Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  As I walked back toward my bedroom, I could feel the tumult in my heart as Halli led up her own personal cheering squad. It felt good. Great. I finally understood what it was like to be strong. And not because I’d just skied to the North Pole or rowed hundreds of miles across an ocean or climbed some mountaintop. All I had to do was be brave enough to tell someone exactly what I thought.

  “Tell me everything,” Halli said once we were back in my bedroom. “What have you found out?”

  I had to tell her I’d figured out basically nothing. That I’d been confined to a bed for the past week and could barely think that whole time. I did tell her about Mrs. Scott, and about the visit from Halli’s mother, and about Sarah and Red—“How is the big guy? Does he miss me? (I lied and said he did. Even though he obviously thought I was Halli enough)—and about everything Daniel told me.

  “That’s it?” Halli asked. “He couldn’t tell you more?”

  “There wasn’t really time,” I said. “I was more focused on trying to find you again.”

  And I told her about my current situation. And what I thought it meant.

  She silently took that in. The idea that we were both basically stranded at the moment in a single living body. Like the last two survivors of a shipwreck, washed up on shore.

  “So now what?” she finally asked.

  “I have no idea. I don’t even know how long I can sustain this—being here, I mean. I have no idea if I get to stay or if...I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do?” Halli asked.

  “Wait until morning and then call the professor and tell him everything. Then I think that was a good idea you had about going back to see him. It’ll be easier when we’re all together again.”

  And my mother could come along with us. Even though we’d have to hide what we were doing from her, at least I’d get to be with her. I was even tempted to go wake her up right then, just to see her. But Halli and I needed to finish our business first.

  And right now I could feel something going on with Halli. Something she didn’t exactly want me to know.

  Then images started flooding into my mind. Ideas that must have been there the whole time, but Halli had pushed them aside for a while as the two of us talked of other things.

  My eyes instantly locked on the suitcase sitting in the corner of my room.

  It looked full.

  Then I glanced into the closet. I’d left it open when I went to get a robe, and it didn’t really register with me how empty it was. I thought it was just clean. Organized. But the truth was it had been stripped to the bones.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  And then I saw another image: Halli on her last run that afternoon, the quick one she took before the ball. I knew she took a detour to the bank on the corner. I even saw her use my bankcard and my PIN to withdraw money at the ATM. But that memory had been swamped by so many others when I fast-forwarded through them, I didn’t pay enough attention. Now that I really focused on it, I could see how much she took.

  “Three hundred dollars,” I said. “What for?”

  It was my money. From my savings account. I thought she wasn’t going to do that.

  “I wasn’t,” Halli answered, hearing my thought. “But the situation has changed.”

  “How?”

  “I’m still here. And I need a way out. I can’t depend on Professor Whitfield anymore. You know that scholarship won’t work. I have to do this on my own.”

  “With my money,” I repeated.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Halli said. “All of it.”

  “All of it? How much are you taking?”

  But her answer merely echoed my question: All of it.

  “Over two thousand dollars,” I said.

  “I’ll pay it back.”

  Lights shined against my bedroom window. It was still dark outside—maybe only four in the morning—and some car had just pulled up in front of our house and shined its lights toward us.

  “I have to go,” Halli said.

  She jumped off my bed and picked up the suitcase and headed for the front door.

  “Where?” I asked. “Wait a minute! Where are you going? Who’s out there?”

  But it was obvious, wasn’t it? It was Colin in his rented car. She was going with him. Running away. Touring the Wild West with a guy she’d just met that night.

  “I was leaving today anyway,” Halli said. “By myself. I had a plan. But now it’s going to be easier because of Colin. He can teach me how to make money here. I need that, Audie—you know I do. Then he’ll drive me where I need to go.

  “And he’s Daniel,” she added, as if that would make me feel better.

  “He’s not,” I said, “and this isn’t the time to leave. We have to figure this out! I just got here!”

  “And you might disappear again at any second,” Halli answered. “You said so yourself.” She quietly closed the front door behind her.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, desperate to hit Pause, to make this whole situation slow down until I could catch up and do something about it. “You can’t just leave. Did you tell my mother you’re going?”

  “No.”

  “Or the professor? Or Albert?”

  Halli greeted Colin as he got out of the car. He took her suitcase and loaded it next to his in the trunk.

  The resemblance was remarkable. But he wasn’t Daniel. Daniel has a warmth about him, an innate goodness that you can just see when he looks at you. This guy was too sure of himself. Too confident. I could tell by the way he acted.

  “You can’t just leave and not tell her,” I tried again. “Do you understand that? Go back. Wake her up. Tell her!”

  Halli got into the car. “I can’t have another four-hour conversation with your mother where all she does is cry and tell me I can’t go. It’s pointless. I’m not doing it again.”

  “Then I’ll tell her!”

  But I couldn’t. Halli was too strong. No matter how desperate I was to see my mother after all this time, and to save her from the fear and heartbreak when she woke up and realized I was gone, I couldn’t make my body do it. Couldn’t force my hand to open the car door, or push my legs onto the driveway so they could run back into the house.

  I wasn’t in charge of any of it anymore.

