Mirror in the Sky

by Aditi Khorana

  He shrugged. “I guess . . . because I didn’t want to tell you. I mean, I knew I would have to, but I still liked you. And because I felt . . . bad.”

  “About sleeping with me, or about leaving town with Halle right after you slept with me?”

  He shook his head. “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  “Yes.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I love her. I always have. Even despite all the shitty things she’s done . . . like cheating on me. But I also really like you. Not just like . . . I feel like . . . in an alternate universe, you and I . . . we’re probably together, you know?”

  “Yeah. I know,” I said, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “No you don’t. I wonder about us. All the time, actually. I think about you. But I also feel like Halle and me . . . this is going to make me sound like the biggest asshole, but I’m happiest when I’m with the both of you. Does that make sense?”

  “It makes you an asshole misogynist,” Veronica announced from the backseat.

  “Lucky Tara. She gets to be Halle’s sister-wife,” Alexa said.

  He shook his head. “But it’s not like that.” He turned to me. “You know it’s not like that. I don’t know how to express it to you, how to tell you this without sounding like a jerk. I can’t stop loving her, and I can’t stop wondering about us. Just the way she wonders about that other guy, I guess. Which is why I can’t hate her. Even if I should.”

  The moon revolved around the Earth, and the Earth revolved around the sun. It was the natural order of things. But what did we actually know about the natural order of things? What did any of us know about anything? There was an Earth-like planet in the sky that contained an alternate version of each and every one of us. My mother was stuck in a compound in California that was being raided by the FBI. I was sick to my stomach wondering whether she was even alive. Till a few months ago, that wasn’t normal.

  “Tara? Why didn’t you tell me about Halle?”

  I turned to Veronica, grateful for the change of subject, because I didn’t feel like thinking about Nick loving Halle for the rest of eternity, no matter what she did. I didn’t want to think about my mother in a compound that was being teargassed either.

  “Because . . . I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.” It felt like it was my dirty little secret that I had kept from everyone.

  “You should have told me,” Nick said.

  “Why would I have? You were a jerk to me,” I said.

  “But I wasn’t! I was your friend!” Veronica exclaimed.

  “Yeah, me too,” Alexa said.

  “You still are my friends. And you guys kept things from me too.”

  “Was I supposed to tell you that I’m some arsonist vandal who gets a thrill out of pulling the fire alarm every week?”

  “Technically, you’re not an arsonist,” Veronica told her.

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered actually setting Brierly on fire,” Alexa said.

  “I’ve considered it,” Veronica responded. “Seriously . . . do you know what it’s like to be a dyke in Greenwich, Connecticut?”

  I had to smile a little. “Do you know what it’s like to be poor and Indian in Greenwich, Connecticut? And I can’t hide it either, okay? It’s, like . . . right here on my face,” I said to her, scanning my hand over my face until Veronica smiled back at me. It was a moment of levity, and I needed it.

  “Tara, you underestimate yourself,” Jimmy said. “And you underestimate me.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you overestimate Nick,” Veronica said.

  “Thanks, V,” Nick replied.

  “Everyone overestimates you, O Golden One,” Alexa said.

  “I thought Halle was the Golden One,” Veronica responded. “I wonder what she’s doing right now.”

  “This is the shittiest road trip on Earth. We’re all a bunch of unloved liars and criminals,” Hunter said.

  “Technically, Alexa’s the only criminal,” Veronica responded.

  “Yeah, and Hunter and I never lied about anything,” Jimmy noted.

  “And love is a maldistributed commodity,” Alexa said, and we all turned to look at her. “No, seriously. It’s a poorly organized, uneconomical thing . . . love.”

  “Do you think that’s why we’re friends?” Veronica asked me now. “Because neither of us belongs here?”

  “What about me?” Alexa turned to her.

  “You too.” Veronica nodded.

  “Who knows?” I asked.

  We were quiet for a while till Veronica broke the silence. “You know, for a moment, just for that day, when we were all up at the house together . . . I felt like . . . this is kind of amazing. We’re not angsty or complaining or secretly annoyed with one another. We actually like being together. We were like those matrilineal societies they taught us about in the ninth grade. And then these fuckers came up and ruined it all.”

  “It was not my intention to ruin . . .”

  “Shut up, Nick. Your defensiveness is not welcome right now.”

  “I know what you mean.” I turned to her. “It was nice. For a day.”

  Veronica shook her head. “Well, that’s all over now.”

  “Yeah, but not because a bunch of guys showed up and destroyed your utopia. It’s because you’re all dishonest, deceiving, terrible people.”

  “Speak for yourself, Nick,” Alexa said.

  “I know I am,” he said. “I’m a terrible person, you don’t have to remind me,” he said. And then he punctuated the conversation by switching the radio station. He turned it up when he heard it was Oliver Spiegel on the air.

  “Now let’s talk about some of the different theories that suggest that we live in a multiverse. Tessa Novak, you’ve likened the universe to a breadloaf. Explain this to our audience.”

