“That was nice of her.”
“She . . . said it was because she knew you’d be very sad if anything happened to us. To me . . . actually.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.” And I think at this moment Daniel might finally be just as uncomfortable as I am.
“In any case,” Daniel says, gesturing toward the cloud, “that’s how it happened. That’s what I remember. Halli hiked down with us. We rode the boat together. We said goodbye at the train station—everything I told you when you first asked.”
“But . . . how?” I say. “I still don’t understand. I mean, I know that’s what her tracking shows—and it’s what you saw—but how could it all be completely different from what I saw? I know that avalanche was real—I watched her almost die. And look.” I point to myself. “There’s no denying I’m in here. How else could that have happened, except the way I remember it?”
“Julius?” Francie says. “Play the other one.”
47
Julius shuts off cloud one, and cloud two starts to take form again.
Same beginning conversations. Same all the way to Halli and me saying goodbye to each other. I stand there watching while she and Red hike off into the distance to where I can see Karl waiting for them. It’s all the way I remember it.
Then Halli and Karl hiking in the snow. It’s dumping on them now, but I know it’s not the day I saw—the day with the avalanche. They’re walking up, not down, and to the left, not to the right. They’re leaning into the wind, making progress.
Now Halli and Karl are sitting inside a hut I’ve never seen before, eating some sort of soup, dipping bread into the broth. Halli sits back in her chair. She smiles at Karl. I know that expression—tired, but happy. So everything is still fine.
“Watch,” Francie says. As if I want to do anything else.
Now it’s Halli and Red on a mountain slope. In a very familiar scene. And I was wrong—I don’t want to watch at all. I know how this ends. I close my eyes and turn away.
“No,” Francie says. “It’s not what you think. Watch, Audie.”
The blizzard is pounding them, making it impossible for them to walk. But they keep trying. Karl is a little above them, on the bend of trail just up the slope.
Then the sound. I can’t hear it, but I can see it—a vibration in the ground. A low, slow rumble. Getting louder. Like sound traveling through a tunnel and finally exploding out the end.
“No, please,” I say, closing my eyes again. I cover my face with my hands.
“Look!” Francie says. “Quickly.”
I risk opening my eyes.
And suddenly see myself lying on my back, eyes open, staring at something above me.
I am lying on my back. Me, Audie. Me with the short hair. Me with the completely unmuscular little body. Unmistakably me.
“Oh, my—” I start out in a whisper, but then I finish by shouting, “I’m alive! Look, Daniel, it’s me!”
Daniel is staring at me, too—the me in the movie—and it takes him a second longer, but then he smiles.
And now I’m shaking him by the arm. “Do you see?”
“Yes,” he says, laughing, “I see.” He hugs me. It feels good. I hug him back, happy to share this with someone who would care. No one else in this room knows me the way I really am. No one except Daniel would understand what it means to see that particular girl again, her face, her hair—Audie Masters, still clearly alive.
But then Daniel loosens his grip. “What happened?” he asks his parents.
I turn around to see what he’s talking about. The image of me is gone. All that’s left in my place is a featureless cloud of white.
“Where am I?” I ask. “Where’d I go?”
“I’m sorry,” Sam says. “That was all.”
“What do you mean, that was all?” I look into the next room. “Where’s Olga? Bring her back! Ask her what else she saw!”
“That was all,” Francie tells me. “We waited. She was still holding onto your hand, but nothing else came.”
“But . . . she kept seeing me!” I argue. “She kept pointing and telling me to go to her. What else did she see?”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Audie. That truly was everything.”
“But she’s alive, isn’t she?” Daniel says. “Audie. Isn’t that what this means?”
Daniel’s parents exchange an uncomfortable look.
Sam is the one who answers. “When Olga told you someone was alive . . . I believe she meant Halli.”
“Well, maybe,” I say, “but we also saw me. I was there. That was my body at the end—tell them, Daniel.”
“I’m sorry,” Francie says. “I know it’s confusing. We had Julius divide the two scenarios so you could view them separately, but remember, as Olga saw them, they were both unfolding at the same time.”
“But . . .”
But now the truth is sinking in. I don’t want it to—I want it to keep floating on top. I want to be able to skim it off and throw it away.
“You see,” Sam says, “Olga watched Halli die in one scenario—”
“And live in the other,” I finish for him. “Both at the same time. And that’s why she was so excited.”
I move away from the group of us clustered in front of the cloud, and take a few paces on my own. I have to think. None of this is clear.
“But we saw her,” Daniel still wants to argue. “We saw Audie. Now. Alive.”
“I think it was an artifact,” his mother tells him. “Some imprint of the girl who now inhabits Halli Markham’s body.”
Before Daniel or I can say any more, Francie signals to Julius. “Play back the second one. Reverse to just before the avalanche. Now, Audie, watch.”
It was the part where I had my hands over my face. The part I didn’t want to see. The avalanche is rumbling. Halli looks up. She throws herself over Red to protect him—
And the cloud turns white. No transition, no swirling or confusion of lights, but just cold, stark white.
