All the Lonely People

by Jen Marie Hawkins

  “Can I ask you a question now?”

  I want to say no, but I nod.

  “Did you dream about this blanket before or after you got to London?”

  I inhale, exhale. “After.”

  He nods. “I thought so.”

  Trying to fill in the blanks is dizzying. “What are you saying?”

  His pupils dilate. “What do you know about quantum entanglement?”

  Well, that took a hard left. I try to remember the definition on the poster in his room. Can’t think straight enough to remember the words.

  “Less than I know about playing guitar.”

  He chuckles. “It’s a theory that says when some particles become entangled, they remain connected even after they’re separated. Einstein called it spooky action at a distance.”

  “I’m sure it will surprise you that I’m still confused.”

  He turns so he’s lying on his side in the seat. He props his head up. “The theory is based on very small particles, at the atomic level. But remember what I said about how we only see a very limited part of our universe?”

  “The physics-as-our-glasses comparison, yes.”

  “Right. Communication is an even more finite science, but a lot of scientists think quantum entanglement can very well explain that, too. Think of how a flock of birds instantaneously change direction and rhythm. Have you ever noticed that?”

  I nod. “Sure.”

  “How are they communicating that? I know people don’t do that, but some people are able to communicate better nonverbally than others. Is telepathy just thought particles that become entangled when people spend a regular amount of time together? Or rather, become entangled?”

  I glance down at the blanket. “So you’re saying you picked up on some nonverbal cue about the…?”

  “No,” Henry says, a little squirmy. He rolls back on his back and stares up at the ceiling of the bus. “I’m saying I bought the blanket because I’ve dreamed about it also.”

  The statement itself is innocent. But all the words unspoken, the ones in between, hiding in the curve of his lips—those are the ones that whisper flames into my ears.

  “So perhaps we’ve dreamed the same thing.” The corners of his mouth turn upward, just slightly. “At some point.”

  I turn my head and zoom in on a fingerprint on the window. Ringo is playing the drum solo from Abbey Road in my chest. When I get the courage to look over at him again, his eyes are closed.

  After a few still, quiet minutes, I whisper “Was the blanket in the dream you shouldn’t tell me about?”

  His eyes stay closed. I can’t tell if he’s sleeping or playing possum, but I feel dodged-a-bullet relief when he doesn’t answer.

  Maybe it’s better if I never know.

  Chapter 34

  : Tell Me What You See :

  “PICK A CARD. Any card.” Henry’s dimples wink as he grins.

  He leans on the front counter of the Fox Den, fanning a set of jet-black cards with gold filigree musical notes on them. Henry and me. Me and Henry. I can’t get the thought out of my head. It’s hard to reconcile falling asleep on the bus and waking up here with him, back at the store. My memory is a puzzle with missing pieces.

  “Am I supposed to ask the question aloud?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Just concentrate on it. Focus with your mind. Then pick the card you feel drawn to for the answer.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Our trip flashes in a series of reverse-motion still shots in my mind. He’s asleep beside me on the bus. Then he’s holding me in the graveyard as I cry. He’s leaning toward me under an umbrella at Strawberry Field. He’s grinning across the table from me on Penny Lane. Then staring at me through a camera lens at Pier Head. I ask the silent question: What’s the outcome of this thing between Henry and me? My hand reaches for the cards until they stop on one. I peek through my lids and pull it away from the deck. It’s warm in my hand, shiny gold border contrasting the ink-black of the card.

  “Flip it over on the counter,” Henry says. I don’t look at him, in case those thought particles he was talking about have somehow transmitted to him what I’ve asked. I flip the card over. In the same shiny gold filigree, two figures—a man and a woman—face one another. Behind them, swirls dominate the sky like they’re suspended in the cosmos. An angel reigns over their heads. At the bottom of the card: THE LOVERS.

  Chapter 35

  : Good Day Sunshine :

  “ICE CREAM AND dabbing!”

  Somewhere, through thick darkness, an English voice shouts this over and over. Ice cream and dabbing! It makes no sense with the context of the tarot card. The voice grows progressively louder. More insistent. Then Henry’s voice joins the bizarro chorus.

  “Where did you say?”

  I open my eyes as I process it: just a dream. No tarot cards. We’re still on the bus. Hazy morning daylight swirls inside the bus with a heady mix of diesel fumes. I try to imagine what this dream was supposed to mean. Ice cream and dabbing?

  Henry rubs his eyes and yawns. There’s a lingering feeling that we’ve missed something important, that something is not quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it. The bus driver props a thick arm on the seat back in front of us and says it again. But this time, it’s clearer.

  “High Street and Abbey. Last stop, ladies and gentlemen. Wakey wakey.”

  Out the bus windows, a drowsy English town awaits. There are old brick buildings and Tudor houses, but the thing that catches my eye is the mural on the side of a building. It’s a painting, in psychedelic colors, of a hand holding a sword.

  Henry stretches his back and looks out the window, surprise dawning over his face. “Is that…?” He leans over me to get a better look. A smile creeps over his sleep-wrinkled face, and then he throws his head back and laughs.

