Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “I have to go,” Halli told her mother as soon as the screen was back in front of her and the hologram focused again. “Watch my dot. I’ll probably be up here a few more days.”

  “Will you call me?” her mother asked.

  Halli coughed again. “Need water. Goodbye.”

  Then she pressed the screen and her mother’s head disappeared. Halli sat back on her heels and blew out a breath. Then she smiled at me.

  “Very good,” she said.

  “I’m sweating,” I pointed out.

  “Was that her?” Halli asked. “Same mother?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Well then,” Halli said, “I’m sorry.”

  7

  Not really the same mother, I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid it might hurt her feelings.

  Because even though the face generally looked the same, the tone—the vibe of the woman—was definitely different.

  Or maybe what was different was how Halli treated her mother. Maybe that was the whole wrong thing. Because I would never talk to my own mom that way.

  We’ve been a team, my mom and me, since I was ten. Before that we were part of a triad, a trio, a family—but she and I don’t really talk about that anymore. There are no pictures of him on the wall. If there are still photos of the three of us in albums, they’re tucked away in my mom’s closet. When he left, he left us for good, as far as my mom was concerned. If he sends checks now and then the way he’s supposed to, she deposits them like she would any donation she gets at work. We never talk about him. And I’m kind of okay with that.

  I used to feel so sorry for Lydia and her twin brother Will. They lost their dad for real—as in dead—back when they were little. I thought it was so sad they’d never know what it was like to have him around as they grew up. But people adjust. I’ve adjusted. Now it would feel weird to have him back.

  So whatever weird thing there was going on between Halli and her mother, it wasn’t anything I shared or understood.

  But it made me curious about something.

  “Are your parents divorced?”

  “Divorced?” she said. “No.”

  Wow. What an interesting thing. She must have had a whole different life, growing up with both parents. I wanted to hear all about that at some point, but first there were other things I was more curious about.

  “What did you mean when you said to your mother, ‘Watch my dot’?” I asked.

  “My location on the map,” Halli said. “You know . . . the tracking.”

  She could see I didn’t have a clue.

  “You don’t have that?” she asked.

  “I mean, sure, we have maps . . .”

  Halli pulled her shirt down on one side and bared her shoulder. She pointed to a spot beneath the left side of her collar bone. “Don’t you have one of these?”

  “One of what?”

  “An identifier. A tracking cell embedded under the skin. We all have them.”

  I know sometimes pet owners microchip their animals, but I’ve never heard of doing it to humans.

  “Does it . . . hurt?”

  “Probably,” she said. “But you get it when you’re a newborn, so I don’t really remember.”

  I thought about what that must be like: Here’s your new baby, Mrs. Jones, let’s just weigh her, measure her, microchip her—good to go.

  “So that means your mom can track you wherever you are?”

  “Unfortunately,” Halli said. “But only for another few months. Then I’m taking her off the list—taking both of them off.”

  I felt like I should understand—she was speaking clearly, and not only in English, but actually in my own voice. Yet I still didn’t get it.

  “I’m sorry—take who off what list?”

  “My parents. Off the list of who gets tracking information. Once you turn eighteen you get to decide.”

  “Oh, sort of like a friends-and-family plan.”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “So you’re saying no one can track you once you’re eighteen? I mean, unless you want them to?”

  “The government still can—everybody has to register with them. That way if you commit a crime, or you’re lost up on Everest, they can find you.”

  “Wow.”

  “So you don’t have that?” Halli asked.

  “Not at all.”

  But it was an interesting idea, for sure. I started thinking about who would be on my list. My mother. My father. Lydia and Will and their mom Elena. And . . . that was about it. Those are the only people I care about and the only ones who probably care about me.

  Kind of sad.

  “How many people are on your list?” I asked Halli.

  “Three. Two now, with my grandmother gone. And soon, zero.”

  I was practically sociable compared to her.

  I heard a beeping again. More of a ringing, really. I waited for Halli to answer her screen. She didn’t even seem to notice the noise.

  Because it wasn’t her noise. It was mine. My phone, my world.

  And thanks to that, me back in my own bedroom.

  8

  It took at least three more rings before I felt oriented again. Then I reached over and answered my phone.

  “Hey,” Lydia said, “what took you so long? Were you sleeping?”

  I checked the clock. It was 11:30. I’d been gone three hours.

  “No . . . I . . .” I rubbed my hand over my face, like I could dry-scrub it back to reality. Then I noticed my clothes. Not my warm, cozy camping outfit anymore. Back to my own boxers and sleep shirt.

  “Audie?”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on? Why are you acting so weird?”

  “I’m . . . .” Another dry scrub. “Okay. Sorry. Hi. What’s up?”

  “Mom wants you over here tonight for a barbeque.”

  Lydia and Will’s mom Elena always tries to keep me fed whenever my mother’s out of town. Since my mom and I hardly ever cook for ourselves, I’m always happy for the invitation.

  “Okay, sure,” I said. “What time?”

  “Six. I’m teaching until 6:30, but she says come early.”

  “Is . . . Will going to be home?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “Yes, and Hairball, too, of course.”

