“Yeah, pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“You guys look. I’m going to go get a snack,” Halle said.
I glanced at Nick, and he gestured to the telescope. “Go ahead,” he said. I put my hand on the side of it, my face close to the lens. “Do you see it?” Nick whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” I whispered back, and we both began to laugh. He placed his hand on the small of my back then. “See it? It’s right there,” he said, looking into his phone. His face was two inches from mine, but neither of us turned.
“Oh yeah. It’s pretty big. I mean, it’s just as big as any other star, maybe even . . . bigger. So we knew that the sun was there, just not Terra Nova? Because the light of the sun was obscuring the planet?” I could feel Nick’s thumb as it trailed along the waistline of my jeans.
“Yeah, we discovered the star a while ago, but it’s hard to see planets because they’re so small, and the light of the stars makes them difficult to see. They get lost in the glare, so astronomers look for a transit—that’s, like, when the light of the sun dims by a fraction when a planet passes it.” He was still whispering, and I could feel a trail of goose bumps on my back as he latched his finger into my belt loop. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t move for fear of what might happen if I did.
“But it was out there all along.”
“Yeah. We were bound to discover it sooner or later.”
“Do you still think there’s a different version of us out there?” I asked.
He was quiet for a moment. “Another version of you and me standing on a deck on Terra Nova, looking for Earth . . .” he mused.
Inside the house, the TV clicked on, authoritative voices talking about something that couldn’t nearly be as important as this moment.
“I like that we’re on the same team together,” he said. “Here, I mean. Maybe on Terra Nova too.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Remember when we were the Obamas?”
At this, I burst out laughing, moving away from the telescope to look at him. He was grinning at me.
“You think we might have been the Obamas on Terra Nova? Honestly, I thought it was super racist that I was forced to play Michelle.”
“You were not forced to,” Nick laughed. His hand was resting on my waist now.
“I totally was! Mrs. Patterson made me, that horrible racist wench. You just don’t remember.”
“No. You just don’t remember. Patterson had nothing to do with it. You were Michelle because I asked you to be.”
I thought about it a moment and realized it was true. He had asked me. I had forgotten that part. “Why’d you ask me?”
He shrugged. “I guess I had a crush on you.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. We stood there for a moment, under an umbrella of stars, an eternity of possibilities just above us. All I could think to do was reach my hand toward him. It came to rest on his chest, and his breath quickened.
“I . . .”
“Guys, you have to come in. The interview’s on . . .” announced Halle from the door.
I jumped, my mouth still ajar, my hand recoiling from the shock of Halle’s words.
“Oh hey, Halle,” I said. My voice was a little too shrill, but when I looked at her, she seemed unperturbed by either the story, whatever it was, or by the fact that Nick and I were standing inches from one another in the dark.
“What interview?” Nick asked, following her in.
“You know, that Japanese lady from the picture.”
They were both halfway across the kitchen by the time I turned to join them.
I stopped at the threshold of the doorway and looked back to that spot. The spot where Nick Osterman had confessed to me that he once had a crush on me. Had, I reminded myself, before I followed them both to the living room, where the TV was blaring, another wave of breaking news. Halle and Nick settled on the couch together, in front of the TV. I hesitated a moment before I sank into a chair off to the side.
It was her, the lady from the bitmap image. MICHIKO NATORI, read the banner beneath her face.
“And when was it that you identified yourself in the image distributed by NASA?”
“My friends forwarded me the picture. E-mail after e-mail . . . text after text . . . friends and family asking, ‘What are you doing on Terra Nova?’ It was like a joke, but it’s not funny. She looks exactly like me, but she’s not me.”
“And what do you make of that?” the reporter asked as the camera panned out. AN EDWARD COPELAND EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, read the banner across the screen.
“That’s the guy who cried on the air,” I said, thinking about how his tears had elicited disdain from my father.
