Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “Oh.”

  “And then there were small clues ever since yesterday,” he goes on. “But the main one was that in the past two days you’ve rarely looked me in the eye. That isn’t Halli. Halli is very forthright. So I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought something had happened to you, and she was keeping it from me. I never imagined what the real secret was.”

  “But then how …? I mean, you obviously felt sure enough to kiss me.”

  “No,” he says. “I wasn’t. But I knew I had to do something. You tried to make me leave Dr. Venn’s office—I couldn’t allow that. Not once you confirmed you were in trouble. So I took a risk. Knowing I might make an utter fool of myself if I was wrong.”

  I’m looking him in the eye now. “I liked it. Very bold move, Everett.”

  We’re smiling at each other in a way that I’m used to, but I know we have to be careful. As much as I’d love to repeat that kiss right now, there are too many witnesses around us. Halli isn’t as anonymous as I’d like her to be.

  As if to reinforce the point, two young women peel away from a group of nearby students and come over to us.

  “Halli?” one of them says.

  “Yes?”

  “We were wondering …” But that’s as far as she gets before she loses her nerve.

  The other girl gives her a friendly nudge and takes over. “You’re a real inspiration—we wanted to tell you that.”

  “Oh. Okay, thanks.” That’s nice of them.

  “Could we get a photo with you?” She pulls a small tablet from her pocket and hands it to Daniel. “I swear we’ll keep it private.”

  “Okay, sure.” I can be a good sport. The girls move to either side of me and both link their arms around my waist. Then they lean in close and rest their cheeks against mine.

  I flinch a little at that. Strangers don’t usually come up to me and feel so comfortable wrapping their arms me and invading my space.

  Any more than the real me is used to someone proving a point to reporters by pulling me toward him and kissing me on the mouth.

  But I suppose some people must view Halli Markham as public property. One of the side effects of her being famous.

  “Thanks, luv!” the more outgoing one says to Daniel as he hands her back her tablet. She turns a little to the side and drops her voice to a whisper. “Is he your boyfriend, then?” she asks me.

  “What? No … we’re just friends.”

  “I’d like to be friends with that!” she says with a laugh before tugging on the other girl’s arm and leading her back to their group.

  Daniel points up ahead. “The schnauzer.”

  Sure enough, there’s a little dog trotting along on his own, heading toward Dr. Venn’s office in a very purposeful way.

  “Let’s wait a minute,” I say, knowing Red might not appreciate the competition.

  We find an unoccupied bench under one of the huge trees and sit down. A little gust of wind sends a few more yellow leaves drifting down around us.

  “Are you ready for this?” Daniel asks me.

  It’s a reasonable question. I haven’t really had enough time to process the morning. I could probably use a long soak in a tub.

  “It’s real, isn’t it?” I ask him. I know it is, but for some reason I feel like I keep needing the confirmation.

  “I’d like to put my arm around you right now,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “Or at least hold your hand.”

  “Me, too.”

  Instead I fold my arms across my chest to fight against the temptation.

  The two girls who came over earlier are looking at us again, obviously talking about us to their friends. It’s really not the way I’m used to living.

  “Do you think it will ever be normal for us again?” I ask.

  Daniel laughs. “It was never normal. Think of how we met.”

  “Oh. Right.” I’ve always been a visitor from another universe. Being inside Halli’s body for the second time though isn’t really that much more incredible.

  “There he goes,” Daniel says. The schnauzer trots back out and heads just as purposefully toward wherever his next destination is. From the look of him, he probably has people all over this campus feeding him treats all day long. He’s not a slim dog.

  Daniel stands and offers me his hand. I take it, just for the space of time we can get away with while he lifts me to my feet.

  “Tonight,” he says. “We’ll have a more proper hello.”

  I suppress a smile. “I kind of liked your improper one.”