And then me. Lying on my back, eyes open. Then the white again.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What does that mean?”
“Play her the earlier film,” Francie tells Julius. “The one of the slave girl. Just the ending.”
It takes a moment, but then the cloud reforms, showing me the end of the burial of Nefiri. I have the same reaction as the first time—poor, poor girl.
But this time I don’t look away. I watch it until the end.
I watch until the cloud turns white.
The room is silent. We all just stare at the cloud.
And then finally I find my voice.
“You’re telling me I’m dead.”
48
Daniel isn’t willing to accept it yet.
“Have you ever seen that before?” he asks his parents. “That splitting? Has Olga ever seen two versions before?”
“Never,” Sam says.
“She called it a puzzle,” Daniel says. “A double puzzle. One layer over another. What did that mean?”
Maybe I’m more practical than Daniel, maybe I just know when something is over. When I’ve reached a dead end. Literally.
“It means just what she saw,” I say. “One part of Halli went one way, one went the other. She died in one life and now I’m in her body. In the other life she hiked down with you and lived.”
“But then where is that girl?” Daniel says, his voice rising in intensity. “You are that girl, Audie. You are wearing the body that produced the tracking information that complies with what I saw. You are the girl I hiked down with that day. There was no other. You are the physical proof.”
My head is beginning to hurt. I’m all for a deep, intellectual conversation, but this whole experience since I woke up this morning has been too emotional. I need a break. I need to go somewhere quiet and just sit in the dark and recover.
Daniel pulls out his tablet. “Look.” He pokes it into life, makes a few sweeps with his finger, and finally brings
up a kind of blank slate in 3-D. A sort of holographic chalkboard he can write on.
“You, Audie, are here. Right in this room. In what we’ll call Body A.”
He writes “Body A” on his tablet, and it shows up on the chalkboard.
“Halli—Body B,” he writes, “continued onward with Karl. The tracking information for that body disappears from that moment forward. There’s absolutely no record of Halli being anywhere but with Sarah and Martin and me. No record of her staying in that hut where we saw her and Karl dining, no record of her being in any avalanche.”
“Okay,” I say, “that’s all true—but so what? What does that prove? Olga saw the avalanche, just like I did. And she saw Halli die, right? Isn’t that what the white light means? So that has to be Body B, since it’s the one that kept hiking.”
But now I see the inconsistency. “But if Body B is the one I saw in the avalanche,” I say, “then that’s the one I saved—that’s the one I’m in. But the tracking information doesn’t show any of that. It only shows what happened to Body A.”
“Precisely,” Daniel says.
“So which body am I in—Body A or Body B?”
It’s beginning to look suspiciously like a math problem. My brain doesn’t like that one bit.
“And there’s another,” Daniel says. “Body C. Your body, Audie—your real one. We saw it there at the end, so where did it go?”
“Dead, isn’t it?” I say, wishing I didn’t have to. “Isn’t that what the white light meant?”
“But how can you be sure?” Daniel asks.
“I can only tell you how Olga’s vision normally works,” Francie says. “When she comes to the end of a life, the image turns to white. We’ve seen it every single time, for as long as she’s been coming here.”
“But Olga said she was alive,” Daniel answers. “She said to go to her. I can’t believe she was only speaking of the other Halli. That wouldn’t make sense—Olga knew very well that one Halli had died, the other lived. She was sitting across from the live Halli at just that moment. The only surprise was that last image of Audie. I’m certain of it.”
I study the expression on Daniel’s face right now: intense, serious, but also energized and almost . . . happy. He has more hope than I do in this moment. But I’m willing to let some of that hope leak onto me. Right now I could use some.
Because if Daniel’s parents are right, it’s all over. Whether I’m in Body A or Body B, all the other bodies are gone. White light dead and gone—including my own.
Which means I’m stuck. Permanently and irrevocably stuck in this body and this life. My former home—the girl known as Audie, the shell known as Body C—is gone. Like the traveler to another planet who comes home to find his own planet destroyed.
But I don’t even have time to process that, or to feel sad, because Daniel isn’t going to let me.
“Where’s Olga?” he asks his parents. “Can we bring her back in here? To clarify?”
“I’m afraid it won’t make any difference,” Sam tells him. “Once the cloud turns white, Olga never has any information beyond that. We’ve tried with her before. She’s told us she can’t see what isn’t there any longer. Her vision ends with the end of a life.”
“I don’t accept that,” Daniel says. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong. Come on, Audie.”
“Wait—where?”
Daniel grabs my hand. “We’re going to talk to Olga.”
49
I was expecting a little flower shop like the one near our grocery store at home—a kind of one-room space filled with shelves of vases, and a refrigerated case in the back for the bouquets that need to be kept cold.
But this place. Wow.
It’s like the store equivalent of Halli’s greenhouse: a huge, two-story space with plants and flowers everywhere, like they’ve taken over the earth and if we humans don’t keep moving, we’ll all be swallowed by vegetation.
I hesitate inside the front door, just trying to take it all in. But Daniel is impatient.
