, and I knew I could never begin to grasp more than the smallest idea of its purpose. But I sensed that every part of it, from quark to quasar, was unique and—in some mysterious way—significant.
I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a piercing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase—nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it.
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose. And as long as I had a part in the music of the spheres, even if it was only a single grace note, I was not worthless. Nor was I alone.
God help me, I prayed as I gathered up my raw and weary senses, flung them into the wormhole—
And at last, found what I’d been looking for.
There was no way I should have been able to recognize Earth from such a distance, when it was nothing but a bluish-white dot among the stars. But I heard the cosmic orchestra change its tune, caught the barely perceptible buzz of the signal I would always think of as Tori’s Noise, and I knew.
“That’s it!” I yelled.
Faraday bolted upright and slapped his hand down on the console. Another pulse of light streaked past me into the wormhole, frilling its edges with a thousand un-nameable hues, as the signal from the two relays connected. Tearing off my helmet, I flung myself out of the box into Faraday’s arms, and Tori grabbed both of us simultaneously in an exuberant group hug.
“You have to stop him,” I panted at them both. “Mathis— he’s almost got the door open—he’ll be here any minute—”
“There’s no time for that,” said Faraday. “The wormhole won’t stay stable for much longer. It’s already in a state of temporal flux, and it’s only going to get worse. You and Tori have to go.”
Tori’s face sobered. She pulled the relay out of her tool kit and set it down carefully on the floor, then backed up a step, shaking out her hands and arms as though warming up for a marathon. “Okay,” she breathed. “This is going to hurt, but it’s going to get us home. I can do this.”
Faraday moved toward the console again, but I caught his hand. “Don’t stay here. Come with us.”
“I can’t.” His voice was square with resolve. “The impulse generator we rigged up isn’t stable enough. Someone has to stay on this end and keep the readings constant, to make sure you get through safely.”
I began to protest, but he stopped my lips with a finger. “You’re still young, Alison. Too young, for all that I allowed myself to forget that for a while. You need time to decide who you are and where you want to be, and I’d only get in your way.”
Hot tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to deny it, to tell him we could work things out, but there was no point. When he’d told me I was too young, he’d meant it.
“But . . . what’s going to happen to you?” I asked. “When Mathis finds out what you’ve done—”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be all right.” He took my face in his hands and brushed his lips against mine in a final, achingly brief kiss. “Good-bye, Alison.”
Then he let go of my hand and stepped back. Away from me. Forever.
Tori stood by the relay, waiting. With leaden feet, I walked to stand beside her as Faraday reached toward the console, ready to send us both home. Grief surged inside me, filling my mouth with the bitterness of unsaid words, and I almost swallowed before I remembered that I didn’t want to do that anymore.
/>
“I love you,” I blurted at Faraday.
His violet eyes met mine, deep and serene as ever. “I don’t love you.”
“Liar,” I said with a tear-stained laugh, and then his hand came down and the world splintered into a trillion pieces as the relay tore us apart.
NINETEEN (IS COMFORTED)
When I came back to consciousness I felt rock beneath me, a slab of porous black. Lichen scratched my cheek, and a potpourri of wet soil, fallen leaves and dry pine needles filled the air. Between that and the faint taste of sulphur in my mouth, I didn’t even have to open my eyes to know where I was. Faraday had kept his word, and brought us home.
“We did it!” exclaimed Tori, and panic knifed through me as all my senses protested at once. But I made myself lie still, reminding myself to accept the feeling and give it a chance to pass. If nothing else, I’d had plenty of practice.
“Sorry.” Tori dropped her voice to a whisper. “Forgot about the synesthesia thing.” She got up stiffly, rubbing her arms, and looked around. “Hey, we’re at the top of Adanac!”
“The ski hill?” I said weakly. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Faraday told the relay to move here or something, right before he sent us through. But—” she rubbed her arms—“it’s not exactly summer anymore, is it?”
