Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  But in the light of morning, things were clearer again.

  Halli lay in my bed looking at the ceiling. Thinking about her life before. Thinking about Ginny.

  “Are we going to cross that?” Ginny quizzed her one day as they stood on the bank of a river deep in the jungle.

  Halli was eight. She looked at her grandmother, hoping for a clue, but Ginny kept her face impassive.

  Halli gazed again at the water. The current looked fast, but they’d crossed faster ones in the past. She thought they could probably do it.

  “Yes,” she told her grandmother.

  “So you think we should cross it right now?” Ginny asked. She lifted her foot as if she were about to stride straight into the river right then.

  “Wait!” Halli said.

  Ginny pulled her foot back.

  “I need to test it first,” Halli remembered.

  “Good,” Ginny said.

  Halli searched around for a rock that was heavy enough for the job. Then she tossed it into the center of the river and listened.

  The rock made a distinct ker-plunk sound. That meant the river was deep. And dangerous.

  “What should we do?” Ginny asked her.

  Halli considered their options. “We’ll go together,” she said. “Walk slowly, side by side, and use our hiking sticks to brace ourselves.”

  “Which way do we walk?” Ginny asked.

  Halli pointed. “At an angle, slightly downstream.”

  “And what if one of us falls?” Ginny asked.

  Halli thought about that. “We’ll tie ourselves together with rope first. Then whoever’s still standing can pull the other person back up.”

  “Or the river will pull us both down,” Ginny said, “and since we’re tied together we’ll both drown.”

  Halli nodded, taking that in. She’d learned not to get frustrated when she didn’t know the answer right away. It helped that Ginny always let her take her time to work through the proper solution. Even if it didn’t seem like they had the time to spare.

  “We’ll link arms instead,” Halli said. “And shuffle our feet sideways.”

  “What if the water’s too deep to wade?” Ginny asked. “What if we have to swim?”

  What if, what if, what if...

  The answer was never, “Well, I give up. Forget it. This is hopeless.” There was always something they could try, always some action they could take to move forward.

  Halli never forgot that.

  Or at least tried not to.

  There was a period after Ginny died when she let the darkness consume her. Halli didn’t know what to do next—not for a long time. She made her way back to Colorado from India, but then didn’t leave there for a whole year. She didn’t want to. She holed up with Red and only went out every day because she didn’t want to cheat the dog. Red needed his walks, his hikes, his runs in the snow while Halli skied. If not for the dog, she might have stayed in bed for a year and rarely bothered to get up.

  She hated that period of her life. She didn’t feel like herself. And she knew Ginny would have been so very disappointed.

  But it was Ginny’s own fault, Halli reasoned at the time. If only her grandmother had left her a note, left her some guidance—not just sneaked off without saying anything to Halli, even though it was clear Ginny knew she was going to die. It’s no wonder Halli lost her footing. No wonder she felt lost.

  Until I came along. At least that’s what she told me. Somehow my showing up out of the blue one day reignited something in Halli. By the time I saw her last, hiking in the Alps, she looked happy. Energized. Alive.

  Until, that is, she died.

  But that reignited spirit was still in her. Something had shifted in Halli over the past month, and she felt like herself again. Like the girl her grandmother had brought her up to be. And that girl didn’t give up. Not ever.

  So what if?

  What if you’re stuck in someone else’s universe, and you’re stuck in her life, and she’s stuck in high school studying things you know nothing about?

  You learn those things or you leave.

  But what if you’re not interested in learning those things, and you can’t leave unless you pass a test?

  You pass the test.

  But what if the place where you were going to escape to involves more school and more studying things you know nothing about and aren’t interested in? What if all you really want to do is get out and explore this new world from top to bottom and use all the skills you already have?

  Then you figure something out.

  Like what?

  I’m working on it.

  37

  It was working.

  In Algebra I that morning, Halli could see she understood. The equations Ms. Gonzales wrote up on the board actually made sense to her. Halli nodded as one of the girls in the front row called out the right answer.

  Ms. Gonzales saw that.

  After she wrote the next equation, she called on Halli.

  “Audie? Want to give it a try?”

  If it had been me, I would have been all tongue-tied, sweating. Even if I thought I knew the answer. Algebra brings out a kind of panic in me.

  But Halli was calm and cool.

  She gave the correct answer.

  Winslow Henry twisted in his seat and gave her a bitter smirk. “Great,” he muttered, like she’d just turned traitor, like one of the inmates had suddenly become friendly with the guards.

  “It’s easy,” Halli whispered when he turned around again. “I can show you.”

  “Yeah, right,” he snorted, then shrugged like he didn’t care.

  In Mrs. Arnold’s English class two periods later, Halli offered again. “I can teach you in ten minutes.”

  “Shut up,” Winslow said.

  Halli wasn’t going to beg him to let her help him. She’d done the decent thing by offering, and now he was on his own.

  As soon as the bell rang for the start of class, Mrs. Arnold picked up a stack of notebooks from her desk and started handing them out.

