Scream and Scream Again!

  “I know, I know, my sightwriting is so bad,” Hadron said sheepishly. “Okay, the asterisk at the bottom left is what you call the Big Bang—the beginning of everything. As we go to the right, the universe expands. The single dark line that extends from the asterisk? That represents us—well, the mass of gas and elements that became Earth. The squiggly lines that look like a river, that’s where billions of years go by. But if I put them in from the beginning, the graph would be too long.”

  “What about the second asterisk?” I asked. “And the other lines?”

  “The second asterisk happened sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the dinosaurs,” Hadron replied. “An asteroid hits the planet. There’s a massive series of collisions on an atomic level. Quarks and bosons go wild. Matter begets antimatter. Thousands of parallel realities form—literally entire, different worlds all existing at the same time, all invisible to one another. They begin as mirror worlds, all looking the same. But little things happen in each. A mutant form of paramecium here, an odd microbe there. Tiny changes have big consequences. The realities begin to develop in different ways. Some of them are unstable and go extinct. Many of them develop intelligent life, like us. Others semi-intelligent, like you. We are the dark line that arcs across the top. You’re the other dark line.”

  “And the little arrow at the bottom?” I said, moving closer. “Is that pointing to now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me I’m crazy, but it looks like our two realities are about to merge.”

  Hadron nodded. “Our quanta are converging, the particle spins aligning.”

  “Like I said.”

  “This is a good thing for your people, of course. You get the benefit of an awesome world. There are no wars. People are productive. We have always harnessed free energy from the sun. It has never occurred to anyone to mine fossil fuels. Poverty is unheard of. You have what you want, when you want it.” Hadron smiled. “The secret, Justin, is that the convergence already began generations ago. Points of confluence have opened up all around the world—odd little portals between the two realities. . . .”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “Like the space under the platform at Fifty-Ninth Street.”

  Hadron smiled. “The portals are relatively stable, but they do move a bit, and they’re invisible to the naked eye. Which is why our scientists developed a special viewing mechanism.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw Hadron reaching for those orange sunglasses. I sank into my chair and shook my head as the reality sank in. “The glasses. That’s why you wanted them. And I almost prevented you. We could have been killed because of me. . . .”

  The graphic disappeared and the shelves began to emerge from the wall again. Hadron leaned closer toward me. “Over generations, there has been leakage through the portals—both ways. The first happened during the Crusades, when three gladiators from your world, brandishing spears and smelling like horse manure, appeared during a global forum on water filtration in our world. That was entertaining. Quite a few leaks to your world, too. A rather brilliant fellow called Plato. A family known as Gandhi, and a quirky soul who went by Einstein.”

  “We got the better deal,” I said numbly.

  “But there’s a problem, Justin. These leaks prevent the convergence from completing. The worlds cannot merge until all the leaks have been returned to their proper reality. Which is where I come in. I am a Seeker. My job is to bring the leaks back. When our work is done, no more impediments. The worlds combine. Your New York City will look like ours.”

  I nodded. “So . . . no Columbus Circle. Or Times Square or Chinatown or the Statue of Liberty . . .”

  “Or the Five Corners School for the Unconventionally Abled. Or the sunglasses racks at the S&W Hardware and Deli.” Hadron put her hands on my shoulders. Her smile filled me with a sudden deep warmth. “You will never be ridiculed again, Justin. In no time, you’ll be with your friends and family. They will have to adjust to all this. But they will. Trust me. And they’ll love Bruno.”

  Bruno, who had fallen asleep, farted.

  “But what if you don’t collect all the leaks?” I asked.

  Hadron shrugged. “We will be like two north pole magnets, and eventually, the lines will diverge again for another few million years. Your world will continue in exactly the way it is heading. Toward absolute, barbaric chaos.”

  Outside the window a kid flew by, doing a loop the loop on an invisible hoverboard. He spotted me through the window, grinned, and waved. From the wall a stove emerged, opening to reveal a pungent, steaming lasagna. My mouth began to water.