  “Please,” I begged. “At least just leave her a note. You don’t understand how she’ll feel. Please just tell her where you’re going.”

  “It won’t matter,” Halli said. “I’m not coming back.”

  “Ready?” Colin asked as he started the car.

  “Ready,” Halli said.

  “You don’t understand,” I tried one last time. “I love my mother. I would never do this to her.”

  “No,” Halli said softly inside my head, “you wouldn’t. But I’m not like you, Audie. I can’t be you. And if I stay here any longer, people are going to realize that. And then what? Can’t you see that would be worse for all of us?”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” I asked. Colin had already pulled away from my house. I couldn’t stop him. It was all out of my control.

  “I don’t know,” Halli said. “All I know is what I’m going to do. I’m sorry, Audie, I really am. I hope you can sort this all out. But until then, I can’t stay here anymore. I have to do what’s right for me.”

  There was hardly any room for me in there anymore. Whether or not Halli was doing it intentionally, I could feel myself being squeezed out. There it was, my own brain, my own flesh and blood, and it had no use for me anymore. It’s like I was a stranger.

  So I took the easy way out, stopped fighting it, and rose above it instead. Surveyed the whole scene from somewhere outside. And once I had some distance, I could see it all with the sort of clarity I needed. I began to understand that what Halli said was true.

  She wasn’t me. She couldn’t be me. Any more than I could keep pretending to be her. I’d twisted myself into knots for the past two weeks trying to do everything the way I th
ought she would want—and why? What good did it end up doing either one of us?

  I’d been so busy being Halli Markham, I abandoned Audie Masters. No wonder my body rejected me—it knew I’d already betrayed it. Halli had the right idea: make the best of where you were, but don’t stop being who you are.

  Even if it meant not doing something simple and kind like leaving a note for my poor mom. I could forgive Halli for everything else, but I wasn’t so sure about that.

  But fine. I could deal with all of it, now that I knew the rules. My borrowed body back in Halli’s universe was undoubtedly dead by now, but I was still here. The thinking, feeling me still had a lot of life in her, and all I had to do was figure out how to bring her back into the physical world.

  After all, I’d done it once before.

  This time I wasn’t trying to save Halli, I was trying to save myself. And luckily I didn’t need to race against an avalanche to do it. I had time. I could think it through. And try to remember exactly how I created a life for myself that seemed to skip ahead by three whole days.

  If I could make it happen again, I knew this time it would be different.

  Because if Halli could do whatever she wanted—

  —then so could I.

  ******

  ******

  BOOK 4: BEYOND THE PARALLEL

  #

  par·al·lel·o·gram /par-uh-lel-uh-gram/ noun: a four-sided figure having both pairs of opposite sides parallel to each other.

  par·al·lel·o·gram: communication between parallel worlds

  “If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.” ~Orville Wright, American Inventor and Aviation Pioneer

  1

  Walk, I have to keep telling myself. Don’t run.

  But the urge is so strong.

  “Halli Markham!” Sarah shouts from the distance, and she’s already racing toward me. Across this vast, polished lobby, toward the girl she thinks I am.

  Walk, don’t run. Stay calm. Stay in control.

  I know this scene. I’ve been here before. It’s Monday. I’m in London. I’ve just spent the day touring Halli’s parents’ headquarters, and now Sarah and Daniel are here to meet me.

  I don’t have much time.

  “And Red!” Sarah cries, hugging me first, then the dog. “How are you, you handsome boy?” Red wags his tail so hard he might achieve liftoff.

  I look past Sarah to where Daniel is still making his slow, steady way. He’s limping a little, just like last time.

  So far everything is like last time.

  Which means by tomorrow night I’ll be screaming. My head will feel like it’s been split in two. I’ll be rushed to the hospital, pumped full of drugs, unable to think or get away.

  A week later, I’ll be dead.

  I want it so badly: to run to Daniel now, to throw my arms around him, hold him hard, and whisper urgently in his ear, “It’s me. It’s Audie. Halli is trapped inside my body, back in my universe. This is me in here. We have to hurry. I need your help. We don’t have much time.”

  But I can’t. I know that. Because telling him the truth right now—this day, this exact moment—started a whole chain reaction before, a chain that ended in pain and suffering and death, and I can’t afford for the any of those things to happen this time. I can’t take even one step down that same path. I have to do it all differently—everything.

  My life depends on it.

  2

  It’s tricky, traveling across time and space.

  Especially when you’re not really sure how you did it.

  “How are you?” Daniel asks, giving me a friendly, platonic hug.

  “Great!” I could say. “Although I’ve only been alive for about five minutes so far, so let me get back to you on that.”

  Because the truth is, I’m not really sure myself.

  It’s all coming at me pretty fast: the sudden sunshine through the windows, the echoing noise of the lobby, people calling to me, talking to me, wanting things from me—when just a moment ago I was somewhere dark and peaceful and warm, all by myself, and in the moment before that I remember being furious—

  I kneel down next to Red and pretend I really need to pet him right away. Anything to buy myself a few extra seconds so I can think through my next move.

