Before I Disappear

by Danielle Stinson

  My father loved us. He would never leave. Something took him from us.

  Ian grabs the hammer by the head. “The police don’t know shit,” he says in a dead-on impersonation of Rowena.

  My laugh startles us both. Ian turns back to the wall we built, but not before I notice his mouth tilt up at the corners. He wanted to make me laugh, I realize. The thought warms me, and it makes me feel like I’ve won something out here in the middle of nowhere. Like Ian and I are allies. Maybe even friends.

  I can’t remember the last time I had one of those.

  I sit back down in front of the fire next to Becca. Behind the mattresses, the glass rattles. Wood creaks and rafters groan. I can feel each blast of the wind in the pit of my stomach.

  “It’s getting bad out there.” I hate the way my voice cracks. We lived in Kansas once when a tornado passed right through our trailer park. With nowhere to hide, Charlie and I watched it come for us through the bedroom window. I remember holding on to him so tightly it hurt, vowing that if it hit us, they’d find our bodies a mile away, still attached to one another.

  This is worse. From the sounds outside, you’d think the sky was cracking open.

  And this time, I’m not there to hold Charlie’s hand.

  Ian feeds more wood into the fire. When he settles back onto his elbows, his gaze wanders to the girl sleeping under a heap of blankets.

  “How do you know Becca?” I ask, to distract myself from the noises outside.

  “My father used to do some work for her family.” Ian studies the building flames. “It was a long time ago.”

  “She seems … attached to you,” I say, hoping to draw him out a little.

  His expression softens. “The last time I saw her she was riding around on a bike with purple streamers.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Funny.” Ian runs a hand under his cap. “She was always stuffing cereal in my shoes or putting fake ‘for sale’ signs on my car.” His lips quirk.

  I remember Becca’s crooked smile on the beach—a glimmer of this girl from Ian’s memory. It’s easy to see why he loves her.

  “I checked on her a few minutes ago,” I say. “Her eyes are back to normal. Whatever was messing with her head back at the river, I’m pretty sure we’ve got her back.”

  Ian nods but says nothing.

  I decide on the direct approach. “What do you think is going on?”

  Ian takes his time answering. “Something happened to the town, and we got caught up in the middle.”

  “Do you think it has to do with the DARC?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugs. “All I know is, wherever we are, it seems pretty determined to kill us.”

  “The weather isn’t our only problem,” I point out. “That thing that got Becca back at the river is still in here with us.”

  Ian grabs another board from the pile and snaps it in half. “We’ll have to watch ourselves.” He waits for me to look at him. “If you feel something weird coming on again, speak up. I’m serious, Rose. Don’t try to tough it out.”

  I lean back to study him, eyebrows lifting. “Because you’re such a shining example of openness.”

  Ian massages his neck. “This is different. This is about survival.” His expression darkens. “If I feel myself going over the deep end, I’ll give you a heads-up.” He looks away. “It might just buy you enough time.”

  “To do what exactly?”

  He meets my gaze dead-on. “Run.”

  Oh.

  I release a sharp breath and nod. “Fine. I’ll tell you if I start to feel psychotic, if you promise to return the favor.”

  Ian stares at my hand hovering in the air between us. A second passes before his callused palm swallows mine. Starburst eyes zero in on me, and a jolt of electricity runs straight up my spine.

  He misreads my shiver. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Rose.”

  After everything that’s happened, he’s still worried about frightening me. It’s one more piece of evidence proving he isn’t the monster people assume he is. A monster wouldn’t worry about my feelings or help a little boy just because he asked. A monster wouldn’t have dragged me through the snow or carried Becca like she was made of glass.

  “I know.”

  Ian drops my hand, and I instantly feel the loss of warmth. There’s something about him. A stillness that is somehow charged. Like the seconds of quiet between lightning and thunder. Mom told me once that every person was a strange land with their own strange weather. It makes me wonder if the secret landscape inside of us looks just a little bit the same.

  Thoughts of storms bring mine back to the one outside. It hits me that I haven’t heard the wind for a while. Quickly, I move to the mattress blocking the window.

  Outside, the storm is breaking up. Already the snow has stopped, and the clouds are clearing, leaving behind a patchwork sky. Light bathes the landscape and illuminates a lake ringed by trees. When he was little, Charlie loved nights like this. He’d sit for hours with his nose pressed against the glass and a smile on his face like the stars were spelling out secrets only he could read.

  Ian moves in close beside me. We’re huddled next to the window like we need its light to breathe, and even though I don’t want to break the strange connection that’s been growing between us since the river, there’s still one question I have to ask.

  “Why did you fix my car? I mean, I know Charlie asked you to, but that doesn’t explain why you did it.”

  Ian flexes his injured hand. “Your brother is different.”

  Different. I hate that word. I especially hate how people use it when they really mean something else. My feelings must show, because Ian shakes his head.

  “That’s not what I meant.” He palms the bill of his cap. “It was something about the way he looked at me.” When he turns to me, the expression on his face makes my heart snag in my chest. “I … I can’t remember the last time someone asked me for a favor.”

