by Julie Drew
When the others went to the range, Tesla worked with her hands, instead. She had found it hilarious that her instructor was a retired circus performer, but only until she had seen what the woman could do with a set of throwing knives. Tesla could juggle, throw, catch, and put a spin on just about anything she was strong enough to lift off the ground, and—of course—her aim was perfection.
Finally refreshed after the intensity of the afternoon’s workout, Tesla wandered downstairs for a drink, her hair still wet from the shower. She had almost two hours to kill before she had to meet Sam at the movies. It was, technically, a date, but they weren’t “dating.” She’d made that clear to Sam a long time ago, told him they needed to be friends first, and he was pretty good about it—he hadn’t even tried to kiss her again since that time at his house last summer when her dad was still missing. Still, she felt like she had to keep her guard up—he was intense and pretty straightforward about his feelings and, well, who wouldn’t like that? She was flattered, as well as tempted; the guy was undeniably attractive.
The backdoor opened as Tesla’s head was buried in the refrigerator, and she felt her body tense involuntarily. By the time she emerged, her expression was carefully blank, and she turned to face her father.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hi, honey.” He put his briefcase and keys on the kitchen counter by the door, then his eyes widened as he registered what she wore. “Where did you get that shirt?” he asked abruptly.
Tesla was surprised. “This? I found it in one of those old boxes in the attic—you know, Mom’s stuff.”
“I don’t want you snooping around in her things.” He was agitated, inexplicably angry, and Tesla was immediately angry in return.
“Snooping around in her things?” she repeated, incredulous. “She wasn’t just your wife, you know. She was my mom. I have a right to see her things—which is the only way I can get a sense of who she was, since you won’t talk about her.”
“Tesla, I just don’t want—these things will stir up painful memories for you,” he said, but his careful, reasoning tone infuriated her, like she was a mental patient or something and needed to be handled.
Her anger—and something much, much uglier—immediately rose to the surface. “Oh, of course, if we don’t talk about her and she’s just a big blank spot in my mind I obviously won’t be pained by the fact that I don’t have a mom. Thanks for sparing me that.”
“Look, of course I know you’ve suffered a loss, you and Max both, but your sarcasm doesn’t help. I haven’t been through all those things myself and I’m not sure what’s in there. That’s all I meant. I don’t think you need any more…surprises.”
“Surprises—are you kidding me?? Anything beyond the color of her eyes is going to be a surprise since I have so few memories of her—which is another thing that doesn’t make any sense. People remember stuff from when they were five, six years old—lots of people. I’ve got nothing but some crappy old T-shirt she liked a million years ago, and I can’t even have that??”
“That’s not what I meant,” her father snapped.
“Isn’t it?” Tesla felt her heart race. She felt both fear and anger, and the toxic result of that particular combination was absolute recklessness. “What are you afraid of? What do you think I might find—some indication of how she actually died?”
A beat passed, and then another as they stared at each other, shocked.
“What did you say?” Greg Abbott whispered.
A part of Tesla wished she could take it back, wished she’d never said it, but only a part of her. The anger that licked along her veins could not be ignored. There was no stopping what had been set in motion.
“You refuse to say anything more than that there was some vague, generic car crash,” Tesla said all in a rush, her words coming out fast and loud as she hurled them at her father. “Why? Sebastian Nilsen said there was no car accident—he said her death was your fault!”
It was out there, in the room now. Tesla took a step back, as if she could distance herself from the words she’d spoken, could somehow unsee her father’s face drain of color, the unguarded pain in his eyes, and something else that she didn’t recognize, wouldn’t recognize. This was the one event from last summer she hadn’t told anyone—especially her father: that Sebastian Nilsen had accused Greg Abbott of the death of Tasya Petrova, had accused his old rival of killing Tesla’s mother, the woman they had both loved.
Greg Abbott’s hand shook as he raised it to gently push his glasses up higher on his nose, a gesture so exactly like his son’s that he looked, for a moment, the same age as Max. “I—I didn’t think you would give credence to anything Bas Nilsen had to say. Or that you could think this of me.”
