I’m not wearing my watch so I have no idea what day it is. They smile at each other as Danny fumbles a chord and Shira sings off-key. We’re on easy chairs in a loose semicircle around the six-pack. The stars are out and Obscura blinks among them. So this is after April 6, but in a completely different reality. One without fire.
Blood snakes out of my nose, a thin stream easily wiped away by the back of my hand. My lips are smooth. Surreptitiously, I explore my face with my fingers. No scars.
“Hey,” I say, repeating it louder until they stop their song and turn to me. They seem so far away, although we’re barely two yards apart.
“Hey,
cielo.
How you doing with that Corona?” Danny punctuates his sentence with a chord progression.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“I thought we were just going to hang. The three of us. You still wanna go out to Ghost Town?” Long dark hair swishes over Shira’s shoulders.
“Nah, leave it.” I’m smiling.
“Come here.” She beckons me forward.
I comply, settling myself at Shira’s feet in the dust. She tugs her fingers through my hair, separating the strands into workable clumps as she begins the braids.
Danny cracks open another beer. “Man, this sure feels good, don’t it?”
“It sure does.” I lean into Shira’s hands. This is what we could’ve had. If I’d never had that fight with Danny, if I’d never gone to Shira’s afterward, if we’d never gone to that dumbass barn with a bottle of tequila and matches.
“This is how it should be, just the three of us. Together, forever.” If I could just stay right where I am right now, everything would be OK.
A dull ache throbs at the base of my spine, claws its way up to my head.
“No, no.” Squinting, I turn toward Danny. There’s smoke curling off his shoulders. The smell of burning hair and flesh makes me want to gag. Shira’s whimpering as her fingers turn to ash. I leap toward Danny, but there’s a hand on my shoulder, holding me back, forcing me down in the dust.
“Kyle… Kyle!”
Chapter Seventeen
Danny’s dead
Mya’s concerned face looks down at me. She grabs my arms and pulls me to my feet.
“What happened?” I cough up Coke and blood on pristine tiles.
“You fell off your chair,” she says. Prof. Cruz hands her paper towels, which she spreads across the floor, mopping up my mess. “You just fell back. I thought you were having a seizure or something.”
“It happened again.” I bend down to help her.
“What did?” Professor Potato asks, all wobbly chinned.
“I shifted. How long was I out for?”
“A minute maybe.”
Mya fetches me a glass of water to wash down the sour taste between my teeth. I’ve puked more in the past forty-eight hours than I have in my entire life. The novelty is wearing off.
Prof looks concerned, and waits for me to recover before saying anything. “Tell me about your experience.”
And I do, mostly. I leave out the part about Shira and Danny both being alive in a third reality. Some things are just too personal.
“Fascinating.” The prof strokes his chin. “Kyle, would you allow me to document these findings? You’d make an exceptional case study. Far more reliable than anonymous accounts in some underground forum.”
“Findings?” Mya sounds indignant.
“I’m not a damn guinea pig.”
“By documenting what you experience, I might have the chance to help you, and others who might be experiencing this event.”
“Might be?” Always that dollop of doubt.
“This is a scientific first. You must appreciate the significance of that.” His wrinkly jowls are turning puce.
“What I’d appreciate is if this could stop before I cough up a lung.”
“Yes, the physical exertions are a concern.” Prof has the decency to frown and look baffled. “But you’re young and healthy, with ample endurance.”
My hands become fists of their own volition. I’m ready to turn the guy into Smash, but Mya takes my wrist, unfurling my fingers.
“Do you know how we can stop this from happening to him? Stop him shifting?”
“Before Wednesday?” Cruz shakes his head. “You have a marvelous opportunity here, son. You have the singular ability to experience multiple realities—”
“I’m not some Peter Parker, and I don’t want to die like this.” I don’t want to be scarred or strapped down in the loony bin either. I want that night out on the rocks under the stars, with Shira’s hands in my hair and Danny strumming his guitar.
“I can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard.” I’m on the verge of tears.
