Because I’m not sure where I’m going, if I’m going … or why. Not anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Charlie’s so engrossed in what he’s doing, he doesn’t even look up when I approach.
He’s kneeling over the mirror, surrounded by tools and circuit boards and multiple flashlights. On a stack of textbooks, his laptop is open and a YouTube video is playing with no sound.
I drink in the scene, my knees almost buckling with the impact of still more homesickness. Will it never stop?
I suddenly want my family so much, it steals my breath. My mom—the one with a wrinkle in her brow and a little too much width around her waist. My burping exclamation-pointed brother, because Trent the Tool isn’t as evil as I thought, but he isn’t my obnoxious little brother.
And Dad. I miss Dad so bad because Mel Nutter kind of belongs in the middle of this all-too-familiar tableau of miscellaneous junk gathered together for an “invention.” In a freakish twist of irony, he’d love this.
Charlie melts me with that smile. “How was the party?” he asks.
“Pretty lame, but I am flying to Pittsburgh on a private plane Friday morning.”
“Cool.”
Is it? Hard to tell how he feels about that. “What are you doing?” I ask.
Charlie doesn’t answer immediately, adjusting the mirror a little and angling the flashlight, which is super bright, like a halogen bulb. “I did some more research, and decided to attempt an experiment.”
“What kind?”
He fiddles with the electronics some more, moving wires on a circuit board. “I thought we could test the arrangement of matter and energy.”
“Good times,” I say with a laugh.
“It could be. I have a Geiger counter that can help detect the movement of quarks and gluons.”
“Gluons? I take it you don’t mean fake nails.”
He chuckles softly and flicks the flashlight back and forth, adjusting the mirror. “He must be smart, your dad,” he says.
“He is smart. And funny, and kind, and makes the best chocolate chip pancakes in the world.” I sigh, and can’t help adding that other bit about my dad. “He’s also … a collector.”
“What’s he collect?”
“ ‘What doesn’t he collect’ is a better question.” I settle on a strip of stiff Florida crabgrass, a cloying honeysuckle smell hanging in the air just like the word I don’t want to say. “I think there’s another, less flattering name for him.” I pluck at a sturdy blade that doesn’t want to come out. “He’s kind of a hoarder.”
Charlie gently rests the mirror against the side of the house to give me a quizzical look. “Like on the TV show?”
“Not quite as bad. But …” Our house had been getting close. “Still, it’s embarrassing.”
Charlie looks hard at me, considering that. “Were you upset about it the night this all happened?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it … upset.”
“Was it on your mind?”
I try to go back in time—and space, evidently—and remember exactly how I felt that night. “I was more upset about my parents fighting, I think. Why?”
“Because what was on your mind, like exactly your emotional state, seems to be key to getting you back to that universe.”
“So you said. But even something like that?”
“Here. Watch this.” He guides me over to the laptop, and we sit in front of it while he starts that YouTube video from the beginning. It’s a quantum mechanics physicist talking about parallel universes on some shaky home video taken in a college classroom, with particularly bad sound.
Charlie turns it up, and we lean close to listen.
Honestly, I don’t get half of what the lecturer is saying. Until he gets to the part about the power of thoughts—powerful enough to move us between two universes if all the other external factors happen to be lined up.
“In the instant when you have a fleeting thought, your whole body makes a quantum leap into a whole different dimension,” the guy says.
Charlie pauses the video. “I think if we can somehow figure out how to spark the right light over the right mirror at the right time, you have to cooperate by having the right thoughts. That’s why what you were feeling that night is so important.”
I drag my legs up to wrap my arms around them and rest my head on my knees, thinking hard. “I had a lot of emotions going on that night,” I admit. “I was feeling … cheated.”
He waits for me, giving me some time to gather my thoughts and put them into words.
“I wanted a better life,” I finally say. “Kind of like my mom, when she saw the magazine article about Jim Monroe. I wanted my life to just be … better.”
“And is it?” he asks softly.
“In some ways, it is,” I say. “Obviously, on the outside, it’s better. I’ve got money and looks, and all the kids want to be me. Who doesn’t want that?”
Charlie lifts an eyebrow, the minuscule gesture saying it all for him.
“You’re different,” I say quickly. “Most teenage wannabes crave more of that stuff.”
“And that’s what you were thinking, when the lightning struck? I guess it would make sense that you landed here, then.”
“You mean, if I’d been thinking of something totally different, I might have gone to some other universe? Like, if I’d been obsessing over …” I try to pull something out of the air. “My grades?”
“You might have landed in that universe where you have a one-hundred-and-eighty IQ.”
“Getting bumped to fifth chair in orchestra?”
“You’d arrive in virtuoso universe.”
“My pathetic love life?”
He grins, which sends a shower of chills all over me. “Maybe that would have dropped you into my lap.” Before I can answer, he adds, “All I’m saying is, what’s going on in your head is as important as where the electrons fly. Now look at this.”
