Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (3 page)

“Really?” The sharp edges of the word cut through the cold, still air, surprising them both. Finn cleared his throat and moved his weight from his left foot to his right, and it was enough to allow him to regain his composure. “I thought you two had agreed to just be friends. You’re dating now?” His voice was careful and held no trace of emotion.

Tesla shrugged, looking down at the ground as she tacitly admitted that he was right. She wished she could deny it, claim that she was actually in love with Sam, but she knew she was a terrible liar. Glum and averting her gaze from his, she waited for Finn’s ridicule—or, worse, his pity.

What Finn saw, however, was a shy, pale girl with mismatched eyes hiding her happiness behind wildly tangled red hair, happiness she had found in a new intimacy with Sam, and he felt such a surge of jealousy and—that tightening in his chest, that weird pulling sensation he’d felt last summer during the chaos of Dr. Abbot’s kidnapping—that he scared himself. He hadn’t felt it for months, yet here it was again, suddenly, and stronger than ever. His adrenaline surged, he felt his fists balling up at his sides and he had to exert some serious effort to uncurl them, to maintain his easy posture in front of her.

She looked up at him then, her brilliant blue and green eyes hooded, and he read nothing there, despite how well he thought he knew her. He trembled with the effort of breathing normally when his heart was racing and his body screamed for some sort of action. It was an astonishing and frightening experience and he knew without a doubt that there was something wrong with him.

He needed to figure it out.

This new direction in his thoughts, away from Tesla and toward a problem to be solved, was an immense relief. “Tesla,” he said briskly. “Remember last summer when we were both knocked out in the hidden rooms just outside the Bat Cave?”

“What?” Tesla was thrown by the sudden change in subject. “What about it?”

“Did you feel any odd physical symptoms around that time?”

“No—what do you mean? Like what?”

“Wasn’t there something when we both came to, when we were untying each other? Something about my headache from getting knocked out—and you had one too?”

“God, Finn, I don’t know. I’d been chloroformed, you got hit in the head with the butt of a gun. Of course we both had headaches. What are you talking about?” Tesla had begun to worry that Sam would arrive and it would be just too weird and embarrassing. Finn would be amused, Sam would get all stiff and formal.
Oh my god, what if Finn mentions that he kissed me today
?? she thought in sudden panic.

“Look, Finn—not to be rude, but Sam’s gonna be here any sec—“

“Yeah, yeah, no problem. Have fun. I’ve got to go anyway.”

Tesla was left standing with her mouth open, and she quickly snapped it shut. Finn was the most confusing person she’d ever met, that was for sure. Acting like he liked her one moment, kissing her, with every bit of warmth and passion one might hope for, and absolutely dismissive of her the next, not to mention taking every opportunity to laugh at her. Whatever it was they had begun last summer was clearly gone. Finnegan Ford had moved on.

Whatever
, she thought.
Maybe it’s time I moved on, too
.

CHAPTER 4

Finn knocked on Bizzy’s door. He’d headed straight back to Jane’s to find her; he knew she would be studying in her room, despite the fact that it was Friday night.

“Reading,” came the unwelcoming response from within.

“Yeah, but I need to talk to you,” Finn said through the door.

“Fine, come in,” she replied ungraciously.

“Hey, Biz,” he said as he walked into the spotless room. Her bed was made, and though she lay on the quilt, propped up on her elbows reading a textbook that must have weighed sixty pounds, he suspected that the reason no wrinkle appeared in the covers was due in part to her perfect hospital corners, and in part to the fact that she probably weighed no more than ninety pounds herself.

Bizzy shut the book with a resigned sigh, and sat up on the bed. Waving Finn to the only chair in the room, a ladder-back wooden chair at her desk, she looked at him expectantly.

“What’s up?”

Finn took his time, having tried unsuccessfully on his way over to figure out exactly how he would explain the situation to her, how he might actually frame his crazy question. He grabbed the chair, turned it backwards and set it down a few feet from the bed and sat down, arms folded across the back of the chair, his chin resting on them.

“I have a—a thing that I’m trying to figure out, and I need your brain.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m listening.” She reached up unconsciously to tug on one of the five tiny silver hoops that hung from piercings along the outer edge of her ear, her black-rimmed eyes fixed intently on his, the frailty of her body accentuated by the harshness of her black hair, the multiple piercings, the tattoos on her arms, rather than disguised, as Finn knew she intended.

“I honestly don’t know what I’m here to ask you. The whole thing is—well it’s just weird, I don’t know how to describe it. I might even be imagining it,” he admitted, and actually blushed.

He’d never done
that
before. “Well, just start from the beginning, then,” Bizzy said.

Finn took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, you know last summer, when Dr. Abbot was kidnapped, Tesla and I were both knocked out. We came to, and—I know I probably had a mild concussion, but there was something odd that happened. At least I think it happened.”

“Yeah, go on,” Bizzy encouraged when he hesitated.

“Well, Tes was tied up on the other side of the barricade, and I was really just coming to myself. She made her way over to me, and I had this strangely
tight
feeling in my chest that seemed to—well, to ease up as she got closer.”

