by Kate Norris
“Still, you should definitely stay here. The less you’re seen, the better. This place is nothing much, but we’ll make do.”
Rather than being relieved at this, Winnie began to worry. She hadn’t really thought about what it would be like, sharing such a small space with Scott for days on end. Where would she sleep? On the couch? No, of course Scott would be a gentleman and insist she take the bed . . . which, if her guess about the Murphy bed was correct, would be about five feet away from Scott on the couch. So, there she would be, wrapped in his blankets, head on a pillow that smelled of him, listening to his breath while he slept. It sent a tangle of feelings shivering through her stomach.
She was excited at the prospect of being so close to him, and ashamed of that excitement.
Winnie gave her head a brief shake. She was there to figure out how to save her Scott, not to think like that about his double.
“Well, that’s settled—” Scott began, but Split-Winnie cut him off.
“No, it’s not! I don’t want her staying here. She can upset gravity just as easily here as she can at Dora’s, and the only reason she’s afraid of Hawthorn is because James is missing in her world, and their Scott thought Hawthorn was to blame.”
“What?” Scott asked. “James went missing? Why didn’t you tell me!”
“I was going to,” Winnie said weakly. Her double just hadn’t given her the chance.
Scott had never looked at her with such reproach before. Winnie felt a hot flash of righteous hatred toward her double for betraying her confidence. This feeling vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving behind confusion and shame. Was that the sort of person her double was when her back was against the wall—disloyal?
She and her doppelgänger were bringing out the worst in each other. The two of them weren’t supposed to be in one world together, and with both of them occupying the same identity, just trying to exist made her feel like a dog begging for scraps. She couldn’t just be Winnie anymore, even in her own head. “Winnie” was her, but also her double, who she had to dress like, even though she knew she could never really be her. She just wanted to be herself, but how could she, under the constant pressure of her own mirror image?
No. She had to stop thinking of her double as another self outside her body—as another “Winnie.” She was Winnie. Let her doppelgänger be . . . Beta, at least in Winnie’s head; she should get to be Alpha in her own mind, if nowhere else.
Winnie took a deep breath. Distancing herself from her doppelgänger made her feel calmer than she had all day. She was stuck in a foreign world, but she was Winnie, she was herself, and she was human. An individual, not just a poor copy.
“Well,” Scott said slowly, “would you tell me about it now?”
“But that’s the thing,” Beta interjected. “It doesn’t matter—it has nothing to do with our Hawthorn. Our James is fine. So, she doesn’t have to stay with Dora, and she doesn’t have to stay with you. We don’t have to hide her at all. We can introduce her to Hawthorn and let Nightingale help her. Especially if they’re just going to find her anyway.”
Winnie being there might be upsetting the order of things and endangering people, but at least she cared. Her double didn’t seem to care about anything aside from herself and her Scott.
“Hawthorn was using James as a test subject,” Winnie said, pausing to let the horror of that sink in. “The kind of man who does that—he isn’t a good man, not in any world.” Winnie felt a lump forming in her throat, because what she said could apply to Father too. “But if that’s the sort of person you’re willing to turn me over to, then I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
“Of course we won’t!” Scott said quickly. He shot her double a look of reproach. “We aren’t going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
This felt like victory—but only for a moment. Beta immediately paled and clutched her stomach, which made Winnie realize that she was feeling queasy too. She lurched to her feet, eyes searching for the bathroom, but her double shoved past her and hurried that way herself, slamming the door shut behind her. Winnie could immediately hear the sickening sound of her double vomiting.
Dora took her arm and quickly guided her to the kitchenette, handing her a little wastebasket. Winnie’s stomach heaved, but thankfully, it was empty.
She watched Scott as he waited for her double outside the bathroom. There was something so tender about the way his hand was pressed against the door that separated them, like he was eager to share even in her suffering.
Scott finally glanced back over his shoulder, sparing a thought for Winnie. But instead of inquiring how she was, he just said, “You should probably go. And maybe it’s best if you just stay with Dora—at least for the time being. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll start planning then.”
Even though Beta lost the argument, she still got her way in the end. Winnie wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t have really expected Scott to side with her over his own girlfriend. Still, it felt astonishingly unfair that her double’s preference was given more weight than Winnie’s safety.
She longed to see her own Scott then with an intensity she remembered from the early grieving months after her mother’s death. That experience had taught her there was no escape from grief. Time would lessen it, but the only way out was through.
It wasn’t an especially helpful lesson.
Winnie’s legs felt increasingly weak as they descended the several flights of stairs to exit Scott’s apartment building, but her nausea gradually eased. Once they were outside, a chilly wind lashed Winnie’s cheeks, making her realize they were wet.
“Your stomach hurts terribly?” Dora asked, grimacing in sympathy.