“No, it’s not that, exactly—” Tesla began, but stopped, not altogether sure what it was, if not that.
Her father walked away but stopped at the kitchen door and spoke without turning around. “Things are never as black and white, never as simple, as we’d like them to be. And neither are people.” There was a pause that seemed packed with meaning that she could not decipher. “Even the ones we love the most.”
Tesla stood a moment longer in the kitchen after he’d disappeared upstairs, until the cold air from the still-open refrigerator reminded her to shut the door. She walked slowly up the stairs, past her father’s closed door and the awful silence that emanated from his bedroom. In her own room, she changed her clothes to go meet Sam while she savagely berated herself for her inability to self-censor, to think before she spoke. She always managed to make every situation worse.
Let’s see, Max is mad, and Dad is crushed and disappointed in me. I guess my work here is done, she thought bitterly as she dressed all in black to suit her mood. She pulled on a soft, fringed wool tunic with long belled sleeves and a deeply cowled hood like a monk’s, thick, ribbed sweater-leggings and flat, slouchy boots before she left the house. It was only when she got to the square in town and saw the bright lights around the theater’s marquee that she stopped the self-hate long enough to realize that her father had managed to avoid her questions about her mom and left her frustrated, with no answers, yet again.
Tesla looked up at the clock tower in the town square to check the time—she was twenty minutes early for her date with Sam—and had just decided to get a coffee when someone laid a hand on her shoulder.
Startled, she spun around to find Finn, who took a step back to widen the gap between them to exactly two feet eleven inches, she noted instantly.
“You really have to stop following me, Abbott. It’s getting embarrassing,” he said. His cocked eyebrow and lopsided, derisive grin were calculated for maximum aggravation.
Caught off guard, and apparently still unsettled by the kiss they’d shared earlier, Tesla decided a good offense was, after all, the best defense. “You wish.
Really? That’s your stinging rebuttal? she berated herself silently.
Finn laughed. “Well, I wish a lot of things, but I’m not sure you following me made the cut.”
Annnnd, there it was, his endless amusement at her expense.
“I have a date—what’s your excuse?” she demanded hotly. “Maybe you’re following me.”
His smile never wavered, but there was a faint, barely detectable…tightening about him. His lips, his warm brown eyes, the arms hanging loosely at his side—they hadn’t changed, not really, but his focus on her now seemed hard and bright, no longer lazy. She didn’t really see the shift, she just…felt it.
“That’s kind of cute,” he said, his tone pitch-perfect, making Tesla think she’d imagined some change in him. “Some nice boy at school taking you to homecoming?”
“It’s got nothing to do with school. I’m going out with Sam.” She said it with a shrug, even contemplated interrupting herself with a yawn to indicate the depth of her complete boredom, but she just wasn’t as good at this as Finn.
“Really?” The sharp edges of the word cut through the cold, still air, surprising them both. Finn c
leared his throat and moved his weight from his left foot to his right, and it was enough to allow him to regain his composure. “I thought you two had agreed to just be friends. You’re dating now?” His voice was careful and held no trace of emotion.
Tesla shrugged, looking down at the ground as she tacitly admitted that he was right. She wished she could deny it, claim that she was actually in love with Sam, but she knew she was a terrible liar. Glum and averting her gaze from his, she waited for Finn’s ridicule—or, worse, his pity.
What Finn saw, however, was a shy, pale girl with mismatched eyes hiding her happiness behind wildly tangled red hair, happiness she had found in a new intimacy with Sam, and he felt such a surge of jealousy and—that tightening in his chest, that weird pulling sensation he’d felt last summer during the chaos of Dr. Abbot’s kidnapping—that he scared himself. He hadn’t felt it for months, yet here it was again, suddenly, and stronger than ever. His adrenaline surged, he felt his fists balling up at his sides and he had to exert some serious effort to uncurl them, to maintain his easy posture in front of her.
