Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  Daniel pulled back and gave me a look of concern. But he knew as well as I did that we didn’t have the luxury of waiting another whole day. Not if the Oxford professor was right. If I had another chance to find Halli, I had to take it.

  “See you,” I told Daniel.

  He gave me a nod.

  When the door closed behind him and Red, Dr. Rios stood up to go.

  “I’ll look in on you later,” she said.

  “Mm-hm,” I answered, trying to look innocent and calm.

  A smile tugged at the edge of Dr. Rios’s lips. “I didn’t forget, you know.”

  “Forget what?” But I was pretty sure I knew.

  “Your medication,” Dr. Rios answered. “As I said before, I enjoy having you as a patient, but I prefer seeing you out in the world. I’ll have someone check on you every hour. If you don’t need the medication, I’ll continue to suspend it.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Rios. I really appreciate that.”

  “But if you feel any pain,” she added, “you must tell someone. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “This isn’t the jungle or the Arctic, Halli. If you need help, you can have it. There’s no reason to be stoic. And in fact it’s dangerous if you need help and don’t ask for it.”

  I knew the real Halli probably would have tuned out the lecture, but I heard every word.

  Until recently, I doubted anyone would ever apply the word “dangerous” to my life. Halli was used to it—she’d been raised for it. But me? The only kinds of lessons drilled into my head when I was a little girl were to say please and thank you, to always do my homework, to brush my teeth at least twice a day.

  But if that Oxford professor was right—if my condition really was “deteriorating”—then I was in more danger than Dr. Rios realized. And since she couldn’t offer me a cure for mishandled body swapping or being trapped in the wrong universe, it wouldn’t really have done any good to explain it to her.

  I was on my own. I liked it better when Daniel was there, but the truth was I had to do this by myself. He could hold my hand all I wanted, but it was my mind that had to find Halli out there in the waves, my mind that had to resonate with hers somehow so that maybe—maybe—I could build some sort of bridge that she could use to follow me back. Maybe Professor Whitfield was wrong before. Maybe I really could figure out a way for Halli to take over this body, even if her real body was dead.

  My head throbbed just a little bit harder. That was no good. That was the opposite of what I needed.

  I took a deep breath. Then another. The most important thing right now was getting the drugs to seep out of Halli’s brain.

  Then I’d try again and keep trying until I found Halli and fixed this.

  49

  “I enjoyed your journals,” Mrs. Arnold told the class on Friday morning. “Some very inventive answers there. Being invisible was your top choice—”

  Cheers went out from people who had picked that.

  “—with the ability to fly, second—”

  More cheers.

  “—and incredible strength, third.”

  “That’s me,” one of the guys shouted. He flexed to prove he was already there.

  “Some of your answers, though,” Mrs. Arnold said, “were unusual. I thought you’d like to hear from a few of your classmates. Samantha, would you come up and share yours?”

  As Halli watched Samantha Grabel walk up to the front of the class, looking both shy and pleased, Halli felt a strange kind of dread. She had no reason to think Mrs. Arnold might call her up there, but the possibility made her uncomfortable. She thought what she’d written was private. It wasn’t like the kinds of things she wrote during an expedition with Ginny—she knew those would all eventually find their way to strangers.

  But this particular journal entry was one she’d written off the top of her head, and she’d been so happy to write something again, she let her guard down. The only risk she saw was that it would be read by some English teacher she would never see again as soon as escaped from school. She wasn’t counting on having to read it out loud to a room full of strangers.

  But Halli sat there calmly, listening to Samantha read aloud, and telling herself there was no reason to expect the worst.

  “If I could have any two special powers,” Samantha began, “they would be that I could speak to animals and I could turn myself into any of them I wanted.”

  The essay was a cute one—I’ve always thought Samantha was a good writer—and people chuckled as she read it because everyone knows she’s absolutely crazy about animals of every kind. Everything she owns—clothing, backpack, notebooks, purse, water bottle, jewelry—has some kind of animal on it. Horses, dogs, cats, elephants, lions, birds, dolphins—you name it, she’ll wear it.

  The class applauded as Samantha returned to her seat.

  Then Mrs. Arnold looked at Halli.

  “Audie? Would you come read yours?”

  Halli thought about saying no. But then, did she really care what any of these people thought? She was never going to see any of them again. It wasn’t worth making a scene by refusing.

  She strode to the front of the class and accepted the journal from Mrs. Arnold. Then she turned to face my classmates.

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

  “Cool,” someone murmured in back.

  Halli looked up for a moment, then went back to the page.

  “I used to have a grandmother,” she read. “She was the greatest person I’ve ever known. She was strong, brave, wise, fearless, and above all, reliable. No matter what we were doing, I always felt safe when I was with her. I thought nothing bad would ever happen because she would always find the solution and she would save me, no matter what.

  “The day she died was the worst day of my life. I couldn’t believe it was real. The person who told me had to say it three times before I finally nodded and then started sobbing.”