  Hadron laughed. “Enjoy. And get a good sleep. Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to the YE—young explorers. Our version of school. You split into topic groups—travel, tech, food, story creation, music. It’s fun. You’ll like it.”

  The door opened in the wall, and she gave me a little salute as she went through.

  The lasagna was amazing. Better than my dad’s, which is saying a lot. But after I’d taken a few bites Bruno awoke with a start and began yapping. “Hungry?” I said, lifting him up and offering him a forkful of lasagna. But he just kept licking my face and tickling me so that I could barely stop laughing.

  As I wrestled with him on the sofa, I glanced up at the flat-screen TV. The Guitar Hero logo splashed on the screen, and I spotted a Stratocaster by the sofa that I hadn’t noticed before. “Whoa, cool—want to dance?” I asked Bruno.

  He wagged his tail and began wiggling like crazy.

  I put him down and picked up the guitar. I started to play and dance, awash in the aroma of oregano and tomato sauce.

  I knew I wouldn’t be going to sleep anytime soon.

  The voices woke me up in the middle of the night. I’d fallen asleep with Bruno and the guitar beside me on the floor. The TV screen was black.

  As I staggered to my feet, I realized my clothes were still foul and stinky from the subway, and I should probably take a shower. I heard a flurry of giggles and whispering from outside, but I figured it was just some hovering kids.

  I looked out the window. It was dark, but a soft light suffused the area below.

  Weird. All I could see was a stretch of low trees and bushes leading to the shore. So I turned to the bathroom. But before I could shut the door, I heard the voices again.

  Now I was feeling paranoid. “Did you hear that, Bruno?” I whispered.

  “Yap yap,” Bruno yapped. “Yap yap YAP yapyapyap!”

  I took that to mean yes.

  One last look.

  I went to the window and peered to the right and left. I felt the entire room start to move, turning with my glance. Like it was reading my mind and wanted to help me. I lost my balance, and my hand slammed down on the candy cabinet, nearly smashing a pair of glasses.

  Hadron’s glasses.

  As I picked them up, Bruno started growling, sinking back on his haunches.

  “Dude, sorry, I didn’t break them,” I said.

  “Grrrrrr,” Bruno replied.

  The orange frames were kind of cool, I had to admit. I put them on and struck a rock hero pose, but Bruno had disappeared behind the sofa.

  “You are so weird,” I said.

  As I lifted my arm to remove the glasses, I caught a glimpse of something out the window.

  My arm stiffened.

  Three hairy faces were peering in. From the same body. In the midst of their foreheads were gaping toothless mouths, dripping a milky liquid. Diamond-shaped eyes radiated from the chins, shooting darts of light. When the creature saw me, it let out a squeal, waving a quartet of snakelike tentacles just below its shoulders. It rocketed backward like a frightened squid, into a floating group of similar three-headed creatures that were now chittering wildly and training their eyes on me like spotlights.

  I tore off the glasses and dove after Bruno.

  I don’t know how long I stayed behind the sofa. My mind kind of went blank, and my body froze. I had thrown off the glasses, and now they were
on the floor. Bruno had snuggled against me for a while and then wandered out into the room.

  Finally, I emerged. The window was clear of monsters. Somehow Bruno had found a bowl of kibble that had materialized out of nowhere.

  I stood. I gathered myself. Okay. I was tired. I hadn’t slept. Leaking between quantum realities—or whatever they were called—was hard on a person. It had to be.

  I was seeing things. That’s all. I still needed that shower and maybe some more food.

  Avoiding the window, I ran into the bathroom. Hanging on the back of the door was a pair of jeans and a T-shirt exactly my size. A pair of boxers and socks lay on top of a brand-new pair of Converse sneakers on the floor. I tossed my old clothes aside, took the shower, and then put on the new wardrobe. Everything smelled so fresh. I felt like a new person.

  As I scooped all the stuff out of my old pocket, my phone rang.

