“You’re right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done it. I just . . .”
“I get it. She saved you; you think you owe her a debt.” Eli shook his head. “You don’t anymore—that debt has been repaid.”
I couldn’t force myself to put a lie into words so I changed the subject. “We’re getting closer,” I said. It was true, even if we weren’t quite there yet.
When we went through the portal, we had some of Reid’s father’s notes. From them we’d started trying to re-create his machine that had opened the portal and gotten us here. It wasn’t easy, even with the notes. We didn’t understand a lot of them, and building this thing from scratch in Reid’s foster parents’ garage had its problems even if we knew what we were doing.
Reid pulled the car into his driveway and slammed it into park. It felt deliberate, like he was disagreeing with me.
“We’re so fucking close, I can practically taste it,” Eli said. “Before summer we’ll be home, and you’ll be so famous, you’ll have to fight the chicks off. That’ll make you forget about the ones here.”
I nodded, despite the tightening in my chest. I wanted to get us home. I needed to. It was my fault we’d gone through the portal, and we’d been here so long I was having trouble remembering my real life: my parents and my brother. I had a hard time picturing their faces or hearing their voices. I had to get back to them.
I just didn’t want to forget Janelle.
As we got out of the car, I caught sight of Reid’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
He was still pissed.
The next morning I officially became a stalker.
I thought about dropping it. I knew I should. Eli had been right. Janelle didn’t know me, and checking up on her was borderline creepy, or just plain creepy, but it was daylight, and I wasn’t following her home. I was a friendly, good-intentioned stalker. I just wanted to see that she was okay and maybe get the chance to talk to her. At least that was what I told myself. They probably all say that.
During lunch I hacked into the school’s intranet with a password I’d lifted from my counselor and gave myself two third-period classes, something I could easily fix later without anyone being the wiser. Then I ditched biology. My teacher didn’t take attendance, and I wasn’t known for class participation, so it was unlikely he’d notice my absence, or care.
I headed into Janelle’s English class a few minutes late. This teacher, Ms. Kompt, apparently did take attendance. She had the screen open on her computer, and everyone in class was writing silently at their desk. Only a few looked up at me. One of them was Reid, and from the look on his face, I knew I’d have to explain this later.
Ignoring him, I handed Ms. Kompt the paperwork I’d printed out. “I think the schedule change is wrong. I’ve already filed my paperwork to have it fixed, but they said to come here anyway.”
She sighed and handed me a copy of Lord of the Flies, a book I’d actually enjoyed reading a few years ago. “Well, just grab an open seat. The prompt is on the board. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
I didn’t respond. That I would learn what I needed to in a classroom at Eastview was doubtful. Not that it was a bad school. It wasn’t, I guess. But to get home, I needed to know things beyond what Eastview’s educational system was equipped to give me.
Most of the open seats were in the back. I scanned them to see which was closest to Janelle. Then I saw her.
Her face was a little bruised, but she looked as beautiful as she always did. Her eyes were downcast, and she was writing something on her paper. Like this was just another day. I felt strangely proud of her for holding her own. For putting up a fight.
She was fine. I knew I should just leave. It wasn’t too late. If I turned around and left, changed my schedule back, or even just left for the day, nothing would have changed.
“Ben?”
I turned back to Ms. Kompt.
“Any seat will do.”
I nodded and made my way to the open seat right behind Janelle. I held my breath as I passed her, just waiting for her to look up and ask me why I was stalking her.
She didn’t look up.
I sat down behind her and rummaged through my backpack as the teacher started moving around the room, checking on everyone’s progress. When I had a broken pencil and wrinkled piece of loose-leaf paper, I looked at the prompt on the board.
Are humans inherently good or inherently evil? Support your position with at least three examples.
That was a complicated question. Something that would realistically take much more than ten minutes of free-writing time. It wasn’t black-and-white. Circumstances needed to be factored in.
The teacher paused at Janelle’s desk. She didn’t say anything at first, but when Janelle didn’t offer up any information, she said, “What happened?”
“Skiing accident,” Janelle said without looking up from her paper.
Almost everyone in class snickered at that. They’d already heard what happened yesterday, and this was San Diego in March. There weren’t any places to go skiing after school around here.
The teacher pressed her mouth into a straight line. She knew it was a lie, but she just turned to me and tapped my blank paper. I nodded and started writing the question down for good measure.
“Hey, J,” whispered the kid next to her. Chuck something. “What was the fight about?”
She didn’t answer.
“I heard you’re sleeping with Matheson.” He clutched his chest. “Say it ain’t so.”
“And you’re dumb enough to believe that?” Janelle rolled her eyes. “He texted me about homework. Brooke had to come and warn me to stay away from him.”
“Who threw the first punch?”
Janelle turned to him. “I might have told her that if she had to warn me to stay away from her boyfriend, she didn’t have a very good hold on him.” She smiled. “It might not have been the best thing to say.”
Chuck snickered. “So you’re still saving yourself for me?”