  Halli paused and cleared her throat.

  “I’ve thought about that day so many times. I’ve thought about what I wish I could have done differently. Maybe if I hadn’t eaten breakfast, I wouldn’t have felt sick, and I could have gone with her and saved her. Maybe if I noticed she was acting strangely that morning, I would have asked her what was wrong and would have kept asking until she told me. Then I could have forced her to let me help.

  “If I had special powers, I would go back to that day last year and I would save her. Someone else I know died a few weeks ago. I wish I could go back in time and save her, too.

  “My grandmother and I had a happy life together. I wish it could have gone on forever.”

  The room was very quiet. Halli stood there looking at my journal, not ready to meet anyone’s eye. She wasn’t used to feeling shy, and she didn’t like it. So she forced herself to stand up tall and gaze out over the class.

  She caught Winslow Henry giving her a quizzical kind of look, but when she scowled at him, he changed it to an approving nod.

  “Very good, Audie,” Mrs. Arnold said, and as soon as she clapped the rest of the class did, too. But Halli didn’t care. She felt exposed in a way she hadn’t since coming to my life and taking it over. She didn’t like the feeling. It wasn’t any of those people’s business how she felt about Ginny or anything else.

  Halli took her seat and tuned out the rest of the class. A few more people read their essays, and she didn’t care. Mrs. Arnold went over vocabulary for an upcoming test, and Halli didn’t care. All she wanted to do was leave. She couldn’t believe she had wasted five days already being at that school. There was no reason for her to be there.

  On her way out of class, Mrs. Arnold complimented her again on her essay. “That was very well done, Audie. Your writing has really improved.”

  Halli gave a single nod of acknowledgment, then kept on going.

  She thought about leaving, right then and the
re. Just go out the double doors, and start running as far as she wanted to go.

  She forced herself to stop. To reassess. To stand there in the hall and review her ultimate plan.

  Once when she and Ginny were in Peru, getting set to climb the Andes, they met another group of climbers led by a man Ginny knew. He had a lot of ideas about the best route to take, the right gear to bring, how heavy the packs should be, what food they should eat—all of it.

  Ginny listened politely, then told the man, “Good luck.” She didn’t argue with him, didn’t share any of her own opinions, she just went on her way.

  When she and Halli were alone again, Ginny told her what she really thought. “Thorne has always been an idiot. He never listens to advice. I gave up ever offering any. But so far he’s killed five people on his expeditions, and he doesn’t seem to learn from any of it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell any of the other people?” Halli asked her. There had been a group of eight, ready to follow Thorne up into the mountains.

  “Tell them what?” Ginny asked. “That their leader has more guts than sense? That they shouldn’t trust his decisions?”

  “Well, tell them that people have died.”

  “People die all the time,” Ginny said. “Maybe all those people will live. We can’t prevent anything from happening. All we can do is look out for ourselves.”

  Halli hadn’t liked that answer. She walked along side Ginny for several minutes, saying nothing.

  Ginny finally broke the silence. “You think I’m being callous.”

  Halli nodded.

  Ginny stopped and looked at her. “You are the only person in this world I care about. I would give my life to save you. I will always do everything in my power to keep you safe and alive. Do you understand that?”

  Halli nodded.

  “That is my only job in this world,” Ginny told her. “Everyone else has to look out for themselves. You have to learn to decide what’s most important to you, and then let everything else go.”

  Halli stood in my high school hallway, oblivious to the stream of people going by. They didn’t matter. School didn’t matter. Had she gotten so caught up in succeeding at this plan of graduating early and moving to Colorado that she’d lost sight of what it really was she wanted—what it was that was really important?

  She had been offered a clean slate. A new universe where nobody knew her. She could go wherever she wanted, do whatever she wanted, and still keep with her all the knowledge and experience she’d gained from almost eighteen years of her other life. Why was she wasting any part of this opportunity? Why was she living so small?

  Ginny had six rules for an expedition. Rules that were meant to keep the two of them safe and healthy:

  Sleep enough.

  Eat enough.

  Know where you’re going.

  Respect the weather.

  Take care of your partner.

  Be willing to change your plan when you know it’s the smart thing to do.

  Halli was face-to-face with rule number six. Was she just being stubborn, hanging on to the plan she’d made on Monday? Had she just been wasting time this week, going to classes, going to yoga, doing endless algebra worksheets, when she could have been taking positive, tangible steps toward the life she really wanted?

  She thought she had set out along the right path, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’d taken some detour, and now she was further from her goal than she ever meant to be.

  Ginny taught Halli not to dig in. Not to insist on continuing up a particular path just because they’d already put so many miles into it already.

  Stop. Look at the map. Look at terrain around us. Are we lost?

  And if the honest answer was yes, they had to be willing to backtrack all those many miles, and start up the right path again.

  Halli heaved a huge sigh. “All right,” she said to herself. The bell rang for the next class, but that was irrelevant to Halli. Halli Markham was not me, and she didn’t actually care about any of this. It was time to head back down the trail.

