When You and I Collide

by Kate Norris

  Winnie was grateful that even though her double had been against concealing her from Father, she seemed to be playing along now.

  “Say, what have you got there?” Scott asked, gesturing to the lab bench where Winnie had placed the glass form she found.

  “It’s a Lichtenberg figure. I found it on the ground over there. There must have been some kind of electric discharge when I arrived. Do you think that could have caused the fire you and Fa—Professor Schulde—were putting out earlier?”

  Scott stared at her in consternation. Had he noticed that she’d almost called this world’s Dr. Schulde “Father”? An embarrassing misstep, to be sure, but . . .

  “You know about Lichtenberg figures?”

  Winnie sighed in frustration. He was surprised about that?

  “I told you! I work with Father—and you. I’m going to be a physicist myself.” If Father lets me, she thought, but did not add.

  Scott picked up the glass rod and began to carefully examine it.

  “Maybe,” Winnie began, thinking aloud, “maybe this discharge of electricity was the universe, I don’t know, snapping back into equilibrium?”

  Scott raised his eyebrows.

  Winnie was reaching. She knew she was reaching. She understood just as well as he did that when electricity discharged, it wasn’t as if that energy vanished. It was just—she closed her eyes, and all she could see was her Scott, lying there on the floor. The jagged hole burned in his lab coat. The stillness of his chest.

  That was the world she was supposed to want to return to?

  Her chin trembled. Scott was right here! And completely out of reach.

  “What is it?” Scott asked. He made a move forward as if to touch her, but then seemed to remember himself. He stopped short and stepped back. “Winnie, what’s wrong?”

  Winnie let out a trembling breath. “Right before I transported here, there was an accident. You were—” Winnie began, but cut herself off.

  She wanted to tell, and she didn’t. Keeping all this grief pent up inside her felt impossible. But saying it out loud would make it more real.

  “An accident?” Scott pushed. “What happened?”

  Winnie squeezed her eyes tight—not that it mattered. Eyes open or closed, she saw the same thing. Scott, coming close because she had called to him. And then the blinding bolt. And then Scott on the ground.

  “Something went wrong with one of Father’s experiments. Scott was hurt. No—not hurt. He—he’s dead. He was electrocuted and he’s dead.”

  Scott let out a shaky breath. “Oh, Winnie. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

  She opened her eyes. “I read Professor Schulde’s notebook. The animal subjects Hawthorn transports—they go crazy? Is that going to happen to me?”

  “No! No, I don’t think so. And it isn’t—they don’t ‘go crazy,’ per se. When they come back, it’s like their brains have aged. But it happens very fast. If that was going to happen to you, we’d be seeing signs already. The rats immediately show signs of severe—fatal—dementia. Except when Hawthorn autopsies them, their brains appear normal.”

  Winnie didn’t know what to think. “What if that happens to me when I go back?”

  Her breath quickened. It was all catching up to her: Hawthorn’s ghoulish experiments. Not being able to get home. What waited for her there if she did manage to get back.

  And she was terrified.

  Even if Winnie could somehow get herself home unharmed, what kind of experiments would Father subject her to, now that he knew it was possible for her to travel between worlds?

  No. She couldn’t do this.

  “Scott, I can’t go back! It’s too risky. You say that me being here will upset the balance of things, but the first law of thermodynamics—it’s like any other natural ‘law’: It’s manmade. A theory, really. It could be wrong. Maybe me being here proves it’s wrong. I don’t want to go back, and you can’t make me.”

  For a long moment, Scott didn’t say anything. He just stood there, scratching his chin, looking at her. What was he thinking? That she was being a coward, probably. He must be so disappointed in her.

  But even Scott’s disappointment couldn’t make her want to go.

  To Winnie’s surprise, when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to rebuke her.

  “Are you familiar with time dilation?” he asked.

  Winnie frowned. She thought she’d heard the term before, but wasn’t sure.

  “It’s a correlation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity,” Scott explained.

  “Oh! Yes. I’ve read some of his papers, but they’re . . . pretty dense.”

  Winnie had no idea where he was going with any of this.

  Scott laughed softly. “Well, that’s an understatement. And I’m certainly no expert myself, but Hawthorn is. Basically, the way he explains it is that time moves at different rates in different frames of reference. And alternate realities are very different frames of reference. So, traveling between worlds is always a sort of time travel. He thinks that’s what’s causing the animal subjects to experience a strange sort of aging. He’s trying to figure out how to minimize that effect, but—”

  “You think we could make use of time dilation—is that it?” Winnie broke in eagerly. “You think that when I go back, I could really go back—back to before Scott’s accident?”

  Winnie’s breath went quick and shallow with excitement as hope took root. She could go back in time and prevent Scott’s accident. The idea of time travel was crazy—but was it crazier than traveling to alternate realities?

  Scott smiled. “Yes. Exactly. You could go back in time when you go back in space,” he said. “At least theoretically.”

