Together, we give the door a solid push, and the group of seven or eight follow, all of them laughing and whispering nervously.
Jade’s hand shoots out of the last stall. “What part of ‘You need to leave’ don’t you understand, Flute Fly?”
“I don’t understand anything about you, Jade.”
At the sound of my voice, Jade slowly steps out, taking in the minimob behind me. “What do you want?” she asks.
“We want to use the bathroom.”
“Find another one,” Bliss calls out from inside the stall. “You made your grave, Ayla, so sleep in it.”
I roll my eyes, but Jade is looking hard at me. “She’s with a bunch of invisibles,” she says under her breath to Bliss.
Finally, the blond head leans out of the stall. “I’m serious, Ayla. We’re not amused by your escape-ades.”
“Oh, my God,” one of the girls behind me says, and laughs. “She means ‘escapades.’ ”
“She’s an idiot,” another whispers.
Bliss’s blue eyes narrow at her. “And you’re ugly.”
“Really?” I demand. “How can you tell? I thought she was invisible.”
There are snickers behind me, but Bliss is slowly stepping out of the stall. When she does, about six small handbags thump to the floor, tags visible.
“Get out of here, Ayla,” she grinds out.
“We’re using the bathroom, Bliss.” I turn to my little posse. “Do what you need to do, girls. We have a few minutes before first period. Nobody owns this place.”
Bliss just stares, and Jade shakes her head. “Why are you doing this, Ayla?” Jade asks.
“Why are you?” I take a few steps closer and glance at the purses, then bend over to pick up a satiny clutch that’s been ruined by water—or worse—on the floor.
“Hey!” Bliss swipes it away, knocking it back to the floor. “You’re not getting any of this.”
“I don’t want your stolen crap,” I say, leaning against the cool metal of the stall and crossing my arms. “And you don’t need to shoplift to prove you’re cool.”
Jade immediately assumes peacemaker position, stepping between us. “Ayla, you’ve made some really bad decisions lately—including this latest stunt today—and we’re just trying to figure out what to do with you.”
“You don’t have to do anything with me, Jade. Friends don’t think about what to do with their friends! You like them. You support them. You have fun with them.”
Bliss inches closer, still barely at my chin, even with high heels. “You got that right, Ayla. And you totally broke that code. You are acting like a complete tool, hanging out with nerds and geeks, and risking our position at this school so you can get some kind of social services award.”
“That’s not why,” I say softly, a twinge of sympathy for her because I can tell she’s choosing every word very carefully, not wanting to make a mistake and look stupid(er) in front of the very people she claims she can’t see.
“Then, why did you change?” Jade whines. “What brought this on, really?”
I can’t answer, so I shake my head. “I tried to see all this from both sides.” I gesture toward the girls who are in front of the mirror, pretending to comb their hair or put lip gloss on, but listening to every word we say.
“And what’d that do for you?” Bliss challenges. “Make you all happy and whole and … and … happy inside?”
I smile at her. “It made me blissful. And you should try it. You’ll find Bliss.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh my God with the Oprah crap.”
Jade takes my hand. “Come on, Ayla. Just go back to normal. This …” She nods toward the girls. “This isn’t the natural way of things.”
“That”—I point toward the fallen handbags—“isn’t the natural way of things, either. Why shoplift when you have more money than most of the free world, or torture kids who are already living in hell, or cheat when you’re smart enough not to? Why? Just because you can?”
“Because we’re supposed to,” Bliss says firmly. “That’s our role in this place, and we do it better than anyone else. For that, we get into the best parties, treated like royalty, and respected.”
“Respected?” I throw the word back at her. “Fear is not respect, Bliss.”
“Get out of here, Ayla.” Bliss tries to drag Jade back into the stall. “You don’t belong in our world.”
“I don’t belong in a bathroom stall, that’s for sure.”
The girls at the mirror laugh softly, but I didn’t say it to be funny. Bliss disappears, but Jade stays rooted to her spot, looking at me with sad eyes.
“I can’t fight Bliss on this.”
I shrug. “You have to make your choice. Listen.” I reach for her hand. “I need to say goodbye.”
“You’re leaving?”
“For a while,” I say vaguely. “I’m going to a clinic opening with my dad, and then …”
“You’ll be back on Monday?” Jade actually sounds worried. She leans very close and whispers, “I bet we can work this out.”
“I don’t know. I can’t make any promises about who—er, how—I’ll be when I get back.”
She gives me a weird look, but nothing I haven’t become pretty used to over the past few weeks. “Maybe a little time away will be good for you. Especially with your dad. He always makes you see things the right way.”
The right way. His way. Not my way.
“Yeah,” I say, aware that the bell is ringing. “Now I gotta go find Charlie.”
“Box boy?” Bliss chokes.
“His name’s Charlie Zelinsky, Bliss, and he happens to be my boyfriend.”
“Jeez, Ayla.” Jade slips into the stall. “You are too far gone, even for me.”
I turn and catch Candi’s surprised expression in the mirror. She doesn’t look away, though, and I see a glimmer of approval. I leave the stall and get next to her, leaning over to pick up her flute case.