Winnie nodded. It was easier to let Dora think that was why she was crying.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next evening, Winnie headed out for her rendezvous with Scott. As she walked down the block to meet him outside the five-and-dime store where Dora had said that Beta had said that Scott had said he would pick her up, she tried not to be annoyed that her life had become a game of telephone. If Beta had let her stay with Scott, communication wouldn’t be an issue . . . but if Winnie was honest with herself, she knew that if she were in her double’s place, she wouldn’t want her staying with Scott either.
Winnie hugged her arms to her chest.
The weather had finally turned, and the night was downright cold, full of the promise of winter to come. She rocked back and forth, trying to keep warm as stiff fingers of wind pulled at her scarf and hair. Her hands stung. The skin at her knuckles had started to crack, and although Winnie knew it was almost certainly from the cold, it made her nervous. She had begun to mistrust her body. Nausea, headaches, nosebleeds—what next?
She caught a glimpse of her own watery reflection in the glass of the store front window, illuminated in a cone of light from a streetlamp, the bright navy of her borrowed coat inky in the dark, eyes huge in her pale face, curls blown wild. It looked like she was fading away.
Scott waved at her from down the street, the other hand holding his hat tight to his head. He looked a bit enigmatic in his tightly belted trench coat. The light glanced off the lenses of his glasses, turning the expression behind them inscrutable.
Winnie found herself hoping she really could trust him.
“You haven’t been waiting too long, I hope?” he asked, smiling lopsidedly. It was his nervous smile, and recognizing it flooded Winnie with an uneasy affection.
“Oh, no—I just got here.”
He offered her his arm and began to escort her down the sidewalk, chivalrously walking on the street-side to buffer her from the press of traffic. It made Winnie feel odd—and guiltily pleased—that anyone who saw them would think they were a couple.
“How are you doing? Winnie’s nausea stopped soon after you left. I assume yours did too?”
Winnie nodde
d. She was feeling a bit shy, just the two of them—but perhaps that was for the best. It wouldn’t be right for her to be too comfortable with her double’s boyfriend.
“I’ve been thinking about the connection between the two of you,” Scott said. “Quantum entanglement, or whatever it is. It’s sort of—well, creepy. And then I think about my double, and what happened to him. It makes me feel like maybe I’m doomed and just don’t know it.”
Winnie was relieved that this, at least, was a worry she could ease. She knew that sometimes a person died in one world and lived in another. She’d known that since her very first splinter.
“It’s not like that. Think about it—if there are infinite realities, we’ve probably all died countless times.”
He thought for a moment, then smiled. “You know, that’s actually comforting.”
Winnie was glad she’d been able to make him feel better, but she wasn’t able to return his smile. Even if Scott was likely dead in many worlds, and alive in still more, it was too abstract a reassurance for her unless she could get him back in her own.
* * *
• • •
Scott set about making Winnie some tea in the dollhouse-sized kitchenette. Once it was ready, he set the tea tray on the coffee table and sat down across from her. In addition to tea and cookies, he’d prepared a few cheese sandwiches, which he’d cut into tidy, crustless triangles. This touch of domestic flair surprised her, but on second thought, why should it? Surely someone capable of operating delicate, finely calibrated equipment wouldn’t be at a loss when confronted with a kitchen.
“I thought that if you were skipping dinner at Dora’s, I had better actually give you some food,” Scott said, looking somewhat bashful, “although the pantry is a bit bare this late in the month.”
“Thanks,” Winnie said, grabbing her teacup and a triangle of sandwich, “I’m famished.”
“So, where do you think we should begin?”
She knew that Scott wouldn’t be able to help unless he knew everything, but it was hard enough for her to think about what had happened, much less talk about it. So, she had spent hours in a café writing down a full account of Scott’s accident in what she hoped was meticulous detail—a truly horrible way to spend the day, but better that than trying to speak it all aloud.
“I wrote down everything I could remember about what happened in the lab that night.”
That terrible night had been only two days ago. It felt like a lifetime. She only hoped that if they were right about the time dilation, and if she just hurried, she could be quick enough to undo it.
“But before you read it,” Winnie added, “there’s something you need to know. Or maybe you know already? But Scott didn’t.” Winnie swallowed nervously, but there was nothing to do but come out and say it. “Sometimes I see alternate realities. I get this glimpse of how things could happen differently, how that same moment plays out in a different world, but then also, sometimes—well, once, I saw a peek of the future that resulted too.” Winnie could see he had questions, but pressed on. She wanted to get it all out. “So, it isn’t a complete surprise—I mean, it isn’t completely random—that I would be able to travel between realities too.”
“That’s—well, it’s astonishing. I can’t even begin to . . .” He trailed off, then said suddenly, “I wonder why Winnie doesn’t see them?”
But surely Beta saw splinters too. Winnie’s ability—it wasn’t cosmetic, like her hairstyle or one of her double’s lovely sweaters, something that could be taken on or off. Seeing splinters was part of her. Winnie didn’t say anything, but her disbelief must have shown.
“No,” Scott said firmly. “She would tell me something like that.”
