Now That You're Here (Duplexity, Part I) (15 page)

He kissed me.

Mom knocks on the door again. “Eve? Are you in there?”

“Yeah.” My voice cracks. I stumble around like I'm not in control of my own body. “Just a sec.”

“I've got your homework and some things to help you feel better.”

“Be right out.”

The closet door looms over me. I have to stay cool. I can't mess this up.

But he kissed me.

Kissing is supposed to happen to other girls. Girls like Stacy Farley. Not girls like me.

My hands shake as I reach for the bedroom door. By the time I get it open, Mom is already at the other end of the house. I close it behind me without letting it latch.

In the living room, I flop onto the couch and curl up, my heart pounding in my head.

“There you are.” Mom feels for my temperature. “You're clammy.”

“I feel better than this morning.”

“Well, you look worse.”

She hands me my homework and walks to the kitchen. “I thought a stir-fry might be good tonight. I got that sauce you like so much. But maybe soup would be better? Oh, and look in the bag on the chair. Got you some new magazines.”

I check the back windows. Where is he?

“Which do you want?” Mom asks. I dash back to the couch before she returns to the living room. “I can make either.”

And then I see him, strolling across the yard like nothing at all. I snap my attention back to Mom and try to control my face. I have to keep her distracted.

“Hey.” I make it up as I go. “I—I, um. Did they say anything about what I missed at school?”

“The secretary said everything would be explained in the packet.” She starts to turn.

“W-wait. Mom. What if I, uh.” I flip through the pages without really looking at them. “What if I have questions?” Finally, he's out of view. “On second thought, never mind. Looks like everything is here. Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” She gives me a confused smile, then walks back toward the kitchen. “Oh, I got you peppermint candies, too, for your stomach.”

That was too close.

When my heart stops racing, I take a closer look at the homework packet. Warren scrawled a riddle across the top of the page of math problems:

If Eevee in another universe sneezes, and Eevee in this universe doesn't know she exists, does the sneeze make a sound?

Oh, that wacky Warren.

I turn the page and see a second note, also in his chicken scratch:

Weirdness to share. Come by later if you're not contagious.

Weirdness? I flip through the rest of the pages, looking for clues, but there are only equations. From the kitchen, Mom blabs about her day. The Carsons stood her up for the open house way over in Mirabel, so her day was wasted driving back and forth to Scottsdale, and she really wants to land that deal, but they must be the flakiest people that ever walked the face of the earth and blah-blah-blah.

I turn back to Warren's second note. Danny weirdness, or something else? “I'm going to run out for a sec.”

She pops her head around the kitchen doorway. “What for?”

“I have to ask Warren about some of this work.”

“You can ask him tomorrow. He doesn't want your germs.” She snaps the metal tongs in her hand. “I'm thinking stir-fry. Good?”

“Sure.” When she's back in the kitchen, I flop back on the couch and cover my face with my arms. What am I doing?

I ditched school.

I lied.

I ditched school
again.

I let him in my room.
No one goes in my room. Not even my parents.

He kissed me.

I replay the scene in slow-mo in my mind.

It was a quick kiss. An unexpected kiss. But it was a kiss nonetheless.

“Someone's feeling better.”

I gasp.

Mom's standing over me, holding a glossy magazine in her oven-mitt-covered hands. “Didn't mean to startle you. I thought reading something might help distract you from feeling bad. What were you smiling about?”

“Smiling?” I shrug. “Didn't realize I…” One of the article titles catches my eye:
Is It Love? How to Know for Sure!
“On second thought, reading sounds good.”

She hands me the magazine. “Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes.”

Just enough time to do a little research.

After dinner, I finish up the homework packet, then ping Warren on chat, but he's not online. I don't have any choice but to sit in the living room with Mom, watching stupid shows on TV. The whole time I think about Danny—one of the signs, according to the article. What is he doing? Is he thinking about me? What if he's thinking about the other me? Maybe I should call him. Am I overthinking this?

When the news comes on, Mom goes to bed grumbling about having to work on a Saturday. I lock up the house and grab the peppermint candies. In my room, I stand in the place where he stood and stare at the walls. My brain is so wound up, there's no way I'm going to be able to sleep. I pull the paints out from under my bed.