  Someone groaned. “Not journaling.”

  “Yay!” said a girl in the back.

  “It’s been a while,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Would you rather have this or a pop quiz?”

  “This,” came the chorus in return, and Mrs. Arnold continued distributing the notebooks. She handed Halli the one with my name on the front.

  Finally, Halli thought. Some activity at that school that she could actually enjoy.

  She had spent the past few days in Mrs. Arnold’s listening to the class discuss a book Halli had never heard of and had no intention of reading. She tried pulling out the algebra worksheets to work on instead, but Mrs. Arnold shut her down right away.

  “Audie, your thoughts on Benjamin’s decision? Do you think he was right or wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he was too impulsive? Or was he brave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A few more back-and-forths like that, and finally Mrs. Arnold gave up. But she still made Halli put away the math worksheets, and Halli hadn’t tried since.

  But if they were going to write in there instead, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Halli hadn’t written anything in a very long time. Not since the day before Ginny died. People asked her to, begged her to—“Tell us what you’re doing! Tell us how you are!”—but Halli always resisted. It wasn’t anyone’s business how she felt about what happened. And she knew she wasn’t living the kind of life anymore that anyone might find interesting.

  But it wasn’t surprising that people still wanted to hear from her, whatever she might want to say.

  Over time, her field reports had become wildly popular—even more popular than Ginny’s. It had something to do with the style Halli developed of always downplaying whatever was going on. The more dramatic something was in real life, the more casual she tried to sound about it.

  Brief visit to village doctor. Agreed bite not
serious. Probably won’t lose arm. Ginny happy, since means I can carry more gear. Doctor says rest tomorrow and chew herbs she gave me. Taste like rancid worms. Might chew off arm instead.

  Whenever they got back to civilization, Ginny and Halli would write up longer, more detailed descriptions of their trips. But people always seemed to prefer Halli’s day-to-day reports from the field.

  Fingers and feet so frozen, decided to shave head to stuff hair inside boots and gloves. Ginny said stupid idea. Waiting for her to fall asleep so I can shave her head instead.

  “Eli?” Mrs. Arnold called. “I think you’re next.”

  A guy two rows over from Halli got up and shuffled to the front of the room. Mrs. Arnold held out a paper bag in front of her. Eli reached in a pulled out a slip of paper, which he handed to Mrs. Arnold.

  “Okay, let’s see what today’s...” She read the slip and smiled. “Good. This is a good one.” Eli returned to his seat.

  Mrs. Arnold used her Magic Bag of Topics as a way of tricking us into writing essays. At the beginning of the semester, she had us all write out provocative questions on a slip of paper. Things like, “Would you rather be deaf or blind? Why?” or “Would you rather be ugly but smart, or good-looking but stupid?”

  Every few weeks Mrs. Arnold would have someone reach into the bag and pick out one of the topics. Then we’d have five minutes to speed-write out our answer in essay form: topic sentence, two paragraphs of body, conclusion. It was a lot better than always having to write things like, “What was the theme in Old Man and the Sea? Discuss.”

  “Here’s your question,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Ready? ‘If you could have any two special powers, what would they be, and why?’ You have five minutes. Go.”

  Halli thought about it for a few seconds, then she started writing. She didn’t stop until Mrs. Arnold called time.

  Halli wished she could have written longer. It felt good to exercise that muscle again. And what she’d written...surprised her. She hadn’t expected to say exactly what she said.

  Mrs. Arnold gathered up the journals, then told everyone to pull out their books. She spent the rest of the class period droning on about fake characters Halli didn’t care about. She was still thinking about what she’d written:

  If I could have any two special powers, they would be the power to go back in time and bring back people who have died.

  38

  Something cold against my face. Something wet. Something with a particular, familiar smell...

  Then the hot breath, the wagging, wriggling body, and I knew without even opening my eyes that Halli’s dog was lying practically on top of me, licking me frantically, and generally having an ecstatic meltdown because he was finally reunited with the girl he thought was his.

  “Red,” I breathed out happily, lifting my hand to scratch behind his ear. That wasn’t enough for him. He let out a sound that was half bark, half moan, and kept bumping his head into my arm until I finally got the message and hugged him tightly around his neck. Then he nuzzled in as close as physically possible, and continued licking me on the ear. If he could have climbed inside my skin somehow, I’m sure he would have done it.

  I felt this giddy sort of happiness. Like I might want to bark and moan myself. I hadn’t realized what a relief it would be to see and feel that dog beside me again. To hug him and smell his fur. To be the object of so much affection and pure love. To feel something warm and comforting there in the midst of the cold, strange features of the hospital.

  And equally welcome, the human face I saw smiling down at me with both delight and concern.

  “Halli Markham, please tell me you’re alive.”

  “I’m alive,” I said, smiling back.

  “No, really tell me,” Sarah said. “Something that only you would say if you really were all right and everything hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.”

  “I’m fine, Sarah. Really. Thank you so much for bringing my dog.”