“I wanted to tell Scott, to tell Dora, even. But I never told anyone, outside of family. Don’t think it means she doesn’t trust you—I’m sure she does. But it’s a scary thing, being different. And it’s only getting scarier, with the war, being German . . . Growing up, seeing splinters felt like—I don’t know, like a wart. I was embarrassed. What child wants to be different? But now it’s worse. Now it feels like a target.”
Scott nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. It’s selfish, taking something so personal and making it about me. But it’s just—it’s so strange, for there to be something that significant about Winnie that I don’t know. And Dr. Schulde! Why would he agree to work with Nightingale, knowing the risk if Hawthorn found out about her?”
Winnie was gratified to hear him acknowledge that the risk from Hawthorn was real, especially after Beta once again suggested handing Winnie over to him last night.
“I was surprised by that too,” Winnie said, “but it seems like here, he keeps her out of his work. Maybe he felt like that distance was enough, or maybe he thought that him knowing more about Hawthorn’s work would help keep her safe.”
Or maybe, Winnie thought, her father was more worried about his own career than about his “daughter.”
Winnie pulled the folded-up papers recounting the accident out of her purse and passed them to Scott. “Here,” she said. “If you have any questions, just ask.” She’d kept the account as dry as possible, but still felt as exposed as if she were handing over her diary. Scott began reading, and she took a nervous bite of her sandwich.
The evening of Scott’s death had been awful, and it had been awful to relive it, which was part of why she’d written everything down. Printed words on a page couldn’t waver. They couldn’t betray her feelings by some inflection or glance. They couldn’t alert Scott to the fact that the accident had been both the worst of her time in the lab and its culmination—not an anomaly, but the apex of years of awfulness.
Winnie watched his face as he read on. After a minute or so, she saw him flinch and knew what part he must have arrived at.
“A kitten? You were supposed to control a coin toss that determined whether or not Professor Schulde killed a kitten?”
Winnie nodded.
“But it was just to give you some extra motivation—a trick, albeit a cruel one. He wouldn’t have actually killed it,” Scott said. His voice sounded confident, but he was examining her face, looking desperate for confirmation.
Winnie shook her head. “He would have killed it.”
She had known Scott would understand the physics of the situation, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would struggle to grasp the psychology. When she considered leaving out those cruel details, it was from a simple desire to avoid airing the family’s dirty laundry, not from any fear that he wouldn’t believe her. Now she was glad she’d left those parts in. She needed Scott to understand it—all of it.
Her fate was at least partly in his hands now. She wanted him to know what that meant.
“The Professor Schulde I know—”
“You don’t know him,” she said. “Not like I do. And you don’t understand how angry he was.”
“Why? Why was he so mad? He sounds awful!”
Winnie frowned. Father wasn’t a monster. She didn’t want Scott to think he was.
“He found out that I found out that Erwin Schrödinger is my real father.”
For a moment, Scott just looked at her. “But not here,” he said. Then immediately shook his head. Beta and Winnie were identical. Obviously, they had the same parents. Winnie and Scott both knew that although there might be any number of differences between their worlds, the parentage of two identical selves wasn’t one of them. “Are you sure?”
Winnie nodded.
“Still, the experiment, it’s all so cruel.”
“I don’t think he does it to hurt me,” Winnie said. “I—I think he does it to hurt himself. As punishment for the accident that killed Mama.”
Scott raised his brows. “So, you’re what—collateral damage?”
In a way, she was glad he didn’t understand—glad that Scott had never been in so much pain that seeking out ot
her, different hurts was a desirable distraction. Her double would understand. Wouldn’t she?
“Don’t tell her about any of this, okay?” Winnie said.
“Doesn’t she deserve—”
“No. No good can come of it.”
Finally, he nodded. “Fine. But I hate keeping secrets, especially from Winnie. And I’m awful at it.”
“Then this will be good practice.”
He sighed and shook his head, then he opened his mouth to speak—but instead, closed it again.
“What?”
He gave a heavy sigh. “Nothing. I—I’m just going to finish reading this, okay?”
Winnie frowned, then nodded. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but supposed he was entitled to his own private thoughts, same as she was.
* * *
• • •
Scott finished reading Winnie’s account and set the papers aside.
“All right,” he said. “I think I understand the premise of your father’s experiment, and it’s pretty clear how it went wrong. To start with, I think we need to figure out how to re-create the conditions of your first trip.”
Winnie nodded. “There’s some equipment we’ll need—a pretty sizeable generator and a Faraday cage will be the most difficult to come by, I think—and we need more space than we have here.”
“Don’t worry,” Scott said. “I know a place that has both the equipment and the space. Hawthorn’s lab.”
Winnie laughed out loud, although she had a sick feeling he wasn’t joking.
“Winnie, you can do this. You didn’t want to be in that world anymore, and because the conditions were right and you wanted out badly enough, you were able to travel between worlds. I think if we can re-create the conditions, you can will yourself back.”