  The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Father had always theorized that her ability could transcend linear time. That was the whole basis of his coin toss experiment—that she could change a coin toss that had already happened.

  It all sounded pretty impossible.

  But maybe she could do the impossible, if it meant saving Scott.

  Without that hope, she had nothing.

  Winnie gestured to the Lichtenberg figure. Its meaning was gradually becoming clear to her.

  “I found that where Scott was standing when he was shocked. But that happened before I traveled here.”

  “Hmm,” Scott said, considering. “Maybe it was like . . . a sort of echo. A reverberation that came through when the door between our worlds was open.”

  “Could it be a sign of the time dilation, though? Could there be an inverse relationship between time in your world and mine?”

  Scott frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Well, in my world, there was the electric blast, right there in the lab”—she pointed to the spot—“and then, after that, I was transported. But here, I was transported first—I must have been, or else there wouldn’t be an opening between our worlds—and then came the blast. You see? The order is reversed. So, when time moves forward here—”

  “It moves backward in your reality,” Scott finished thoughtfully. “That could be the case.”

  “So, let’s say it takes us a week to plan an experiment to get me back home—that would deposit me back in my world a week ago, right?” Winnie smiled wide. “Is—is that true, do you think? Because that would be amazing!”

  Scott smiled. “It sounds logical to me. Of course, we can’t know for sure. But it seems as probable as anything. So, you’ll work on an experiment with me? To go back?”

  “My god, yes! We should start right away!”

  Scott gave a chuckle.

  Winnie had been completely adrift since she saw Scott hurt and somehow transported herself to this strange place. Each new thing was a wave crashing over her, and she hadn’t been processing things so much as just trying to keep her head above water. But now s
he felt like she could breathe.

  Maybe she could see Scott again, and not just by proxy. Maybe she could save him. The thoughts were a life preserver, and she clung to them.

  “What do we do first?” Winnie asked eagerly. She’d been in their world now for what—forty minutes? They were already plenty early enough for her to stop the accident if they began immediately.

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Scott said. “The experiment will take planning, and equipment—which means we need to find somewhere for you to stay in the meantime. You’ll have to look like the real Winnie for that, so if someone spots you, it won’t be suspicious.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Winnie said sharply. It made her feel like . . . like a cheap knockoff. And the worst thing was, she knew he was right. A glance at this world’s Winnie revealed just how she measured up—or rather, didn’t. “I am the real Winnie,” she said, more for herself than him. “Just as much as she is.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I wasn’t implying that you’re second-rate. Only—different.”

  Ah, yes. Different. He’d known she wasn’t the “real” Winnie as soon as they kissed. There were much more important things to worry about, but unfortunately that didn’t stop the petty ones from bothering her too.

  She couldn’t wait to get back to Scott. The real one.

  * * *

  • • •

  Scott went back upstairs with the saline solution, and Winnie retreated once again to the dining room to hide out until Scott and Dr. Schulde returned to the laboratory. Then she would let her double make her up, and the two of them would try to figure out someplace where Winnie could stay. Maybe with Dora? If the girl even existed in this world. She thought of her own Dora wistfully. How she would love to be part of Winnie’s forced makeover! She was a little excited at the prospect of looking more like this world’s prettier version of herself, and that feeling mixed uneasily with the awful events of the day.

  Winnie knew Scott was dead, but she could undo it. She would go back—go back and wrest a happy ending out of that sad world, no matter what it took.

  Winnie would remake reality and become Scott’s savior, instead of his downfall.

  Her body trembled lightly, still awash in adrenaline, an acrid taste in her throat. But despite that, a tentative shot of hope unfurled in her chest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Winnie’s double met her in the hall upstairs and silently led Winnie into her bedroom. Winnie was surprised to discover that the girl’s room wasn’t up in the attic like Winnie’s, but in the large, bright bedroom next to Father’s study on the second floor. It was the room that Brunhilde used back home. Did Brunhilde sleep in the attic in this world? Was there even a Brunhilde here?

  Once the door was shut behind them, her double spoke.

  “Well?” she asked. “What’s the plan?”

  Winnie’s head throbbed dully. She didn’t feel good, but supposed it would be stranger if she did, considering all that had happened. She glanced around the room, trying to get her bearings. Her double’s room had no books. How could she sleep in a room with no books? Split-Winnie’s bed was unmade, and yesterday’s clothes were strewn on the floor, where they were a bit rumpled, but still in better shape than anything Winnie was wearing. Winnie glanced down at her dirty, wrinkled attire—she really did need to change.

  When she looked back at her double, the girl was massaging her temple. Did she have a headache too?

  “Scott says I need to be able to pass for you if I’m going to stay here,” Winnie told her double.

  “Here? With me?” the girl said, raising her eyebrows. “Easy for Scott to say! I’m not going to try to hide you in my room like a puppy or something.”