  I see what he means: I really haven’t been looking him in the eye for two days. Now I remember why. Because looking into his warm brown eyes right now makes me want to forget all about the hurry. The danger. All the choices I need to make minute by minute if I’m going to survive this time around. All I want is to be with him quiet somewhere, feel his warm comforting arms around me, and talk about our lives.

  Okay, mostly kiss, but also talk a little in between.

  “Shall we?” Daniel asks.

  “We shall.”

  As soon as Red understands where we’re going, he bounds on ahead. I feel strangely reluctant.

  Daniel notices me slowing down. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just … worried,” I confess. “About what he’ll say. We still don’t know how the other him died.” Then I say what’s really holding me back. “What if I can’t stop it?”

  “Audie, look at me.” Daniel smiles in that kind, confident way I’ve come to know and love. “Everything about you is a miracle. This will be no different.”

  I want to believe that. I’m lost if I don’t. I know that. He’s right.

  But I can’t help wondering, secretly, whether I’m smart enough to do all this—even with Daniel and Dr. Venn’s help.

  Dr. Venn’s parallel self was a physicist working on the Manhattan Project. I assume he was smart, too.

  But not smart enough to still be alive.

  17

  I can hear Red barking from far away. I take off at a run.

  He’s standing in the doorway of Dr. Venn’s office, barking at a woman and a robot.

  Dr. Venn’s chair is in its extended position so he’s standing upright again, supported by all the purple cuffs and cushions. That’s what Red doesn’t like. He doesn’t seem to mind the woman so much. She’s about my mom’s age, and she has one of Dr. Venn’s arms cradled between her hands while she’s massaging his wrists and fingers.

  “My nurse,” Dr. Venn calls over the sounds of Red’s alarm. “This will only take a few more minutes.”

  I grab Red by the collar and ask him to sit. Then I crouch down next to him and pet him while the purple monster still looms above.

  Then, just as Dr. Venn said, a few minutes later the nurse is done and he can compress his apparatus back into a chair.

  The nurse brings her mouth right up against Dr. Venn’s ear. “I’ll see you tonight, Granddad.” Unlike him, she has a British accent. She smiles at him, waves, then turns toward Daniel and me.

  “A word of caution,” she says. “I know it’s easy to forget because his mind is sharp, but my grandfather is a hundred and three. Please don’t wear him down. I’ve seen him bedridden for a week when he pushes too hard. He loves his work—sometimes too much. But you two will be mindful of that, won’t you?”

  She smiles the way a teacher might after telling everyone, “If you cheat, I’ll know it, so don’t do it.”

  Daniel and I both nod. The woman gives my shoulder a squeeze and leaves.

  Meanwhile Dr. Venn has been trying to coax Red back toward him, but the dog won’t go. “Here,” Dr. Venn says soothingly. “I know. It’s all right.”

  Finally Red does this sort of crab walk sideways for a few steps, obviously still afraid, until he sees the biscuit cupped in Dr. Venn’s arthritic hand. Then everything is forgiven. Red reclaims his position at the base of Dr. Venn’s chair and peacefully devours
his treat.

  Dr. Venn looks up at us. “I assume Madeline told you to take it easy on an old man?”

  I hesitate, then nod.

  “Good. Then you can help me right now.” He gestures toward the earphones. I settle them over his ears, then resume my seat and pick up the microphone.

  “We can come back tomorrow if you’re too tired,” I tell him, hoping he won’t say yes. I don’t think I can stand leaving right now and then wondering all night long.

  “Nonsense,” he says. “You’ll know when I’m tired. I’ll fall asleep. Until then, we keep going. And if you have to come back tomorrow and the next day and next week, you will. We have important work to do together, yes?”

  “Yes.” I think of what he said about working on the atomic bomb. How no one wanted to sleep. I get that. Right now I wish Dr. Venn were strong enough to talk to us through the night.

  “So,” he says to Daniel, “how far into the history did you tell her?”

  I pass the mic over to him. “Scientists all around the world agreeing never to use their knowledge for war.”