“Shhhhh . . . I want to listen,” Halle said, her voice a little too harsh.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Michiko Natori told him. “What would you think if it was your face? If it was you? What if you knew for certain there was another you out there? Someone who wore a different coat this morning? Someone who chose a different route to take to work? Or maybe even bigger things . . . a different wife? A different career?”
“I don’t know what I would think of it.” Edward Copeland shook his head. “I think it would . . . make me go a little crazy,” he said.
But I already knew how I felt about another me on Terra Nova. Something about it was comforting. And yet that question what if? was like a virus. A small infection—so negligible that initially, I had ignored it, while all around, it had already become a global epidemic. And of course, I had always asked myself questions like that: What if we had stayed in New York? What if I hadn’t walked down Hillside Road that day? What if I had stayed home instead of going to the restaurant the night Veronica was dining there? But now there were bigger questions. What if there was a version of me on Terra Nova who was with a version of Nick? What if Nick was my boyfriend instead of Halle’s? I felt a mild euphoria as I thought of it.
We watched the rest of the report in silence. I thought about my father driving my mother to the airport. I thought about how she would check in her luggage, take off her shoes at security, collect them on the other side of the X-ray machine. At eleven fifteen, she would board a flight. JFK → LAX. She would land tomorrow morning in another world. A world of sun and fake tans and people who hike through the Santa Monica Mountains.
And here I was, in Nick Osterman’s living room, my eyes glued to the TV, Halle and Nick in my peripheral vision, his arm around her shoulders, hers resting on his leg. I alternated between excitement and frustration, trying not to think about what could be. But mostly, I tried not to think about what he had said to me, what I felt for him, or the fact that he didn’t look my way again for the rest of the evening.
EIGHTEEN
“A road trip, that’s what we need!” Halle announced. We were sitting in her BMW SUV, Alexa and me in the back, Veronica in the passenger seat. It was a Friday afternoon in mid-November, and by now, the cold had set in. Trees arched their skeletal branches into the street, begging for a taste of light. Instead, they got rain and haze. There was no snow yet, but the skies hinted at it, that orange early evening glow, and so I was prepared, wearing a green coat, white mittens, and a white beanie.
“I detest road trips,” Veronica intoned. “Everyone fights, people get sick. Sometimes people die.”
Alexa and I burst out laughing. “Why would anyone die?” I asked.
Veronica shrugged. “Seriously, it’s the premise of, like, every horror movie. Camping is even worse. Are you guys campers?”
“I’m Indian. We don’t camp. My dad says in India camping is poverty. Tents, malarial swamps, shitting by the side of the road.” We were cracking up now.
Halle had insisted on having dinner together tonight. Her parents were out of town again, this time in Italy. It was becoming clearer and cleare
r to me that Halle’s extended family was the staff at her estate—a housekeeper, a butler, a gardener, her father’s driver. I had never, until I got to know her, seen her as someone who might be lonely, but now I wondered if spending all that time alone was what had made her so precocious.
“You guys, seriously. I don’t mean, like, now, but maybe in the spring. We could drive up to the Cape, or my parents have a house in Nantucket. We could spend a weekend there. What say, Tara?” She turned for a minute to look at me, flicking a strand of her hair out of her eyes. She was dressed in an ivory Burberry coat and looked like the quintessential New Englander with a matching Burberry scarf around her neck.
“So it would be, what, us and Nick? Do you want to invite Jimmy or Hunter?”
“No Nick, no Jimmy, no Hunter. No boys allowed.”
“Jimmy’s going to be disappointed. He might show up in Nantucket and try to roofie Tara.” Veronica turned and mock-frowned at Alexa and me.
“Yuck! Don’t ever use the words ‘Jimmy’ and ‘roofie’ in the same sentence.”
“You haven’t noticed that he’s all over you, like, all the time?” Veronica asked.
“Tara’s got a lot of admirers,” Halle said in a deadpan voice. “Don’t be jealous, V. Hunter still loves you. He told me he’ll wait for you till the end of the Earth. Hey, maybe on Terra Nova, you’re in love with him?” she teased.
