by Kate Norris
PHILOMEL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Katheryn Norris
Figures courtesy of public domain: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
Figures copyright © 2021 by Katheryn Norris: 6 and 7
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Norris, Kate, author.
Title: When you and I collide / by Kate Norris.
Description: New York : Philomel Books, 2021. | Audience: Ages 12 up. |
Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: Sixteen-year-old Winnie, who can see
alternate realities, finds herself transported to one and must now find
her way back to save the man she loves.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009715 | ISBN 9780593203033 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593203040 (epub)
Subjects: CYAC: Space and time—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | German Americans—Fiction. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.N644 Wh 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009715
Edited by Liza Kaplan
Design by Ellice Lee
This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Dedicated to all the readers
who need other worlds to escape into, and to the libraries and librarians who keep this escape free and accessible.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Two
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PART ONE
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
CHAPTER ONE
LATE OCTOBER 1942
NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Late afternoon sunlight poured through the classroom windows, and Winnie watched the light dapple her lab bench in a dancing pattern of oak-leaf shadow. Freedom was near. It was the final period of the day, and Mr. Claremont, her physics teacher, stood at the front of the room leaning heavily on his wooden podium.
“Consider an archer’s bow,” he said. “The perfect example of potential energy! When the archer pulls back the string, he loads the cocked bow with potential.”
Maribel, a classmate in the next row, yawned at Winnie dramatically and mouthed, “Boring!”
Winnie smiled back, and the girl gave her a confused frown.
Oh. Maribel’s pantomime must have been meant for Winnie’s lab partner. Winnie’s cheeks went hot with embarrassment.
Communication was a funny thing. Winnie was fluent in German—her first language—as well as the English she’d learned when she and her father immigrated to the United States eight years earlier. And Mr. Claremont’s science-speak came naturally to her; she’d been surrounded by such talk since childhood. But the effortless, unspoken teen-girl language her classmates shared? Winnie didn’t think she’d ever master that.
Would she have been such an outsider if she and Father had stayed in Germany?
The dismissal bell rang, and Winnie quickly slid her heavy physics textbook into her knapsack, eager for escape. She was normally happy to consider the bow—or the mechanics of any machine, simple or otherwise—but even Winnie sometimes got sick of school. The past week had been full of clouds and cold rain. Who could be immune to the lure of a sunny fall day after all that?
“Miss Schulde, do you have a moment?” Mr. Claremont asked gruffly.
Winnie gave a startled look in his direction, squinting in the glare reflected off the cabinets along the side of the room. All the sciences at her small, private girls’ school shared one lab, so the cabinets were full of an odd cross-disciplinary assortment of beakers, barometers, and taxidermized animals. Few students there studied the hard sciences—and fewer still stuck with them through physics, the most advanced course offered. Winnie was one of just seven students in the class.
“Of course,” she answered.
Some of the other girls shot her gleeful “oh, you’re in for it now” glances, probably hoping this meant the “class pet” was about to be taken down a peg. Winnie had only one true friend at school—Dora—a girl both fierce and fiercely liked, and if she had been there, the girls wouldn’t have dared give Winnie those looks. But of course Dora wouldn’t be caught dead enrolled in something as drippy as a physics class.
Winnie put on a smile to show those girls she wasn’t worried. Although the smile was forced, it was true that she wasn’t afraid of Mr. Claremont. Other students complained about what an ogre he was, but if they thought he was a strict taskmaster, they should try working with Father.
After the classroom emptied of stragglers, Mr. Claremont cleared his throat. “Barnard College is going to establish a physics department,” he said. “They contacted me in hopes of recruiting scholarship students with aptitude in the field. May I give them your name?”
Winnie was stunned.
; “But I’m just a junior,” she stammered.
And she was a young one at that—Father had Winnie skip third grade when they moved, since she was working above her grade level in all her classes. Keeping her schoolwork up on top of trying to become fluent in English had been quite the challenge, but Father firmly believed that there were two ways of doing things: you were either pushing yourself to the limit, or you were being lazy.
