by Kate Norris
Louisa shot Winnie a dirty look, like she suspected that this trouble could be traced back to her. Winnie resented the unfairness of this for about a split second before realizing that Louisa wasn’t wrong.
Dora shook her head mutely. Then, after a long pause, she said, “I’ll speak to them. I—everything will be fine.”
“You won’t tell them I’m here?” Winnie asked Dora, but the question was really for Louisa.
“No, of course not.” Dora frowned at Louisa. “It’s just me and you and Martha here, understand?”
Louisa nodded, but she didn’t look pleased about it.
Dora left to go speak with the men, but Louisa hung back a moment.
“I don’t know what it is you’ve done, but I want you gone by tomorrow or I’ll turn you in myself.”
Winnie nodded. If the next day’s experiment didn’t work, she would have nowhere to go—but if the experiment didn’t work, Louisa would be the least of her problems.
* * *
• • •
“It’s okay,” Dora said shakily when she returned some half hour or so later. “They just asked if I was at the school last night, or if I knew who was. They also asked if I’d heard about some kind of car accident? I just told them I’d been home all night. They asked if I knew James—there, at least, I could tell the truth. We never met. They must have found out I’m Winnie’s best friend, but they don’t know anything more yet.”
Winnie frowned. “They might not know exactly what they’re looking for, but they’ve already managed to get awful close awful quickly.”
It was bad luck that there was an open investigation into James’s death when they destroyed the gymnasium, and that she’d seemed somewhat suspicious already—to Muldoon, at least—when the investigation into the explosion at her school began. The two events weren’t actually related, but of course they would seem that way, since Winnie had ties to both, and James and her father had ties to the same government project.
“You know, they might be watching Dr. Schulde’s house,” Dora said. “They might even be watching this building. Are you sure it’s a good idea to go over there tomorrow?”
“No,” Winnie said. “It’s almost certainly a bad one. But it’s the only one we have.”
* * *
• • •
While they were eating that evening, Louisa came in, tossed the New York PM Daily down, gave Winnie a glare, and stalked out of the dining room.
Dora met Winnie’s eyes from across the table with a meaningful look, then cautiously picked up the paper.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Winnie pushed her chair back with a screech and hurried over to stand behind her friend so they could read together.
WARSHIP APPEARS—AND DISAPPEARS!—OUTSIDE BLOOMINGDALE’S
It was the kind of thing she’d expect to see on the cover of Astounding Stories or Weird Tales—some work of science fiction—not the evening paper. But there it was.
Winnie quickly skimmed the news article. Apparently, in the middle of the night, several bystanders saw a ship flicker into existence smack dab in the middle of the intersection of Third Avenue and 57th Street, remain there just long enough to demolish three parked cars, and for at least two witnesses to note the hull number and name on the bow—USS Eldridge 173—then vanish.
As if that weren’t impossible enough already, the ship with that identification was planned, but it hadn’t been built yet.
“What do you make of it?” Dora asked breathlessly. “It’s just so strange! A hoax—?”
“Do hoaxes crush asphalt? Or cars?”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. But I thought . . . I thought I heard a ship horn last night, when we were getting on the subway.”
Dora frowned. “But that was earlier, and much too far away. The ship—”
“Appeared maybe half a mile from the school,” Winnie interrupted. “Later. Right when we were performing our experiment.”
Dora shook her head in disbelief. She seemed slow to accept what Winnie already had: This was her fault. It was another side effect of the energy imbalance Winnie had caused. She didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but the why was no mystery.
“Maybe it was the Germans, somehow, like the paper says.”
The article supposed that the Germans had somehow dropped a ship in the middle of Manhattan. What else could it possibly be? But that theory didn’t account for the US hull number, or explain how the Germans could have gotten something so massive aloft—let alone how they could have possibly made it disappear after.
The whole article had a tone of barely constrained panic.
Only one thing is clear, it concluded—our Axis enemies have a terrible new weapon.
Winnie shook her head. “It was us. Me. Our experiment—somehow, I moved that ship. I must have brought it here from the future, from when it’s done being built. Maybe even some other world’s future. I’m jumbling everything up, twisting the natural order of things, and now . . . this. It’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense.”
“All these poor people!” Dora exclaimed. “Terrified of the Germans’ ‘new weapon.’ I wish we could tell them they don’t have to be afraid.”
Winnie didn’t say anything—she didn’t want to worry Dora more—but people should be afraid. The real threat was right there, in their own city.
Winnie suspected it was the continued wrongness of her being there, concentrated somehow by the electric field they’d created, that had temporarily pulled a massive amount of matter into their system when she’d failed to transport herself. A small part of her was gratified. At least they were on the right track. At least they were doing something.
But what if there had been a person in one of those cars?
What if they’d staged their experiment at any other time of day, when that intersection would have been teeming with people, not just a handful of couples heading home from the Copacabana or whatever other nightclub. It was a tremendous stroke of luck that no one had died.