She looked up at him then, her brilliant blue and green eyes hooded, and he read nothing there, despite how well he thought he knew her. He trembled with the effort of breathing normally when his heart was racing and his body screamed for some sort of action. It was an astonishing and frightening experience and he knew without a doubt that there was something wrong with him.
He needed to figure it out.
This new direction in his thoughts, away from Tesla and toward a problem to be solved, was an immense relief. “Tesla,” he said briskly. “Remember last summer when we were both knocked out in the hidden rooms just outside the Bat Cave?”
“What?” Tesla was thrown by the sudden change in subject. “What about it?”
“Did you feel any odd physical symptoms around that time?”
“No—what do you mean? Like what?”
“Wasn’t there something when we both came to, when we were untying each other? Something about my headache from getting knocked out—and you had one too?”
“God, Finn, I don’t know. I’d been chloroformed, you got hit in the head with the butt of a gun. Of course we both had headaches. What are you talking about?” Tesla had begun to worry that Sam would arrive and it would be just too weird and embarrassing. Finn would be amused, Sam would get all stiff and formal. Oh my god, what if Finn mentions that he kissed me today?? she thought in sudden panic.
“Look, Finn—not to be rude, but Sam’s gonna be here any sec—“
“Yeah, yeah, no problem. Have fun. I’ve got to go anyway.”
Tesla was left standing with her mouth open, and she quickly snapped it shut. Finn was the most confusing person she’d ever met, that was for sure. Acting like he liked her one moment, kissing her, with every bit of warmth and passion one might hope for, and absolutely dismissive of her the next, not to mention taking every opportunity to laugh at her. Whatever it was they had begun last summer was clearly gone. Finnegan Ford had moved on.
Whatever, she thought. Maybe it’s time I moved on, too.
CHAPTER 4
Finn knocked on Bizzy’s door. He’d headed straight back to Jane’s to find her; he knew she would be studying in her room, despite the fact that it was Friday night.
“Reading,” came the unwelcoming response from within.
“Yeah, but I need to talk to you,” Finn said through the door.
“Fine, come in,” she replied ungraciously.
“Hey, Biz,” he said as he walked into the spotless room. Her bed was made, and though she lay on the quilt, propped up on her elbows reading a textbook that must have weighed sixty pounds, he suspected that the reason no wrinkle appeared in the covers was due in part to her perfect hospital corners, and in part to the fact that she probably weighed no more than ninety pounds herself.
Bizzy shut the book with a resigned sigh, and sat up on the bed. Waving Finn to the only chair in the room, a ladder-back wooden chair at her desk, she looked at him expectantly.
“What’s up?”
Finn took his time, having tried unsuccessfully on his way over to figure out exactly how he would explain the situation to her, how he might actually frame his crazy question. He grabbed the chair, turned it backwards and set it down a few feet from the bed and sat down, arms folded across the back of the chair, his chin resting on them.
“I have a—a thing that I’m trying to figure out, and I need your brain.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m listening.” She reached up unconsciously to tug on one of the five tiny silver hoops that hung from piercings along the outer edge of her ear, her black-rimmed eyes fixed intently on his, the frailty of her body accentuated by the harshness of her black hair, the multiple piercings, the tattoos on her arms, rather than disguised, as Finn knew she intended.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m here to ask you. The whole thing is—well it’s just weird, I don’t know how to describe it. I might even be imagining it,” he admitted, and actually blushed.
He’d never done that before. “Well, just start from the beginning, then,” Bizzy said.
Finn took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, you know last summer, when Dr. Abbot was kidnapped, Tesla and I were both knocked out. We came to, and—I know I probably had a mild concussion, but there was something odd that happened. At least I think it happened.”
“Yeah, go on,” Bizzy encouraged when he hesitated.
“Well, Tes was tied up on the other side of the barricade, and I was really just coming to myself. She made her way over to me, and I had this strangely tight feeling in my chest that seemed to—well, to ease up as she got closer.”