  I nearly dropped it. I hadn’t thought of using it at all. I had assumed an alternate reality would be out of network.

  The caller ID was an unreadable string of weird characters, but I answered it anyway. “Hello?”

  “Justin, it’s Hadron,” the voice said. “Did I leave my glasses there?”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “I figured. I’ll be there in five. And Justin?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t put them on, okay? Under any circumstances. They will blind you completely.”

  “Um . . .”

  “You didn’t put them on, did you?”

  “No!” I lied.

  “Good.”

  As she hung up I dumped the phone into my pocket, along with my cash and all my other stuff. I burst out of the bathroom, pushing the hair out of my eyes. Bruno came scampering up to me. His tail was wagging, and he had the sunglasses in his teeth.

  “I lied to her, Bruno,” I said. “But—but she lied to me. She said those things would blind me.”

  Bruno began yapping loudly. He was trying to tell me something. As I lifted him he extended his neck, pushing the glasses toward my face.

  “YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP!”

  “All right, all right.” I set Bruno down and took the glasses. I was curious now. As I slipped them on, I glanced about the room. It looked darker, but the window was a rectangle of soft light. Outside was a blur of motion, black figures passing back and forth.

  I went closer.

  The air was thick with three-headed hairballs, with tentacles like a squid but legs like a human. They were shirtless, revealing a hairy rack of compact tubes along each side of their torsos. The tubes were the size of toilet paper rolls and throbbed as they moved, acting like jet-propulsion engines.

  As I pressed my nose against the glass, I noticed two groups of the hideous creatures gathered closely on either side of the window, looking at me. As if they’d been waiting just out of sight, hiding.

  I jumped back. Who were they? Stalkers? A study group? I felt like a zoo animal.

  Now my eyes were taking in the entire room. I’d been so focused on the scene outside, I’d never turned inward. The smooth walls were a hodgepodge of tubes, wires, sprockets, and gears. The stove, the shelves, the TV, and a dozen other appliances were crammed together on wheeled metallic platforms. Everything that had popped in and out of sight through creamy white walls—they were all there, along with the mechanisms that moved them.

  This was why she’d told me not to put on the glasses. It wasn’t that they’d blind me. This was the opposite of being blinded. I was seeing everything the way it really was.

  I glanced down at Bruno.

  But Bruno was no longer there. In his place was a greenish insect-like creature with a segmented body, hinged arms, a beaked mouth, and two big blue eyes on stalks.

  “If I were you,” he said, “I would go now.”

  The screech was music to my ears.

  My arms were tucked by my side, my back flush against the track bed between the rails. As the C train’s soot-blackened chassis passed inches above my nose, I laughed.

  All I could think was that Hadron was wrong.

  Our people were not semi-intelligent. At least not me.

  The escape had happened so fast. The last few minutes were running through my brain like a movie on fast forward. Back in the room I’d known enough to listen to Bruno. I’d drawn shades over the apartment window and snuck out the door. Running around the back of the building, I’d taken a route along the shore and finally circled back to find the hoverbus. I’d climbed aboard, looking calm and collected. I got off at the stop in front of the gardens and raced across the field. Putting my glasses back on, I saw that the gardens were patches of steaming swampland. The field was a smoky, parched desert plain, and in the midst of it was a giant black hole.

  As I prepared to jump, a three-head came jetting toward me. I knew even before hearing the voice that it was Hadron. She pleaded with me to give her back the glasses. She warned me I’d be sorry. She promised explanations. She said if I went, it was all over.

  Of course I jumped.

  The trip through was painful. As if my body had been vaporized and then reassembled. But when I felt myself on the track bed, I quickly tucked myself out of harm’s way. And now here I was, lying in garbage and a foul pool of liquid I did not want to try to identify. My lungs felt seared by the burning metallic stink, and I didn’t know if my eardrums would survive the noise.

  But I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world. Or any other world.