She gives me a tentative smile. “Charlie Zelinsky is your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, he is.”
“I know he gets a lot of grief, but I always thought he was kind of cute.” She tucks a tube of lip gloss into her purse. “You know, kind of in a young Ashton Kutcherish kind of way.”
“Exactly!” I say.
“It’s going to be rough for you, Ayla.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “He’s an outcast.”
“They’re my specialty. Anyway, it’s going to be way worse for me when I make my next announcement.”
“What?”
“I’m signing up for orchestra.”
Her jaw flaps open. “What do you play?”
“Violin.”
She gives me a squeeze and holds it. “The soul of the orchestra, I always say.”
“So it is.”
I’m still smiling when I head to English lit, but that grin disappears when I see that Charlie’s seat is empty. I don’t know why, but I have a very bad feeling about this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By Friday morning, I’m a mess. I haven’t heard from Charlie since the night of Jim’s dinner party. He never came to school, he’s not answering his texts or calls, and he hasn’t been on Facebook.
If I had time, I’d go to his house, but Jimbo is on a tear to get to the executive airport and fly to Pittsburgh. He finally notices I’m upset when I climb into the backseat of the limo.
“What’s the matter, Ayla?”
“Nothing,” I assure him, settling into the cool leather of my favorite seat, already used to the family limo.
“You’re not apprehensive about flying, are you?” He glances up to the always clear blue skies. “It’s a good day for flying. I’ll let you take the controls if it’s smooth.”
“No, thanks.” Is he nuts?
“Is it that homeless boy?”
God. Him, too? “He’s not homeless,” I say without emotion. “I wanted to say goodbye to him before I left, is all. I don’t suppose you’d swing by his house
in Hialeah before we go.”
“You don’t suppose right. Hialeah?” He curls his lip. “Well, your mother had a weakness for losers, too.”
“Evidently. She married one.”
That gets me a dark, dark look. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I meant her other boyfriends.”
Does he know Mel Nutter? I don’t want to get into it. I turn toward the window, hoping he’ll just shut up.
“I Googled that boy’s name after I saw him with his tongue down your throat.”
Oh, boy. Here we go. “I’m sure you found lots of interesting information,” I say.
“And I know about his sister.”
I whip around to him, a sudden and fierce defensiveness rising. “What about her?”
“She’s a—”
“Don’t.” I hold my hand out, no idea what he’s going to say, but I know I have to stop it. “Don’t say another word.”
Fortunately, his cell phone buzzes, and someone else is the victim of his sarcasm and condescending attitude. I can just sit here and think about my plan.
Except, I have no plan. I was going to make one with Charlie, but then he disappeared on me. I couldn’t find a street address for Mel Nutter in Pittsburgh, but I know where Process Engineering is, so I might go there as soon as I’m away from Jim, who says he has meetings all day today. Or go to South Hills High and pretend to be a new student, and check out my old lunch table. Or cruise by my old house on Rolling Rock Road.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, because I wanted Charlie to help me figure that out. I really want Charlie to come with me, but now, considering Jim and his Googling, I decide this is better.
Still, I pull out my phone to check my text messages again—nothing new—and send one more to Charlie.
Am on my way to Tamiami airport. Leaving soon.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. Should I add 143? Make it more personal, more urgent?
I just hit send, and put my earbuds in to drown out the sound of Jim Monroe barking business into his phone. I watch Miami roll by, not so enamored of the palm trees and sparkling water now, bracing myself for the heavy skies and old brick buildings that make up so much of Pittsburgh.
Morning traffic is slow, but Marcel finally pulls us into the small airport out in the suburbs, and I see a row of private planes on a tarmac. I’ll be getting on one of them in a matter of minutes.
Without having said goodbye to Charlie. Without a plan.
I climb out, and Marcel gets our two bags. Jim says he’ll meet us at the plane and strides inside the tiny terminal, presumably to do whatever paperwork has to be done before flying.
“This way, Miss Ayla,” Marcel says, gesturing with Jim’s Louis Vuitton bag.
I start to walk toward the row of planes. The sun is already hot enough to warm the pavement under my feet. This is a waste of time, I think glumly. What am I hoping to accomplish here? The chances of getting to my universe are slim to none without Charlie’s help.
All I’m going to do is—
“Annie!”
I spin around to see Charlie climbing out of his Jeep, waving.
“Charlie!” Flooded with relief, I run toward him, leaving Marcel behind. “Where have you been?” I ask, fighting the urge to throw my arms around him.
I don’t have to fight long. He hesitates only a second, then reaches for me and holds me close, squeezing me so hard he takes my breath away. “I thought I’d missed you,” he admits, his voice husky.
“Why haven’t you answered my texts? Where were you yesterday?”
“Locked at UM, working on something with Dr. Pritchard.” He clutches me tighter, and despite the fact that exhaustion has made his eyes red and a little swollen, I can see the joy and excitement all over his face.
That expression is eerily familiar. Mel Nutter, moments after an invention has been completed.
“What are you working on?”