  “Ha!” she said indignantly, plopping down on the dog-free side of my bed. “As if that chauffeur, or whatever his credentials are, were simply going to march into our home and collect the dog and drive away with him! ‘Master Demetrios’s orders,’ indeed! I said, ‘Look, you tell your master that I am the mistress of this dog—temporarily, at least—and it will take an order from the Queen for me to release him to the care of anyone other than Halli Markham herself.’”

  A little dose of Sarah, and I was already feeling much better.

  “Well,” she went on, “the driver could see he wasn’t getting past me, no matter how unthreatening I might look in my pink bathrobe, and since apparently he was under orders to deliver Red to your bedside within the hour, he simply had to wait while I changed into something more presentable, since I wasn’t parting from that dog under any circumstances no matter what orders your boyfriend Jake might concoct—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend—”

  “Well done, you,” she bubbled on, “since that was to be topic number two: his general overall unsuitability and demeanor, hitting my brother in the face like that, telling your mum not to let us visit you anymore—your mum!” she paused to exclaim. “That’s topic number three—but eventually Red and I rode comfortably in the back seat of a very large sedan, and here we are, and may I say I can now safely die of happiness, having seen that you’re all right.”

  She reached down and picked up my hand and pressed it against her cheek. “Oh, Halli Markham, you don’t know how awful it’s been. We’ve all been absolutely mad with worry.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “But really, I’m fine.”

  “I hope you’re right, because if anything happened to you...”

  Her voice trailed off. Sarah turned to the side and made a hiccupping sound. Much to my surprise, I realized she was trying to hold back a sob.

  “Sarah!” I squeezed her hand. “Look at me. I’m fine now. Everything’s going to be all right. They said they’ll let me out soon.”

  Not exactly true, but I couldn’t let the sunniest girl I know sit there looking so upset.

  Sarah sniffed and gazed at me with misty eyes. Her voice was very quiet. “Halli, tell me the truth. I know I had something to do with it—with your being here in hospital—and if I did, if I somehow caused this...”

  “You didn’t,” I assured her. Another lie. She had everything to do with it. But I never wanted her to know that. “Don’t cry. Everything is fine.”

  Sarah nodded and wiped her eyes.

  “Is...Daniel here, too?” I thought I knew the answer, but I had to ask.

  “No, and I tell you he’ll crack apart with jealousy when he finds I’ve been to see you. Mum and Dad, too. But of all days, the three of them left this morning on some errand to Oxford. I don’t expect them until this evening.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad.” I smiled as if I didn’t really care that much, even though inside I was the one cracking apart at the thought that I could have seen Daniel, but didn’t. Maybe this was the one time any of them might have been able to sneak in. Maybe he’d never get that chance again.

  But agonizing about it wasn’t going to help me.

  “How has Red been?” I asked Sarah, changing the subject for my own sake.

  It wasn’t a casual question. Red has separation problems. I saw that for myself the one time Halli came over to my universe to visit me. When she returned, her campsite was in shambles. Red had gone practically berserk looking for her. Then once I took over her body, I got to experience for myself the kind of connection those two have. Red never left my side.

  “Oh, he’s been lovely, of course,” Sarah said. “Poor thing.”

  She reached over and patted his side. But I noticed she avoided looking me in the eye.

  “Sarah...?”

  She sighed and met my gaze. “Well...there was a bit of destruction that first night.”

  “What kind of destruction?”

  “My bedroom, my brother’s bedroom, our living room, half of th
e kitchen—”

  “Oh, Sarah—”

  “Not to worry!” she said cheerfully. “All in a good cause. That poor dog was the most pitiful creature I’ve ever seen. After the medics took you away, he sat on the pavement howling as though someone had stolen his very soul. It was terrible. Then we finally coaxed him into a car and brought him home, but he was still so distraught, and...well, it took some time for him to calm himself.

  “But after that,” she went on quickly, “once he’d exhausted himself, poor thing, he was quite sweet and pathetic. And now he can’t bear to let any of us out of his sight. Mum and Dad let me miss school a few days, just to keep him company.”

  I kissed the top of Red’s head and gave his neck an extra squeeze. “Poor boy. I’m so sorry to have done this to you.” He licked my cheek and thumped his tail on the bed.

  “And we got the house all sorted again in time for the party,” Sarah said, “so no harm done.”

  “What party?”

  “My dad’s fiftieth—you probably don’t remember—”

  “Oh, of course I remember! I’m so sorry I missed it. I really like your dad.”

  Sarah and Daniel’s father is a history producer. Their mom is an archaeologist. They were the only people besides Daniel who knew the truth about who I was and where I’d come from. And they’d tried to help me find the real Halli again. Which I did. It just hadn’t worked out the way I hoped. Not yet, anyway.

  “So how was it?” I asked Sarah. “Did you all have fun?”

  “Not really,” Sarah said. “Everyone was fairly mopey. Daniel especially. He kept saying he should be here with you, not drinking punch and eating sweets. He’s been very devoted, my brother. He obviously feels a great bond, because of Audie. I think he pines for her a great deal.”