And for just a split second, with his eyes locked on hers, she did.
* * *
—
When Carter left, Gregory turned and closed the door.
Tree realized she’d only seen him twice in this dimension: once with his wife, and once with Lori.
“Well,” she said. “I guess now you know why I missed your class today.”
“Sorry?”
“Advanced bio?”
He frowned and looked down at the name on her chart. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you in my class? You don’t look familiar.”
Apparently, some good choices did follow you into a parallel universe. Tree smiled. “My mistake.”
Gregory offered her his hand. “I’m Dr. Butler.”
He had no idea who she was.
“Nice to meet you.”
This is so weird, Tree thought as Gregory pulled up a chair.
“Miss Gelbman, I’ve been having a hard time pulling up your medical records—”
“I know,” Tree said, cutting him off. “I should be dead.” Gregory looked shocked. She continued, “My results? They don’t make sense, right?”
“Uh, yes,” Gregory said. “Highly alarming, to be honest.”
Something about that word alarming triggered Tree’s mind, and she remembered that Tombs was in this very building. She sat bolt upright and said, “She’s about to die.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Lori!” Tree shouted. “He’s going to kill her!”
“What?”
“Listen to me. You need to stop her from going down to the OR.”
“Excuse me,” Gregory said. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Tree stopped short. “Really? Well, maybe your wife does.”
Gregory froze. The look on his face told Tree she’d been right. Tree pointed at the door and yelled, “Go!”
The minute he was gone, Tree quickly sat up, pulled the IV line from her arm, and climbed out of bed. There was one gun in this hospital that she knew of, and it belonged to Officer Ramirez, who was standing guard over Tombs.
Tree poked her head out of her own room, then silently raced down the hall.
16
Deena was reading the same book she was always reading on September 18. She didn’t even notice when Tree sneaked past her at the nurses’ station.
When Officer Ramirez came out of the bathroom, Tree was ready. As the cop walked through the door zipping his pants, Tree stepped out and whacked him over the head with one of the heavy old telephones that were still in every room.
As the officer crumpled to the floor, Tree reached down and grabbed his gun.
“Sorry,” she said.
Then she headed back into the hall, moving like a pro, room by room, clearing each one as she went.
A nurse came out of one of the rooms ahead, and Tree stepped back into the doorway to let her pass. Once the coast was clear, she continued down the hall until she stopped short. There was a trail of bright red liquid on the floor. Blood. Tree’s heart began to race as she followed the drops to another door. She raised the gun and entered the room.
There were beds in this room, the privacy curtains drawn around each one. A patient gown was lying on the floor, and nearby, fresh blood led Tree to the back corner.
Tree took a deep breath, pointed the gun, and ripped back the curtain.
It was Lori.
Her roommate was still alive but barely, bleeding out into a puddle spreading beneath her. In a few seconds, it would all be over.
Tree turned her head to look away and saw a reflection in the polished chrome of a medical cabinet. The sadistic grin of the Bayfield Baby mask leered just behind her, the knife poised above her, ready to slice her out of the day and sentence her to live this moment all over again.
Without missing a beat, Tree spun around and unloaded three rounds into the killer, blowing him off his feet. He hit the linoleum with a bone-crunching smack.
She bent down and tore off the mask to reveal Tombs, still alive but barely.
“Who set you free?” Tree growled at him.
He tried to speak, but all he could manage before he died was a choked gurgle of blood and then a final silence.
Tree held up the mask in her hand, staring at its cruel grin. She couldn’t see the curtain behind her move, and by the time she sensed someone behind her, it was too late. As she was pulled into a chokehold, she glimpsed a second baby mask looming above her. She tried to raise the gun, but the killer grabbed her forearm. Reaching back, she tried to pull off the mask with her free hand. Choking and defiant, she was able to spit out, “Who are you?”
When her attacker didn’t answer, she made a decision. She was tired of dying alone and afraid.
With her last ounce of strength, Tree aimed the gun at one of the oxygen tanks in the room and fired.
There was a deafening kaboom as the whole room exploded into a ball of fire and threw Tree directly into…
…Carter’s bed.
She sat up as the flash of the flames receded, and heard Carter say, “Oh, hey. You’re up!” as she silenced the call from her dad.
Tree rolled her eyes. “I’m so done with this shit.”
She had to get back to the lab.
17
The dry-erase board was covered in dozens of equations, and Tree was almost finished. She spoke the last one aloud as she wrote it from memory:
“Multiply the Euclidean vector by the square root of pi to the seventeenth power, we get an axiom of 0.004, which then gives us a linear-plane vector of 8.2.”
Tree put the cap back on the marker and turned around to see Carter, Ryan, Dre, and Samar all staring at her in silence, their mouths hanging open.
“Daaamn, girl,” Carter said quietly.
Samar and Dre approached the board almost reverently and scanned the equations.
