by Kari Luna
The rain came down harder, like my headache. I walked over to the fountain, put my hand in the water and patted my face, hoping it would revive me, but I felt strange. Dizzy. There were too many people, and the sky was too bright, even with the rain. As I looked up, little black balls fell from the sky. As they got closer, I saw they weren’t balls, they were bears—baby black bears falling everywhere.
They rained down, like miniatures, and bounced off the ground as if they were made of rubber. Bounce, bounce, bear to the right. Bounce, bounce, bear to the left. They were furry and cuddly, and soon they covered all of Washington Square Park.
People studied, ate and danced as little bears fell into the open spaces between them. Hundreds of baby black bears, raining from the sky. One of them bounced into my lap and I gave it a hug as I watched others crawl between the striped pant legs of a sax player. Around the juggling pins of a woman in a pink feather boa. Bears peeked over the shoulders of chess players and people eating noodles from cartons. They didn’t cry or growl; they just giggled, crawled and explored the park like babies. The one in my lap licked my hand.
I remembered that my animal book said bears showed up when you needed to pay attention. They were a sign to listen to your heart, feel your power and make choices from that place. I’d always thought about getting a bear necklace, but I guessed a hundred bears falling from the sky would do the trick. Dad would have loved this, I thought. And then I realized—he already did. One summer night, in our backyard. Except it was probably an alternate version of our backyard in a parallel universe. And Dad had been there, baby black bears falling everywhere. At least, that’s what he told me. I never saw it myself, until now.
“I have to get out of here,” I said to the little bear beside me, to bears all over the park.
I picked up the one in my lap, sat her by the side of the fountain and stumbled. I saw double bears and triple bears, and the trees swirled around me. The backs of my eyes felt like fire and then there was nothing. The darn sky actually fell.
“Sophie!” I thought I heard someone say as my body moved through space.
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My head felt dark and muddy like the inside of one of those caves I always saw advertised on the highway but never actually got to visit. Mom drove fast the few times we moved and she didn’t stop for anything but bathroom breaks and snack attacks. “The basics,” she said. “If you really need to pee, tell me, and we’ll stop. But we’re not pulling over for a new Greatest Hits of the ’80s tape or magnet that says ‘The Cheese State.’” I wanted to tell her to stop forever, to quit leaving one town and hitting the highway toward the next. I wanted her to know there wasn’t enough chocolate in the world to make up for the fact that, since New York, I hadn’t been anywhere long enough to want to be somewhere else. So far, I always left my heart a few cities behind.
I opened my eyes. The bears were gone, replaced by strangers, crowded around me.
“She’s awake!” the lady holding lavender under my nose said.
“You fainted,” another woman said, shoving Vitaminwater in my face.
“Oh,” I said, taking the water and sipping. Gulping.
“Do we need to call someone?” Vitaminwater Woman said.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though I let them help me up and over to a bench. “I think it was just low blood sugar.”
“Take this,” Lavender Lady said. “I never eat the whole thing anyway.” She handed me a turkey on rye.
“Thanks,” I said, unwrapping it and taking a bite. I knew she wouldn’t leave until she saw me eat. Since when did New Yorkers have so much time to waste?
“We’re visiting from California,” Lavender Lady said. That explained it.
“I appreciate your help,” I said, eating more of the sandwich. “But I have an appointment. I have to go.”
“Can we walk you?”
“No,” I said. I had to get away from these women. “I’m fine, really. Go enjoy the city. Besides, if I need help, my dad works in that building.” I pointed. “I’ll just go see him.”
They nodded, the dad answer appeasing them, and walked over to another bench. I grabbed my bag, threw the rest of the sandwich in the trash and waved good-bye. As I walked, I thought about how rain turned into bears, like the blackbirds had peeled off the wallpaper. Objects animating. Dad was in that world, just like he said. I picked pieces of black fur off my shirt, proving that I’d been there, too.
I needed to talk to Dr. Russo, but that would have to wait. Too much was happening for me to keep it to myself. So I walked to a place where Dad and I used to go. A place full of books and promise and a friend named Finny.
TWENTY-TWO
Saturdays were research days, and sometimes Dad took me to Bobst, also known as the Big Library. We started with slings and strollers, but eventually advanced to hand holding and lower-shelf book gathering. I got older, but not old enough, because everything still loomed above me—people and purses, books and tables. Luckily, Dad’s hand was always there, guiding me through it, except for that one day. I was five years old, and he was frantic, running from table to stacks, returning with huge volumes whose titles I couldn’t yet read. I sat at his feet instead of the table, coloring in my notebook, my tiny Mary Jane leaning against his black loafer.
“Ten more minutes,” he said every ten minutes for the next two hours. But I got bored and wandered, following a girl with shiny red shoes. Her shoes were made of sequins, and Dad had said only good people wore sequins, so I ran after her even though she went far away from our table. I trailed behind as she pulled book after book from the stacks. Some of them even had pictures on the front. Dad’s books never had pictures.
“Hi, there,” she said, finally turning around. “Are you lost?”