He reaches for a penlight on the ground and flicks it on. It emits a thin red beam. “Low-beam laser,” he says. “Hold it and shine the light onto the mirror.”
I do, and a few other red dots appear around it. “What are they?”
“The same particles of light going to multiple places at the same time. And some of them we can’t see.” He looks up at me, the red lights casting a soft glow on his face. “They’re in a different dimension.”
“I can’t believe you figured all this out already.”
“Not that much science involved, and I had help from Dr. Pritchard and the Internet. Now let’s make this more complicated and add you to the mix. Get in front of the mirror.”
When I do, of course, I look like Ayla. And I have an idea.
“Let me show you something,” I say, sitting back down next to him. I take out my phone and flick to the photo I changed with the Famous Faces app. “Will this help?”
“Is that Annie?”
“Not exactly. But closer than …” I gesture toward my image in the mirror. “This.”
He studies the picture for a long time, and I realize I’m biting my lip. I’m so used to being pretty around Charlie. What will he think of the “real” me?
“You looked like that?” There’s no judgment in his voice.
“Worse. Add braces.”
He looks up at me. “I think I would love Annie.”
For a moment, I can’t speak, because everything in my body is up and running around doing a little happy dance. “You would?”
He smiles, a beautiful, sweet, honest smile. “Can you email this picture to me? So I have it?”
“Sure.” I take the phone and send the photo as an email to his address. “She’s kind of … plain. I mean, compared to this.” I gesture vaguely toward my face. “So it might be a bit of a disappointment for you.”
“Annie, it’s not the outside of you that I like.” He inches closer. “When are you going to figure that out?”
“Sometimes I still feel like the girl
who gets asked to homecoming as a joke.” I laugh softly. “I was, you know. Right before I came here. Some jerk said, ‘Hey, homecoming’s Saturday. Maybe you’d want to go with me.’ ” I close my eyes. “And I was the laughingstock of my bus because, you know, I thought …”
“Hey.” Charlie puts his finger on my lips. “He didn’t deserve you.”
I’m frozen in the moment, in Charlie’s eyes, near his mouth. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to kiss him.
“So forget that clown, and think about me,” he says.
That’s all I think about. “I can’t believe this.”
“Believe what?”
“That I finally meet a really, really great guy and I’m considering leaving him.”
For a long moment, neither one of us says a thing. I can hear crickets and cars, wind in the leaves, and his next slow breath.
“You don’t have to leave … Ayla.” Reaching over, he puts his hand along my cheek and lightly runs his thumb over my lower lip.
Deep inside, things flutter around. All those things that were dead on the night with Ryder are very much alive and well and … fluttery.
“I like it better when you call me Annie.”
“I know you do. And you know where Annie belongs.”
Yes, I do. “No way I can go back and forth for a few years, is there?” I ask.
He laughs softly. “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not even sure you can go back at all. You may end up in some weird half-alive, half-dead state.”
I suck in a breath and back away from his touch. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. Or you might have some random thought about the queen of England and end up in London. But really, place is not the only variable that worries me.”
“What is?”
“Time. Time is so critical. You know those red light particles that we don’t see? They aren’t just in another place; they could be in another time. That’s what’s really important about this experiment—that you get to the right moment of time.”
I frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that for this to work, I think, you have to go back to that very moment when you were in your room, or at least the next morning, so that not too much could have happened without you in that universe.”
I shake my head, unable to look away from him, my stomach tight and my limbs heavy and my mind so completely boggled by it all. “How?”
“Time is a continuum,” he says. “So, for you to get to the right place, you have to more or less mentally erase everything that’s happened to you since then. Just wipe it out of your mind. This life, this experience, this new family and school. Me.”
“I could never do that,” I say quickly. “I could never erase you.”
He smiles. “Mind over matter, Annie. You can do anything.”
All I can do is sigh. Trying to get back to who and where and when I was seems more daunting than ever. “I don’t know,” I say skeptically. “What if I think the wrong thoughts and go flying back to Timbuktu five years ago?”
An expression flickers over his face, a hint of darkness. “I wouldn’t mind going back five years,” he says softly. “But this is about you.”
I know why he wants to go back five years, but don’t know how or what to say. “What about Lizzie?” I ask instead.
“What about her?”
“If I go back, does it take away her chance of having a dad in this universe? ’Cause I can’t do anything to hurt her, not in any universe.”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But going to Pittsburgh might make a difference in the scheme of things.”
“How?”
“You’re messing with the universe.”
“Yeah, well, the universe messed with me.”
Charlie’s hand is still on mine, and he squeezes, pulling me closer. “You know, you might be one of the luckiest people in the world. You get to see both sides and make a choice.”
I feel so close to him, so connected. Have I ever felt like this about anyone before? “Charlie …”
He leans closer, and our faces are inches apart. “I don’t want to complicate your decision,” he whispers.
“You already have.”
He kisses me so softly, it’s like a breeze on my mouth. Then I close my eyes and reach for him, letting him ease me back to the ground. His hands close over my face, holding me as we kiss, my heart beating so hard I can feel all my pulse points throbbing.
