Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “I thought you didn’t want one,” Will said.

  He was right. In fact, he and I had had a specific discussion about it not that long ago. He was teasing me about still using a flip phone. I explained that I didn’t need all the fancy features of a smartphone—at least, not for the price.

  But it wasn’t just the price of the phone that held me back. I probably could have bought a used one from Will at any time. The problem was I couldn’t justify in my own mind having our monthly cell phone bill go up, just so I could have a cooler phone. My mom needs hers because she travels so much, and it’s easier to check her e-mail and use the Internet without always having to carry her laptop with her, but what was my life like? It couldn’t have been more basic: school, work, home. There was always a computer nearby. I didn’t need an upgrade.

  But Halli didn’t know anything about that conversation. So all she could do was bluff. “I changed my mind. So how much do you want for it?”

  Will tilted his head. “Come on, Aud. You seriously think I’m going to charge you? It’s yours.”

  “No, you don’t have to do that—”

  “It’s done,” Will said. “Give me a few days with it and I’ll turn it over.”

  Halli smiled. “All right, thanks. That’s nice of you.”

  There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Gemma stuck her face in.

  “What are you two up to, then? Secret plans, hmm?” She winked at Will and gave him an extra-energetic flip of her hair.

  Halli didn’t say anything. She just stood there expressionless, waiting for Gemma to leave.

  “I’ve decided to forgive you,” Gemma said to Will. “And no, you don’t have to wear a hat. There. Better?” She made a pouty face. “Now please come back out and sit with me. I’m terribly bored.”

  Halli gave a snort. She had heard the Sarah version of this girl complain of being bored plenty of times, but somehow when Sarah said it, she sounded charming and fun. Nothing about Gemma was either charming or fun.

  “We’ll be out in a minute,” Halli said, then she slowly started closing Will’s door. Gemma had no choice but to back up into the hallway. As soon as Gemma’s feet were clear, Halli shut the door in her face.

  Will looked at her in amazement. Then he couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Like I said,” he repeated quietly, “I think she’s a little stressed lately.”

  “Piece of advice,” Halli said, not bothering to whisper. “I’ve seen girls like that before. Insecure, and the only way they can feel better about themselves is to try to make everyone else around them look bad. It’s boring. You seem like a nice guy. You could do a lot better.”

  Will continued to stare at her in wonder. “Audie, what’s going on with you tonight?”

  “Nothing.” She patted him on the arm. “Sometimes things just need to be said.” Then she jerked open the door.

  Gemma stumbled back. She caught herself, then gave Halli a furious look.

  Halli turned back to Will. “Thanks again. I owe you a favor.”

  She didn’t even bother acknowledging Gemma as she strode right past her.

  Gemma muttered her one-word assessment of what I was.

  “Gemma,” Will said wearily. “Just don’t.”

  14

  When Halli and my mom got back from dinner, Halli found several urgent messages from Professor Whitfield. She waited until my mom was in the shower before she called him back.

  His face popped up on the screen after only a few rings.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “We’ve been calling you all day. Has something happened?”

  “No, I had things to do.”

  “Things to...Halli, don’t you understand? We need to establish the connection again. As soon as possible.”

  Halli sighed. She’d been avoiding this conversation because she knew the professor probably wouldn’t understand. Or agree.

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you,” she said, “but I just know: It has to come from Audie this time. There’s nothing I can do to contact her. It’s like you said yesterday—we have a new kind of connection now. And I’m telling you, no amount of me sitting here and concentrating is going to bring her back. If she ever does come back, it’s because she’s done it on her own.”

  The professor was quiet. He stroked his beard. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and pinched his fingers against them.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “You might be right—I just don’t know. But it doesn’t feel right not to keep trying.”

  “I know,” Halli said. “I thought so, too, at first. But the more I think about it, the more I think I’m right. I’m sorry, Professor,” she added. “I don’t want it to be this way, either.”

  Now it was Professor Whitfield’s turn to sigh. “So what do you want to do next?”

  Halli almost laughed at that. Her list was long.

  But she dealt with the most practical problem first.

  “Do I really have to go to Audie’s school tomorrow? Is there any way out of it?”

  “Not if we’re going to convince people you’re her. And buy ourselves some time.”

  Because the professor had a problem—a huge problem. Halli didn’t understand all of it, because it involved issues that never would have come up in her world. But if it had been me talking to the professor, I would have understood right away.

  I was a minor. I wouldn’t turn 18 for another few months. And that meant Professor Whitfield needed my mom’s permission to do all those tests he ran on me the previous weekend when I came to visit him at his college in Colorado.

  The truth is, I tricked him. I told him my mom knew all about it—I even let him buy her a plane ticket to come with me. But all along I knew I’d be coming alone, and that I’d bring a forged letter from her saying she gave him permission to test me.

  Because up until then, I still didn’t have the courage to tell my mother anything about what was going on—that I’d found a parallel universe, that I’d found my parallel self, that Halli and I were having the times of our lives, or at least my life, doing things like hiking together in the Alps. It was an amazing sequence of events, and I was afraid to tell her about any of it. Because I was pretty sure she’d stop me from ever doing it again.

