Unraveling

by Elizabeth Norris

  I head back into the kitchen, thinking about Ben. He did make a conscious effort to carefully go through the room so alias Mike Cooper wouldn’t know anyone had been there.

  “Look, Barclay, did you meet with him today?” Struz says, and I freeze where I am and slowly back out of the kitchen, while Struz’s back is turned. “Good. No, that’s good.”

  Struz couldn’t possibly be talking about alias Mike Cooper—unless Barclay was there to interrogate him and we just misjudged it. We were far away.

  “All right,” Struz says. “Well, get it done. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Get what done? I want to ask, but I can’t make my body move, I can’t make my lips open, and I certainly can’t make words come out.

  I can’t possibly believe Struz is somehow involved—I just can’t.

  Except ever since Ben brought me back to life, no one is who I thought they were.

  Which means I can’t tell Struz about what’s going on—not yet—because the only thing I know anymore is that I don’t know who to trust.

  04:00:00:00

  A day passes and nothing changes.

  I help Jared with homework and clean the house like everything is fine, only this time it isn’t an escape, because Ben is all I can think about no matter where I am. I check my phone for texts from him or Elijah every couple of minutes.

  We requested a psych consult, and my mother’s still in the hospital—she’s just been moved to the psychiatric ward.

  Jared’s decided the best way to convince me he’s not too young is to give me the silent treatment.

  Elijah swears they’ll find out more about alias Mike Cooper next time.

  I give him and Ben more time—and then more time. And still more time.

  Because I don’t have another plan.

  When I tried to apologize, Alex declared himself out until we call Struz and get people who know what they’re doing involved. And he’s not going to speak to me until then either.

  I still don’t know how the house fits with everything else.

  And I’m still not a single step closer to figuring out what to do to stop this countdown.

  Which means I’ve become obsessed with it—as if watching it tick might somehow make it slow down or at least not feel like it’s speeding up.

  Which is why at 5:10 p.m. on Sunday evening, I know the exact moment four days to Wave Function Collapse becomes three.

  03:23:59:59.

  03:08:20:00

  After checking up on my mother, I come home to a quiet house. Jared is still asleep. And still mad at me for the other night, for not telling him anything, for not treating him like an adult, for locking myself in Dad’s home office, for breaking up with Nick of all things—for everything.

  I check my phone for a text from Ben, but there’s nothing. I debate texting him to see what’s going on, but I know he’d tell me if there was news.

  I clean up the kitchen. We’re almost out of dishes—not that it matters much, since Struz and Jared seem like they’re happy to live out of pizza boxes. I take out the trash and the recyclables before they both start encroaching on our living space, and then I open the fridge to see what’s inside that’s salvageable.

  In the back of the fridge, I find a Tupperware of spaghetti with red sauce, obviously a batch my father made and then forgot about. From the way it smells, it might be a month old. He always cooked too much pasta—we usually had enough for at least two more people. He never learned how much was enough. And he always forgot about leftovers.

  But holding the cold Tupperware container in my hand, I don’t care about the smell. I just wish I hadn’t always complained so much about the fact that he cooked the same thing over and over again and that I hadn’t yelled at him so much about putting food in the fridge and forgetting about it.

  That all seems so insignificant now.

  And that makes me think of Jared. If I’m looking at what could be the end of the world, I’m not about to let my brother be mad at me in the middle of it.

  It’s not that I’m giving up—not even for a second—but I’m looking at it with a heavy dose of realism. We’re stalled. We don’t know how to stop Wave Function Collapse. And if the world really ends, I need Jared and me to be on good terms.

  There’s only one thing left for me to resort to.

  Bribery.

  From my mother’s email address, I email both of our homeroom teachers and excuse us for the day. I let Jared sleep until nine forty-five, and then I wake him up with waffles and ice cream. I actually wouldn’t have let him sleep so long except our waffle iron is archaic and it totally burned my first attempt.

  He doesn’t ask what’s up, because he’s still giving me the silent treatment, but I know he wants to—which is important.

  “Here,” I say when he’s finished. I hand him the video game Alex’s dad brought home yesterday. Anything Jared-related has managed to remain unaffected by his whole not-talking-to-me thing. The game is wrapped in funny snowman wrapping paper, because when he was in preschool, Jared had a thing for snowmen.

  “What is it?” The first three words he’s said to me in days.

  I shrug like I don’t know.

  He gives me a skeptical look but rips into it anyway, his whole face lighting up as he realizes what it is. “Shit! How’d you get this? It’s not gonna be released for at least another month!”

  “I called in a favor,” I say. “I know people, you know.” More like Alex’s dad knows people, but whatever.

  “This is awesome,” Jared whispers. “Seriously, Janelle, so cool.”

  “Good, now before you think I’m just going to let you cut school and get you an advance copy of a video game every time you’re mad at me, get dressed. We have things to do.”

  He looks crestfallen, and those big puppy eyes almost make me change my mind. “I can’t start playing now?”

  “Later tonight.” Like when I’m absorbed in the case again and you need something to do. Only I don’t say that, because I know Jared, and being that truthful might ruin his excitement about the bribery gift.

  “Where are we going?” Jared asks.

  “Disneyland.”

  I leave the room, because we both need a minute to digest why the hell I just decided that.

  After all, the last time we went to Disney, Mom had just gotten out of her third stint in a mental hospital and Dad actually took vacation days and left his FBI cell at home.

  It’s one of my top five moments. The only top five moment with all of us together.

  On the car ride home, Dad held Mom’s hand, Jared fell asleep with the stuffed animal our dad won at one of those shooting games, and at the end of the night when I was almost asleep, my mom came into my room, stroked my hair, and told me how she was proud of me.

  I’m sure she’s said it other times.

  But that’s the only time I remember.

  Despite everything going on, Disney manages to make me feel like I’m ten again.

  It feels like we’ve somehow managed to transport ourselves outside of the real world, and it’s easier not to think of real-world problems. The smell of popcorn and funnel cake, the bright colors, the balloons, and little kids on vacation laughing and screaming, it’s happiness, and it’s everywhere.

  Jared and I get giggly over everything. We gorge ourselves on chili bread bowls from Golden Horseshoe and then Mickey Mouse ice cream from one of the street carts, and wait in line for Space Mountain and the Tower of Terror twice, though since it’s mid-September and we just had a horrendous earthquake, we don’t have to wait too long. We catch the Jedi Training show and even the end-of-the-night parade and the fireworks at Sleeping Beauty Castle. At one point, after fooling around with all the characters in costume, we almost get thrown out because Jared tackles Goofy to the ground.

  It’s the perfect day.

  Not because of any one specific thing we do, but because it’s just me and Jared. We’re together, we’re happy and laughing, we’re not t
hinking about school or our parents or even what’s coming next. We’re not thinking at all. We’re just moving from one ride to the next.

  We’re only living for each moment as it happens.

  And knowing I might die in less than a week—for real this time—that perfection means everything.

  Because Jared is the most important person in my life. Now and always.

  And if I died today, my perfect moment wouldn’t be my mother and me at the beach. Not anymore.

  It would be this.

  02:20:12:55

  On the way home, Jared is leaning back in his seat, his eyes closed. I think he’s asleep until he asks, “So what’ll happen to us now, anyway?”

  I keep my eyes on the road. “What do you mean?” Please don’t be what I think.

  “Now that Dad … and with Mom…”

  “Try not to worry about it,” I say automatically. Even though it sounds lame. Even though there are a million better things—truer things—I could say. But I can’t.

  “Is Mom going to be in the hospital for a while?”

  I hope so, but I can’t tell him that. Instead I say, “Maybe,” and hope he changes direction.

  But he doesn’t. “We’re not going to get put in foster care or anything, are we?”

  “No,” I say, even though I don’t really know. I think between Struz and the money I’ve got in my name, I’ll be old enough that the court will let Jared stay with me. Suing for emancipation is just another thing I’ve been putting off until after…

  Jared is still looking at me, but I can’t get anything other than clichés through the lump in my throat. “We’ve still got each other.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Jared says. “I guess… I mean, I miss Dad, I do. But sometimes it doesn’t feel real, because he was never around, you know? He was always working, so it doesn’t feel like he’s really gone.”

  I have to swallow a few times before I can trust myself to get the words out. “I know,” I say. Because I do. Sometimes I forget Dad isn’t just at work. “I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking he’s going to come home any minute, or I check my phone to make sure he didn’t call to tell me he can’t find his house keys.”

  Jared laughs. “I still look for the X-Files notes, you know, the Post-its with quotes that he used to put on the fridge sometimes when he was in the middle of a case?”

  I nod, trying to ignore the way my eyes are starting to burn.

  “How long do you think it will feel like that?”

  I would never trade what I have with Jared. Ever. But there are moments—like this one right now—where I feel like I was thrown into parenting him, and I resent my parents, both of them, for dumping this on me. I don’t have all the answers. Not for Jared and not for myself.

  “On some level, probably for a long time,” I say. “Maybe even forever.”

  Jared nods and looks at his lap. “I feel… I don’t know. I just… I don’t feel sad enough about it.” He whispers the last part, as if he’s ashamed.

  My throat constricts again, and my breath hitches. “I know how you feel,” I say, because I don’t want him to feel guilty. Only it’s not true. I don’t know how he feels. Not at all.

  Because every time I forget that my dad is really gone, and then I realize he is, I feel devastated all over again—like I’m losing him all over again. I even miss the bad cooking, the terrible B movies on the Syfy channel, the lame jokes, the stunts he used to pull to embarrass me. I especially miss the faces he’d make when he got phone calls from Alex’s mom, about nothing in particular, just her wanting to feel in the know about his job, while at the same time checking up on me and making sure I wasn’t being a bad influence on her son.

  But when Jared was younger, before we both gave up on Mom, Dad and I moved heaven and earth to keep him from seeing her at her worst. We both kept him an arm’s length from that. The only problem is, of course, that Dad coped by working more, and I coped by taking care of Jared. Which means Dad pushed Jared an arm’s length away too—essentially he pushed Jared to me.

  For the past fourteen years, I’ve been pretty much the only parent Jared has known.

  02:15:19:49

  After Jared’s asleep, I sit at the kitchen table and stare into space. I don’t even think, I just try to absorb some of the peace from the quiet house.

  And then the phone rings.

  “If I’d known you’d leave us for an earthquake,” I say when I answer.

  “Not now,” Struz says, and his tone makes me sit up straighter. Whatever he’s called about, it’s serious. I’m about to ask if everything’s okay, but then he three-names me. “Janelle Eileen Tenner, I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to give me the straight-up, no-nonsense, absolute truth on the answer.”

  “Done.” Because whatever he asks, if it’s important I’ll tell him anything.

  “Were you at the Federal Building downtown today?”

  “No,” I say, and then, because that might not be enough, I add, “I took Jared to Disneyland.”

  “And you didn’t open up the safe in your father’s office?”

  “No.” I didn’t even know there was a safe in his office, but of course I’d love to get in there now.

  The other end of the phone is silent, and I wait for Struz to speak, listening to the empty house and the sound of the steady rain outside, while a feeling of dread settles between my shoulder blades and begins to radiate outward.

  “You’re not lying to me,” he says, but it isn’t a question. He knows I’m telling the truth.

  I answer anyway. “No. What’s missing?”

  He doesn’t answer me. Instead I hear him mutter to someone wherever he is, and then he sighs into the phone. “I won’t make it back there tonight, but I’ll come by the house to check on you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” I want to say something else, but I don’t even know what.

  “And whatever you’ve been doing on this case, Janelle, you need to stop. Shut it down.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What happened?”

  But it doesn’t matter, because he’s already hung up.

  I stand up and move over to the copies of the case files I still have spread out on the dining room table, wondering if that was my moment where I should have admitted there’s more to this thing than he knows. I pick up the stack of my dad’s notes about alias Mike Cooper—and the notes I’ve added from Elijah and Ben stalking him—and start reading through them again to see if I can somehow see something new. Alex is right—it’s ridiculous to suggest I can make sense of it when my dad’s entire team at the FBI has more resources, manpower, and experience, and they’re coming up empty. But I’m still driven to try. Because I don’t know exactly how Barclay fits into this thing.

  And because if I don’t focus on solving this case, I’ll have to focus on how lost I feel without my dad around.

  Two days, Ben, alternate universes, Wave Function Collapse, alias Mike Cooper, the house, radiation poisoning, and my father—dead. There has to be something else I haven’t seen yet.

  I look at the receipt for the different kinds of chlorine I bought at the pool supply store. If alias Mike Cooper wasn’t actually going to use these for some kind of bomb, what was he going to do?

  I doubt he was really planning to use them to clean pools. So what other uses are there for chlorine? I grab a pen and a scrap of paper and write them down.

  water purification

  disinfectant

  baseline for a number of chemicals *

  dry-cleaning

  medicines

  I think it’s also used in manufacturing to make things, everything from temperature-resistant nonstick Teflon on frying pans to components of cars, and a lot of other stuff, which means this is going to require more research and probably not get me anywhere.

  When I put the pen down and look back at the table, I have that hyperaware feeling again, like someone’s watching me. I try to ignore it. It’s after two a.m.,
and I don’t hear anything to suggest Jared is awake. I get up, move a load of wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, grab a glass of water, and come back to the table. I need to try to solve this. We’re running out of time.

  But the feeling stays with me, giving me goose bumps.

  And when I look up, my eyes go directly to the window and my blood stops moving for a second, because Ben is standing under the back porch light in the pouring rain, his hair soaking wet, flattened on his head, rivulets of water streaming down his face into his eyes.

  I put my hand to my chest and listen for a heartbeat and as I do, it comes back double the pace, double the strength, and I wonder if Ben is real. Or if going without seeing him for a whole two days was too hard for my subconscious. The rain just accentuates the darkness of his hair and eyes, and I imagine his lips tinged blue from the chill.

  I must be dreaming.

  How is it possible to go years and never speak to someone, never notice them, not once, and then suddenly think about them all the time? Even when you know nothing will—nothing can—ever happen between you?

  Without realizing it, I’ve stood up and taken a step toward him, and I hold my hand out, pressing it to the window. Ben mirrors my movements, and I know he must be my imagination, that I must be asleep at the table and dreaming this, because everything else in my mind just falls away, fades out, and there’s just the thundering sound of the rain outside, the pounding of my heart reverberating through my veins, echoing in my ears, and the warmth of his hand on the glass.

  I see his chest rise and fall, like he’s breathing heavily; wisps of warm air fog the window, and I realize I’m breathing just as hard.

  My fingers tense, and I wish I had more control over this dream, that I could just will away the glass between us and feel his skin touching mine.