This is so different from Ryder, so different from anything I’ve ever imagined. I just want to lie here forever, holding him, trusting him.
I smell fresh-cut grass, and the scent of something soft and musky that will always remind me of Charlie. Closing my eyes, I wrap my arms around his neck and sink into our kiss, dizzy with the pure bliss of it.
An alarm bell screams so loud, we both jump a foot.
“Oh, my God. What is that?” I ask.
He’s up in an instant. “Something’s wrong with my sister.” He takes off toward the back of the house, and I push up and follow, hustling to keep up as he throws open the back door and charges to the bedroom hallway. On the way, he slaps a white alarm pad on the wall, silencing the screaming buzzer.
“Coming, Missy!”
He sails into a room, barely lit by a night-light. Right behind him, I come to a complete stop when he reaches her bedside. It’s not a regular bed but very high and angled, like a hospital bed.
“Oh, Charlie, Charlie.” She’s sobbing. “I dreamed about the accident again, and it hurts. Everything hurts!”
“Shhh. Don’t cry, Missy.” He reaches over and holds her, and my heart—the one beating with a crush a minute ago—is breaking into a million pieces. “It doesn’t really hurt. It’s just your imagination. It’s just your memory.”
“It hurts,” she cries. “In all the places I can’t feel. I want to forget that day, but I can’t.”
“I know,” he says tenderly. “Neither can I.”
My hand is over my mouth, holding back my own sob of sympathy. I step back into the hall, away from a scene that seems so private that I shouldn’t be here.
“Why did it happen?” she croaks in a husky, broken voice.
“I don’t know, Missy.” His voice is as defeated as hers. “Why does anything happen?”
I back farther away, a tsunami of shame drowning me.
How could I possibly be so selfish? So small? So wrapped up in whether I’m A-list or invisible, rich or poor, pretty or plain?
Melissa Zelinsky can’t walk in this universe. And her brother, who loves her so much, is in as much pain as she is. If anyone should get to a better place, it’s them, not me.
Is there any way I can do that for him?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I have one day left at Crap Academy before I leave for Pittsburgh, and two things to accomplish on this last day. I almost skip school completely because, well, no one really cares if I go or not. Jimbo isn’t around, and my mom is living in some condo in Boca.
But I do go, mostly because I need to see Charlie. I haven’t heard a peep—not so much as a text—from Bliss or Jade, but there’s part of me that wants to say goodbye to them. Because what if I do find Mel, and he has a mirror, and I somehow travel through time and space and never come back here? The more I think about going to Pittsburgh, the more I think about not coming back here again. Maybe I’ll just talk to Mel … or maybe lightning will strike twice. I have to be ready for anything.
When I get to school, I don’t see Jade or Bliss outside by the fountain, so I head to their lockers, and on the way cruise by the eleventh-grade girls’ bathroom. I’m just in time to see a few girls hustling out, mumbling unhappily, then sliding distrustful glances at me.
“Your friends probably want you in there,” one says.
“Maybe not,” someone else says. “Ayla’s off the A-list.”
“Yeah, she’s one of us now.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” someone
says snarkily.
But Candi Woodward steps out of the pack toward me. “Ayla’s in a class of her own,” she says, giving me a wide smile. “She’s different.”
The compliment warms me. “What did they do, kick you guys out again?”
“They think they own that bathroom,” Candi says wearily.
“The whole school,” another girl says.
Irritation slams me. “They only own it if you give them the power to.”
“Easy for you to say,” one girl whispers from the back. “You don’t know what it’s like to be us.”
“No?” I fire back. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. And you know what? They have nothing on you but some luck in the gene pool, street smarts on how to work the system, and attitude.”
“So, what are you saying, Ayla? We can be like them and not be invisible?”
“Who wants to be like them?” I challenge. “They’re mean and miserable, and they don’t even trust each other. And you are not invisible.”
Candi kind of laughs. “To them, we are.”
“If you were really invisible, then who would treat them like royalty? Believe me, they need you to be very visible. Without you, they’d be center stage with no extras, no audience, and no props.”
They kind of look at each other and laugh. “Right, Ayla.”
“I mean it. If you didn’t stare at them and part the hallways to let them by, they’d notice in a hurry, believe me.”
“Maybe we should try it.”
“Yeah!” a dark-haired girl says as she comes forward. “Let’s treat them like they’re invisible.”
I shake my head, putting my hand out to stop her. “Then you’re stooping to their level. Let’s just take back our bathroom and not give them any power.”
A couple move to the door. “Like the storming of the Bastille.”
I laugh. “Without the guillotine.”
They gather round me, and I realize I’m the de facto leader, which is fine with me. “You ready to go in?” I ask.
“Ayla,” Candi says, holding me back, “are you sure? If you do this, you lose your queen bee crown for sure and certain.”
“I don’t want it.” I link my arm with Candi’s, feeling the first flicker of true friendship with another girl since I got here.