  “My manners!” Sarah says, seeming to notice for the first time the other people standing around me. “Sarah Everett,” she tells the group, “and this is my brother, Daniel.” She shakes hands with Mr. Chilton, the man in charge of the London facility. Says something complimentary about his tie. Then she turns and smiles for the camera. “I suspect there’s a person behind those.”

  The guy holding what look like big square binoculars lowers them to enjoy the sight of Sarah with his bare eyes. He offers his hand. “Bryan Stewart.”

  Bryan. The history reporter Halli’s parents saddled me with for this trip. The Bryan Stewart who hounded me so hard, looking for the next great scoop on the famous Halli Markham, he ended up being the main reason why I was rushed to the hospital where I spent the last remaining week of my life. No thanks, Bryan. Not this time. I’m going to have to figure out what to do about you.

  Sarah turns to the final member of our little party. “Jake Demetrios,” he says, smiling politely, but not exactly with as much enthusiasm as Bryan.

  Jake. That one … is a little more complicated. In love with Halli most of his life, sort of made me fall in love with him for a little while, and now … well, I’m going to have to get away from him, too. I need to have total freedom to do the things I need to do if I’m going to come out of this whole situation alive this time.

  “Where’s your cousin?” Sarah asks me. “Is she here?”

  “Couldn’t make it.” I flash a look at Daniel that I know he’ll understand. He’s quick. And he, unlike Sarah, knows there is no cousin. He knows Audie is a visitor from a parallel universe. He just doesn’t know he’s looking at me right now.

  But he can guess that the cluster of other people around us might be curious why his sister is asking about some cousin Halli Markham doesn’t have.

  “We don’t mean to interrupt if you still have work to do,” Daniel says in his polite British way.

  “Of course we mean to interrupt!” Sarah says. “Halli Markham, we are here to steal you away. We have grand plans for you this afternoon, and then I hope you know you’ll be staying with us for as long as you’re here. You can share my unreasonably tiny bedroom in our parents’ unreasonably—”

  “—tiny house,” I could finish for her, but I don’t. Instead I just smile. “That sounds great.”

  “Splendid!” Sarah says. She looks at Bryan and Jake and I know what’s coming, I’m just not fast enough to catch her at the start. “And of course your fr—”

  No, my “friends” aren’t welcome to come along. Not this time. That won’t work for me at all.

  “Hey, Jake, Bryan—can I talk to you two for a sec?” I have no idea what I’ll say, I just know I need to break up this party as soon as possible. “Let me just finish this up,” I tell Sarah and Daniel. “Then I’ll be all yours.”

  “Will that be all, Miss Markham?” Mr. Chilton asks me.

  “Yes. Thank you.” He looks happy to be released. As I recall, I asked him a lot of questions about the science behind one of Halli’s parents’ inventions. Mr. Chilton didn’t seem to like that.

  I draw Jake and Bryan a little ways off to the side. “Listen,” I say. “I have a favor to ask both of you.”

  I feel a strange vibration against my leg. I look down and it’s Red. It’s Red leaning against me and growling low in his throat. Growling, it appears, at Jake.

  Jake can take the hint. Even though Bryan is right next to me, Jake backs up and stands a few feet away.

  “Red, it’s okay.” But the growl gets deeper. I reach down to pet his head, but that doesn’t comfort him at all. He just keeps snarling at Jake, warni
ng him away.

  Which makes no sense whatsoever. The two of them were best buddies a few days ago, back on Halli’s parents’ island. Jake must have thrown the stick for Red at least five hundred times. That creates a certain bond.

  But I don’t have time to sort it out. I have a deal to make.

  “Look,” I tell Bryan, “I haven’t seen my friends for a long time.” Kind of a lie, since they were visiting me in the hospital just a day or two ago. “I’d like to hang out with them for a while, you know? Relax for a couple of days. Without …” I gesture at his camera. “That.”

  Bryan doesn’t look happy. Halli’s parents promised him full access to me. He’s supposed to get the exclusive story on Halli’s new venture, finally becoming involved in her parents’ business empire.

  “But I’ll make it worth it to you,” I say. The idea occurs to me in a flash, and I know in my gut it’s right. “If you leave me alone for a few days and just let me rest and relax, I’ll give you something no one else is going to get.”

  “I’m listening,” Bryan says.

  I glance at Jake. From his safe distance away, he’s listening, too.

  I take a deep breath, like this is hard for me.

  It’s not.

  “You know how private I’ve been about Ginny’s death?” I start. And it’s true: Halli doesn’t even like to talk to me about her grandmother’s death. Even a year later it still feels too raw. But in that brief time that Halli and I shared a brain together—my brain, in my former body, just a short time ago—I saw enough footage in her memories to be able to piece together a pretty believable story.

  Maybe a day ago I never would have considered using Halli this way—using her private memories to buy myself some time. But that was before I understood exactly how Halli has treated my own life. She didn’t worry about messing up everything I’ve worked so hard to put into place. She felt perfectly fine quitting school, quitting my job, running off in the middle of the night with some guy she just met—okay, a parallel version of Daniel, but still, it’s not like she really knew him—and just leaving without even bothering to write my poor mom a note. I begged her. I pleaded with her. But Halli didn’t care. She said she had to do what she had to do.