Tonight the terdragon-curve fractal calms me. I close my eyes and let the design expand and fill my mind. The lines lengthen and snake around, each ending in a finlike curve. When I open my eyes, I break out my acrylics and set about painting the fractal across the border of the window. My hands work quickly, the imaginary equations mapping out the lines faster than my brush can follow.

Three taps at the window startle me out of my trance. Did I imagine them? I hold my breath and wait. When the sound comes again—
tap tap tap
—I peek through the slats and see him, backlit by the streetlight. I slide the window open.

“Saw your light,” he whispers. “Thought I'd say hi.”

“Hi.”

“Wanna hang?”

Do
I? “I'll be out in a sec.”

I breathe down the butterflies in my stomach—also a sign from the article—pull a sweatshirt on over my pajamas, step into my sneakers and tiptoe down the hall.

The night is chilly and the air tastes fresh. It must be late. Dad's lights are off. Warren isn't on his roof. Danny sits in the grass, resting back on his hands with his legs crossed in front of him. I sit beside him.

The darkness feels so big, I keep my voice low. “What's up?”

“Today was almost perfect. I don't want it to end.”

“Just almost perfect?”

“Just almost.” He leans back on his elbows. “Things go okay after I left?”

“Almost.”

“Just almost?”

“It's better now.”

He points up at the sky. “There's the Big Dipper.” He tracks his finger toward the horizon. “Which makes that Polaris.”

“You know your stars.”

“My dad taught me. The ocean's big. Read the stars and you never get lost.”

“You must spend a lot of time at the ocean. Do you go over to California a lot?”

“Been a couple of times. It's a two-day sail, though. Mom worries when we're on the water overnight.”

“Sail?”

“Well, we could fly, but then you don't see the stars.” He brushes the grass off his hands. “So, what do you want to do tomorrow?”

“Hang on. Say that bit again about California.”

“What?”

My head feels woozy. “Your Arizona has an ocean?”

“Yours doesn't?”

“Oh my God.” I stand up and pace.

He stands, too, takes me by the hands, and leads me back to sit again on the grass.

“Was it an earthquake? Did part of California sink into the ocean?”

He makes a face like I'm crazy. “No. It's just always been out there. Across the sound. So, tomorrow. What should we do?”

I pick a blade of grass, still trying to imagine Arizona Bay. The grass is smooth against my fingers. “Something legal?”

“Boring.”

I pick a second blade and twist the two together. “Aren't you afraid of getting caught?”

“That's what makes it exciting.”

“You and I are so different.”

“That's what makes it exciting.” He hooks his elbows around his knees and we just sit there, looking at each other. The streetlight illuminates half of his face, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his jaw. Finally, he breaks the silence. “Did you find it?”

“Find what?”

“That'd be a no, then.”

“What did you do?”

He smirks. “You'll know it when you see it.”

“Tell me.”

“Nope.”

“Please.”

He looks up at the sky.

“Give me a hint.”

He looks back at me and leans close. My heart flutters up in my throat and I swear the stars start to spin. “No,” he whispers. And then he kisses me for the second time.

Really kisses me.

She tastes like peppermint.

I lie back in the grass and there are a bazillion diamonds above us. She lies down next to me, shoulder to shoulder. I want to kiss her again, but instead I find her hand and hold it in mine.

“
Now
it's perfect.”

In the distance, a dog barks and there's the sound of a car engine. Eevee's fingers are tight around mine and I stroke the top of her thumb.

The night sounds fade to white noise. Then a steady pounding, at first in time with my heart but then separating into its own rhythm. Thick and constant, the beat slams against me. Courses inside. Above the droning, I hear voices I can't identify. Jumbled. Inseparable. Lights dance behind my eyes. Somehow, I'm no longer on the lawn at Eevee's house. Bodies slide against me, around me, pressing like ocean waves and always in time with the sound. A woman's laugh shudders through me and then her voice is in my ear. It's Eevee, only not. Every word lights up the colors in my eyes, bringing the world into focus. Strobe lights flash against bodies dancing, and before me her red lips, her slender arms around my neck.

“Danny.”

The ground rushes up to meet me and I land. Hard. I gasp. Choke. She's leaning over me, her hands on my shoulders.

“Eevee?”

I touch the grass. Reach up and touch her face.

What was that?

She helps me sit up, then holds both of my hands in hers. “You must have drifted off and had a nightmare.”

Pinpricks of cold race up my arms and circle my chest.

I don't think that was a dream.