I shook my head no and pointed to some stranger at another table.
“Ah, okay,” she said, and then she left, her glittering shoes disappearing around another corner. I walked the opposite way, trying to retrace our steps, but everything looked the same—tables, books and people who were all strangers to me. I started to cry.
“Daddy,” I said. I hated being alone. “I want my daddy,” I said louder, and people started to notice. A man walked up to me, but I ran the other way. I didn’t know him, and his shoes were dull and flat.
“Sophie?” Dad’s voice came from far away.
“Daddy!” I said as loudly as I could, wanting him to find me. Hoping he wouldn’t leave me alone in the world of books forever.
“Stand up and sing,” he shouted, coming closer. “Sing your favorite song so I can find you.”
I wiped my tears on my sleeve. I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to spend another Saturday at the Big Library. I just wanted to go home.
“Sophie, sing,” he said.
I gulped and let the words float out of my mouth, softly.
“Happy birthday to me,” I said.
“Bigger!” he shouted.
“Happy birthday to me,” I sang, less timid.
“Louder!” he said.
“Happy birthday, dear Sophie,” I sang with all my heart.
“Happy birthday to you,” Dad bellowed as he appeared at the end of my aisle. The man moved away, and Dad picked me up, hugging me tightly.
“My girl,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “My cream puff. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I hated that he’d had to find out.
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Revolving doors spit me out into the Big Library—twelve levels of glass and steel with an atrium in the middle. People scurried like ants up and down stairs, across floors and in between the stacks of this massive metropolis. Adding to the science-fiction vibe was the floor, which looked like an optical illusion—gray, black and white cube-shaped interlocking tiles. Dad once said it reminded him of Q*bert, his favorite video game from the eighties
. Now that I was back—and knew about the game—I totally saw the resemblance.
I sent Finny a text and then switched my phone to vibrate, hoping that he’d done the same thing so he’d feel it when I called him. I could look for him—he probably started on the second floor—but no telling where that led him. Who knew where anything led anyone? Two weeks earlier, Dad was on Fourth Street with Peyton, a photo of me on the mantel. And now he was lost.
I was halfway across the lobby when the floor blurred. I rubbed my eyes, hoping it would go away, but instead my body moved up even though I was standing still. Like I was riding an elevator.
“Hey!” I said, looking down, half expecting to discover I was sitting on the shoulders of a giant who’d decided to stand, but it was just the floor, rising beneath my feet and taking me with it.
I dug my boots into the square I stood on, struggling to keep my balance. The rest of the library fell away as I went up, up, up, teetering on a tiny square. It was like surfing, only we were going up instead of out. And there was no water to catch me if I fell.
My mind hopped into survival mode, which turned out to be the voice of my PE teacher, who taught yoga last week. “Find your inner calm,” she had said. “Let your balance come from the core, the middle of your body.” I tried to focus on the middle of my body, but that was impossible, considering that I was now five floors up at the top of a pyramid.
“At least we’re not moving,” I said, looking down. Way down. How the heck was I going to get back to the ground? It was too high to slide. I didn’t have climbing gear lying around, and as far as I knew, I hadn’t yet developed the ability to fly. And then the whole thing shook like an earthquake. I had to find my way to solid ground.
I looked at the square diagonally down from me, held my breath and jumped.
“Yes!” I said as my feet planted into it and the square turned green. It was like being in another world, like gravity was different here or something. My feet stuck to the square like Spider-Man on the side of a building. I jumped diagonally and down to the next square, and it turned green, too, and made a noise. BOINK. All roads led to the floor, so I kept hopping, turning squares green. Sending sounds into the lobby, like cartoons. Like a video game.
“No way,” I said as familiar fireballs and curly snakes appeared.
This was Q*bert. And I was Player One.
I dodged snakes and fireballs like a pro until I was halfway down, face-to-face with the purple guy. He tried to knock me off my square, but I was in the zone. Nothing was going to stop me, not even this super-pesky little guy. No wonder people knocked him off the side. I thought about doing it, but it seemed mean, like cheating or something. That was probably why I wasn’t normally very good at video games. Empathy wasn’t required, just survival skills, all the time. Kind of like my life.
I hopped down and to the left, outsmarting the snake. Down and to the right, fireballs bouncing off my head, wondering if Dad ever visited this universe, and if he did, did he get the high score? If this were a video game, I’d probably be dead by now, but the real-life version was easier, letting me experiment, explore and hop my way to the floor and, ultimately, to victory.
“High score!” I said as I got to the bottom. The pyramid collapsed, and I raised my arms in triumph, but no one was there to see it, not the snake, not the purple guy, no one except my calves, which were burning. If I had to be a video game, I’d much rather have been Ms. Pac-Man. All she had to have was a big mouth.
A few people milled around the lobby, unfazed by what had just happened, but for the most part, it was empty. Everyone must have been entrenched in the stacks. I heard a fluttering sound like papers falling but didn’t see anything. There was one swoosh and then another, like tiny planes flying across the atrium. I looked up and I was partially right—things were flying. Only instead of jets zooming back and forth, it was books. Objects animating, just like Dad said.