  My grasp of the geography here is imperfect, so I can’t see where we are on the map in my not-quite-awake brain. Arriving at the last stop on the bus line means we slept through the stop at Birmingham. That much I’ve put together.

  “How far are we from London?”

  “About three hours,” he answers.

  I pull out my phone to check the time and our location, but it’s completely dead. Great. I scratch my head. It’s itchy from getting my hair wet in the rain last night. I throw it all up in a messy bun with the tie around my wrist. Henry keeps chuckling as he folds the blanket and stuffs it in his backpack.

  “Tell me again how this is funny?” (I’m super not a morning person.)

  He glances sideways at me. “It’s serendipitous.”

  “What is?”

  “Come on, you’ll see.”

  * * *

  : : : : :

  * * *

  Once we’ve located the bus station bathrooms, we go separate directions.

  The ladies’ room door swings shut behind me and I set my backpack on the sink. I splash water on my face and brush my teeth. It would’ve been so much nicer to wake up in a bed and breakfast this morning. To take a real shower. But then I remember the weird chemistry with Henry and the tarot card dream, so I backspace that thought in my head.

  Once I brush my hair and redo the messy bun, I pull my change of clothes out of the pack and step inside a stall. I quickly change into the dress I brought: the one I wore the night at the Crow. The mascara came out in the wash and now it’s good as new. I shove my dirty clothes and rain boots inside the pack and pull out the flip-flops I brought. The nail polish on my toes is badly chipped now, but whatever. It feels good to have my feet out of those boots.

  Henry’s waiting for me outside the bathroom, fresh-faced, with two coffees in his hand. He gives me a once-over and hands me a cup. “Feel better?”

  I nod. “Much. Thanks.”

  “Let’s go.” He heads toward the exit. I follow a few strides behind, looking for signs, trying to get my bearings.

  “We’re not going to find another bus?”

  He glances back over his shou
lder. “Not yet.” He motions for me to follow him as he pushes the glass door open. We step out into the foggy morning air. There’s a sense of otherness hanging in the breeze. We veer off the sidewalk and climb a hill. The flip-flops don’t have the same grip as the boots, and my knees go unsteady. Dew dampens the bottoms of my feet and I slide. I squeeze my toes together to keep the shoes on.

  “Where are we going?”

  He smiles over his shoulder at me. That smile. “The first ley line I ever discovered, the first time the magnets worked for me away from home, it was here.”

  I try not to let myself hope. Not after last night. “They react as strongly as they did at the graveyard?”

  He nods. “Stronger.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. His pace slows as he scrolls the screen and I catch up to his side.

  “How do you still have a charge? My phone’s dead.”

  “External battery. Here.” He puts his phone in my hand.

  “Remember how I said I still text my mother? This is the first one I ever sent her. After.”

  I scan the screen. It’s dated two years ago.

  Remember that time we talked about King Arthur? The way they destroyed his bones and left no trace of him? People can’t be erased, you said. His soul is still there on Avalon. Like magic.

  Science tells us matter can’t be created or destroyed. If souls are matter, then they can’t be either. So where do they go? Let’s find out. Meet me there. On Avalon.

  He studies me, a shy look I’ve never seen before, then puts his phone back in his pocket.

  “I always come here thinking she’ll be waiting. Much like people come here to unearth King Arthur, summon his spirit, or what have you.”

  The land flattens and we step through a wooden gate. A winding path of stepping-stones climbs upward. With the way the fog hangs, hazy and dream-like as it obscures visibility, it feels like we’re ascending into the clouds. My skin tingles as we walk through the mist.

  “This is kind of trippy.”

  He laughs a little and looks down at me. “You feel it, right?”

  The way he looks—hope glistening behind dark-rimmed eyes, messy hair surrounded by a halo of lavender in the subdued morning sunlight—knocks the breath out of me. I feel something all right. As we scale the hilltop, the remnants of fog burn off and clear.

  On the horizon, a tall tower stands against the clouds. The hillside rolls in shades of green. It’s déjà vu. The scariest one yet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shake my head and try to stay calm. “Nothing. Just. This place feels familiar.”

  He nods. “You’ve seen Glastonbury Tor before?”

  “In dreams?”

  “Yes, of course,” he says, like he already knows.

  The sun rises higher in the east, painting the surface of everything in pearly gold. We take the path all the way up. I get dizzier with each foot of altitude, terrified of what I’ll find when we get to the top. We stop at the base of the tower: a lumbering stack of ancient bricks. They climb the morning sky like a wild, mortar-laced vine.

  Henry sinks to a squat and sets the magnets on the ground, far apart from one another. I watch as one wiggles, then the other. In the space of a snap, they fly together—negative end on negative end.

  Henry looks up at me, smiling with his whole face. “See?”

  He moves them further apart. It happens again. “This only happens on ley lines. And it only happens this strongly at one other place.”

  “Where?” I watch in awe as he moves them further and further apart still, even as the magnets continue to interact and find each other. Sinking to the cool concrete, I pull the atlas out of my pack and study the lines.

  He presses his lips together for a moment. “Did you notice the leys in London?”

  I glance up at him and shake my head. “I really haven’t looked at the maps outside Liverpool yet.” But he has to be asking for a reason, so I flip over to the London map. There are several cross sections around the River Thames.

  He leans over, shoulder touching mine, and points to a spot.

  “There.”

  It takes a minute to settle in. “The Fox Den is on a ley line?”

  He nods. “Mum bought the property for that reason. She believed it’d draw people there. That it’d mean inevitable success. She was right about the first part; wrong about the second. It used to be called Ley Line Records. My dad changed the name after she passed.”

  “Why?”

  “Ley lines are excellent communication conduits. Business models, not so much. Especially for a record store in the age of digital music. It’s the only other place the magnets react this strongly, though. At least for me.”

  We’re quiet for a while, sharing oxygen and studying the atlas.

  “Wait. Why didn’t you tell me this before? Couldn’t you have shown me what the magnets do that night in the darkroom?”

  He grins. “Yes. But I worried you’d think I was some sort of head case.”

  My eyes narrow. “Really? You watched me puke in a trashcan that night. On a very public sidewalk.”

  “It was a dainty puke. Not like a full-on man puke, if it makes you feel better.”

  I smile. “It does. Somewhat.”

  More silence.

  “Okay fine. Then why couldn’t you have shown me the other night? In Patrick’s room? After I texted you about it, I mean.”

  “Because,” he offers me a sheepish grin, “that was my excuse to tag along on this trip.”

  For the first time, his aura sizzles red around the edges. It makes my stomach do somersaults. His eyes are so sincere. So intense. His lips part, ever so slightly, and they look like they were designed with kissing in mind. I stand before I can entertain the thought any longer.

  “I should tell you,” he continues. “I was conducting an experiment that night. With the mugwort tea.” He rubs the side of his face and looks away. “It’s great for hangovers, of course, but I wanted to see if lucid dreaming on a ley line created a conduit of communication. A sort of telepathic link. I wanted to see if I could send you a message.”

  My heart leaps in my chest. Oh my God. The dream. Sweat erupts on my palms. I wipe them on the back of my dress. He watches me carefully and I do my best not to react.

  After a long moment, he says, “But I don’t think it worked.”

  My heart is hammering now, ninety miles a minute. I decide to be bold. “How do you know? What was the message?”

  He smiles and it’s inexplicably sad. “That I want to help you find your father.”

  A sinking feeling settles over me, and I can’t tell if I’m

  grateful or disappointed.

  Chapter 36

  : Fool on the Hill :

  WE SPEND THE morning wandering around the tower and testing the magnets at different spots, keeping our distance from the crowds of tourists.

  He outlines the theoretic principle that could explain why the magnets behave differently in certain places: the Faraday effect. I feel dense trying to wrap my head around it, even though he breaks it down in the simplest possible terms.

  The view below us is spectacular. Various shades of green spread out like a patchwork quilt over the countryside. When we finally find a place to rest, it feels like we’re sitting on top of the world.

  “You want me to lay the blanket out?”

  “No!” I protest. With an exclamation point.

  He looks at me funny. “Okay.”

  I change the subject. “I wish my phone battery wasn’t dead so I could take pictures.”

  Henry lifts his hips and pulls his phone from his back pocket. He presses the camera icon and puts it in selfie mode. I squint into the glare on the screen as he scoots closer to me, until his shoulder touches mine. He lifts the phone at an angle and snaps a picture.

  “I’ll text some to you,” he says, standing and stretching his long legs. He pulls a tiny lens attachment out of his bag and puts it on the viewfinder of
his phone.

  “The lighting is perfect today,” I say as he snaps panoramic pictures of the hillside and the town below.

  “Mmm,” he agrees.

  I sit up on my knees and tuck my feet beneath me, lacing my fingers through the little white flowers that spring up through the short blades of grass. The ground is sunbaked now, all of the morning dew sipped away. When I glance up, he’s got the lens pointed at me. He smiles, and I catch it like something contagious. A soaring feeling churns inside my chest, a familiar and terrifying one.

  “So you’ve tried to contact your mother here?”

  After tucking his phone away, Henry sits down again and leans back on his hands.

  “Tried. Yes. I came over on a whim a couple of winters ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it was snowing, and there were warning signs posted because things were slippery. I ignored them. Scaled the hill on my own. There wasn’t a soul around.” He tilts his head back like he’s remembering, then he looks over at me. “I was sitting right here on the fresh powder. Talking to both of them.” He shifts his weight to one arm—the one closest to me—and points at the sky, drawing an invisible circle with his finger. “Then something shifted up there. It was probably just a reflection in the snow flurries. But the more it flickered, the more convinced I became that it meant something. I stood up and reached for it.” He drops his hand. “For a moment, it looked like I could climb right into the shimmery disc. But it was out of reach. And the harder I concentrated on touching it, the smaller it got. Until it eventually disappeared altogether.”

  I imagine him, standing alone in the snow, reaching for something that may not have even been there. I would’ve done the same thing.