  I’m still searching for a response when boards creak outside.

  A sharp rap on the door has the terror from last night flooding back to me. I want to retreat inside myself like I did then, but the incessant pounding says whoever’s out there isn’t going away. It could be the person who pushed me into a raging river a few short hours ago.

  It could be Charlie.

  The strange tugging starts up in the center of my chest. This time, I don’t hesitate. I let it guide me until I’m standing directly in front of Becca.

  The next three heartbeats hang suspended, and then the peace crashes down with a bang. Right along with the front door.

  FIFTEEN

  “Crap!” The intruder stumbles and hits the floor.

  Something about the high-pitched, nasal voice strikes a familiar chord.

  Ian reaches for the person lying just inside the door, but I get there first.

  Brown eyes blink at me through thick frames as I help the stranger off the ground.

  Blaine’s entire face lights up when he sees me. An unexpected warmth winds through my chest at the sight of him. He’s a little piece of normal out here in these woods. More important, I can’t remember the last time someone was this obviously happy to see me.

  Blaine springs to his feet and moves in close to my side. His nostrils flare as he takes in the boarded-up windows. The mess of tools on the floor. The partially deconstructed bunks. “I haven’t been in here since Scout camp in the fourth grade.” His voice cracks at the edges. “Like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Not really.” The side of his arm brushes mine.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I was out for an evening stroll. I saw the smoke from your fire and thought I’d drop in.”

  “You think this is funny?” Ian speaks up.

  The arm pressed against mine starts to tremble. “Nothing about this is funny.”

  “It’s okay.” I shoot Ian a warning glare and le
ad Blaine to the fire. He follows me like a puppy. When I sit, he hovers awkwardly over my shoulder, like he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do.

  I pat the blanket beside me.

  Blaine drops down to the dusty floor and proceeds to tap his knuckles against the wood in a rat-tat pattern. “What’s with her?” He nods at the sleeping girl by the fire.

  “We found her in the river.” Becca’s hair has fallen across her face. I push it back, and Blaine’s eyes bug.

  The tapping stops. “Is that Rebecca. As in Kennedy?”

  “Um, maybe?”

  Blaine’s eyebrows arch as he glances at Ian. “Fascinating.”

  Ian’s glare has the younger boy cringing against me. I’m missing something here. What’s Ian’s connection to Becca, and why did it make Blaine react like that? A dozen new questions pop up in my mind. They’ll all have to wait.

  “What are you really doing here?” I ask.

  “Hiding.” It’s just one word, but somehow, it’s loaded with enough emotion to blow the roof right off this cabin.

  “Have you tried going back to town?” I ask.

  Blaine shakes his head. “Not yet. I tried to go home yesterday. My family lives a few miles outside of town, on the far side of the road. I kept walking and walking.” His lips tremble. “But no matter how far I walked I never got there.”

  Ian and I share a look. Blaine is too wrapped up in his own story to notice. “I’ve been trying to get up the guts to head back into town all day, but that freak cold front came through almost killing me and…” He trails off.

  “And what?” I press.

  “And I was afraid of what I’d find,” Blaine says, finally meeting my eyes.

  Time collapses until I’m back in the high school parking lot listening to Blaine brag about how everything was about to change. The book in his lap and Rowena’s pamphlet in his hand. Back then he’d struck me as a little bit strange and a lot lonely, but everything about that day looks different now. Including Blaine.

  “Why were you afraid of going back to town?” I ask.

  Silence.

  “Please.” I reach out and grab his hand. “We just want to know what’s happening. Where did everyone go?”

  Blaine blinks at me. “Go? What do you mean go?”

  “The town is lost,” Ian says. “It’s completely covered up by some freak storm that seems to be growing wider. From what I can tell, the four of us are stuck with it in a six-mile-wide patch of woods that are all that’s left of the world.”

  Blaine, who has been vibrating nervous energy since he first stumbled in here, goes completely still. “You said six miles?”

  Ian shrugs. “Give or take. The land runs in a circle from the storm over town all the way to the woods, near where the road to Maple should be.”

  Blaine’s face loses all color. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  “What is it?” My grasp on his hand tightens. “Blaine, what’s going on?”

  “It’s called Murphy’s Law. Otherwise known as everything going to complete and utter shit.”

  “You have two seconds to start making sense.” Ian’s shadow falls over us, and Blaine shrinks back. After what I saw in that parking lot, his reaction makes a sad sort of sense.

  I motion for Ian to back off. He rolls his eyes but retreats to a safer distance.

  “Explain it to us.” I try for a gentle tone even though all I want is to shake him until he spills his guts.

  Blaine’s throat bobs once. “This patch of woods you’re talking about. Approximately six and a half miles in diameter. Twenty miles in circumference. Just under thirty-two miles in total area. It’s an exact match to the underground dimensions of the DARC.”

  My heart is suddenly beating so hard I can barely hear myself think.

  Every clue, every bit of evidence has been pointing back to one place.