“If these are all the failed algorithms—” Dre turned and looked at Samar, who nodded.
“Then there’s only one possibility left,” he said.
They both looked at Ryan. As if reading their minds, he jumped up and moved to the computer, furiously punching in code. He hit Enter, and a message popped up:
DATA COMPLETE—SYSTEM READY
Ryan looked up at Tree in shock.
“Holy shitballs. You did it.”
Samar and Dre gave each other a high five.
Carter turned to Tree and hugged her. She tilted her mouth up toward his by reflex, forgetting where she was for just a second. She could feel Carter sense it, too. This was chemistry in a physics lab.
Tree held his gaze until she felt it slip, until finally, it evaporated into awkwardness.
It was Ryan who broke the weird silence that followed by throwing his arms around both their shoulders.
“Let’s do this!” he shouted.
Samar and Dre were already double-checking Sissy’s cables and wires as Tree and Carter hovered over Ryan at the terminal. Ryan paused to look at Tree.
“Just so we’re totally clear: this algorithm is bifurcated by parallel Cartesian coordinates.”
Tree held up a hand. “Ryan. English. Please.”
He nodded and tried again. “One variant closes the loop in this dimension. The other one sends you back to your original dimension and closes that loop. It’s decision time: Do you want to stay here or go back?”
Tree looked at Carter, and for the first time, her confidence faltered. She closed her eyes for a moment and shook it off.
“I’m staying here,” she told Ryan. “Final decision.”
Ryan nodded once. “Okay. Here we go, then.”
He hit Enter, and Sissy crackled and hummed. As the machine started to fire up, lights began to flicker, and soon the whole room was pulsing and vibrating.
Tree could feel Carter’s gaze on her, but she couldn’t look at him anymore.
The device seemed to be building to a crescendo, when all at once it powered down on its own.
“What happened?” Tree asked. She could tell from the crestfallen looks on everyone’s face that this latest effort had also just failed.
Dre studied the analytics. “The vector’s off,” she said.
“But you said this was the right one!” Tree was beginning to feel like she might fall apart.
“The math was right,” Dre said. “Something’s off.”
“Guys!” The tone of Tree’s voice left no choice but to look at her, and once she had their attention, she continued. “I’ve been literally killing myself to memorize all this shit for you. Failure is not an option.”
Tree noticed Ryan glued to the screen at the computer. He hadn’t said a word. She walked over and saw the grave look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Something in the hard drive,” Ryan said. He pointed at the screen. “It must be a virus.”
“Dude!” Dre yelled at Samar. “Did you open spam porn on the computer again?”
“No!” Samar shouted back, but it was fairly obvious he was lying.
Dre rolled her eyes, and Ryan threw up his hands.
“Great,” he said. “I’m going to have to manually reenter all this code.”
“How long?” Tree wanted to know.
Ryan shrugged. “Six, seven hours?”
“Ryan, look at me,” Tree said. “I’m already on borrowed time here. Get. It. Done. Understand?”
“Uh…yeah. I’m on it. Jeez.”
Tree left before the hopelessness of the situation paralyzed her. She was beginning to wonder if the loop was something that couldn’t be undone.
Tree was already at the lunch quad when Carter caught up with her. She had hoped that if she kept ignoring him, he would leave her alone. She was staying here, and she was going to need a little break if they were ever going to be friends. Things had shifted, just not in the direction Tree had wanted. It was too hard for her to be near him and not touch him now.
Ignoring him didn’t work.
Carter fell into step with her as they passed the Bayfield swag table.
“Get your school spirit on before the big game. Twenty percent off with your student ID.” Keith Lumbly was doing his best to sell more crimson sweatshirts and baby masks—hopefully, Tree thought, not to psychopaths.
“Tree, hold up a sec.”
She stopped and turned to face Carter.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
“But what about the killer? You said people are going to die tonight.”
Carter paused. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stared down at his tennis shoes. When he looked back up at her, Tree felt her knees go wobbly.
“If the loop closes,” Carter said, “and we don’t help them, then aren’t they dead…for good?”
“I can’t go back to that hospital,” she said. “It’s too risky.”
Carter squinted up at the bell tower behind her. “So that’s it? We walk away and let a bunch of innocent people die?”
Tree sighed. “People die every day, Carter. I can’t be responsible for everyone. I know how selfish that sounds, but it’s true.”
Carter’s eyes filled with a disappointment Tree had never felt pointed in her direction.
“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, that does sound pretty selfish.”
Tree’s eyes filled with tears, but she refused to let them fall. “That’s not fair,” she said. “You don’t know how hard this is for me. I don’t want to have to choose between you and my mom, but I have to.”
“What do you mean ‘choose’ between us?”
Tree had wanted to tell him so many times and sworn that she never would. Now that the moment was here, there was no way to hold back.