I saw a flash of anger in Veronica’s eyes, but she hid her emotions well. “I don’t date morons.”
“He’s a handsome guy,” Halle pressed. “So you won’t date morons, or handsome guys, or . . .”
I could see Veronica about to say something, but it was Alexa who cut Halle off.
“That’s mean,” she said. “You’re all lucky to have admirers.”
“Aaaawww, poor Alexa feels left out. You can have Hunter if you want.” Halle looked at her. “I’m sure Veronica’ll let you have him. He’s not her type.”
“Seriously, you can have Jimmy,” I told her to diffuse the tension.
“Take Nick too, while we’re at it,” Halle said.
“Whatever, Nick completely doesn’t fall into that category,” I said to Halle, but even as the words came out, I sensed that they touched a nerve in her, and I wondered if I had unconsciously sought to do this. I had noticed that she and Nick were spending less time together, and Halle had been insisting on “girl time” regularly since the day of our egg-drop preparations. Sometimes Nick would call while we were all together, and Halle would simply ignore her phone.
I would say I tried not to think about this too much, but the truth was, it was all I ever thought about, curiosity about their relationship growing within me like an incorrigible weed. This was only compounded by the other questions I pondered day and night: Had Halle heard us talking on the deck that evening? Did she know what Nick had said to me? Did she care? Did it even matter? Had was the word he had used. I had a crush on you. Before Halle. And then I would feel that twinge of disappointment in the pit of my stomach. Halle Lightfoot: 500,000, Tara Krishnan: 0. I knew you weren’t supposed to feel this way about your friends, but I did.
Most of the time, I liked Halle. When we were hanging out or grabbing pizza or talking about books. But then I’d return home and start to resent her again. She was so perfect, it was kind of infuriating. She still always knew the right thing to say. She was still a stellar student and star of the track team. She still came to school every day looking as though she had just walked off a runway. And Nick was still in love with her, even if I wasn’t certain she felt the same way.
“Do you want to invite Nick for dinner?” Veronica pressed Halle. “I could call him right now,” she said, reaching for her phone.
Halle reached for her wrist to stop her, but on her face was a smile. “No,” she said firmly. “Just us.” Then her tone softened. “Can we, like, pick a place for dinner and then talk? I’m starving.”
“It’s five o’clock, Halls.”
“I’m up for an early bird special. I just ran eight miles. Can we go get Indian food?”
“The restaurant isn’t open for another hour,” I told her. I didn’t want to go to the restaurant with Halle, Veronica, and Alexa. I didn’t want to run into my father, didn’t want to witness the awkward tension of him waiting on our table, or worse, Halle leaving behind a tip for him.
“Really?” her eyes widened. “Well . . . can’t you maybe call in favors or something? I mean, I guess we could do something else, but . . . I would, like, love Indian food right now, and you would be my hero.”
I hesitated for a moment, but Halle continued to smile like she wasn’t asking. “I guess. Okay, let’s head over. Amit will let us in.”
“Who’s Amit?”
“He works at the restaurant. They’re probably prepping right now. We can have them make us something.”
“Wait, that really cute guy?” Halle asked. “He’s, like . . . a sophomore in college?”
“Yeah . . . he’s the one.”
“He’s super tasty,” Halle said, reminding me how much I hated that expression.
Amit unlocked the door for us, looking frazzled and annoyed. “You know we’re not open yet, right?” The radio was blasting loud gangsta rap.
I shrugged. “We were hungry,” I said, adopting that same indifference to other people I had seen in Halle and Veronica at times.
“Okay, just go sit over there,” he said to us like we were a bunch of recalcitrant kindergartners. “I’ll see what we have ready. Your dad’s not here yet.”
“Could you maybe bring us some of those really delicious lassis?” Halle looked at Amit wide-eyed, a smile on her face. “They’re my favorite.”