  Winnie recognized her own expression of incredulity, although she’d never seen it from the outside. There was an unexpected harshness to it. All those times Dora had begged her to be friendlier to their school acquaintances, to teachers who misspoke or just plain got things wrong, to stupid boys in soda shops, she’d thought her friend was just being pushy. But meeting herself, she had to wonder.

  “No, I just meant here, in this world,” Winnie said, trying not to sound irritated. “I was actually thinking I could stay with Dora. If . . . well, she is your friend here, right?”

  “She is.”

  “Okay, good.”

  Split-Winnie just stared at her.

  And was this what it was like to talk to her? She had never suspected her reserve was so . . . chilly.

  “So,” Winnie continued, “can I borrow some clothing?”

  “Oh—yes, of course.”

  The girl opened her closet, and Winnie saw that her double had easily three times the clothes she did, all of them as fine as could be. Her double took a pine-green cardigan with delicate pearl buttons off the hanger, passed it to Winnie, then searched for something to match, finally pairing it with a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a sharp plaid skirt.

  “Thank you.”

  “I can cut your hair too,” her double said. Then she regarded Winnie’s face critically, with much the same focus and intensity Winnie imagined she herself showed when examining a broken-down piece of laboratory equipment. “And I’ll need to make up your face, obviously.”

  Obviously.

  Winnie tried not to let her annoyance show.

  She took off her dirt-smudged shirt and skirt and caught her double giving her a sly once-over. The girl’s curiosity wasn’t exactly welcome, but it was certainly understandable. Winnie found herself wondering what “her” body might look like, not caught in the mirror or glimpsed up close in parts—a glance down at her knee as she lifted her leg to put on stockings, a peek at her elbow to look at a bug bite—but in full view, right there in front of her.

  How odd that a person could live in a body for sixteen years, and still not fully know what it looked like!

  Her double startled her by putting a gentle finger to the jagged scar on Winnie’s upper arm then.

  “I’ve got one too,” she said, eagerly stretching the neck of her sweater to show a matching scar. “From the car accident, right? You really are me, huh?”

  Winnie nodded, although it felt false. The two girls weren’t really the same. Winnie suddenly felt shy standing in front of this person—herself, but somehow also a stranger—in her underpants.

  Winnie couldn’t take her eyes off her double’s scar. When that shard of windshield pierced her double’s arm, it had been her arm. Different as they might seem, they had been the same person then, in the same accident.

  “Isn’t it so strange?” Winnie said. “The worst thing that ever happened to me, and it happened to both of us.”

  Her double gave a little humorless laugh.

  “The worst? Worse than this?”

  Winnie blinked in surprise. Of course it was worse. Mama died in that accident. Unless—

  “Wait—is Mama alive here?” Winnie asked eagerly.

  If Mama was here—that wouldn’t make Scott’s accident worth it, but at least there could be some tiny speck of good. To see Mama again, to hug her again—Winnie’s body thrilled with hope! She felt warm all over, like the sun was kissing every cell.

  That must be where their worlds diverged. Both of them had been in the accident, but this girl—this confident, beautiful her—had a mother who’d survived it.

  She grabbed her double’s arms tight.

  “Well, is she? I want to see her!”

  Her startled double blinked back in surprise. “Let go of me!”

  “Tell me! Tell me where she is!”

  Her double stared back at her, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  This must be what it looked like when Winnie was scared.

  “She’s gone!” her double said.

  “Gone?”

  “She died in
the crash, just like yours!”

  Her double must think she was completely unhinged. Winnie realized how tightly she was gripping her double’s arms and tried to let go, but there was some strange resistance there, like her double was—sticky? No. Magnetic.

  Winnie peeled her fingers away with difficultly and took a few steps back. She’d practically assaulted the girl. What was wrong with her? The flesh of her double’s arms held the indentation of Winnie’s fingers for a few uncanny seconds, like a couch cushion or florist’s foam.

  Both girls stared.

  Winnie’s double opened her mouth first. “What—” she began, but by then the flesh had sprung back to fullness. “What was that?” she finished shakily.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Winnie said. “Scott said that me being here might cause some sort of energy imbalances, but . . . it’s better now, right?”

  Her double nodded slowly.

  “I’m sorry,” Winnie said, her voice small. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—well, you would understand.” She looked at her double, eyes full of tears, but for once unembarrassed. “Can you imagine thinking for a second that you’re actually going to see her again?”

  Her double nodded grimly. “I understand.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Winnie finished dressing quickly. When she checked her reflection, she was both disappointed and relieved to discover that even in her doppelgänger’s lovely clothes, she looked like herself.

  Her double stood behind her, and it was beyond strange seeing both their reflections in one mirror. For a moment, Winnie was overcome with vertigo. She put her fingers on the dresser top to steady herself.

  “What are you thinking?” her double asked. “It feels like I should be able to tell, but I have no idea.”

  “I really don’t even know myself.”

  Words often felt inadequate to express her full feelings—it was part of why Winnie was so quiet in general—but they had never been this deficient.