  Great. “Okay, I’ll be there. Tell your mom I said thank—”

  But Lydia was already off the phone, on to the next thing.

  I turned my phone as off as I could. Off OFF. Stupid thing. I had been having the greatest experience of my life, and that idiot phone had to ruin it.

  I sat there in bed and caught my breath. Caught up with my brain, is more like it. Three hours in another dimension, another universe, another life.

  In-freakin-credible.

  I needed to get back there as quickly as I could. I popped the earphones back on and rewound the CD and prepared to go back to some campfire discussion and a big warm dog curled beside me.

  And I waited. And I tried. And . . . nothing.

  I tried for a whole hour. Kept looking at the clock, then closing my eyes again and trying some more. Which might have been the problem—I wasn’t in that relaxed, meditative brain-wave state like before. If I had a vibration, it was an agitated one—not the kind that had broken me past the barrier before.

  Or maybe, I thought, Halli had moved on. She wasn’t sitting there trying to reach me—or reach her grandmother—like before. Maybe it really was a two-way connection, and unless we were both exactly set up to match our vibrations, it wasn’t going to work.

  Which was SO frustrating. I couldn’t get her a message, like, “Hey, turn on your brain at 2:00 this afternoon—meet you back at the cliff.” I had no way of letting her know when or if I was back in my meditative groove. So I’d just have to use the same trial-and-error as before—putting myself in the right frame of mind as often as possible, and hoping one of those times worked.

  For now, the best I could do was sit down and wri
te up my notes about everything that had happened.

  Because if I ever ended up there again, I was going to need to ask a lot of questions.

  9

  “Heeeey, Audie girl, whatcha up to?” (Wink.) (Plump up the hair and toss it.) (Annoy me.)

  “Hey, Gemma. Hi, Will.” I gave him a little wave. Even though I was standing right in front of him. Because I am a dork.

  The three of us hung out in the back yard while Will’s mom worked the grill, and even though Elena was only two feet away, Gemma still felt perfectly fine pressing her padded English bra right up against Will’s arm and trying to slip her hand down the back of Will’s waistband while he and I talked as if THAT WASN’T THE MOST IRRITATING THING EVER. And embarrassing. As in must-look-away uncomfortable.

  And Will didn’t even seem to notice.

  But Elena did. I glanced over and caught her eye. She scrunched her face to the side and stuck out her tongue. She’s not a big Gemma fan, either.

  “So I was hoping you could take a look at the program,” I told Will, after explaining the problem I’ve been having with the computers at work. “Maybe sometime in the next couple of days?”

  “Sure,” Will said.

  “You can fix that, cahn’t you, babe?” Gemma asked him with a wink.

  (Here, how’s this hot coal from the barbeque feel on that eye?)

  “I’m sure he can,” I said, refusing to look at her or the hand wedged down his backside.

  “I’ll come in tomorrow,” Will promised.

  Me, too, I thought, even though I hadn’t planned on going back in until Wednesday.

  Gemma made a pouty face and plunged her hand down a little further and tossed her hair and pressed her bra against Will’s arm (a very complicated sequence, but no problem for a pro like her), and said, “I thought we might see a show tomorrow.”

  (We call them movies here, Gemma.)

  Will didn’t seem to notice the boob against his sleeve. Or maybe he’s immune to it after so many repeated applications. “I’ll probably have to work all day,” he told her. “I’ve already got four clients lined up—five, now. I’ll try to fit you in around noon,” he told me.

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Will has his own computer consulting business—Computer ER: Emergency Repair. He used to work for just our moms at their non-profit organization, but then word got around, and pretty soon he was running his own 24-hour tech support for people willing to pay a hefty price for a house call. He’s come a long way since the days when he and Lydia and I thought we might make our fortune on a lemonade stand.

  “Babe, it’s our eleven-month anniversary.” Gemma winked at me. “Audie girl, couldn’t you spare him?”

  (Could, won’t.)

  Will’s dark eyebrows wrinkled. I could see he was already thinking through the software problem I’d described. He mumbled to himself as much as us, “I thought I fixed that problem.”

  Gemma offered me a tight smile. She thought she had fixed it, too.

  10

  Lydia didn’t show up until after nine. Turns out there was some guest yoga instructor in town, and after Lydia taught her Saturday afternoon class she and the other yoga teachers at the studio got to sit in on a special session with him.

  Since we were all in the living room by then, Lydia pushed aside the coffee table and demonstrated one of the new, advanced poses the yoga instructor taught them. It involved twisting her body one way, legs another, head a third way, if that’s even possible, which, apparently, it is. I couldn’t have gotten my body to do that even if someone took it apart and handed the pieces to me separately.

  Lydia is . . . amazing. I’ve never understood why she doesn’t have a million guys after her all the time. She’s clearly the most beautiful girl at our school. She has all her mom’s dark exotic features—the long black hair, the dark eyes, the olive-toned skin—Will has them, too, except his hair just brushes the top of his collar, and by late afternoon his face always has the shadow of stubble—even more on the weekends when he doesn’t always have time to shave—and man, that guy is incredible-looking, but he’s never seemed to know it. Which only makes him even hotter, if that makes any sense.

  But back to Lydia. And me. I’m sure a lot of people look at us and have no idea why we’re even friends. We have none of the same interests. In fact, to be truthful, a lot of our interests actually bore each other. She doesn’t care a thing for science, and until the vibration issue came up, I thought all of her yoga stuff was just weird and pointless.

  But whether or not you have a lot in common with someone, when you’re thrown together with that person from the time you’re little, you can’t help but grow attached. Our mothers became best friends years and years ago when they started their non-profit company, Build a Fund for Good, and somehow the three of us kids just assumed we should all be best friends, too.

  Or more than that, if a certain someone would ever open his eyes.

  Which I’ve never told Lydia about. I have my reasons, mostly involving the fact that she’s not that great at keeping secrets—except her own—plus she’d probably laugh in my face if she knew how much I loved her brother. And even though they’re not that close, she might feel some sort of twin-inspired compulsion to tell him, which means I’d either have to die of humiliation or flee the state and live under an assumed name and never get to eat Elena’s food again. It’s just not worth the risk.

  “How’s that bloke?” Gemma was asking Lydia. “What’s his name—Davey?”

  Lydia narrowed her eyes. “How do you know about him?”

  “Will told me.”

  Lydia transferred her Evil Eye to her brother. “Thank you. You are now officially cut off.”

  Will laughed. “Oh, come on. Big secret. You’ve been stalking him all month.”

  Elena looked up from the button she was reattaching to a shirt. “Big secret to me.”

  Lydia shrugged. “Guy from the yoga studio. Total loser. Move on.”

  That’s about all I knew about it, too. One day he was the extreme object of her affection, the next day he was out.

  Which seems to happen often with Lydia.

  “If you need some advice—” Gemma started to say, and I immediately stifled a smile. Because I knew exactly what Lydia was thinking.

  HAIRBALL.

  But Lydia smiled sweetly. Fakely sweetly. “Yes, Gemma, please. Give me all your best advice. I’m sure my brother would love to know how you landed him.”

  Gemma winked. “We’ll talk in private.”

  And Lydia actually went along with it. She got up and the two of them went into Lydia’s bedroom and closed her door.

  Will and I exchanged a look.

  “Aren’t you curious?” I asked. “How she ‘got’ you?”

  Big mistake. Because the last thing I wanted to see was the sly smile that brought to Will’s face. Or hear him say, “I know exactly how she got me.”

  I wished I were back on a mountain.

  11

  I left Lydia and Will’s house pretty soon after that. No point in sticking around just to torture myself. Plus I really wanted to try to see Halli again. Maybe I could reach her before she fell asleep.

  I set up everything the way it had been this morning: same clothes, same lighting, same position in my bed with the sheets pulled up over my legs.

  But I knew the key was going to be relaxing my brain. Because if I couldn’t do that—couldn’t be as nonchalant about it as I had been this morning—I was never going to recapture those particular vibrations again. Even if Halli were on the other end of the line waiting for me.

  And that was the big question: was she? It depended on a couple of things.

  First, did she like me? I know that sounds sort of first grade—“Can I play with you? Will you be my friend?”—but I had to factor it in. Because I knew that I definitely wanted to spend time with Halli again, but if she didn’t feel the same way, why would she ever go to the trouble of inviting me
back?

  Second, if she did want me there, would she remember the steps she went through that brought me? Would she have to sit back on that exact same ledge—which might be unlikely there at 10:30 at night—and free her own mind the way I was going to try to free mine? What if she was as tense as I was, and couldn’t get the same vibration as before?

  And last, even if she did want me, and she could tune her mind the way she had before, there was still the question of whether that was really the secret behind it all. So far that was only a hypothesis. What if my being there this morning had nothing at all to do with my particular methods or hers, but instead was just a random, unrepeatable event?

  “Come on, Halli,” I mumbled as I settled into my pose. “Calling Halli . . .”

  And eventually, there she was.

  12

  I was so friggin cold again. I have to figure out the clothes thing.

  But Halli was ready for me, my same outfit laid out.

  “You just disappeared,” Halli told me. “Left your clothing in a heap.”

  Red was beside himself to see me. His whole body wagged, from shoulders to tail. I kneeled in front of him and gave him a big hug.

  “Happy to see you, too, boy.”

  It was nighttime there, same as at home. Clear sky, brilliant stars. I tried to find the constellations I know—Orion’s belt, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper—but either I wasn’t looking in the right places or they weren’t there.

  Which was an interesting thing to think about—did they have a completely different star system? I’d have to add that to my list of things to investigate.

  While I pulled on Halli’s warm layer of clothes and wrapped myself in the thick sleeping bag she’d brought out from the tent, Halli boiled water and made us hot chocolate.

  “Did you know I’d come back?” I asked, gratefully accepting the mug.

  “I hoped.”

  What a nice thing to hear.

  We were by the campfire again. So she didn’t have to go back out to that cliff to duplicate the experience.