Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (21 page)

Tasya was silent, but she leaned back, resisting, and with her free hand attempted to peel Nilsen’s fingers from her arm. Greg Abbott, who had paused at Jane’s warning, stepped forward again toward his wife, but Jane laid her gun on the ground by her side, braced herself and grabbed his arm with both hands, trying to hold him back. They struggled for the briefest of moments in absolute silence, a parody of the scene unfolding in the lights before them, and in the confusion Tesla watched the shadowy form of the little girl—Tesla herself—step forward, move one hand forward with absolute certainty, and lift the gun from the ground without either her father or Jane realizing it.

The little girl stepped to the side, raised the gun in both hands, and took aim at the man dragging her mother into his car, and in the moment before she pulled the trigger and destroyed everything, the moment before Tesla knew, finally, that she
would
act, the stunning fact of what had actually happened eight years ago, right here, resurfaced in Tesla’s memory and threatened to black out the world.

It was me—I’m the one who shot my mother eight years ago
.

CHAPTER 25

Time seemed to slow and there was a roaring in her ears as Tesla took three perfectly calculated steps and reached out, watching her hand as if it belonged to someone else, as if it weren’t connected to her body at all but was acting on its own volition. The flat of her palm came to rest firmly on the back of the little girl, right between her shoulder blades, and just as the younger Tesla closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger, the older Tesla shoved her hard and she fell forward, stumbling as the sound of a shot rang out and the flash from the gun’s muzzle drew every eye to the spot where it had been fired.

Tesla stepped back, further into the shadows as her father and Jane turned to the little girl, gun still in her hand, who now lay on the ground, her lip cut and bleeding. In the road, Tasya screamed as the man dragging her toward the car grunted, dropped her wrist and slumped toward the ground, one hand on the pavement to keep from falling to his knees.

“Who’s there?” Tasya cried, scanning the woods in vain, her eyes wide and frantic.

Tesla heard the terror in her mother’s voice and, a moment later, a squeal of tires, but she barely registered Nilsen limping back to the car, getting in and driving away as she backed further into the woods, away from the chaos and fear reverberating among those who remained.

Tesla watched her father pick up his little girl and then race with her, following close on Jane’s heels, to his wife who stood shaken but unharmed in the middle of the road, moonlight now the only illumination.

Think
Tesla shouted inside her head, trying not to give in to the wave of numbness that threatened to overtake her, the shock she welcomed because it would allow her to feel nothing.

Turn around. Run.

And she did—she turned and ran, faster than she ever had in her life, away from what she’d just done, away from any consideration of what it might mean for the future, away from the new-found memory of what she had done when she was a little girl. Tesla allowed herself one thought and one thought only, and it kept time with her pounding footfalls:

My mother didn’t die. My mother didn’t die. My mother didn’t die.

Lifting the latch to swing the garden shed door open, Tesla stepped carefully inside and closed the door with shaking hands. She could see her breath in the cold, still air, and make out the faint shapes of tools and a potting bench against the wall underneath the small, four-paned window where wan moonlight spilled into the small room. The light sheen of sweat between her shoulder blades dampened her shirt and she shivered. Racing back through the woods had warmed her, not to mention the unthinkable thing she’d done by changing history, but she felt cold and leaden now, the shock of all that had transpired tonight finally settling upon her shoulders. She rolled them back, as if to adjust the unfamiliar weight she now bore, and reached behind the lawnmower for the sleeping bags her parents stored there between camping trips.

She pulled one out, unzipped it, and after retrieving Schrödinger from her bag, climbed in, shoes, jacket, and all, tucking her chin in toward her chest where she cradled the little brown mouse. She lay, hugging herself, her face hidden, pressed against the flannel lining that smelled like summer, freshly mown grass, campfire smoke, and dirty sneakers, and the mouse’s whiskers tickled her fingers.

Time passed—she wasn’t sure how much—and Tesla realized she wasn’t shivering anymore. She stretched out inside the sleeping bag, poked her head out to breathe the crisp, fresh air, and stared up toward the ceiling in the dark, barely able to make out the raw wood rafters in the faint moonlight, the nearly invisible structure that kept the whole thing from falling down on her head.

She heard the scrabble of tiny claws somewhere in the shed, and felt, more than heard the almost soundless response of the mouse she held, desperate for the comfort of his warmth and nearness.

Selfish
, she thought.
He doesn’t exist to comfort you.

She sat up, then, and let the sleeping bag fall away from her shoulders and arms. She set the mouse down on the dusty floor, just able to make out his shape in the dark, the faint light in the shed glinting off his black eyes, his tail now pitifully crooked.

“Go on,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

He stood up on his hind legs, stretching tall to look at her, his nose and whiskers twitching. Then he turned, down on all fours again, and scurried away.

When he was gone, she lay back down, and finally, the tears came.