  “Yes. A noble, humane idea,” Dr. Venn says. “Simply wonderful. But do you see the flaw in it? From a physicist’s point of view?”

  I try to think of what he means. But nothing comes to mind.

  “There were so many rules,” he tells us. “We had to be very specific. Think about it: anything can be turned into a weapon. Even a paperclip or a shoe. It’s the mentality behind the instrument that makes it dangerous—if someone wants to do harm, he can always find a way.

  “So it took months of debating and redrafting before we had a plausible agreement. A list of rules about how much science we all could pursue, and where we would draw the line. Do you see it yet?” he asks me. “The flaw?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t.”

  “Space,” he says. “What do we do about space? Airplanes carried the bombs to Japan. Imagine how much more damage someone could do if they launched a weapon from space. Rocket ships were only a hypothesis and the stuff of science fiction in the forties, but the dream was there. The theories to support it were there. And some of my colleagues didn’t want to sign the Pact if it meant giving up their pursuit of knowledge.”

  “Einstein,” I mutter. A flash of a memory. Of Halli and me in her greenhouse in Colorado, and me quizzing her about historical figures from my universe that she’d heard about, too.

  She was pretty fuzzy on Einstein.

  “He was a peaceful man,” Dr. Venn says. “He hated war. But his answer was no. He had to know what he could know. So he and a fair many scientists ultimately refused to sign.”

  “What happened to them?” Daniel asks.

  “Nothing. They went on. Life went on. Audie has been living in that world her whole life. And you,” he says to Daniel, “have been living in this one. The one we made, my colleagues and I, that day we signed the agreement.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Are you saying you deliberately created a parallel universe?”

  “No. No more than you did when you tried to save Halli and now, as you want to save yourself. Everything changes once you make a different choice.”

  “Make a different choice,” I repeat. “That’s all it takes.”

  “That’s all it’s ever taken,” Dr. Venn says. “No one seems to grasp that.”

  “But …” There are questions on the tip of my brain, but somehow I can’t seem to shape them into words.

  “Leave it,” Dr. Venn says. “I’ve seen that look on too many students’ faces over the years: too much theory, not enough story. So let me tell you a story.

  “That other me—Edgar, we’ll call him—goes to work one day, just like every day, except this day his colleagues are signing the Pact. For reasons of his own, he does not. That night he goes home, kisses his wife, has supper, reads a book, falls asleep.

  “I, on the other hand, go to work that day, sign the Pact, then go home, kiss my wife, have supper … and so on. Would you hand me that pen, son?”

  Dr. Venn gestures toward a pen on his desk and the pad of paper nearby. He detaches his arms from the purple cuffs, props the notepad on his lap, and then draws a long, shaky line across the paper.

  “Edgar’s life,” he says, pointing to the line. Then he draws a second long line. It begins at the same starting point, but then angles steadily off in another direction. “My life.”

  He draws more shaky lines. “Your grandparents’ lives, Audie. Your parents’ lives. Yours.” All heading in a certain direction. Then he draws three more lines starting from the same place, but angling off again: “Now Halli’s grandparents. Her parents. Her.” Dr. Venn looks up at me. “Do you see? Circumstance and choices. That’s all it ever is. You’re born into a particular world, a particular country and city and neighborhood, and born to a specific set of parents. And then … choices.

  “And I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he adds. “It’s not a line, it’s a loop. But that’s a different story. I need to know that you understand this one, first.”

  I study his drawing. Study the lines. There’s the one for my life. That’s me in Universe A, being raised by a nice mother, taking an interest in physics, having a crush on Will, deciding to see if parallel universes are real so I can have a hot project that will get me into Columbia.

  And there’s Halli’s line. Universe B, abandoned by her parents, raised by an adventurous grandmother, a grandmother who dies and leaves Halli alone.

  I pick up another pen from Dr. Venn’s desk and start drawing new lines on his paper. Lines that branch off from the ones he drew for Halli and me.

  Here is the line where I try to save Halli and end up stuck in Universe B instead. And here’s the line where Halli starts living my life in Universe A and takes it in a completely different direction.

  At some point about a week from now, that new line representing me would end. The story of Audie is over. The new line for Halli would keep going.

  But wait! I move the pen back a few inches on my line and start drawing another new branch from there.

  Something is wrong. Something doesn’t make sense. I tap the pen against the paper while I think.

  It’s different. The past is different. That’s exactly what it is.

  “It’s not just circumstance and choices,” I tell Dr. Venn. “It can’t be. Both times when I’ve woken up in Halli’s body, the past was changed before I ever got here. She hiked out on Sunday instead of Tuesday—I didn’t cause that. And this time Jake and I …” I catch Daniel’s eye and stop myself.

  When I told Dr. Venn and Daniel about everything that happened to me the last time I was Halli, I didn’t tell them everything. In part because it didn’t seem something that would help Dr. Venn with the science, but more because I didn’t need for Daniel to know any of that.

  And now that I’m thinking it through, there’s another difference: not only how Jake reacts to me and how Red reacts to him, but also how Daniel is treating me.

  Last time he acted like he couldn’t make a move on me because he would somehow be cheating on me. With me. He couldn’t get past the fact that I looked like Halli.

  But this time? Not a problem. Once he knew it was me inside here, he had no problem kissing Halli’s lips.

  Not that I’m going to explain any of that to Daniel or Dr. Venn. So I just let my sentence trail off and hope Daniel will forget it.

  “Okay,” I tell Dr. Venn. “Let me say it all for myself and you tell me if I have it. When I decided to try to save Halli, I made a choice. A new universe split off.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “But that universe had a different history than the first one, because in the new universe, Halli’s tracking information showed she hiked out the Alps on Sunday instead of Tuesday. Right?”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t make that choice,” I remind him. “I didn’t know anything about it.”

  Dr. Venn nods. And I notice that he isn’t just squintin
g anymore, his eyes are closed. They open a few seconds later, but there’s no doubt about it: he’s fading.

  “Dr. Venn? You look tired. Should I stop?”

  “No, but help me back in.” His voice sounds weaker than it did just a few minutes ago. Daniel and I both hurry to help him slip his arms back into their cuffs.

  Dr. Venn flexes his fingers on both hands. He gives us a reassuring smile, but says, “If I can’t move these in the morning, Madeline will have my hide.”

  And ours, I think, but don’t say it.

  “Go on,” Dr. Venn tells me. “You’re very close. I’m not sleeping, I’m listening.”

  But his eyes are definitely closed.

  “So now I’m back again,” I say, speeding it up. “And this time the past is different again. Things I didn’t choose, like Red growling at Jake—the two of them were friends last time.”

  Good save. Make it all about Jake and Red.

  “And me staying with Mrs. Scott this time instead of at Halli’s parents’ apartment. I didn’t choose any of those things.”

  “You did,” Dr. Venn says faintly, “but you just don’t know it.” He takes a deep breath and forces his eyes open. I can see it’s an effort. “I’m sorry, children. I can’t anymore today. I have to sleep.”

  Daniel and I both stand up. “Do you need anything, sir?” Daniel asks.

  “No, no …” Dr. Venn’s head has already drooped toward his chest. I gently remove the headphones and unplug both them and the microphone. I’m not sure what else we should do.

  “Do you think we should just … leave?” I ask.

  “He’s gotten along without us all this time,” Daniel says. “I imagine his granddaughter will come for him. Or maybe he naps and then leaves on his own. He came alone this morning.”

  I feel weird about it, but we do just leave. It takes a little coaxing to get Red to come with us. He really seems to love sleeping at Dr. Venn’s feet.

  This time when we emerge from the office, no reporters. Jake’s strategy seems to have worked.

  I pull from my pocket the card Jake gave me this morning. The one he said I should use to “page” him.