“This.” He reaches into the back of the Jeep and pulls out a backpack, handling it carefully. “For you to take to Pittsburgh.” Slowly he pulls out a mirror, about the size of a laptop. “It’s Picture-Perfect, and, Annie, it works.”
He holds it in front of me and I see my reflection. Then he reaches behind it and presses a button, and … there’s Annie. The picture I emailed him, but even more accurate.
“How did you do this?”
“Long story, but I haven’t slept for two days.” Even so, he beams, his smile sending a bolt of energy right through me. “It works, Annie. I mean with the light. It breaks particles up and sends them to a million different places.”
My jaw loosens. “How do you know? You traveled to another universe?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “But we sent a few rats somewhere.”
Now my mouth drops and basically hits my chest. “How?”
“Light, angle, and good thoughts. What you need to do, we think, is get as close as possible to the place where you were before. Even in your old house, in your old room. Even better if you can go at night and re-create the moment. Can you try?”
“I guess. I was thinking about going to my house.”
“Here. I made a special padded case.” He slides the mirror into the backpack. “It might work. It really might.”
What if it does? I may never see him again.
He places the bag onto my shoulder, then runs his hand down my arm, giving me a squeeze. Looking up at him, I know I have to say what I’ve been thinking for the past day and a half.
“Come with me.”
He doesn’t react, but looks into my eyes.
“Please, Charlie. I can talk Jim into bringing you. We’ll come up with a reason why you have to go. Please. I need you.”
“Then I’ll come home alone.”
“Not if you travel to the other universe with me.”
“I can’t. I might be doing some traveling of my own.”
“Really? Where are you going?”
His smile is sly. “I made two of those mirrors,” he says.
“Meaning …”
“Figure it out, Annie. If I can get us to the right place at the right time …” His voice trails off, and I can finish the rest. He wants to leave this universe for a better one, too. A universe where Missy can walk.
I swallow hard. “But what if we’re not in the same place together?”
“We might not be,” he says softly. “But if we are, we’ll know.”
“You think so? How?”
“We’ll need a secret code. Next time we see each other, we’ll know who the other one is … or isn’t, if only one of us knows the password.”
For a long, long minute, we look at each other, the connection between us as intense as the blistering sun.
“What’s in the bag?” Jim Monroe’s voice makes us jump; neither one of us heard him approach. (Either because he’s a sneak or because we were lost in each other’s eyes. Or maybe both.) He’s pointing at the backpack.
“It’s nothing, Dad,” I say quickly. “I’m trying to convince Charlie to come along on the trip to Pittsburgh.”
He ignores that, reaching for the pack. “You’re not taking anything on that plane I haven’t examined,” he says.
I step back. “It’s personal. And you haven’t seen what I packed, so that’s just ridiculous. You aren’t the TSA.”
“My plane, my rules. Open the bag.”
“It’s noth—”
He grabs for it, yanking the bag off my shoulder.
“Hey!” Charlie yells, a hand up to stop him. “You can’t do that.”
He shakes off Charlie’s touch. “I can do whatever I want. Open the bag, Ayla, or you can go home right now.”
Ten minutes ago I’d have jumped at that offer, but now—with the mirror, with a plan, with hope—I don’t want to give up this chance. What would it hurt to show him? With a quick shake of my head to Charlie to tell him to back off, I slide the pack over my arm.
“It’s a mirror,” I say. “Charlie invented it. He’s a
scientist. A physicist. A quantum … mechanic.”
Charlie laughs softly. “Not exactly, but I doubt you’ll be interested in my … discovery, Dr. Monroe.”
“Let me see it,” Jim says coolly.
I unzip. “It’s just a mirror that changes the way you look.” I take it out to let him see it. “He’s giving it to me for … good luck.”
Jim is staring at the mirror, his fingers reaching around the back to press the button. For a second it catches the light, almost blinding me. I gasp as I shut my eyes, half-terrified that I’ll open them and we’ll all be somewhere else.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Jim Monroe’s eyes are bugging out.
“Is this what you were talking about the other day in the exercise room?” he asks.
“Not exactly, but … a little bit.” I hate that he has stuck his nose into this business, but there’s nothing I can do right now.
“You made this?” he asks Charlie, unable to take his gaze from the mirror. He must like the version of himself he created.
“I had some help at the physics department of the University of Miami.”
“Whoa.” Jim angles the mirror back and forth. “This is sweet.” He lowers it. “Are you some kind of inventor?”
“It was a class project.”
At Jim’s skeptical reaction, I add, “Charlie takes classes at the community college. He’s a genius.”
“I see that,” Jim says, flashing a surprising smile. “It’s good.” He slides it into the backpack with far more care this time. “I’ll take it to the plane for you, Ayla. Say goodbye to your friend. Sorry you can’t come along, young man. Weight limit on the flight. Hurry up, now.”
He marches away with the backpack in his arms. For a moment, we both look after him, then at each other.
“He’s unpredictable,” Charlie says.
“Yeah, and a whole lot of other things I don’t like.”
“Where were we?” Charlie asks, reaching out to me again.
“Saying goodbye.” Leaning close, I put my head on his shoulder and wrap my arms around him. “I can’t believe this might be the last time I ever see you … as me.”