It was more urgent than ever for Winnie to try their experiment again.
And more dangerous than she’d realized for her to try again and fail.
* * *
• • •
“No call this morning,” Dora said, “so I suppose school’s reopened.”
“Well, that’s good,” Winnie said uncertainly. “Maybe everything will blow over.”
But she and Dora both knew that was just wishful thinking.
“Or maybe the police want to get all us schoolgirls back in one place, so they can keep an eye on us,” Dora said.
Winnie felt a twinge in her gut and knew immediately that Dora must be right. She hated to think of her friend there all day under their ominous eyes, alone.
“Don’t go. Come to Winnie’s with me. We should all stick together.”
Dora thought about it for a moment. “I think it’s safest if we just act normal. Honestly, I wish Winnie wasn’t playing hooky today.” Her forehead wrinkled with concern. “The detectives last night—they didn’t threaten me, exactly, but I got the sense that one of them, at least, would have been happy to cart me in even if I’m innocent, just to see if it put pressure on the right people. I don’t want to give them any excuse.”
“They wouldn’t arrest you. Not without a good reason. You’re—well, you’re rich.”
“This is wartime, Winnie. I’m not sure it matters who your parents are. And besides,” she added, “it isn’t as if my parents are here.” Dora sighed heavily. “I’m sure they would have leaned on Winnie much harder if her father hadn’t been there to tell them just where they could stick their inquiries. But me, I may as well not have any parents at all.” For a moment, the pain was naked on Dora’s face, but then she gave a weak smile and said, “I just have to hope they d
on’t realize I know anything. So, I’ll be going to school like a good girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to grab my books.”
Dora got up, pushed her chair in, and went off to her bedroom to put together her school things. Winnie tried to take a few more bites of breakfast, but the food turned to cardboard in her mouth. The fork dropped from her hand, and time thickened around her, like the air itself was so full of possibilities that it impeded the normally steady tick of seconds.
It was a splinter—the first one she’d experienced in this world. It hit with an unusual intensity, as if the energy of all the small splinters she would have normally seen in this time had combined into this one.
What Winnie saw was as real for her as if it were actually unfolding before her eyes: Winnie suggested Dora skip school and join them for the experiment at her double’s house.
“Don’t go,” Winnie said, just as she had a moment ago. “Come to Winnie’s with me. We should all stick together.”
But instead of declining, Dora frowned, thought a moment, then nodded her head and said, “Okay. I think I will.”
Then, time jumped.
Winnie saw herself and Dora with Beta in the shed at Beta’s house, sorting through all Father’s retired equipment. It was happening again. She was seeing a potential future, just like she had when she “met” James in Hawthorn’s lab, although this one seemed awfully pedestrian. Dora went with her, and all seemed well.
Winnie felt a twinge of worry. Did that mean things would go well only if Dora went with her?
Then the other half of the splinter hit her. She felt a cramp deep in her belly, like someone had reached inside and was wrenching her organs in their tightly closed fist. Winnie doubled over in pain. She heard her plate shatter against the hardwood floor before she realized she’d knocked it from the table.
She saw her body alone on a dirt floor, a deep dent in her temple. Winnie started panting. Could it be she was just unconscious? No—not with an injury like that.
Was that what awaited her if Dora didn’t go?
Winnie forced herself to focus on the here and now and tried to shut out the awful image of her dead body. She had seen her death once before. She had been crossing the street when a car sped around the corner, just barely missing her. In an alternate reality, it caught her. She heard the wet thump of the impact, like a thick slab of steak being tenderized with a wooden mallet, and saw her bloody body in the street. Although she was unharmed, it took her some time to realize it. Seeing the split had been so upsetting, things had gotten all jumbled. For a moment, it was like she had been hit. She collapsed, screaming. Once the gathering crowd realized she was uninjured, they decided she was having a hysterical fit. A man in a suit had knelt beside her and given her a sharp slap to bring her out of it.
Remembering this made Winnie hopeful for a moment. Perhaps this was like that other time, and she was confusing what happened in the split with what would happen here—perhaps it was some other Winnie who died on a cold, packed-earth floor. But the splinter seemed to be outlining two possibilities: If Dora came with her, she lived; if Dora didn’t, she died.
Of course, she had thought she understood the meaning of the splinter she saw when Father told her she couldn’t go to Hawthorn’s party. She thought that defying him would lead her to James. But it had led her to the wrong James, in the wrong world, via a path that included Scott’s death.
So how could she really know what to make of this splinter?
But the way it had come on, so intense—it also felt wrong to just ignore it.
Dora hurried into the room then, while Winnie was still struggling to decide what to do.
“Are you okay? It sounded like something broke.”
Winnie nodded. She knelt down and began picking up the shards of porcelain.
“I’m afraid to go to Winnie’s alone,” Winnie said suddenly, the words popping out of her mouth before she even knew she was saying them. “Are you sure you can’t come with me?”
Irritation flashed on Dora’s face. “We were just talking about the danger of me skipping class.”
But what if this was life or death? It very well might be, and Winnie was certain that Dora would say yes, if she explained that to her.
But what if Winnie was wrong? It wouldn’t be the first time. How could she ask Dora to become even more mixed up in all this than she already was, when she wasn’t even sure?
Asking Dora to skip school and come with her would be tantamount to demanding that Dora put Winnie’s well-being over her own. And the thing was, she knew Dora would do it—which was exactly why she couldn’t ask.
Of course, Winnie didn’t want to die. She was sixteen! There was still so much she wanted to do. And, if she were to die, there would be no one left to try to save Scott. He would be dead for good.
So, she would try to be smart, and careful. Maybe with the warning she’d seen, she would be prepared to save herself from whatever accident she’d seen the aftermath of, if it was truly the consequence of going to her double’s alone.
Winnie made her goodbyes to Dora, thankful that any strangeness on her part would be dismissed as nerves about the impending experiment.
“This is our last goodbye, isn’t it?” Dora said. “I mean, hopefully it is—if your experiment works.”
Winnie forced a smile. “It is. Thank you for letting me stay with you. Thank you for everything.”
She hugged Dora tightly. Then she made herself let go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As soon as Winnie knocked, Beta opened the door, glanced up and down the street, then gestured frantically for Winnie to come inside.
Beta tucked her hair behind her ear nervously, baring the ugly gash on her forehead. Strangely, it startled Winnie more seeing it on her double than when she saw it in the mirror.
Winnie hadn’t taken that close of a look at herself that morning. Were the circles under her own eyes as dark? Her skin that sallow? The girl was a wreck.
“Are you okay?” Winnie asked.
Her double laughed. It was a hopeless sound.
“No,” she said. “Are you?”
Winnie shook her head. “No. I guess not.”
“We should start in the shed, I think,” Beta said, taking a few steps back from her.
Did the shed have a dirt floor? Winnie couldn’t remember. Father used it to store excess lab equipment and things in need of repair, but she didn’t go out there much herself.
“Why not the laboratory?” Winnie asked.
The floor of the basement laboratory was definitely dirt, but avoidance wouldn’t save her—she had to hope that caution might.
“Father has a—what was that thing you broke? The glass thing that measures electric charge?”
“An electrometer?”
“Yeah, he has an electrometer out there, I think. And one of those cages too.”
“Really? In the shed? Assembled and everything?”
“Um, I’m not sure. We might have to put it together. Let’s go check.”
Even though she knew they had to try to find a way to get her back home, Winnie didn’t share her double’s eagerness to get started. Their earlier failure hadn’t left her with much confidence, and the stakes had only gotten higher. If all four of them together had managed to screw things up, what hope did just she and Beta have?
Beta turned and began walking toward the kitchen.
“Wait—” Winnie said. “Should we really be doing this? Maybe it would be better to wait for Scott.”
Her double stopped and faced Winnie. Her expression was inscrutable.
“I didn’t know James as well as I would have liked,” she said, brows furrowed. “But he meant a lot to Scott, and that means a lot to me.”
“I feel the same way,” Winnie said, although she wasn’t quite sure what Beta was saying—or
rather, she didn’t understand the emotion underneath it, or why she was saying it then.
“Scott—” Beta began, but then shook her head. “He’s been through enough already. He is going to be so mad.” Tears welled in her eyes, but they didn’t spill. “But I don’t know what else to do. Do you?” She paused. “Scott sugarcoats it, but you and me—we know the truth, right? You’re tearing this world apart.”
Winnie couldn’t disagree. It was dangerous to try their experiment again. Or rather, it was dangerous to fail again. But there was danger in all directions now, and retrying their experiment was the only direction that also had the potential for safety—and Scott.
Winnie nodded. Her double was right.
“This is what we have to do,” Beta said.
Winnie nodded again and followed her double outside.
* * *
• • •
The large courtyard was hemmed in on all sides by the neighboring townhouses. A narrow, stone-paved path led to a small storage shed in the rear corner of the yard. Winnie began to walk toward it, and Beta trailed a few feet behind.
Winnie understood why her double was afraid to get too close to her. She put a hand to the cut on her forehead—it looked worse than it felt, but she wasn’t eager for any new injuries, and imagined her double wasn’t either.
What traitors their bodies had become!
As Winnie approached the door, she saw that the padlock on the shed had been left open.
“Why don’t you go in and see if the stuff we need is there, okay?” Beta said.
She looked miserable. Winnie felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t come to their world on purpose, but that didn’t make her presence there any less difficult for her double.
“Okay,” Winnie said. She entered the small shed, which was just as tidy as the one back home. All the tools were hanging in their designated places on a wall of whitewashed pegboard, and orderly shelves of laboratory equipment lined the back wall, either duplicates of things in the basement lab, or equipment in need of repair. The only thing out of place was a stool, pulled out from its spot in front of the workbench to sit in the middle of the room, with a bundle of rope sitting on top of it.