“Carter, we’re together. In the other dimension.”
For what seemed like hours, Carter just stared at her, totally in shock.
“Us?” he whispered.
“Yes. Us. I woke up in your bed, just like today. I did it over and over and over until I fell in love with you. But that version of us is back there. And my mom is alive here. So I’ve made my decision.”
The tears she swore she wouldn’t cry finally slid down her cheeks. A sad, listless silence hung between them until Carter reached up and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“What if you’re wrong?” he asked her. “Maybe this isn’t the life you’re supposed to have.”
Tree wiped her cheeks with her hands. “Really?” she said. “So what? I’m supposed to go back to the other dimension where my mom’s dead? I’m not going back. I can’t lose her again.”
“You just said it yourself: people die. We can’t stop that no matter what. How we keep living is what matters.”
Tree heard someone calling both their names and turned to see Danielle at the outdoor lunch tables, waving and smiling. Her house meeting was in full swing.
“Your girlfriend wants you,” Tree said. “Better go.”
Walking away from him was one of the hardest things Tree had ever done.
As she turned away, she heard Carter jog over to Danielle to say they were just talking about “school stuff.” Tree shook her head and walked away, picturing the pout on Danielle’s face as she begged for help on her American lit paper until he finally agreed, and she could go back to the Kappa business at hand.
Tree didn’t turn back to look, but she knew if she did, she’d see Carter’s eyes following her, watching until she disappeared around the corner at the other end of the quad.
18
Tree arrived at the restaurant later than usual and found her mom and dad already seated on the back deck. Her mother smiled and waved from the table, but as Tree walked toward them, she felt doomed. It must’ve been written all over her face.
Her mother was instantly on her feet. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
“I’m okay.” As she said it, another spasm of pain shot through her. She grabbed at her stomach and steadied herself against the back of a chair.
“You don’t look okay.”
Her mom frowned and felt Tree’s forehead, looking for a temperature.
Tree gently pushed her mother away. “Mom, I said I was fine.”
“You’re cold as ice.” Her mother was growing more alarmed by the moment. “I think we should go to the hospital.”
“No! We can’t go there!”
The words flew out of her mouth just a little too loudly. Her parents exchanged a worried look. Tree tried her best to soothe them and appear calm.
“Look, I don’t want to freak you guys out,” she said softly, “but I need to get as far away from campus as possible.”
Her father looked alarmed. “Theresa, what is going on?”
Tree shook her head. “Dad, please. I can’t explain right now. I just need you to trust me.”
Her father must have seen the desperation in her eyes, because he stopped trying to argue or force her to talk. He just nodded a single time.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
—
As Ryan sat at the computer entering the last bit of code, Samar and Dre checked all the device’s connections, making sure everything was plugged in and secure. Finally, Ryan stopped typing and sat back with a relieved sigh.
“Done. Finally. You guys ready?”
They gave him a thumbs-up.
“Okay. Let’s close this loop once and for all.”
With a single keystroke, he fired Sissy up. The glowing proton lasers hummed to life, aimed at the centrifuge.
* * *
<
br /> —
Tree sat alone in the back seat as her dad drove, one hand on the wheel, the other twined with her mother’s. The road was deserted, and Tree gazed out the window, feeling better with every mile they put between their car and the Bayfield campus.
As they sped past the Bayfield power station, a massive stand of glowing electrical towers surrounded by a high chain-link fence, her mother’s voice brought her back to the present.
“Hey.” Tree looked up to find her mom’s infectious smile as she turned around to face her from the front seat. “Know what I’m craving right now?”
“What?” Tree asked.
“Those giant cinnamon rolls from that bakery in Morrow Bay.”
Tree couldn’t return the smile, and a sense of dread grew in her chest. She only knew their birthday tradition as an eerie video that played on her phone, an enviable memory that belonged to this other version of herself, and she couldn’t escape from the true memory of her mother from her dimension being dead.
“Our birthday last year?” Her mom paused. “You don’t remember? You ate two of them.”
“That wasn’t me,” Tree whispered.
“What, honey?”
Her dad interrupted them.
“Hey, girls, it’s getting late. How about we turn in somewhere for the night?”
“Sure.” Her mom yawned. “I think we’re all pretty pooped.”
As her dad pulled off the road, Tree felt a deep unease settling over her like a dense fog. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but being alone with her parents suddenly felt wrong—like she was an impostor in her own life.
They pulled up to a ’60s-style motel. A neon sign illuminated their rental car, alone in the parking lot. The whole place was a shrine to kitsch.
Her dad got a room, and Tree sat with her mom on the bed, watching bad TV.
Her phone chimed, and she picked it up. It was a text from Ryan:
About to start over here. Fingers crossed…
Her dad crossed the room carrying an ice bucket.
“Going to find some ice,” he said. “Be right back.”
Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U Page 19