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand and leading me through a narrow tunnel of vines and yellow blossoms. It’s like going through the tunnel of a cave, where you think it’s always going to be that close and confined, and then suddenly you step out into this huge, wide-open space, where there might be an underground lake and thousands of stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites pushing up from the floor.
But instead here there are customers—lots and lots of customers. People milling about, browsing, sniffing, chatting, but it isn’t noisy in here, which is weird. It’s like the plants all sort of absorb and muffle the sound. It’s really very pleasant.
And it doesn’t smell. It’s not at all like Halli’s parents’ flat, with that sickening, overpowering stench. Even though there are hundreds—probably even thousands—of roses and other kinds of flowers in here, the whole place just smells clean and damp and fresh.
I give a nervous look to Red. I remember that grad student of Professor Whitfield’s, Hannah Trong, saying plants sometimes have stress reactions around dogs, but I don’t know what else to do—I can’t leave him outside. I hope Olga doesn’t mind that I brought him in. I certainly don’t see any other dogs in here.
“There she is,” Daniel says, pulling me onward.
We can see Olga standing behind a counter, talking to a couple at the front of a long line. Everyone in line is holding in their arms or pushing along on a cart at least two matching plants of some sort—pairs of potted daisies and violets, and all sorts of flowers I’d never be able to name.
I hear someone whisper too loudly to her friend, “Look! It’s Halli Markham.”
Heads turn my way.
“And look!” the young woman tells her friend. “There’s her dog, too.”
“Forget the dog,” her friend murmurs. “Who’s that gorgeous specimen with her?”
I don’t think Daniel overheard that. Which is probably fine—somehow I don’t think he wants some strange girl calling him a specimen, gorgeous or not. It just doesn’t seem like it’s his style.
Jake, sure. But not Daniel.
Olga notices us now, too, gives a little wave, then turns her attention back to the man and woman she was talking to. Daniel pulls me closer to the front—not like we’re trying to take cuts in line, but off to the side in a way that lets Olga know we’re waiting for her.
“We tried him with Magda,” Olga is telling the couple, “but I think Trudy is a better match. They have been together two weeks now. You see if they are happy.”
The woman in the couple asks a question I can’t hear, and Olga answers, “Not too much water. Siegfried prefers to be dry. Feed it to Trudy, and she can pass it along.”
The man and the woman thank Olga, and leave, all smiles.
“Next?” Olga says to the next person in line.
Daniel darts forward. “Sorry,” he tells the woman who’s just stepped up holding what look like two miniature pomegranate trees. “Just a quick word. Mrs. Kopeck, if my friend and I could speak to you—”
Olga stares at Daniel placidly for a moment, like she’s forgotten who he is. Then she surveys the line of people in front of her. “Twenty minutes,” she tells us, then motions for the pomegranate woman to come forward.
“Thank you,” Daniel says.
The two of us step away, and finally Daniel lets go of my hand. I notice his has been starting to sweat.
“What makes you think she’ll be able to tell us anything else?” I ask, following him now past rows and rows of potted plants, toward what looks like a sitting area in back. “You heard what your parents said.”
“I heard,” he says. “But I’m not giving up.”
“Why?” I ask. “I mean, I appreciate it—obviously—I hope you know that. It’s just that . . . well, you’re sort of acting . . . I just wondered why, all of the sudden?”
Now I feel stupid. Maybe I shouldn’t have drawn attention to it. But it does seem odd that ever since th
at session with Olga, he’s been acting a lot more motivated than he ever was when I was telling him my story last night, and when we were talking to his parents this morning.
Daniel stops and faces me. “You really don’t know?”
“Forget it,” I say. “Never mind.”
Daniel looks around us, then draws me off to the side. Past rows of geraniums and snapdragons and signs that say asters and gladioli.
“I saw you,” he tells me. “The real you. Do you think I can forget that?”
I think of the images formed within the cloud: Daniel and me kissing, the look that passed between us when we finally had to say goodbye. I can see how that might make him nostalgic. I can’t pretend it didn’t have an effect on me, either.
But it seems so long ago. Another life. I’ve been dealing with so much since last week, that other life—that other girl—both seem so far away.
But obviously not to Daniel. For him, that memory must be fresh. And seeing it played out again in front of us—
“I know,” I tell him. “It must be really weird for you.”
“No, it was nice,” he says, looking at me straight in the eyes. “I miss you, Audie. I don’t think you know how much.”
My tongue feels dry. It’s the first time Daniel has really said something personal to me. Personal like that. It’s like he’s been maintaining this respectful distance, careful not to say anything that might make either of us uncomfortable—except for a few questions about Jake in the beginning, but even those stopped last night. And now I’ve pushed Daniel back into it by asking one too many questions.
“I . . . I’ve missed you, too,” I answer him. And I know it’s true. I like Daniel—I always have, ever since I first met him. Nothing has happened to change that. It’s just that Jake has sort of moved in and taken over the spot, and pushed Daniel out to the sides where he barely has any room. It’s not Daniel’s fault—he hasn’t done anything to deserve it—it’s just what’s happened because of things beyond either of our control.
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