“You’re delusional.” She shook her head and looked back at her paper.
I wanted to say something, to reach out, touch her shoulder and tell her she was better than the whole lot of them. I knew she was. She saved my life.
But contrary to what Reid and Eli thought, it wasn’t just that. Janelle was different. She read The Great Gatsby during lunch, had actual conversations with teachers, was nice to underclassmen, volunteered at a tutoring center. She was loyal to her friends, and she took good care of her brother. I’d seen her walking him home from middle school and cheering for him at the community pool. She was sarcastic and funny, though she probably thought she was being aloof.
She was like me, or not exactly, since I didn’t do any of those things. I wanted to, though. Even though they weren’t the cool things, if I wasn’t so preoccupied with trying to get us home, I might have done them.
I wanted to do them.
Other than Eli and Reid, I didn’t have a meaningful connection with anyone here. My parents and my brother, they weren’t here—they were in another world. I hadn’t formed bonds with any of my foster parents. Reid and I weren’t ever the kind of friends that shared secrets, and Eli, despite the fact that he was my best friend, hadn’t coped well with the last six years. I felt weighed down by loneliness.
I wanted a connection, and I guess I felt that the person most likely to connect with me was Janelle.
It was hard to explain, but somehow she made me feel less like a freak from a different universe.
Even though we’d never had a real conversation, she was the reason that I felt like this wasn’t the worst place I could have ended up. Like maybe there was hope for me, even if I couldn’t ever get us home.
It made me wonder if there was a girl back home, someone similar, that I was supposed to fall for. Some nights I stayed up and thought about how my life would’ve turned out on the right side of the portal, who that girl would’ve been. I imagined us staying out past curfew, making out in my car, driving
my parents crazy.
Either this universe knew what I was thinking about, or it was trying to torture me, because at that moment, Janelle arched her back, stretching her arms over her head. Her hair, dark and shiny, brushed the tip of my desk. It smelled sweet, and I breathed in just a little too deeply. She smelled impossibly good. I didn’t know what it was about girls and how they could always manage that. I touched the spot on my desk where her hair had been. Don’t judge me. Maybe I’m not making this clear enough.
Emotional connection aside, there were a couple of other things I liked about her. She was hot, and sometimes that was really hard to ignore. Especially right now when she pulled her hair into some kind of fancy thing on top of her head, and I could see the two little freckles behind her right ear. They were tiny, like two points of a triangle, and they always made me wonder if she had any other freckles in hidden places.
She shifted in her seat and I looked away.
I reminded myself I was trying to avoid the creepy aspects of being a stalker and forced myself to stare at my loaner copy of Lord of the Flies.
The pivotal moments in your life are always made up of smaller pieces, things that seemed insignificant at the time, but in fact brought you to where you needed to be.
Moments like breaking up a fight, arguing with my best friends, ditching biology to check up on a girl. Leaving school later than I normally would have.
Fixing my schedule took longer than I expected because I ran into my biology teacher, who forced me to sit down and take the quiz that I missed when I was in someone else’s class.
I didn’t have to work, so I was headed straight to Reid’s house when I saw it: Janelle’s truck, pulled over and abandoned on the side of Black Mountain Road, steam rising off the engine.
I couldn’t see her, but I knew the truck was hers because it was from the 1960s with a faded paint job, and everyone else with a car in this area had something new and trendy like a Prius.
I walked toward the truck and went over what I would say to her when she came back. When we were kids, my brother was obsessed with cars, and he spent all his time lecturing me about them and showing me what he could do. Now I worked restoring motorcycles, not exactly a mechanic, but the closest she was going to get just outside of the Eastview parking lot. I’d take a look, do what I could to fix it, and she’d be able drive it home.
This was my second chance in two days, or maybe my third, since I sat behind her in English only a few hours ago. It was fate or a sign from the cosmos or something telling me that I had to get up the nerve and actually talk to this girl. That thought bolstered me somehow. It calmed my nerves and forced me to stand up a little straighter.
When I got closer to the truck, I realized she wasn’t anywhere in sight. Not sitting in the cab of the truck calling someone to help her and not trying to check out the engine and see if she could help herself. It was like she pulled over, opened the hood, and then just left it there.
For some reason that image made me smile. She had probably cursed it off or something before she left.
She’d have to come back, though. No matter how much anyone hated their car, they couldn’t just leave it on the side of the road.
I took out my phone. If she came back and I was just standing here, I at least needed to look like I was trying to be helpful.
I already had a text from Eli: WHERE U AT.
I thought about responding, about telling him that I was still at Eastview or that I was on my way, but the last thing I needed was him and Reid coming down to pick me up again.
Slipping the phone back in my pocket, I looked around. It was almost four, and the parking lot had pretty much emptied out. Only five cars were left. The teachers had packed it in and headed home for the weekend. There weren’t any events coming up tonight, so the lots by the sports fields and the theater were both empty too.