Tesla awoke with a start, sunshine streaming in through the smudged window of the shed. Consciousness brought memory with it, and she bolted upright, recalling the night before.

Oh God
, she thought.
What have I done
?

She unzipped the sleeping bag and climbed out, then stuffed it back behind the mower, not bothering to roll it up. She peered out the window at the house, but saw no movement, and the sun just peeking through the trees told her it was still quite early. She slung her bag over her head, opened the door, slowly, and let herself out, grateful for the ease of mobility and warmth Beckett’s clothes had afforded her through the night. Even in the face of world-changing events, difficult decisions, joy and tragedy, she realized, the little things in life still matter, and make themselves felt.

Like the fact that she seriously had to pee.

Tesla cut through the neighbor’s yard, noting that nothing stirred but a few birds pecking in the damp grass for breakfast. A light frost covered the cars parked on the street as Tesla jogged the two blocks into town, to the convenience-store-slash-gas-station that had the closest public bathroom. Thankfully, they opened at six a.m., and she emerged a few minutes later much relieved and smelling faintly of institutional liquid soap.

As she walked back toward her house the neighborhood was coming to life with people going to work or school, walking their dogs or picking the newspaper up from the driveway, as if something momentous had not just happened a few hours before.

My mother didn’t die
. But she couldn’t savor it the way she had last night, not in that passive form. The truth of what had happened—a truth she had blocked from her memory—had been revealed. And, now, reversed.

I didn’t kill my mother
, she amended her litany, caught between the desire to dance and laugh and twirl around in the street, or to fall to her knees, broken and sobbing, now that she finally knew the truth.

Tesla spent the next few hours hiding behind the shed and creeping up to the house to peer into the windows. She watched them, wanting to miss nothing—Tesla and Max, playing in the sandbox while their parents hovered. She saw Greg and Tasya—a Greg and Tasya who had never existed, she reminded herself—so nearly destroyed, so aware of their narrow escape, constantly reaching out, silently touching each other, assuring themselves that they were alive, and together. They were whole. They exchanged silent, teary-eyed looks, they laughed too often, with an edge of hysteria in the sound. Tesla, the child, was blissfully unaware, though her lip was swollen where she’d fallen and cut it.

It was a relief at first, to see this new day that had never actually dawned, a day that Tesla didn’t remember because it had never happened to her. A day of closeness, and gratitude, and love. This day, the way it had originally gone, had been filled with shock and grief and tears, had been the foundation of Tesla’s lonely adolescence and her father’s life as a widower.

Before long, however, tendrils of worry crept in like smoke flowing underneath a door and were soon pouring in, filling Tesla’s mind with a sense of impending doom.

What have I done
?

She didn’t know; she couldn’t guess. How would this work? When she jumped back would her mom just—be there? Would she always have just been there? How could Tesla even be thinking this, now, she wondered, if that change had occurred? Wouldn’t she herself be changed, with no knowledge of the past timeline in which her mother had died, and she had been raised by her father alone?

When her head began to ache and a wave of nausea roiled her stomach, Tesla knew it was time to go. She was merely postponing the inevitable, not ready to leave the bittersweet sight of her family, mended, all its pieces whole and intact. She had made it right, but surely she had made something else wrong.

It was time to face it.

CHAPTER 26

Tesla opened her eyes and took in the early morning light that shone through the gap in her curtains.
Home
.

She stretched once, thoroughly, feeling the cool sheets against her bare legs before drawing them back up toward her chest and the warm spot made by her body while she’d slept.

When she realized she was dawdling, deliberately putting off the day—a day which would at least begin to reveal the changes she’d wrought—she threw back the covers, got out of bed, and marched into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Don’t be a coward
, she admonished herself silently.

By the time she’d thrown a hooded sweatshirt over her T-shirt, pulled on yoga pants and shoved her feet into warm socks, Tesla was beyond second thoughts. She realized she was actually holding her breath as she slowly descended the stairs, skipping the creaky one out of habit, so she exhaled slowly, deliberately, trying to soothe the butterflies flitting and bumping around in her stomach, awakened, now that the exhaustion of last night had abated.

She had waited till dark, hidden in her parents’ shed, then snuck into the physics building, actually seeing young Sam once on his cleaning rounds but remaining out of sight until he’d moved on to the other side of the building. She had used the remote Bizzy gave her, which Schrödinger had curled around in her bag only hours before, as if it were his teddy bear, and jumped back, alone now, to the present in a heightened state of shock and nerves. When she opened her eyes in the present, inside the time machine, she had expected to see Finn come racing into the room, Bizzy grinning at her, the others making jokes, all of them talking at once. She would interrupt them, unusually serious, and tell them what she’d done. Together, they would figure it out.

But she had opened her eyes and found the time machine silent, the overhead lights off, the metal staircase that led up to the control room dark, only a faint hum to indicate the machine itself was still on, always on.