Late September, judging by the color in my mind. We’d lost six weeks on the journey—that was what Faraday must have been warning us about when he said the wormhole was in a state of temporal flux.
“Come on,” Tori said. “Let’s get out of here.”
I could hold myself together for the moment, if I lay still and kept my eyes mostly shut. But my senses were still raw and my nerves fragile, and I didn’t dare move.
“You go,” I said. “Get help.”
“And leave you alone? No way.”
“Go,” I repeated. “I can’t. Until the wormhole closes . . . it’s just too much.”
Tori hesitated, then pulled off her lacy sweater and draped it over my shoulders. “Don’t be scared, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can. And even if you have to go to the hospital, I won’t forget about you. I’ll talk to the police and your psychiatrist and everybody. Whatever it takes to get you home.”
Even with the bruises on her face and the slight crook in her nose, she was beautiful. But I no longer resented her for that. This forthright, no-nonsense Tori with her obvious quirks and flaws, the one who loved to fix things and threaten people with blunt instruments, was totally unlike the pampered princess I’d always imagined her to be. And after what we’d just been through together, I was pretty sure that not even her closest friends had ever seen as much of the real Tori as I had. Just as nobody on this planet but Tori had ever seen so much of the real me.
“I know you will,” I said softly. “I trust you.”
. . .
By the time the rescuers found me I was shivering all over, but Tori was true to her word. She stayed with me as they lifted me onto a stretcher and carried me down the ski hill, insisting in fierce whispers that they walk carefully and make as little noise as possible. She refused to even give her name until they were bundling me into the back of an ambulance, and I could hear her passionately defending me to the police officers as we drove away.
Her return caused a huge sensation, of course; it was all over the news for days. Parents weeping with relief, friends and neighbors declaring that they’d always known she was alive, reporters with cameras and microphones following her everywhere she went. Everyone wanted to hear her story, but she refused to give any details. All she would say was that she was glad to be home.
My family were relieved to see me too, but they were also worried, and I couldn’t blame them. I’d run away without my medication while I was still legally in psychiatric care, and then come back six weeks later in a state almost as vulnerable and hypersensitive as the one that had landed me in the hospital in the first place. What could they do but send me back to Pine Hills?
It was two days before I was well enough to come out of my room in Red Ward, and another before Dr. Minta felt I was stable enough to move back to Yellow. It was a very different atmosphere than when I’d left, more crowded than it had been in the summer and full of strange faces and unknown names. Kirk wasn’t there anymore, or at least not at the moment, and Roberto had been discharged a month ago. Even Micheline had finished her course of treatment and gone home. The only one I recognized was Sanjay, and he was shy and evasive. He was on a different medication now, he said, and didn’t think much about aliens anymore.
But Tori had been calling the hospital every day to see how I was doing, and as soon as I was back on my feet again, she set up a meeting with me and Dr. Minta in his office.
“I know this story is going to sound crazy,” she told him, as we all sat down. She’d covered up the bruises beneath her eyes and the scratch across her cheek with makeup, and everything about her radiated health and vitality. She might as well have come in wearing a name tag reading HELLO, I’M SANE. “I mean, if it hadn’t happened to me, and if I didn’t have Alison to back me up on it, I’m not sure I’d believe any of it either. That’s why I haven’t told this story to anyone but the police, my parents . . . and now you. Because I think you have a right to know.”
And just like that, she had him. I could see Dr. Minta leaning forward with hands clasped in anticipation, like a little boy waiting for his bedtime story, and I wondered what on earth Tori was going to tell him. Not the truth, surely? And yet what other explanation could she give for everything that had happened to us?
I needn’t have worried. The tale Tori spun for Dr. Minta was dramatic, bizarre, and in parts completely preposterous, but I’d forgotten what a brilliant actress she was. When she told him that the two of us had been assaulted just outside the school by three men in ski masks, one of whom had thrown me to the ground and stuck a needle in my arm while the others dragged Tori into their unmarked van, the tremor in her voice was so convincing that I almost believed her myself.