“I know what year you are,” Mr. Claremont said with a snort. “But you could graduate early. It would require a few extra classes this semester and next, but it’s early enough in the year to change your schedule.”
Winnie said nothing.
“You aren’t afraid of a bit of hard work?” he pressed, frowning in that way that made some of the other girls tremble.
“No—of course not.”
“And you do want to go to college?”
Well, yes. She did—very much. But did Father want her to? He never said anything about it. And she never asked.
Father sent her to the best girls’ school in the city and demanded nothing but the highest grades from her (not that she’d ever struggled with that). So, Winnie had always hoped college was in her future . . . but she could also imagine Father telling her it was a waste, since he could teach her anything she needed to know.
What if he didn’t want her to go to college?
What if he meant for her to keep working with him, for her to continue their experiments forever?
The prospect made Winnie’s breath catch.
Surely he’d want her to go to college. Mama had gone to university, and it had been much more out of the ordinary then. If she were still alive—
Winnie stopped herself. No. No point thinking about that.
But still, she couldn’t help but wonder: What would it feel like to have a life you didn’t long to escape?
“Miss Schulde?” Mr. Claremont pressed. “You do intend to go to college?”
“I—I’d like to—” Winnie began.
“Well, good!” he interrupted briskly. “Have your father call and set up a meeting so we can discuss it.”
Winnie shook her head. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Mr. Claremont had expected excitement, she imagined. Effusive thanks. Not to see his brightest pupil transformed into a stammering dope. Well, it irritated Winnie too. But that didn’t change anything.
If she asked Father now and he said no, that was that. Dream, dead. Hope, over. She couldn’t just spring this on him. It would take finesse. It would take time.
“It’s too soon,” Winnie said.
Mr. Claremont shook his head in annoyance. “Miss Schulde, what are you afraid of?”
Wanting.
The answer just sprang into her head. Was it true? Of course not. She wanted all the time. She wanted this very thing—her, at Barnard. This wasn’t her first time thinking about it. Of the Ivies, only Cornell admitted women, but Barnard was at least the sister school of an Ivy—Columbia, where Father taught. Now they would have a whole physics department there, just across the street from the world-renowned one at Columbia! Wouldn’t that be grand?
Winnie didn’t just love physics because it was Father’s chosen field, and hers by default. When Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor the year before, an awful feeling of “if that could happen, then any awful thing could” had taken hold of everyone. This sinking feeling of “my god, what next?”
For Winnie, quantum mechanics was an antidote to that despair. Not because it was clear or rational. It wasn’t. There was an uncertainty principle, for heaven’s sake. But physics offered a window into the true weirdness of the world—a way to understand the unexpected not as chaos or tragedy, but as mystery. And mysteries were easier to withstand.
Quantum mechanics governed the behavior of subatomic particles—the very heartbeat of existence. And that heartbeat was strange. It made simple rationality seem childish by comparison, and Winnie’s own awkwardness and oddity somehow okay.
Things didn’t have to make sense. They could just be. And scientists could discover ways of describing and utilizing those odd occurrences, even when they couldn’t explain them. Winnie longed to do more than just read about these scientists and do dumbed-down versions of their experiments. She wanted to do more than work with Father, where they were doing authentic research, but research in which she would never really have a say. Winnie wanted to be a scientist herself. Attending Barnard could be the first step.
And Barnard didn’t just mean education.
Barnard meant freedom—freedom wrapped in a package that Father might just accept.
So yes, Winnie wanted to go to Barnard. Was “want” even a strong enough word?
But she understood that life was a series of equal and opposite reactions. To want wildly was to risk wild disappointment.
Winnie had to approach this desire the same way she approached everything: with caution.
“It’s too soon,” she repeated.
“Fine. I’ll ask someone else. Miss Grafton would jump at this opportunity.”
Oh, Henrietta certainly would! Winnie felt sick with jealousy for a moment, which she knew had been Mr. Claremont’s intent.
“She would be an excellent choice,” Winnie said evenly, proud she was able to keep the envy out of her voice.
There was a fine line between caution and cowardice.