Amit looked back at her, disarmed by her charm. “Sweet, plain, or mango?” he asked.
“What do you think? I think maybe mango? I’m Halle, by the way.”
“Amit.” He smiled, reaching for her extended hand. “Mango’s my favorite,” he said with a smile that made me cringe.
“Mango for everyone then, I guess,” Halle told him.
“I’ll do a plain,” said Alexa.
Amit turned down the radio. “Oh . . . don’t tell your dad, okay? We were just . . . prepping.”
We sat down at a corner table by the window, and Halle sighed, looking nervously at her phone.
“What?” Veronica impatiently remarked, spreading mint chutney on a papad.
“Hypothetically speaking . . . it’s normal to kind of get bored after a while in a relationship, right?”
“Are you saying you’re bored?” Veronica asked.
“It’s just that . . . Nick is so . . . happy all the time,” Halle said.
“He’s a happy guy,” Veronica said.
“And why wouldn’t he be? He’s cute and smart and president of the student council and a star soccer player and everyone likes him . . .” I cut myself off, realizing that I was getting weird.
“You’re exactly right, Tara. Everyone does like him.” Then she looked around at us and shrugged. “It’s like that story with Socrates and Plato . . .”
“Do tell.” Veronica’s eyes widened, and she mockingly leaned her chin on her fist.
Halle rolled her eyes. “Plato asks Socrates, ‘What’s love?’ So Socrates sends Plato out into a field of wheat and says, ‘Find the best stalk you can, the most magnificent stalk, but you’re not allowed to turn back and get one you saw earlier, you have to keep walking forward, and if you find the best stalk, you’ve found love.’ So Plato goes, and he comes back empty-handed. Socrates asks, ‘Why didn’t you bring anything back?’ and Plato says, ‘I saw some awesome stalks in the beginning, but then I thought there might be better ones up ahead, so I kept going, but turns out the early stalks were the best ones,’ and Socrates says, ‘Yup, that’s love.’”
“That’s your story?” Alexa raised an eyebrow.<
br />
“There’s more, Alexa,” Halle responded with irritation in her tone. “So then Plato asks Socrates, ‘What’s marriage?’ and so Socrates sends Plato out into the woods and says, ‘Find the tallest, most beautiful tree, chop it down, and bring it on home.’”
At this point, Amit, carrying plates of food in his hands, interjected. “And then Plato brings back a shitty tree, or at best, it’s mediocre, and Socrates says, ‘What the hell is this piece of shit?’ and Plato says, ‘I know it isn’t the best tree around, but I didn’t want to miss out on having a tree because of what happened in the wheat field, so I just . . . picked one.’” Amit placed a plate of naan and a plate of tandoori chicken before us. “Oh, the samosas are coming. Is four okay?”
“None for me,” Alexa told him.
“I’ll have yours,” Halle said before she turned to Amit. “You know all about Socrates and Plato?”
“Yeah, I’m a philosophy major.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I thought you were, like . . .”
He cut me off. “What? An Indian computer science stereotype? Thanks, racism toward one’s own,” he said, making me blush.
“No, just . . . I didn’t know.”
“So what’s the moral of the story?” Veronica asked.
“That’s irrelevant. It’s more of, like . . . a question. How do you know if someone is your stalk? Or your tree? I’m just asking.” She turned to Amit with wide eyes again. “I mean, did they teach you that part? In college?”
Amit looked at her for a long moment before he responded. “Not . . . not quite, no. But I know what you mean,” he said. He lingered for a minute longer, making the whole thing really uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” Halle said, touching his arm. “I thought you’d understand.”
Veronica and I exchanged glances, but it was Alexa who broke the weird spell.
“I don’t think you should break up with Nick.”
“I do,” Veronica said. “I mean, if you’re not into it anymore.”
“So it’s nothing he said or did. You’re just looking for the perfect stalk of wheat?” I asked.
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