  “What was it, Blaine? What was your uncle doing with the DARC?” I ask.

  Blaine’s gaze meets mine. “I can’t tell you.”

  My stomach sinks.

  The terror on his face melts away, leaving behind pure resolve. “But come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  * * *

  Blaine leads us across the campground to a shack on the lakeshore. Clouds are thin wisps across the black sky above us. As we walk, Blaine shoots repeated glances at me from under the brim of his oversize trapper hat.

  The shack door opens, and a wall of warmth hits me. There’s a portable furnace in the corner hooked up to a battery pack surrounded by wires. A few cables lead to an open laptop, while others are attached to a coffee maker, hot plate, and a half dozen other appliances.

  My focus switches to the pine walls. They’re covered with newspaper articles and pages ripped out of scientific journals. Some of them are familiar. About Fort Glory and the recent crime wave. Others talk about the collider in Switzerland and the DARC here in town.

  Blaine walks to a desk littered with empty soda cans, candy wrappers, and books. They’re piled high in corners and lying on dusty shelves. The titles are even stranger than the clippings on the wall.

  Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions.

  The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos.

  Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.

  The Little Book of String Theory.

  A flash of bright pink on the desk catches my eye. I stare at Rowena’s pamphlet and the feeling of déjà vu almost bowls me over. “What is this place, Blaine?”

  “Did you know my dad is the local pastor?” he asks, avoiding my question.

  “So?” I ask.

  “So my parents believe in the Good Book. As in, God created the world in six days. Let’s just say they don’t approve of my choice of reading material.” He’s talking fast. Like he recently drank a can of Red Bull and inhaled a Pixy Stix, but mostly, I think he’s just relieved not to be alone.

  “My dad used to drag me out here with his Scout troop. He thought it’d be good for me to ‘get my hands dirty.’” Blaine places the words in air quotes. A flicker of old hurt crosses his face. “They haven’t used this cabin in ten years. I knew I could stash my stuff here without anybody messing with it. I’ve been using it as a quasi office since eighth grade.”

  A drop of moisture draws my attention to the sagging ceiling. Something clicks. “This is the job you were talking about at school. You wanted me to fix this shed up for you.”

  Blaine pulls off the trapper hat. Static stands his curls on end. “There are a few leaks in the roof. My books kept getting wet.” He says it like it’s a disaster of epic proportion. “I figured you were desperate enough to help without asking a bunch of questions.”

  “What makes you think I’m desperate?”

  Blaine rolls his eyes. “High school student working graveyard shifts at the Dusty Rose? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do that math.” His expression falls when he sees my face. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. Honest.”

  “You said you were an intern at the DARC,” I say, letting it slide. “What did you do there?”

  “Made copies. Delivered coffee. Cutting-edge shit like that.”

  “What does any of this have to do with the town?” Ian breaks his silence.

  Blaine reaches for something on the desk—a book. The same book he was reading in the parking lot the first day I met him.

  THE DEEP ATOMIC RESEARCH COLLIDER (DARC): Confirming String Theory by Unlocking the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions by Arthur Jackson.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “The closest thing I have to a Bible,” Blaine says. “My uncle is a genius and a revolutionary. He says I take after him. He even gave me a shout-out in the dedication, see?” Blaine displays the title page and personalized signature like it’s his most prized possession.

  At our blank expressions, the book drops back into his lap. “The thing you have to understan
d about physics is that it is competitive. When funding for the DARC was approved in the nineties, it was supposed to blow the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland out of the water. But none of that ended up mattering because the team in Europe got there first. They discovered the Higgs boson, or God particle. This is like…” He searches for a way to make us understand. “The holy grail of particle physics. And when they did that, all the money and hopes wrapped up in the DARC went bust. That’s when my uncle got involved. He believed the DARC didn’t have to compete with the European collider. He believed the DARC could be made into something completely new. We’re talking next-level shit.”

  “In other words, go big or go home,” Ian says.

  Blaine nods. “The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland excelled at finding new particles, but my uncle was hunting something more elusive. Something that, if he found it, would change everything.” He pauses for dramatic emphasis. “Extra dimensions.”

  The silence lasts a beat too long.

  “We’re talking parallel universes?” Ian sounds as doubtful as I feel.

  “Yes. No. It’s more complicated than that.” Blaine starts to pace. “For years, scientists have been trying to create a theory of everything, unifying the four fundamental forces of nature into a set of equations that would reveal the inner workings of the universe. The problem is that we can’t make the math work. Not unless we account for there being more dimensions than we can actually see. Specifically, eleven.”

  “And you’re saying the work your uncle was doing with the DARC would prove the existence of these extra dimensions?” I ask.

  Blaine’s excitement is electric. “Think of our world as a tiny stage. Now imagine that most of reality lies behind a curtain, completely hidden from us. My uncle was using the DARC to punch a tiny hole into that curtain, offering us our first glimpse backstage. Depending on how close these extra dimensions are, he believed it might even be possible to open a portal to an entirely new world.”