The Plexiglas barriers were gone, and one by one, books flew off the shelves and into the middle of the atrium, swirling like birds, their pages carrying them like wings. They soared together like a flock, synchronized, creating intricate formations. I imagined The Great Gatsby working with War and Peace; Emily Post’s Etiquette in rhythm with Fahrenheit 451. Big and small, their covers and pages carrying them, flapping. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, knowledge and wisdom floating above me, hypnotizing me with their grace.
I looked down at the floor, checking to make sure it wasn’t rising below me, and when I looked back up, the books came together forming an S, an O and then the rest of the letters to spell my name.
Okay, universe, I thought. You have my attention, which made me think about what I’d seen since I’d been in Havencrest. Since I’d hooked up with Walt.
Mosh pit, tribe, band.
Flock, pack, Player One.
“I get it,” I said. “Someone wants to make sure I don’t feel alone. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to reunite me with my dad?”
A huge SNAP echoed throughout the atrium.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no.”
The SNAPs continued, books slamming shut, closing their wings, hovering for a moment, skydivers without parachutes. They had nowhere to go but down.
I checked my souvenir pocket and there it was—the small plaid umbrella from Washington Square Park. I popped it open just as the books fell like rain. At first it was a drizzle, children’s stories and sheet music, barely grazing my umbrella. But then the others joined in—poetry with plays, science with sewing manuals, geographies and biographies bouncing off my umbrella, covering the floor with knowledge. Thudding like thunder. A few came at me from the sides, knocking into my arms. I had to do something before I was literally beaten up by words.
“Take that,” I said, swinging my umbrella like a sword at research tomes and outsider art books, volumes on socialism and the collected works of every philosopher ever known to man. There were over three million volumes in this library, and I didn’t see an end in sight, so I dodged and ducked, running head down and umbrella first toward the front of the library. I felt the revolving door suck me in, but instead of ending up outside, I found myself back in the lobby, skirt turned around, my umbrella in someone’s back, both of us on the floor. Surrounded by a crowd of people and two security guards.
“What’s going on here?” one of the guards said.
I reached into my elephant pocket and felt a slim book, proof that I was back, which was good. But it would have been better if I’d been unscathed. I’d been battered by Byron, smacked by Salinger, bruised by Brontë. And once I rolled up my sleeves, I’d have the marks to prove it.
“She totally attacked that dude,” a student with a large blue backpack said. “I saw everything.”
By “everything” did he mean watching me survive the Q*bert floor and flying books? Or was he talking about just now, when I’d maybe popped from one universe back into another, umbrella in some guy’s back? I was starting to see how that could have worked. And it terrified me.
“You’re going to pay for this,” the guy underneath me said as I got up. He adjusted his red sweater. “You knocked the breath out of me.”
“I barely touched you,” I said. Unlike the books that spelled my name and then pummeled me. “You’re fine.”
But I wasn’t. My breath came fast and short, like it had other things to do. Like I was finally realizing the implication of my dad’s book. I came to New York looking for answers. But traveling to parallel universes? I needed more than a moment to come to terms with that. I drank a bottle of water that appeared and felt the oxygen returning, glad my brain was taking over, doing the compartmentalizing thing. Panic was valid. But I was not about to let panic land me in the psych ward.
“Are we finished here?” I said, standing up and turning my skirt back around, attempting to appear normal.
“We haven�
��t even started,” the tall guard said. I could tell he was itching to use handcuffs, if he even had them. “Assault was involved, so we have to hold you for questioning.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“You call this nothing?” Red Sweater lifted up his shirt to reveal a tiny circle-shaped bruise in the middle of his back, like the tip of an umbrella. “Now I’m going to have to go to the chiropractor.”
“You’re hauling me away for that?” I said, feeling like Dad, being taken behind closed doors. This was probably how it started. They question you, don’t believe your story, label you as crazy and then—boom—aqua gowns and little cups of pills at your service.
“Let’s keep it calm over here,” the short guard said, as if I were a member of the Umbrella Militia. He was obviously the pacifist of the two.
“Look, I was just trying to open this umbrella, it got stuck, and I tripped and fell into him. That’s all that happened,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“She’s lying!” the backpack guy said. “She came out of nowhere, umbrella blazing.”
The crowd murmured, like the guy was right. Fellow book lovers on a witch hunt.
“Miss, you need to come with us,” the tall security guard said, taking my arm. “You knowingly and willingly . . .”
“Willfully,” the short guard said. “I think it’s willfully.”
“Don’t correct me,” the tall guard said, whipping his head around. “You attacked a man with an umbrella. I’m taking you to a secure location until the police arrive.”
Police, then psych ward. I had to get out of there.
“We’ll be back in a second,” the short guard said as he dumped me into a small room with no windows.
The lock clicked, and I fell into one of the chairs. If Red Sweater decided to press charges, it was all over. Not only would I not be able to find Dad, I’d barely be able to find myself if I ended up in a mental hospital. I took out my phone, but there were only a few bars, horrible reception. I texted Finny anyway: