Unbreakable (Unraveling)

by Elizabeth Norris

  I feel the rough calluses on Ben’s palm and try to memorize them. I want the feel of his fingers imprinted on my senses.

  He squeezes twice. “Janelle.” His voice cracks.

  For a moment I do nothing. I just wish I could close my eyes and let this moment melt away. I’m not ready for it.

  I’m not ready to say good-bye again.

  But no amount of closing my eyes and wishing is ever going to erase any problems. And even if that did somehow miraculously work . . . well, I’m just not like that.

  So I squeeze back.

  It’s all it takes. Ben pulls me into him, and for a moment I give in to what I want to feel. His arms tighten around me, and I just let myself lean against him. Relish the feel of him holding me. The tension in my shoulders disappears. With my face pressed against his chest, I feel the pounding of his heart.

  The rest of the world is gone.

  It’s just Ben and me, the beat of his heart in my ears, the texture of his thermal against my cheek, the strength of his arms around me, the smell of minty soap on his skin, the feel of his lips against my hair.

  When he whispers, “I love you,” I know it’s the truth. I know how much he means it. And that makes what I’m about to do so much harder.

  My throat constricts and my eyes burn, and I wish there was some other way.

  But there’s not.

  I can’t watch him walk through another portal and out of my world again, not if I’m still holding on to the hope that he’ll come back.

  I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for the ghost of a chance. I don’t want either of us to go through life dead but breathing.

  My body shakes as I push him away from me. The tears sting as they slip down my skin.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asks.

  This whole situation is what’s wrong—portals, other universes, human trafficking, conspiracies, dead bodies piling up around us.

  We’re what’s wrong.

  I take a deep breath and force my voice to come out steady. “You shouldn’t prolong it. You should go.”

  “J—” He reaches for me, but I step back and shake my head.

  “Don’t.” My voice breaks, and I swallow back the lump in my throat. “Maybe someday . . . maybe we’ll see each other again; maybe then it’ll be different.”

  “I want to come back with you. I just—”

  “I know,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Just give me this moment. No promises.” Because I want to remember what we’re like together, right now.

  His eyes are red now, and the tension in his body makes something pinch in my chest. He takes a step toward me, and I hold up a hand to keep him at a far enough distance. He grabs it and holds it against his chest.

  I can feel the throb of his heartbeat.

  “I love you,” he says again.

  I know he does, and I love him, too. More than anything. But does that really mean he’s willing to give up seeing his family for me? Even if his world wasn’t what he was expecting, even if he didn’t belong there anymore, it’s a little more complicated than just checking to see if they’re okay and promising to visit them next Christmas. Plus there’s everything we’ve just been through, the lives we’ve taken—directly or not—and the people we’ve lost.

  “Maybe love isn’t enough,” I say, and I wonder when I started believing that was true.

  Ben shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”

  Underneath the fabric of his shirt, I can feel the warmth of his skin. My own pulse seems to thump at the same rhythm as his, and when he leans in, I can smell the soap from his shower, the mint on his breath. I bite my lip and concentrate on the physical pain to keep the throb in my chest from overwhelming me.

  We’ve seen worlds where we don’t belong—too many. And nothing will ever change the fact that his home is actually a world away from mine.

  “You need to go home,” I whisper as I pull away. And I turn around because I can’t watch him walk out of my life again.

  As I head down the hallway

  As I head down the hallway to find Hayley and demand we leave this instant, I wish this was some romantic movie, and he’d chase me down, turn me around, kiss me so hard it hurts, and tell me something romantic, something I’d have to believe.

  I know the moment he’s gone. I can’t explain how, but it’s like something changes—the air, the temperature, the energy, or maybe it’s just me—I feel a little emptier than I already did.

  I think of the last time he left, when I sank to the ground, alone in the rain. I didn’t think it was possible that anything could feel worse than what I felt in that moment.

  But I was wrong.

  This is worse. I’m not sure how, but I know that it is.

  It’s just past dawn

  It’s just past dawn when we portal back to my earth. As my feet hit the grass outside our apartment on Miramar, a rush of emotion barrels into me and knocks me to my knees.

  I’ve kept my promise.

  I’ve come home.

  “Where are you going to live?” Cecily says as she reaches down to pull me back to my feet. She’s not talking to me.

  “Fuck, I thought I’d live with you,” Elijah says.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “We have language limits at Qualcomm. You can only say the F word once a week. You’ll have to join the Marines. I think they’re more your type.” Her face is washed and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She doesn’t have to tell me she’s happy to be home—she has a bounce in her step that I haven’t seen since our last class at Eastview.

  Elijah nods. His face is serious, like he’s really thinking about whether he could make it a week and only swear once. I don’t know why he’s even considering it—we all know he couldn’t do it. “What if I promise to light that sweatshirt on fire?” he says.

  Cecily looks down at the I ♥ NEW PRIMA sweatshirt she has on and when she lifts her head, her smile has overtaken her face. Her eyes look almost squinty because of it. “I know exactly what we’re going to do,” she says. “We’ll have a bonfire party, maybe near Scripps Pier. We’ll have to clear away the debris, but that would be the perfect place. And we can make s’mores. Or maybe just toast marshmallows, there are a ton of those lying around. . . .”

  Elijah jumps in and he’s just as bad. He wants to have fireworks and sparklers and maybe even an explosion or two.

  “Wow, so is this normal for them?” Hayley says.

  I shrug. “Cecily does like to plan parties. I think Elijah just likes to attend them.”

  I’m not sure what’s normal for any of us anymore. We’ve seen too much—too many different worlds, too much violence, too much death, too much grief. That’s something we’ll have to get through together.

  Right now, holding on to some piece of normalcy is the only way to cope.

  The front door opens easily

  The front door opens easily, and I think of my dad and how he never locked our door. Struz is just like him.

  I wonder if things would have turned out differently if their doubles had been friends.

  Cecily and Elijah fall silent as the four of us walk into the kitchen. Hayley has paperwork for Struz to sign, and a million details to go over with him.

  I have food.

  The apartment is sleepy, like the rest of San Diego right now, and as I mix up the pancake batter, slice the fresh strawberries, and brew the gourmet coffee I brought with me, I revel in the small space, the pile of dishes, the discarded Monopoly board and its fake money on the living-room floor—and the fact that there are seven more-than-half-empty glasses of water on just the first floor and only two people asleep upstairs.

  It almost seems like I never left. Like nothing has changed.

  Nothing here, at least. There’s no denying that I’ve changed, that in less than seven days, the world threw everything it had at me, so many things tried to break me, and a lot of them beat me down.

  But I made it through.
>
  And now I’m home.

  Cecily breathes in the scent of the coffee. “You might end up waking the whole base with this,” she says.

  As if on cue, a sleepy and unobservant Struz—with his eyes half closed, his hand rubbing his hair—comes down the stairs. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and mismatched socks.

  I’d secretly been worried about seeing him again. After everything with his double, I was afraid I’d look at him in a new light and wonder what he was capable of. But now I realize all I can see when I look at him are the differences between them. I see the mussed-up hair, the clothes that don’t fit right because he’s too tall and too thin.

  My heart thuds harder in my chest, and I take a shallow breath.

  His eyes snap open with alarm, and then he sees me. “Holy shit,” he says, and he’s taking the stairs three at a time.

  I hand the pancake batter to Hayley and move around the island into the living room, in time for Struz to wrap his arms around me.

  He sees the bandages on my left hand and right arm, and I sense his demeanor change—he’s taking me in, the same way Barclay taught me to take in a room.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “Just a few scrapes.”

  He just hugs me again, and I can feel his whole body shaking.

  “Jared!” Struz shouts, letting me go. “J-baby is back!”

  Never in his life has my brother gotten out of bed so early and so quickly. It’s like his feet don’t even touch the stairs. He just flies down them, and before I realize what’s about to happen, he launches himself into my arms, like he used to when he was a kid—when he was smaller than me—and he tackles me to the ground.

  He fires questions at me, but there’s no need for me to respond.

  “Where have you been? How could you leave without telling me? If you ever do that again, I swear I’ll . . . I’ll do something you really won’t like,” Jared says. “And it’ll be worse than messing up your clothes in the laundry.”

  When Jared lets me up, I introduce him and Struz to Hayley and finish making pancakes. We all sit around the kitchen table and Struz regales us with dramatic stories about what I’ve missed—everything from his terrible attempt at cooking to moving everyone out of Qualcomm. I give an abbreviated and censored version of what I’ve been through, Cecily tells us about the Unwilling she met, and Hayley shares a funny story about the night she and Barclay first met. And Elijah eats.

  Suddenly everything is the same as it was. The only thing different is me.

  After Hayley has gone back

  After Hayley has gone back to Prima to prepare the next shipment of supplies, and after Cee has taken Elijah to a new evac shelter on a “trial basis,” I sit on our living-room floor next to the discarded Monopoly board. Struz is at another meeting off base, and Jared has already gone to bed, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to sleep again.

  If I’ll be able to close my eyes and see nothing, rather than seeing the faces of the people I’ve lost.

  If I’ll ever forget the curl to Ben’s hair or the way his half smile always looked like a secret he shared with only me. If I’ll ever be able to remember him without feeling that ache in my bones and that throb in my chest—if I’ll ever get over missing him and the way I felt when his arms were around me. And if I want to.

  Then I hear it.

  The high-pitched tone of something electronic powering up—or someone opening a portal.

  For a split second, it’s like someone has drained all the air from my lungs, and I think Chuckles or someone else has not only caught up with me but traced me back to my family. But then I remember who I am and what I’ve just accomplished.

  I stand up and reach for the iron poker next to the fireplace.