I dropped my backpack on the ground and moved around to the front of the truck to check out the problem. It had been standing there long enough that the engine had cooled off, and I spotted the problem immediately: no coolant. The entire engine compartment was covered with the green liquid, hence the steam coming off it. There was definitely a leak somewhere. If I could find it, it would be pretty easy to fix, just fuse the plastic or rubber back together, depending on what was broken.
Of course, Reid and Eli would be pissed about it.
There was no one around. I wouldn’t technically be breaking any of the rules. If Janelle came back, I’d tell her I was walking past the truck and realized I could help.
It took me longer than I anticipated to find the leak. Once I did, it was easy to seal. I focused the energy inside me to my fingertips. I visualized the molecules in the plastic. I saw them multiplying, sealing up the hole, fusing back together.
When it was finished, I turned around, half expecting to find Janelle staring at me, wanting to know what I’d just done to her car, but she still wasn’t back. I grabbed my backpack and debated what to do next. I could keep waiting for her, explain she was out of coolant, or I could just head to Reid’s. The sun had already started dropping lower behind the hills, and the sky was just going to get darker. My phone seemed to be vibrating every few seconds with a new text from Eli wondering where I was. I second-guessed my intentions. What would I really say to her now if she came back? For one, the car was already fixed, minus the coolant and water that would need to be replaced. Worse, I’d been here too long to use the “I was walking home from school and saw your car” excuse.
Maybe all that stuff about fate and signs was really bull. Janelle had pulled me out of the ocean six years ago, but even though we went to the same school and should have run into each other all the time, I’d never spoken to her. Maybe that was the real sign.
I was so lost in thinking about what I should do that I didn’t hear her come up behind me.
“Hey, Ben, what are you doing?”
I jumped and whirled around, not sure what my excuse was or how she knew my name.
She stood there, her arms folded across her chest, her black hair fanned out behind her in the wind.
Only it wasn’t Janelle. It was Marissa Alegado.
“Hey,” I said. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. “I’m on my way to Reid’s.”
“Is this your truck?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I just stopped to see what was wrong with it.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you.” She leaned in and touched my arm as she said it.
Nice was one way to look at it. Weird was another. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t say anything.
“What are you guys up to tonight?”
I shrugged. “Probably the usual.” Trying to re-create a machine that will open a portal between universes.
“I’m heading down to Roxy’s place,” she said, gesturing to the apartments behind Eastview. “Her parents are out of town and she’s having a party. You guys should come by.”
I nodded.
“What about tomorrow night? Do you have plans?” she asked.
“Um, I’m not sure.” Probably doing the same thing as tonight.
“Would you want to go see a movie or something?” I didn’t react and she hurried on. “We could go with Courtney and Reid and then grab dinner after?”
“Oh . . . yeah, maybe,” I said. I knew Marissa liked me. This was the first time she’d asked me out, but she always sat near me at lunch and leaned into me or touched me when she talked. She was cute, and I liked her. I mean, we were friends. At the same time, though, it just felt wrong to lead her on when I’d be keeping two huge secrets from her: that I was from another universe, and that just this afternoon I’d been stalking another girl.
Whether fate and the signs were real or just part of my imagination, when I thought about what my life would be like on the other side of the portal and about the girl that I’d make out with in a darkened movie theater and tell my secrets to and introduce to my parents, she always looked lik
e Janelle.
“I have to check with Eli,” I said, trying to come up with an excuse. “I think he wanted me to help him with something this weekend.”
“Oh, okay,” Marissa said. She sounded like she was trying not to be disappointed, and I felt like a jerk. “Maybe another time.”
I nodded and dug my phone out of my pocket. “I gotta get going.”
Marissa nodded. “Have a good weekend,” she said, as she started down the hill.
“You too,” I said, and I texted Eli back. I’M ON MY WAY.
Where have you been?” Reid asked me when I got to his place. His foster parents didn’t mind that we’d turned their garage into a workstation. They fed us dinner but left us alone. It was ideal.
I ignored him and looked at Eli. The question was his, even if he wasn’t the one who had spoken it out loud. I spit out the details.
“So you went to her English class and fixed her truck today?” Reid said. “So much for backing off.”
“What does it matter? You’ve been dating Courtney since Christmas and nobody gives a crap.”
“This isn’t about him,” Eli said throwing his hands up.
And that was the problem, for me and for Reid. Nothing was ever about him. It was always about me. I got us into this mess and I needed to get us out.
I shook my head. “Let’s just leave it alone.”
“Oh right, because that will solve anything,” Reid said.
“Look, you can’t be a hero every time Janelle Tenner has a bad fucking day,” Eli added.
Reid pointed his finger at me. “You’re risking everything. What if someone finds out we came through a portal and now we can do some freaky shit? They’ll quarantine us in some lab and do tests on us. We’ll never get home.”
“I was careful,” I said. “No one saw me.”
“That isn’t the point,” Eli said, his voice rising.
“Really? Then what is the point?”
“You shouldn’t be standing around and waiting on some girl when we have more important things to do,” Eli yelled.