  How far back she’d have to go before finding the right path, she didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to get anywhere just standing still.

  50

  On her way out the doors Halli heard someone call my name.

  It was Will. He’d obviously been heading for first lunch when he saw her leave the building.

  Halli kept going. She had a plan in mind, and it didn’t involve wasting time talking to Will.

  “Audie,” he called again, and jogged over toward her. Halli resisted the urge to take off running in the opposite direction. She wasn’t in the mood to be scowled at or scolded by Will. Still, he had been generous once, giving her that refurbished phone. Halli knew she owed him at least some courtesy. If he could behave, she’d give him a few minutes.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. He knew I had the same lunch as his sister and Gemma, after fourth period. I should be in class right then.

  “Away,” Halli answered.

  “Away...where?”

  “I have some things to do,” she told him. “I need to go.”

  Halli turned to leave, but Will reached out and grabbed her arm. “Hold up. I just…I wanted to tell you something.”

  Whatever it was, it was of as little interest to Halli as the World History class she was missing.

  “Yes?” she said, trying to hold back her impatience. Ginny always said there were two kinds of people: the ones who wanted to help you spend your time, and the ones who wanted to waste it. School was a waste. And as far as Halli was concerned, so was talking to Will.

  “I know…we didn’t really have a chance to talk the other day,” he said. “At the office, after you quit. I was…pretty shocked. I think we all were.”

  Halli didn’t say anything. She just looked at him blandly.

  “What I’m saying is,” Will continued, “I don’t really understand what’s going on with you right now. You’re different. Very different. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it’s…noticeable.”

  “Thank you for your observation,” Halli answered. “I have to go now.”

  She slipped the loose strap of my backpack over her other arm. Any second now, she’d take off at a run.

  “Wait—” Will seemed to struggle for what to say next. He was acting as shy and nervous around Halli as my mother did the night before. Apparently Halli had that effect on people.

  “I just want to say…I don’t mind it,” Will said. “You know? I mean, after I got over the shock. And what you said to me in the car. You asked me if I liked it. And I guess…it’s different, but not bad.”

  “I’m so happy you approve,” Halli answered. “Enjoy your day.”

  She pivoted in the grass and started loping toward the street. She could hear Will call something after her.

  She turned around and continued jogging backwards. “What?”

  “I said I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he called again.

  “What?” Halli shouted.

  “At the ball.”

  She turned around again, then picked up her pace. As she ran away from that school for what she planned on being the last time, she shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all. As if Halli Markham, world explorer, were interested in attending some ball put on by the family of that overpreening girl Gemma.

  Although there was still the fact that her brother would be there. And that could be interesting. Entertaining, even. In terms of wasting or spending time, it might actually be worth an hour of Halli’s life to satisfy her curiosity about what some parallel version of Daniel would be like. Then if she ever did see me again, she’d be able to give me a full report.

  A big if. She hadn’t heard from me in a week. But it had been a week before she heard from me the first time, so maybe it was possible I was on some kind of schedule. Maybe I’d show up tomorrow morning as she set off on a jog, just like the previous Saturday. It could happen. She had no idea.

  “‘
I’ll see you tomorrow night,’” she mocked under her breath. “‘At the ball!’ Yes, and you’ll be there with your bossy girlfriend, bowing and scraping to please her. What did Audie ever see in you?”

  But we’ve all had our strange alliances. Parallel universes will do that to you. Halli just didn’t realize it yet.

  51

  “Halli, what are you doing?” Professor Whitfield asked later that afternoon.

  “What do you mean?” she said, but she could guess.

  “I just got a call from Mark McKuen over at Bear Creek Mountain Guides. He said you tried to get a job with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said you made all sorts of claims about your experience, but you couldn’t give him any references except me. He was calling to see if you really had done everything you said you’ve done.”

  Halli sighed. The afternoon hadn’t gone well. She’d contacted a dozen different outdoor companies in the area around Mountain State College, asking if they could use her for any upcoming winter excursions. So far all she heard was no.

  “Halli, it’s not going to work that way,” Professor Whitfield said. “For one thing, you can’t tell people your name is Halli Markham.”

  “I thought that would be better than saying Audie,” she answered. “You said it would be easy to check up on Audie and find out she’d never done any of that.”

  “But it’s worse to have no record,” the professor said. “Remember that social security number you memorized? That means something here. You need it if you’re going to get a job. Halli Markham doesn’t exist. Audie is the only one with identification.”

  So she wasn’t as free in my universe as she thought. We might not have microchips and tracking, but if she had to give people a number just so she could get a job —

  “Can I get a number of my own, then?” Halli asked. “In my name?”

  “Not without a birth certificate,” Professor Whitfield said. “I’m sorry, Halli, there are just certain rules over here.”

  Halli got up from my desk and paced around my bedroom. She felt trapped. She hated the feeling.