  So when Professor Whitfield suggested my mom and I come out to Mountain State College where he had loads of intricate equipment that he could use to test my brain function and physical reactions and all sorts of other things while I was interacting with the parallel universe, I said yes, of course. In part because I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to learn more, but also because I was hoping Professor Whitfield would verify for me that everything I was doing was safe. Then once I had that assurance in hand, then I would tell my mother.

  But of course it all fell apart. During one of the experiments I managed to cast my mind three days into the future, where I watched Halli about to be killed in an avalanche. I didn’t have time to say goodbye to anyone, I just reacted: I used the laws of physics—or maybe twisted them, depending on how someone sees it—and catapulted some aspect of me out of that room where I sat with Professor Whitfield, out across the blinding white snowstorm where Halli was about to die.

  But now I know I didn’t save her. Not really. I saved some essence of her, which was now stuck inside my body in a universe where Halli didn’t belong. And at the same time I appeared to have created this new parallel universe where I was currently a prisoner, too. Not exactly the result I’d been going for.

  But the problem for Professor Whitfield was that if he couldn’t find a way to help me reverse the whole thing, and return myself to my own proper body, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do one day soon. Starting with why he conducted tests on a 17-year-old girl when he’d already started suspecting she might have lied to him about her mother.

  Lose his job? Of course. Find himself arrested? Who knows? But no matter what, if the truth came out, he knew his career w
ould be ruined. My mother might even sue him for losing her daughter somewhere out in the ether, and then he’d lose everything he had.

  And aside from all that, Professor Whitfield just honestly wanted to fix this. He wasn’t the kind of man to say, “Oh, well, lost another one. Next!” He’d barely been sleeping. He and Albert had spent more time together in the last week than most married couples do, trying desperately to work out the physics of what had happened. The two of them were obsessed with solving the problem.

  So for Halli to basically say, “No, done with all that, felt like taking the day off” —no wonder Professor Whitfield had panicked.

  But now he was quite a bit calmer. And ready to enter into a new phase of deciding how to deal with things.

  “You have her class list,” he confirmed with Halli.

  “Yes. And I know where the school is. But I really think this is a mistake.”

  “I know you do,” the professor answered. “But I don’t know how else to handle it right now. You have to do your best.”

  “For how long?” Halli asked.

  “According to your theory, that depends on Audie, doesn’t it?”

  It wasn’t what Halli wanted to hear. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.

  Ginny raised Halli to know the difference.

  15

  The wave catapulted Halli out of bed.

  Then she heard Ginny scream.

  Halli felt disoriented at first. It was dark in the little cabin of the boat, and she wasn’t on the bed anymore. She and everything else that wasn’t tied down had slammed into the left side of the cabin and now lay there in a heap.

  “Halli! Halli!”

  She scrambled toward the hatch above.

  Another wave hit the boat, tilting it sickeningly onto its side. Halli waited for the boat to right itself, then she pushed open the hatch and quickly climbed onto the deck. She slammed the hatch behind her to keep the cabin from flooding.

  Halli peered into the darkness. “Where are you?”

  “Here!” Ginny shouted. “Hurry!”

  Halli rushed to the side of the boat. Ginny dangled halfway into the water, clinging to a rope.

  Halli started to pull on Ginny’s arms, but her grandmother screamed.

  “What’s wrong?” Halli shouted.

  “Broken!” Ginny shouted back. “Tie in! Another wave!”

  Halli barely had time to snap the harness around her waist before another wave smashed into the boat. She skidded across the deck, scrabbling for anything she could hold on to.

  When she looked over the side again, Ginny was all the way in the water. Halli reached out and grabbed the nearest thing she could, a fistful of her grandmother’s hair. She pulled until Ginny came up sputtering.

  “Come on!” Halli shouted, leaning out further to capture Ginny’s arm. Ginny screamed. Halli kept pulling. The most important thing was getting Ginny safely back on the boat. They could deal with any injury later.

  Finally Ginny lay sprawled on the deck, cradling her arm and howling with pain.

  “Let me see,” Halli said, trying to force Ginny onto her back. Ginny resisted. “Let me see!” Halli demanded.

  Ginny gave in and let Halli turn her. But she still guarded her right arm, holding it protectively against her chest.

  Halli began feeling along the arm for where the break was. When she couldn’t find it, she tested the bones above. Finally Ginny flinched.

  “It’s your collar bone,” Halli said.

  Ginny cursed.

  She was going to be useless from then on, and they both knew it.

  And they were still days away from land. How many days depended on the wind, the currents, the weather, and how far Ginny and Halli could row each day. But now it would be just Halli at the oars.

  A girl who, no matter how hardy and competent she was, was still only twelve years old.