Sometimes, Winnie didn’t know which side she was on.
Mr. Claremont let out an irritated huff. “Fine.” He waved his hand at her. “That’s all.”
Winnie stepped back, but before she turned to go, she paused. “I do appreciate you thinking of me,” she said.
His face softened, but before he could say anything more, Winnie hurried from the classroom, eyes stinging.
* * *
• • •
Dora was waiting for her when she got to her locker, tapping her foot playfully in put-on irritation at having to wait.
“Sorry!” Winnie said. “Mr. Claremont kept me after.”
“I heard! To shower you with praise?”
“Something like that.”
Dora frowned. “Anything wrong? Sally thought—”
“No, no, everything’s fine.”
Winnie loaded up the books she needed to take home that evening and put on her coat, then the two girls headed toward the exit.
At school dances and parties, Dora was always surrounded by her whole gaggle of friends, but after school it was almost always just the two of them. Winnie preferred it that way, but she’d never say so. It was just a wordless little agreement they’d reached, and in exchange, Winnie put up with the chaotic slumber parties and other social outings where she faded into the background, lonely in the crowd.
Dora threw the school doors open. “Bus?” she asked. “Or walk?”
“Let’s walk,” Winnie said. “It’s so pretty out.”
They set off down the sunny street. The air was full of that special fall scent, sharp but warm, and seemed to thrum with possibility. The city was as loud as ever, but beneath the bleat of traffic and the chatter of pedestrians, Winnie seemed to hear something else: the voice of the season itself, offering her a taste of its signature alchemy. It’s fall! Fall! the wind tantalized in her chilly ear. Everything is changing, and so can you!
If only it were that easy. If only she could be made flashy and fantastic by the same magic that set the maple leaves ablaze! But no. Winnie was small and dark and plain as a sparrow, and imagined she always would be. Winnie was a girl who had just rejected an offer for the one thing she wanted most.
Well . . . second most.
“Say, let’s go to a show!” Dora said.
Winnie shook her head. “I’ve got homework to do, then Father needs me in the lab.”
Dora sighed heartily,
a robust sound from a robust girl—Dora never did anything by half measures—and said, “Can’t he take his own notes for once? What’s he even working on that’s so important, anyway?”
Winnie let out an airy little sigh herself. Sometimes she wished she could tell Dora everything.
Father’s official research was on wave mechanics, and his work continued at home with Winnie’s help. She did more than take notes, and Winnie was proud of the work they did . . . mostly . . . but she couldn’t talk to Dora about any of it. The daily work defied discussion because it was boring by Dora’s standards and complex by anyone’s standards. It required things like helping Father’s assistant, Scott, set up experiments, cleaning and mending laboratory equipment, and yes, taking notes. But their other work—those occasional terrifying, exhilarating sessions Winnie tried to wipe from her memory once Father had sobered up—those could not be discussed because, for those experiments, Winnie was the subject.
One of the war posters that had sprung up everywhere caught Winnie’s eye, pasted on the wall of the movie hall next to advertisements for current shows: Careless Talk Costs Lives. Winnie didn’t need the reminder. She knew sharing secrets came at a cost. Dora had always been so accepting of Winnie, but even she must have her limits.
Winnie could never tell Dora the truth, not about Father’s work and not about herself.
“Gosh, you know even I barely understand Father’s experiments,” Winnie lied, kicking at a pebble on the sidewalk. “But you know how he is.” She forced a grin. “As far as he’s concerned, an afternoon off would turn my work ethic to rubbish.”
Dora offered her a sympathetic elbow and began to swing their twined arms. Then she smiled so broadly her dimples showed. “Are you sure this devotion to your father’s work doesn’t have anything to do with that handsome assistant of his? Stan?”
“Scott,” Winnie corrected automatically. “And I never said he was handsome.” She tried not to blush.
Dora laughed. “I suppose you didn’t. Just that he was so brilliant, and such a good worker, and that you can’t believe how much he knows, considering he’s just an undergraduate and all. And then your eyes went all heart-shaped and you swooned dead away!”