Prof looks concerned. “This is a gift, Kyle. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell you something important.”
“What?”
“Only you can know that. Perhaps some soul-searching is in order.”
Definitely a wack job.
“The syzygy ends in two days.” I drag fingers through my hair.
“And so might the world,” Mya adds. “That doesn’t give you much time to figure this out.”
“Please, stay here. Let me help you, document your experience.” The prof lays his hands on the tabletop. “I can offer modest compensation. Perhaps more if I present these findings to my colleagues at Princeton. With research grants—”
“Whoa, Professor. I’m not spending what might be my last days alive cooped up in the ass end of nowhere so you can
document
me. Keep your compensation and government grants and convoluted science.” This guy doesn’t know any more than we do. He’s got his terminology and equations, and that’s it. At least I get part of what Obscura’s trying to show me. That there’s another way, a third option where I don’t have to lose any of them.
“Let’s go.” I tug Mya off the bar stool and head for the door.
“Please, Kyle, reconsider my offer. Be smart here. Action-reaction. You live in both realities—do something rash and you could upset the balance.”
“And what? Bring about Armageddon?”
“You make light of what we cannot possibly understand.” The prof shakes his head sadly.
“Are you sure you wanna leave?” Mya asks as I open the door.
“I just want this to stop. Prof here just wants it to continue so he can see what happens, right?”
The professor opens and closes his mouth like an obese goldfish, but doesn’t disagree.
“Thanks anyway, Professor Cruz,” Mya says with a wave.
“Wait!” He waddles toward us. “Here, call me if you’d like to tell me anything more, or if you need my help.” He hands me a card with his number and e-mail address on it. “And be careful, please. You might be the key to all of this, Kyle.”
“Me and everyone else who’s shifting.” It can’t all be my fault.
“Make the wrong choice, and you could end up destroying us all. Every choice comes with consequences, even unintended ones.”
How very fucking sage, Prof. Who’d have known that sex and a bottle of tequila could destroy the world? “I’ll take my chances.” I pocket his card and follow Mya out to the Chevy.
It’s a long drive back to Coyote’s Luck.
* * *
“You really think there are other people going through the same thing as you?” Mya asks once we’re out of Ponderosa.
“Why not? Anything is possible.”
“You should get on that forum. Maybe talking to other people in the same situation will help.”
“How? Won’t change what’s happening to me.”
“Might make it easier, knowing you’re not alone.”
I am totally alone. Some Aussie jumping cities isn’t going to help a speck of dust when I switch into the reality where I’m strapped down in the loony bin. There’s no reality-shifting solidarity.
We drive in silence for a while before Mya has to loosen her tongue again. “So, you’ve got a plan to stop Armageddon?”
“I think so.” I turn up the AC. “If I can influence the realities, then maybe I just need to choose one.”
“Which reality are you going to choose?” She keeps her eyes on the road.
“I don’t think it’s that simple. I caught a glimpse of something else, of a reality where Danny and Shira are both alive.”
“So you think there’s a third option?”
“I don’t know, but if I could just go back to when this all began. That fight with Danny. Maybe I don’t have to be such a dick. Maybe I could change things and nobody has to die. Get that third reality.”
Mya chews on her bottom lip, taps the steering wheel with her thumb. “You think if you can go back to that time, that you’d remember all of this and know enough to change it?”
“Well, I remembered when I was back there just now.”
“But that’s like a flash. Might not be real. Could be Obscura messing with your head, showing you what could’ve been? If you really go back to that time, you think you’ll remember these two different futures and be able to change something?”
“I don’t know.”
“And which future would that leave
me
with?” She glances at me. “This third option show you what happens to me, or your parents?”
“No.”
“So what if this third reality relies on something like me dying, or New York getting nuked or a tsunami wiping out the whole of the West Coast?”
“I don’t have all the answers here.” Mya’s starting to make me feel damn uncomfortable. Why do I have to be the one to choose anyway?