  When the train finally stopped, I heard muffled screams from the platform. People had seen my body, I guess. The train must not have made it all the way into the station because footsteps clomped overhead as passengers walked toward the front to exit. I could hear sobbing. Speculating who had died. Some claimed they saw two kids. Three. A girl and a dog. A group of Christmas carolers. A giant rat. That last one really hurt my feelings.

  I finally shimmied my way up the track until I could see a gap between two of the train cars. There, I was able to sit up, grab on to a bumper, and hoist myself up.

  As I rose through the gap, steadying myself on my elbows, I stared through the open door into one of the cars. I still had the glasses on. A group of people were kneeling around an older man who had fainted and was now slowly coming to. Through the glasses’ lenses, everything looked exactly normal—the track, the train car interior, the people. No three heads. No optical illusions.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

  They all turned. A few of them gasped out loud. The old man fainted again.

  Everyone else ran toward me. Several of them reached down and lifted me into the warm train car. They were shouting so loud, I couldn’t understand a word. Their eyes were wide, their jaws open, like they’d just seen Santa Claus.

  “Ho-ho-ho,” I said.

  I’m not sure anyone heard me. But I was safe. And I was home!

  “Falalala . . . lalala . . .”

  A week after my return, we had the biggest holiday party ever in my house—and Lucia Liberatore was singing straight at me. I hoped my face wasn’t too red.

  Luckily, the Vanderdonck High School Chamber Singers were dressed in normal clothes. As they caroled, our fireplace crackled behind them. The living room smelled like a pine forest. Dad had thrown out our old plastic Christmas tree and bought the biggest real tree sold by the plaid-shirted Canadians who camp out every December at our corner. When they realized he was my dad, they gave it to him for free.

  People I barely knew had shown up for the party, including one of the Canadian tree people. Everyone wanted to toast and congratulate me.

  The story of my miraculous survival was all over the media. I had to wear makeup for the TV interviews. As for Hadron, here’s the weird thing: Even though lots of witnesses had seen her, felt her plow into them on the platform, reached down to her when she was on the track—the fact that no trace of her had been found made their claims all seem ridiculous. Police vowed to search, but the only people
taking her existence seriously were conspiracy bloggers who spoke about an orange alien probably also responsible for 9/11, climate change, and human sacrifices in a secret society of corporate execs in Northern California. One by one, eyewitnesses began recanting every day—except Jacob Schmendrick, who stood by the story, but no one ever listened to him anyway.

  I hadn’t told anyone what really happened. To avoid questions about the glasses, I’d stuck them in my pocket as soon I was lifted into the train car. I thought about throwing them out, but I hadn’t. I’d carried them around every day, including at the party. I guess I needed a reminder that the whole thing had been real. Honestly, though, the frames were pointy and beginning to feel really uncomfortable.

  I slipped them out of my pocket and put them on the coffee table.

  In the week since the adventure, Hadron had not returned. Which made me think that maybe the glasses were unique. Maybe by taking them through the portal, I had blocked the convergence forever. Eventually, the lines will diverge again for another few million years, Hadron had said. Which was fine with me. I’d take our broken reality over their idea of perfection any day.

  After the party I promised myself I would throw the glasses into the fireplace.

  “We bought you a present!”

  The voice startled me out of my thoughts. Lucia was sitting next to me on the sofa. Another singer sat next to her, giggling. Jacob sat on the sofa arm, but it cracked, so he quickly stood back up.

  As they all began singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” my mom entered the room carrying a guitar in a case marked TAYLOR. I started to cry.

  “Only the best for you,” Mom said.

  “Play it!” someone yelled, and everyone else joined in.

  I took the guitar out of the case. It was gorgeous. I couldn’t really play it without an amp, but I strapped it on and struck a chord anyway, to wild applause. Lucia took the sunglasses off the coffee table and put them on my face, for effect.

  I let out a yelp.

  Everyone must have thought it was part of the rock-star act because they all applauded and laughed. But they weren’t seeing what I was seeing. They weren’t looking at Lucia Liberatore.