As the van drove away, Tori had struggled with her assailants, but they’d injected her with a sedative and she lost consciousness. She’d woken several hours later to find herself strapped to a table in a stark, windowless room, where a team of doctors in surgical masks had done tests on her. They’d inserted a chip in her arm and pumped her full of experimental drugs that had changed her biochemistry—her family doctor could confirm both those things, she said, if Dr. Minta didn’t believe it. And when she’d tried to escape, they’d beaten her.
As the weeks passed and the experiments went on, Tori had lost hope of ever getting away. But then I showed up unexpectedly one night with Faraday. He’d been hired by her captors to keep tabs on the local investigation into Tori’s disappearance, and also to make sure I didn’t remember what had really happened. But he’d been horrified when he realized the kind of research his employers were doing, and how much she and I had suffered because of it. He and I had sneaked Tori out of the facility and then Faraday had flown us both back to Sudbury by helicopter, where he’d dropped us off on the top of the ski hill and then flown away.
“I don’t know where he is now,” she finished. “But Alison was the one who talked him into helping me, and without her, I’d still be back in that place. She risked everything for me, and it wasn’t her fault they gave her that weird drug that messed her up so badly. Can’t you let her go?”
Even after the space station, Tori’s resourcefulness amazed me. She’d concocted a story that served both our needs, and she’d used every ounce of her undeniable sanity to sell it. And whether he believed it or not, Dr. Minta was clearly powerless against her. He stammered out something about sympathizing with her sense of injustice, but my situation was complicated, and he had reason to believe I was still in need of psychiatric care. Not that he wanted to keep me at Pine Hills any longer than necessary, of course, but . . .
“It’s okay, Tori,” I said hastily,
noticing the belligerent angle of her jaw and the way her turquoise eyes had hardened. “Dr. Minta’s only doing his job. If he thinks I need to stay here for a few more days, then I’m willing to go along with it. Just to make sure I’m really better.”
Dr. Minta’s thick eyebrows rose, and I could tell I’d made an impression on him. He thanked Tori for coming, shook her hand, and ushered her to the door. I walked out to the corridor with her.
“Thanks for trying,” I said. “That was quite the story. I had no idea you were so creative.”
Her blank look was unnervingly convincing. “Creative? What do you mean? All I did was tell him what happened. Just like I told the police.”
I was pretty sure she hadn’t told the police that story, but I could play along. I forced a laugh. “Well, I suppose it’s a little more believable than wormholes and aliens . . . but not by much.”
For the first time since I’d known her, Tori looked uncomfortable. “Ali . . . I think you might not want to talk about that alien stuff again. Even to me. Just let it go, okay? I really think you’ll be happier if you do.” She gave me an apologetic smile, and walked away.
I watched her go, then turned back to Dr. Minta’s office. He motioned me to a seat and sat down across from me, still looking flustered. “Well, that was an interesting visit,” he said. “I’m not sure what the police investigation will turn up, but it does seem clear that she considers you to be innocent. Tell me, Alison—how do you feel about all this?”
I laced my fingers together and gazed down at them. “I’m glad Tori’s home,” I said. “I’m glad I could help her, and I’m glad she was grateful enough to try and help me. I think we’re going to be friends. But . . . I miss Faraday. I don’t think I’ll ever forget him.”
Dr. Minta was silent. Then he said, “I’ve thought some more about your case, Alison, and I believe Ms. Beaugrand has a point. You seem to have gotten through your most recent crisis without any incidents of violence or self-harm, and while I can see you’re somewhat depressed at the moment, that depression doesn’t appear to be of a suicidal nature. Your mother has expressed her desire to bring you home as soon as possible, so you have good family support. And you seem to be doing well on even a reduced dose of your medication, so I don’t see any compelling reason to keep you here.”