“Which reality were you in before this happened? Was Benny alive or dead? Was your father drunk or sober?”
This is so much more complicated than I imagined. Drumming my fists against my skull, I try to remember the details of my life before the fire. It feels like reaching into a dark closet, hands groping for something you think is there, something you can’t see, that you just have to feel for and hope your fingertips recognize.
But I come up empty-handed. “Why the hell can’t I remember?”
“You really don’t remember whether your dad was drinking or not?”
“I remember general things that I guess are true for either life. I don’t remember the specifics that would define it as one reality or the other.”
“Maybe you don’t remember because it doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean?” I’m frowning and the expression still feels odd on my scarred face, too tight around my eyes.
“Forget it.” Mya waves her hand to dismiss the comment.
“No, I want to know. You think I don’t exist? Like this is some epic dream?”
“The prof said that we might’ve all shifted when Obscura first showed up. How do we know if any of this is real then?”
I’m saved from further contemplation by my ringing phone.
“Hey, Shira, what’s up?” I answer. Shira’s polite and friendly as always. She doesn’t ask me where I am, doesn’t mention how I ditched her at the community centre. She’s just calling to see if I’ll meet her at her trailer or at the cemetery for the memorial tomorrow.
I’d forgotten all about it. Promising to meet at the cemetery, I hang up.
“You haven’t told her about any of this, have you?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe she can help.”
“With her incense and feathers?”
“Don’t be a
cabrón
, Kyle.” Mya’s pissed with me and I have no idea why.
“Whoa, I was joking. Why you getting upset?”
“Upset?” She chuckles. “I’m not upset. I’m just really astounded by your complete lack of consideration for anyone but yourself.”
“Um—”
“I get it, this sucks for you shifting between realities, but you don’t even think about what it’s like for anyone else. In that other reality, that other Mya has to deal with Ben and his stupid friends every summer. Poor girl’s a freakin’ vegetarian. And Shira’s mom? Ever think about her, having lost her only daughter? Your dad’s a drunk. I’ll bet you never even considered what that’s doing to your mom.”
Driving my mom to sleazy motels and into another man’s arms.
“And now you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to choose which reality I want to live in’ and screw everyone else who gets fucked over in the process.” Her voice cracks and she backhands a tear off her cheek.
Anger simmers and I’m about to launch into a tirade about how it’s my life being screwed with by a planet, how everyone is just plain oblivious, but I bite my tongue. Mya’s right. I haven’t considered anyone else is this equation.
“I didn’t ask for this to happen to me,” I say.
“I know. But it is happening. Can’t change that. Just gotta deal with it.” Her voice is softer now, but she still doesn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry, Mya.”
“What for?”
“For dragging you into this. Might’ve been easier on you if you’d never known.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Harping on about things in the past you can’t change. You have to deal with the present.”
I spend the next hour staring out at the dry expanse of New Mexico as it trips through juniper woodland into desert scrub. Maybe if I killed myself in both realities, I’d end up back on April 5 before all this craziness. Or I’d just be dead and none of this would be my problem anymore.
“How the hell am I supposed to choose anyway?” I ask, under my breath, not expecting her to answer.
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” She glances at me out the corner of her eye. “Maybe you should let the right reality choose you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Shira’s dead
They’ve put tubes across my face, little vents blowing oxygen up my nose. I’m still strapped down. Guess they’re not risking another staff member’s face.
Voices at the door.
Dad’s standing there with a police officer. After everything I told them, they’re still going to pin this on my dad?
“Dad,” I croak. My throat is so dry. He shakes hands with the police officer and strolls into my room wringing his hands.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, and he barely looks at me as he marches straight to the window. “Why are the police here?”
“There were assault charges against you. Nicholas Vasquez. You broke his nose.”
“He’s one of the guys that attacked
me
.” My voice jumps up an octave.
“His folks have agreed to drop the charges if I pay for his medical bills.” Dad’s seething, sifting saliva through his teeth as he paces alongside the bed.