  The portal is there, a black hole in our living room, and the cool, wet, never-ending scent of possibility moves through the room and raises goose bumps on my skin. I tighten my grip on the poker.

  The portal ripples a little, like a pool of ink. But no one comes through yet. It hangs there, suspended by nothing, and I’m struck by the enormity of just how incredible this is. The idea of something that seemingly violates every law of the natural world being not only possible but also something that’s become ingrained in my life.

  Right when I think it’s about to flicker out of existence, Ben steps through.

  He looks exactly like he did when I last saw him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He smiles, probably because my voice sounds so breathy, and then he says, “I missed you.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  Luckily, I don’t have to say anything, because Ben eyes the poker. “You expecting someone else?”

  I put it down on the kitchen counter and almost say, “I wasn’t expecting you,” but I don’t. Because what I was expecting doesn’t matter. He’s here. Right now.

  Instead, I wait for whatever it is he wants to say.

  “You know what I love most about you?” he says as he shoves his hands in his pockets.

  I smile. Even if I did know, I still want to hear him say it. “Probably not.”

  His smile widens. “Don’t get me wrong, I love your face, and your hair, and your eyes, and I love the way you laugh a little too loud and the way you scare me a little when you’re angry, but . . .” Ben runs a hand through his hair. “I love listening to you—your voice, the things you say, everything.”

  I’m warm, and a little light-headed, and I wonder again what he’s doing here.

  But I try not to hope.

  “Do you remember when we went on our first date—I guess our only date?”

  I do. I remember it so well, it feels like it was just yesterday.

  We sat on a blanket on the edge of Sunset Cliffs. Below us were only rocks and white water crashing against them. We watched the seagulls as they flew in to their rock in the middle of the ocean, landed, and squawked at one another before taking off again. Ben was close enough that he could lean into me, that the heat of his body could keep me warm as the wind from the ocean washed over us. The sun, starting its descent, hung like a huge golden globe near the edge of the water, casting red, orange, pink, and purple streaks in the sky.

  It felt like we were the only two people in the world.

  I nod. “I do.” How could I really ever forget that?

  “The world was falling apart around us, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care.” His voice cracks a little under the weight of emotion, and I take a step toward him. I want to wrap him in my arms and make him promise to never leave me again. “At that moment, I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. Because I had you. This world may not be my home, but four months ago, when I went back to my world, that wasn’t home either.”

  His eyes are glassy with tears, and his hand reaches out to cup my cheek.

  “Janelle, you’re my home.”

  I pull him to me, feel his lips as they touch mine, and I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry.

  Ben seems to know what I’m thinking. I feel him smile against my lips.

  Everything else in the world seems to fall away. The space between us evaporates. One moment we’re a foot apart, the next every inch of Ben’s body is pressed into mine. The soft scent of mint and soap—the smell of Ben—fills my senses, and I hold on to him tighter, pull him closer, kissing him, tasting his tongue as I feel his hands on my back and tangling in my hair. The strength of his arms around me makes my heart beat faster; I’m feverish and I can’t tell where I end and he begins.

  Nothing has ever felt so right.

  Everything that tried to stand between us doesn’t matter now. We might have broken a little.

  But now we’re stronger in those broken places.

  And we’re going to face whatever comes next together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing my sophomore book was a much different experience than writing my debut. This book would never have been possible without the slew of amazing people who brainstormed i
deas, kept me on deadline, and still managed to make me laugh. Special thanks to Dan, Joanna, and Sarah.

  I’m insanely grateful to the team at Balzer + Bray who have put so much faith in Janelle and Ben’s story, especially Kristin Rens and Sara Sargent, who read the monstrous five-hundred-page first draft. Because of them, this book is a complete novel with no plot holes, and it’s shorter. I also owe huge thanks to the marketing and publicity teams, who were so fabulous and supportive: Caroline Sun, Alison Lisnow, Emilie Polster, Stephanie Hoffman, Molly Thomas, and Stephanie Macy.

  I’d also like to thank everyone else at HarperCollins who worked behind the scenes. Special thanks to Alison Donalty and Alison Klapthor, who designed the amazing covers; Caitlin Garing with audio; Jean McGinley in subrights; and everyone at HarperCollins Children’s in the UK and Australia: Nicholas Lake, Rachel Denwood, Alison Ruane, Sam White, Lara Wallace, and Elizabeth Ryley.

  As always, a huge thank-you to Janet Reid, Pouya Shahbazian, and Steve Younger. And to my family and friends who have been so supportive, and all my former students, who are some of the best people I’ve ever met.

  Most of all, thank you to everyone who read Unraveling.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Courtesy of the author

  ELIZABETH NORRIS briefly taught high school English and history before trading the San Diego beaches and sunshine for Manhattan’s chilly winters. She harbors dangerous addictions to guacamole, red velvet cupcakes, sushi, and Argo Tea, fortunately not all together. She is also the author of Unraveling. You can visit Elizabeth online at www.elizabethnorrisbooks.com.

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