No one was there. No one was waiting for her at all.

Tesla walked downstairs to the living room and tried to shake the feeling.
It’ll be fine
, she thought, in a thoroughly unconvincing manner.
Everything will be the same, except my mom will be here
.

Hearing no sound of activity in the house, Tesla walked into the kitchen, only realizing that she was hoping for some kind of waffle-commercial vision of her mom doing delicious things for her family when she sensed her own disappointment at the sight of the empty room. Nope, no heaping plate of gluttonous carbs and sugar unless she wanted to make it herself.

Tesla smiled a very small, somewhat bitter smile as she picked up a banana from the fruit bowl on the kitchen island. She peeled it slowly, took a bite and barely tasted its sweetness, silently berating herself for her sentimental, TV-induced hopes and dreams that she hadn’t even known she’d harbored until she was denied them.
Pathetic
, she thought.
And this was exactly what Mom was talking about. It affects everyone.

Quick, light footsteps ran down the stairs, and Tesla barely had time to swallow her mouthful of banana before Max came barreling into the kitchen, dressed in his favorite Dr. Who pajamas with red phone booths and swirly time-travel graphics all over them. She couldn’t help the grin that stretched her face, the sheer joy of anticipating how much better everything was bound to be—maybe especially for Max, who had never really known his mother. His mother, who was now very much alive.

Max stopped short when he saw his sister.

“Hey,” Tesla said, still grinning.

“Hey,” Max mumbled, pushing his glasses up on his nose and turning to shuffle over to the pantry where he retrieved a box of cereal.

Tesla waited, heart pounding, while he got a bowl, poured his cereal and then opened the refrigerator to find the milk. She couldn’t understand it—
everything
was different now, but Max was acting as if—
Oh. Wait, of course! Everything has changed for me, but not for Max
, she realized. What an idiot she was, everybody would just be living their lives, they were only new lives, different lives, from Tesla’s perspective.

It was a surprisingly lonely feeling.

“So, Max, what’s the word-of-the-day?”

Max looked at her, blinking, as he chewed his cereal, his bottom lip wet from the milk. “Huh?”

Tesla felt odd, looking at Max while Max looked at her, both wearing similarly puzzled expressions if they had but known it.

“Today’s word,” she said clearly. “You know, your Word-A-Day calendar? That Aunt Jane got you for Christmas? Your mission to improve the world’s vocabulary one day and one word at a time?”

Max dropped his spoon into his bowl with a loud clang, ignoring the splash of milk that leapt out of the bowl and onto the counter. His face was already reddening as he looked at her, resentful and hostile. “Did Mom tell you to bug me about my homework?”

Tesla felt the smile fade from her face, as if the muscles beneath her skin were just too weak to maintain it. She could feel her hands shaking, but refused to look down at them. She had to swallow once before she could speak, push the sudden fear down her throat to make room for her voice that still only came out as a whisper.

“No, of course not. Max, what’s wrong?” she asked, stricken.

“Nothing,” he muttered, defensive and sullen. “I’m just tired of mom hounding me about my grades. About my reading and test scores.”

“Why would she hound you?” Tesla asked, her voice a little stronger now.

“Exactly!” he shot back, arms crossed over his narrow chest and a scowl on his face. “I get mostly Cs, which is average. What’s wrong with average? Someone has to be average. I’m not good in school,” he added with a shrug. “Big deal.”

Tesla was stunned. She licked her lips and looked away from Max, from what she now thought of as a dull, slightly slack look in his eyes. How could her brilliant, articulate, literary little brother be, well,
this
, because of the good fortune of having not lost his mother when he was an infant?

Because one change can’t be just one, it’s a thousand, thousand changes you could never trace. Ripples in a pond
.

“But Max,” Tesla said, her confusion apparent in her voice. “You
are
good at school. You’re in all advanced classes and you make straight As. You read all the time. For
fun
.”

Max’s lip quivered as he stared at her, and Tesla saw his hands form into tight fists at his side, saw his eyes fill with tears as he began to shake. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said through his clenched jaw.

“I’m not,” she protested, reaching out a hand toward him, just as he punched himself in the forehead.

“Max!” Tesla gasped, his face just above his glasses turning red from the impact before she had covered the few feet between them. “Max, stop!”

He punched himself in the head twice more before she fully reached him and grabbed his arm, pulling it down by his side, shocked by the tension in his thin, wiry frame. It was all she could do to hold his arm down by his side.

They were both shaking equally now, Max’s face red as he breathed hard and fast through his flared nostrils, Tesla white as a sheet of paper, her eyes huge, wide, and dry.

“Max…Max what’s wrong?” she whispered, paralyzed by fear.