  “Certainly, Oliver. Now, while Terra Nova exists in this very dimension, physicists have proposed that there might be many more dimensions to our world than we know of.”

  “And what would this mean for us?”

  “Well, I like to think of it like this: What if our universe is one of many floating in a higher-dimensional space, much like a slice of bread within a grander cosmic loaf?”

  “That’s an interesting idea. Go on.”

  “Maybe these universes might line up like slices of bread in a loaf, but let’s just say they aren’t always parallel. If that’s the case, they might slam into each other, and every time they do, it causes a Big Bang, a series of Big Bangs that reset the universes over and over again.”

  “Fascinating. And what about you, Adam Bryson? You also believe in the possibility of the multiverse, but you subscribe to a slightly different theory than Ms. Novak.”

  “Well, scientists don’t know for sure the shape of space-time. Maybe it’s a loaf, but some of us believe that it’s flat and that it stretches out infinitely. So if space-time goes on forever, then somewhere down the road, it has to start repeating.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time. In this model, eventually, after looking far enough, you would encounter another version of you. And then another, and soon . . . infinite versions of you. Some that are exactly like you—down to the number of strands of hair on your head—while others will be, say, wearing a different shirt today. Others will have made drastically different choices in life. Perhaps they live in a different city. Or they’re married to someone else, or have an entirely different career.”

  “And we have some more interesting developments in the field of science today, related to Terra Nova. Adam, would you like to tell us more?”

  “In late fall of this year, NASA, in conjunction with the Korean Space Research Institute, the Soviet Space Program, the China National Space Administration, the India
n Space Research Organization, the UK Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, will launch the fastest space probe ever built. Copernicus 1 will travel to Terra Nova in just eighty-five years. In the past, travel to the nearest star would have taken us some eighty-one thousand years, but given the commitment and resources of numerous world governments, in less than a century, our space probe will land on Terra Nova. Of course, most of us won’t be alive in eighty-five years to witness this feat, but our next of kin will actually be able to see our sister planet,” said Adam Bryson.

  “God, what a bummer,” Alexa said. “Eighty-five years! It means . . . we’ll never meet them.”

  “But your children might. And their children,” Hunter said.

  “I know, but . . . what about us? We won’t have any answers in our own lifetime,” I told him.

  “Maybe there are some things we’re not ready for yet. Things we’re not yet meant to know,” Nick said.

  “I don’t know,” Alexa responded. “It feels like a letdown. We’ll never meet our Other selves. We’ll never know what all of this means. It’s just . . . disappointing.”

  “I wonder if we’re all still fighting on Terra Nova right now,” Nick muttered.

  “Maybe we don’t even know each other on Terra Nova,” Veronica said.

  “Maybe we do. Maybe we actually get along on Terra Nova,” Nick responded.

  I turned to look at him. We were still an hour and a half from home. It tortured me that he wasn’t my boyfriend. It had tortured me for what felt like eons. And yet, despite my disappointment, despite my exhaustion, despite all of it, I sank into my seat with the knowledge that maybe somewhere in a parallel reality, we were together.

  It was late afternoon by the time Nick dropped me off. I stood in my driveway, looking up into that clear spring sky.

  “Please,” I asked. “I just want everything to be okay. I just want my mother to be safe. I just want her to come home,” I said.

  I continued to stand there, as though I was waiting for an answer. Just as I was about to turn and go into my house, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket, and I looked at it incredulously. It was a California number, one I didn’t recognize. I hesitated.

  “Please be good news,” I said, but I couldn’t hear any conviction in my voice. It rang again, and I took a deep breath, panicking.

  Finally, after the third ring, I picked up.

  I could hear someone sobbing. I knew it was my mother.

  “Mom?! Mom! Are you okay? Where are you?”

  For a moment she didn’t respond. She continued to sob, her voice choking out the words, “I . . . I . . .” And then she broke down.

  “Mom, please, where are you?”

  “I got out, Tara,” she finally said. “They just got us out. All of us. We’re okay. We’re safe. I’m going to fly home tomorrow. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for putting both of you through this!” She was crying and I was too, so hard that I couldn’t speak. I don’t remember what else she said, but after we got off, I fell to my knees in my driveway and buried my face in my hands, my whole body shaking violently.

  “Thank you,” I said, looking up at the sky. It was all I could say, again and again.

  And then I thought about Halle. She had been right. My mother was coming home.

  FORTY-TWO

  SHE was gaunt, skinnier than I remembered her, when she walked though the door. I ran to her, and we held each other for a long time.

  “I’ll never leave you again, I promise,” she said. In the days that followed, she told us everything. How it had started out fine. They all lived together in the compound, sharing responsibilities. There were orange and avocado and lemon and pomegranate trees and an overflowing garden. “We’d harvest our own food and cook it. There were classes—painting classes and yoga and meditation. It felt like utopia. Then it all changed.”