“Well, duh,” Bizzy said. “You were relieved. Who wouldn’t be?”
“No, it was more than that,” Finn said with certainty. “Yes, I was relieved. But this was a physical thing—I felt…stretched, and the tension eased as she got closer.”
“Sounds like either love or indigestion,” Bizzy joked, but stopped when she saw his face. “Oh. You’re serious.”
“Yes, I am,” he said, and only then, when she met his unfaltering gaze, did she truly feel the seriousness with which he’d come to her.
Bizzy scooted over to the edge of the bed, a little closer to where Finn sat in the chair. “Go on—there’s more, right?”
“There’s more,” he agreed, though he hardly sounded happy about it. “That wasn’t the first time I’d felt it. I felt it at Dodie’s just as Sam and I left the diner to do some snooping when Dr. Abbot was missing.”
“And that was in the past, right?” Bizzy asked, her eyebrow stud, shaped like a tiny barbell, twinkling in the bright light of her room as her brows drew down into a frown of concentration. “After you grabbed onto Tesla in the time machine and jumped with her?”
“Right,” said Finn. “I felt that same tightening, that pulling, when I looked back at her, just before Sam and I walked out the door to head for campus.”
Bizzy sat still, her eyes on the floor, one hand pulling absently at her short, spiked hair. Finn was quiet, letting her think, knowing from experience that she couldn’t be rushed.
“Is there anything else?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him with a feverish brightness to her eyes that both frightened him and gave him hope. “Anything at all, whether it was a similar feeling at another time, or something else that might seem unconnected, but that you can’t explain?”
“Well…,” Finn began, searching his mind. “Yeah. I’ve started feeling it again. I can’t speak for Tesla, but I can’t help but wonder if she’s experiencing something weird, too. Unless I was fuzzier than I thought after I got knocked out, I’m pretty sure that she said her headache from the chloroform had mostly dissipated, but when I winced from a sharp pain from getting hit on the head, she…..”
“She what??” Bizzy prodded him, obviously excited now.
“Well, I’m pretty sure that she said ouch. Like, you know—she felt the pain I
felt. At the same time.”
Without a word, Bizzy jumped up and darted past Finn to her laptop, which sat open on her desk. She began furiously typing, then reading, then typing again. Finn stood up and paced the room, glancing at her every few seconds, knowing better than to interrupt her but barely able to keep from shouting “What??” at her back.
Finally, after an interminable wait during which Finn contemplated the probability that Bizzy was researching what precise mental illness he was manifesting in her room, and whether or not he should make a run for it now, before the authorities arrived with a straightjacket, Bizzy straightened up and turned to him.
Finn took an involuntary step back from the intensity of her expression. Her thin frame fairly vibrated from the excitement she kept in check.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked cautiously. “I’m not crazy, right? This means something?”
“You know I can’t give you a definitive answer.” Despite her obvious excitement, she would not tell him that something was true if she did not know it, and she could not know it without a lot more information. “But I have an idea,” she said, her voice hushed. “Sit down.”
Finn backed up, his eyes locked on hers, and sat down on the bed when the backs of his legs told him it was right behind him. Bizzy swung the chair around and sat down, facing him, her back straight. Their eyes never wavered.
“Have you ever heard of quantum entanglement?” she asked.
“Um, no,” he said. “Why would I?”
“Well, Einstein and some others came up with a theory to explain how and why two electrons which had once been connected but were later separated by a great distance might experience the same thing at precisely the same time.”
“What do you mean?” asked Finn, impatient to get to what was actually going on in his life.
“Bear with me here. They found that if they changed the rotation of one electron, the other electron’s rotation changed, too—at exactly the same moment.” When Finn just looked confused, Bizzy continued. “Given the laws of classical physics, one of these two electrons would experience the change after the other one; even if one experienced what the other experienced, there would be a delay. But there was none. Quantum entanglement suggests that this happens because all things are connected, always. Across time and space.”