They stood like this for several seconds, Max breathing noisily without answering, his bottom lip jutting out aggressively. Finally, he moved—not a sudden, violent movement, but a slackening, and a step back—and Tesla dropped his arm.

“Nothing,” he muttered, shuffling toward the door. “Just leave me alone.”

Tesla ran back up the stairs to her room, picking up a crumpled pair of skinny jeans off the floor on her way to her closet, where she grabbed a dark, forest-green wool sweater off a shelf and a black knit cap buried under summer sandals. In six minutes she had dressed, laced up her black hiking boots, and dashed down the hall to the bathroom. She caught site of herself in the mirror and froze, her hand in mid-reach toward her toothbrush.

My hair is still dark
, she thought.
But it would be, right?
She scowled, trying to understand. She had thrown the dark contacts away last night, so she wasn’t surprised to see her blue and green eyes locked on their opposite reflection, as she worked through it out loud.

“I jumped back. Dyed my hair. Came back to the present. Went back again and
changed things
. Came back—apparently the same me. This isn’t a new me, a different one.” She stared at herself, trying to feel some relief, to make of this some type of evidence that she hadn’t changed everything—and everyone—by saving her mother’s life.

She failed. Her brief encounter with Max was irrefutable proof that, even if everything hadn’t changed, some things had, and not for the better.

Tesla brushed her teeth, washed her face and pulled the hat down over her hair. Just as she reached her bedroom door, however, her father appeared and she pulled up short.

“I’m heading to the lab,” he said, his tired eyes pausing on her hair for a brief moment, but registering no surprise.

Tesla knew what he must be thinking, though, so she rushed to explain. “I was just trying it out. It’s temporary. It’ll shampoo out.”

At that, Greg Abbott registered surprise. “Okay,” he said, his shoulders rising in the barest of shrugs. “Your mom’s already gone. See you tonight.” He turned to go, but Tesla stopped him, her hand on his arm, effectively turning him back toward her, his eyebrow up, waiting, and a slightly impatient, annoyed firmness about his mouth.

“Dad, Max seems… I don’t know. Not himself,” she ventured.

“What do you mean?” he asked, but there was no real curiosity, no sense of urgency in his voice.

“I’m not sure,” she hedged. “He seems… agitated or something. Dad, he got upset and started—well, hitting himself in the head.”

Some sense of the horror she had felt must have crept into her voice because her father’s gaze sharpened as he watched her, and then, unbelievably, slid away altogether, his eyes now looking away, down the hall, where he clearly wanted to be.

“Look, Tesla, your brother’s a handful, you know that. Your mom’s taking care of it. Nothing to worry about, he needs to be more disciplined about school, that’s all.”

“But Dad, I’m not sure ‘discipline’ is the issue here, and besides—”

“Look, Tesla, I really do have to run,” he interrupted, gently releasing his arm by stepping away. Escaping. “Talk to your mom about it. I’m late.”

And he was gone. Tesla stood in her bedroom doorway, barely breathing.
What the hell is going on around here
?

Tesla slung her messenger bag over her sweater as she walked down the stairs, and stopped dead as her mother walked out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“Morning,” said Tasya, raising the cup to her lips while her eyes held Tesla’s. The steam from the hot coffee wafted up and around her face, obscuring her eyes and the details of her facial structure just enough to make her hazy, out of focus. Not quite real—unfinished, always some detail missing. Exactly as Tesla had dreamed of her all these years.

“M-morning,” Tesla said, trying to sound normal.

“I like your hair like that,” Tasya said, smiling, and for the first time Tesla noticed the lines at the corners of her eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones that time had chiseled.
My mom is eight years older than she has ever been
.

“On your way so early?”

Tesla nodded, for a little too long, and forced herself to stop. “Dad said you’d already left,” she said, which made Tasya laugh.

“Your dad doesn’t really know what’s going on,” she said conspiratorially, as if this were a family joke that Tesla knew well. “He’s more distracted than usual. We have a lot of work to do at the lab today.” Tasya’s eyes narrowed, and she smiled with her lips closed.

She’s smug
, Tesla thought. “What’s going on at the lab?” she asked, and was shocked when Tasya burst into genuine laughter.

“I’ll see you down there later,” her mother said, then turned her head toward the kitchen and in a completely different tone, one that spoke of frustration, yelled, “Max! Let’s go. You’ll be late for school.”

“I have to get to school, too,” Tesla said quickly. “Maybe later we can talk—about Max, and everything.”

Tasya frowned, her entire attention immediately back on Tesla. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You haven’t gone to school in months, we agreed it was a waste of time. I thought you liked homeschooling, liked the intensive training we’re able to give you at the lab? Besides, there’s work to be done. The whole point of focusing your education this way is because of the opportunity for…application. So I’ll see you at the lab in a few hours.” She turned and walked back toward the kitchen. “Max!” she shouted as the door swung closed behind her.