  As we all knew by now, they were asked to cut off communication with their families. Their personal possessions were confiscated. They were subjected to hours of interrogation in small rooms. “Kind of like a detainment. We had to get permission to go to the bathroom. Soon we couldn’t even go out on the grounds. They questioned us for hours, telling us they were ‘testing’ our faith. None of us had contact with the outside world. They took our phones, our wallets, our credit cards . . . and then when Robert told us about the thing that happened in Orlando . . .” My mother shook her head. “All I could think was . . . I have to get back to you. I have to get back home alive.”

  My father was sitting next to her on the couch, holding her hand. She told us about how tear gas feels in your eyes. “It’s the worst burning sensation in the world. And the gunshots! That was terrifying, the sound of gunshots. They had us locked in the cafeteria, and they had weapons—explosives, guns . . . I had no idea!”

  My father jumped in. “The police had all the family members in one place. So many people traveled out to California in order to bring their loved ones home. We were watching the whole thing on a screen in some school auditorium, all of us, together. It was . . . terrifying. Jennifer . . .” his voice wavered, and she turned to him, touched his face in a way that I hadn’t seen her do in years. “I don’t know what I would have done . . . what we would have done if you . . .”

  “I’m back, Sudeep. I’m back for good now,” she said, and she reached for his hand again and squeezed it.

  She apologized to me over and over for weeks after she came home. She seemed more fragile, her emotions closer to the surface. She had nightmares. Some mornings, I woke up and she was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me.

  “You were right,” she said to me one day.

  “About what?”

  “About everything. About the whole Santa Monica thing. You were right. You were always wiser than I am.”

  I sat up. “But you missed your parents. You wanted to speak to them. You wanted to see them again. I get that. I get that now,” I said, and her eyes filled up with tears.

  “Can you ever forgive me, Tara?”

  “Of course, Mom. I can’t stay mad at you,” I told her.

  And it was true.

  FORTY-THREE

  THERE are these moments when you feel like you can finally exhale. That the world is a good and decent place again. I spent the next week with my mother, barely leaving her side for a minute. We couldn’t stop talking. There were days when we talked the entire day, forgetting to eat, and by the time night came, I collapsed into bed out of exhaustion. A happy exhaustion, for once.

  My father watched us, a perpetual smile on his face. He left snacks for us on the coffee table. He brought home pizza and kissed my mother and told her how much he loved her again and again. It reminded me of our days in New York, when we were a compact and unshakable unit. It felt good to be that way again.

  The entire week, I didn’t think about Nick. I didn’t think about Halle or Alexa or Veronica. When the phone rang, I chose not to answer it. For the rest of spring break, I hibernated by my mother’s side, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  On Monday, I didn’t want to go back to school, but my father insisted. “Junior year, Tara. You know it’s . . .”

  “I know, I know,” I told him, and I hugged my mother goodbye before I left.

  Veronica accosted me just as I entered the glass corridor, panic on her face. She grabbed my arm. “We have to go over to the Lightfoots’ right now,” she said.

  “What? Why? Class is starting in ten . . .”

  “No, Tara, you don’t understand . . .” Her eyes were tearing up. I had never seen Veronica this emotional.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “They want to keep it out of the press, but there’s an investigation . . . She never came back. Halle never came back from the Cape.”

  I watched Veronica, trying to make sense of the words coming out of her mouth. “What do you mea
n, she never came back?” I asked.

  “I mean just that. She never came back home. I called her cell a few times, but I just assumed she was mad at me when she didn’t respond. So I called her house and talked to her housekeeper, and she hadn’t heard anything either. My parents got involved. They called the cops, had them go over and check the house to make sure she was okay. And so they went to check out the house last night, and she wasn’t there. She’s still not there this morning. All her stuff is still in the house . . . her shoes, her clothes, her contact lens case. Even her wallet and her keys . . . Why would she leave home without her wallet and her keys?” Veronica asked.

  “Where could she be?”

  Veronica shook her head. “I don’t know,” she cried. “No one knows. They’ve searched the area. The car’s still parked in the driveway. Neighbors say that they saw an unfamiliar blond girl walking down to the beach the evening that we left, but that’s it . . . that’s all they know.”

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. “What do her parents say?”

  “They flew back from London late last night. Obviously, they’re distraught. And furious with us for leaving her up there alone. I talked to them early this morning. They called Nick too. The police are there now. They want to talk to us.”

  I drove Veronica’s car to the Lightfoots’ that day because she was sobbing so hard she couldn’t drive. Alexa sat quietly in the backseat, her lips pressed into a line, her hands nervously searching her phone.

  “I don’t understand. How far could she have gotten without her car?”

  No one responded to Alexa’s question. We were silent the rest of the way there. The weather was odd for early spring. It was cloudy, but also unusually hot. The heat of the steering wheel seared my palms. Flowers wilted. The long road to Conyers Farm shimmered with dizziness. The sky looked as though it might rain. A dank humidity had seeped into every small space it could find—between bra straps and skin, between the pages of books, where the hairline meets the back of your neck.