  Halli sat back on her heels and assessed their situation. It was nighttime. The sea was choppy—more than choppy, with big waves hitting the boat every few minutes—but at least she could see stars in a clear sky, which meant there wasn’t the immediate threat of a storm. They were alone in the middle of the Atlantic. Just as they had been for the past 86 days. And this was just the latest in a long string of difficulties:

  The shark that had stalked them for three days. Food that washed overboard. Storms that nearly capsized the boat. Broken oars. Lack of sleep. Ginny’s bruised rib after a wave rammed one of the oars into it. The swelling in Halli’s forearms whenever she rowed for more than three hours at a time. The cuts and sores that never seemed to heal in the wet, salty conditions. And now this.

  Things happen, Ginny always taught Halli. That’s life. Now what are you going to do about it?

  There was no point in wishing things were different—they weren’t. Halli had to get to work. She tightened the harness around Ginny’s waist. If she hadn’t been wearing it during her shift, she would have been lost to the waves before Halli even knew about it.

  “I’m going to go get supplies,” Halli told her. “I’ll be right back.”

  She opened the hatch and climbed down into the cabin. The first aid kit still sat safely secured against the wall. Halli pulled it away, then rummaged in one of the cabinets beneath it for the long strips of cloth she’d need to sling Ginny’s arm. Then Halli took her supplies above.

  She handed Ginny a couple of pain pills and a thermos of purified water. She strapped a light across her own forehead so she could see the injury better. The area around Ginny’s collar bone already looked bruised and inflamed. But at least no bones had broken through the skin.

  “I think I cut my foot, too,” Ginny said, holding it up for Halli to inspect. The bottom of it dripped blood. But not enough blood to pose a serious threat.

  “Let me take care of your arm first,” Halli said. Ginny had trained her in first aid. Already the girl had been called upon to use far more than either of them would have liked. But it was better to know than not know, Ginny always said—better than pretending nothing bad would ever happen. Bad things happened all the time. You’ll feel better if you know you what to do.

  Halli knew that even though it was Ginny’s collar bone that was broken, the best way to take weight off it and reduce the pain was to sling the arm on the broken side. Once she finished that, she cleaned and bandaged Ginny’s foot.

  “How do you feel?” she asked her grandmother after it was all over.

  “Like hell,” Ginny said. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Then she reached over and patted Halli’s leg. “Thank you. You did great.”

  Halli slumped down next to her grandmother and let out a long, weary breath. The adrenaline that had carried her through the crisis was starting to wear off, and now a deep exhaustion set in. She hadn’t slept her full three hours while Ginny was supposed to be rowing, and she had the feeling she wouldn’t be sleeping again any time soon.

  “Let’s talk,” Ginny said. “We need a plan.”

  Halli simply nodded. Then neither of them spoke again for several long minutes.

  Another wave battered the boat, and Halli instinctively grabbed onto Ginny’s harness to make sure she stayed put.

  That seemed to jar both of them out of their stupor.

  “We could call for help,” Ginny said.

  “We could,” Halli agreed. She’d already been thinking about that.

  “It might take them days to get to us.”

  “I know,” Halli said. It wasn’t as if they were rowing across a lake where all the boats were reasonably grouped together. Halli knew the various teams were spread out over the ocean, all of them heading in the same general direction, but still hundreds of miles apart from each other. She and Ginny hadn’t seen a single other person since starting out three months ago. The only reason they knew there were still other teams out there rowing was that they could follow their tracking information each day.

  Last time Halli checked, the race’s support boat was far north o
f them. It had been sent to rescue Team Gray, whose boat had started leaking after a particularly aggressive shark repeatedly rammed into it.

  “Or you could keep rowing,” Ginny said. “By yourself.”

  Halli closed her eyes again. “I could.”

  The two lapsed back into silence.

  Finally Ginny said, “I know you could do it, Halli. You’re a strong girl and you know how to navigate. But it’s up to you.”

  Halli gazed across the wide expanse of ocean toward the sunrise just beginning to peek over the horizon. She had been looking at that same basic scenery—the ocean, the sky, the boat, her grandmother—forever now, it seemed. She had battled fear, exhaustion, pain, boredom, but she’d also felt moments of great joy. Of great pride and satisfaction in what she was accomplishing. So far these had been the most intense three months of her life.

  “Do you really think I could?” Halli asked her grandmother.

  “I wouldn’t let you do it if I didn’t think so,” Ginny said. “I wouldn’t risk either of our lives that way.”

  “But what about my arms?” Halli asked. “The way they swell up?”

  “You’ll have to take breaks,” Ginny said. “Lots of them. And sleep every chance you can get. You can throw out the anchor to hold us in place every time you rest.”

  Halli thought about it for a while longer. She wasn’t competitive—that wasn’t the issue. She didn’t care whether they came in fifth or fifteenth in the race. A few of the other teams—the ones with four rowers—had already crossed the finish line. She didn’t care.

  But she did care about completing the journey if they could. She knew Ginny had looked forward to rowing the Atlantic for a long time. She had waited for years until she thought Halli was old enough to go with her.

  “All right,” Halli said, her voice betraying how tired she really was. “Let’s try.”

  “All right,” Ginny agreed.

  “But if you’re in too much pain, or if you think you need to go to a doctor sooner—”