“Well, duh,” Bizzy said. “You were relieved. Who wouldn’t be?”

“No, it was more than that,” Finn said with certainty. “Yes, I was relieved. But this was a physical thing—I felt…
stretched
, and the tension eased as she got closer.”

“Sounds like either love or indigestion,” Bizzy joked, but stopped when she saw his face. “Oh. You’re serious.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, and only then, when she met his unfaltering gaze, did she truly feel the seriousness with which he’d come to her.

Bizzy scooted over to the edge of the bed, a little closer to where Finn sat in the chair. “Go on—there’s more, right?”

“There’s more,” he agreed, though he hardly sounded happy about it. “That wasn’t the first time I’d felt it. I felt it at Dodie’s just as Sam and I left the diner to do some snooping when Dr. Abbot was missing.”

“And that was in the past, right?” Bizzy asked, her eyebrow stud, shaped like a tiny barbell, twinkling in the bright light of her room as her brows drew down into a frown of concentration. “After you grabbed onto Tesla in the time machine and jumped with her?”

“Right,” said Finn. “I felt that same tightening, that pulling, when I looked back at her, just before Sam and I walked out the door to head for campus.”

Bizzy sat still, her eyes on the floor, one hand pulling absently at her short, spiked hair. Finn was quiet, letting her think, knowing from experience that she couldn’t be rushed.

“Is there anything else?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him with a feverish brightness to her eyes that both frightened him and gave him hope. “Anything at all, whether it was a similar feeling at another time, or something else that might seem unconnected, but that you can’t explain?”

“Well…,” Finn began, searching his mind. “Yeah. I’ve started feeling it again. I can’t speak for Tesla, but I can’t help but wonder if she’s experiencing something weird, too. Unless I was fuzzier than I thought after I got knocked out, I’m pretty sure that she said her headache from the chloroform had mostly dissipated, but when I winced from a sharp pain from getting hit on the head, she…..”

“She what??” Bizzy prodded him, obviously excited now.

“Well, I’m pretty sure that
she
said ouch. Like, you know—she felt the pain I felt. At the same time.”

Without a word, Bizzy jumped up and darted past Finn to her laptop, which sat open on her desk. She began furiously typing, then reading, then typing again. Finn stood up and paced the room, glancing at her every few seconds, knowing better than to interrupt her but barely able to keep from shouting
“What??”
at her back.

Finally, after an interminable wait during which Finn contemplated the probability that Bizzy was researching what precise mental illness he was manifesting in her room, and whether or not he should make a run for it now, before the authorities arrived with a straightjacket, Bizzy straightened up and turned to him.

Finn took an involuntary step back from the intensity of her expression. Her thin frame fairly vibrated from the excitement she kept in check.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked cautiously. “I’m not crazy, right? This means something?”

“You know I can’t give you a definitive answer.” Despite her obvious excitement, she would not tell him that something was true if she did not know it, and she could not know it without a lot more information. “But I have an idea,” she said, her voice hushed. “Sit down.”

Finn backed up, his eyes locked on hers, and sat down on the bed when the backs of his legs told him it was right behind him. Bizzy swung the chair around and sat down, facing him, her back straight. Their eyes never wavered.

“Have you ever heard of quantum entanglement?” she asked.

“Um, no,” he said. “Why would I?”

“Well, Einstein and some others came up with a theory to explain how and why two electrons which had once been connected but were later separated by a great distance might experience the same thing at precisely the same time.”

“What do you mean?” asked Finn, impatient to get to what was actually going on in his life.

“Bear with me here. They found that if they changed the rotation of one electron, the other electron’s rotation changed, too—at
exactly the same moment
.” When Finn just looked confused, Bizzy continued. “Given the laws of classical physics, one of these two electrons would experience the change
after
the other one; even if one experienced what the other experienced, there would be a delay. But there was none. Quantum entanglement suggests that this happens because all things are connected, always. Across time and space.”

“And?” Finn prodded, his impatience clear.

“And, I think it’s possible that somehow, traveling in time together has…intensified the connection between you and Tesla—and it’s continued to get stronger. The theory of quantum entanglement says that everyone is connected to everyone else, everywhere and every
when
, if you follow me, in ways we aren’t aware of. But what if you and Tesla are connected now in a way that you
are
aware of? You feel the connection, emotionally and physically. Because it’s been—you know, amplified.”

“We’re…entangled?” Finn asked, the first trace of fear in his voice. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Bizzy said, a wide grin splitting her face and making all her face-jewelry sparkle with delight.

“Bizzy, that is terrifying,” he said. “You get that, right?”

“No, not at all!” she countered, standing up to pace and waving her arms around while she spoke. “It’s amazing! We can actually look at this phenomenon, examine it, document it. We can—”

“Yeah, we’re not doing anything until I talk to Tes,” he said, standing up quickly. He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her in and kissed her once on the top of her spikey head, and he was out the door, calling back over his shoulder, “Thanks, Biz, you really are the brightest witch of your age!”

CHAPTER 5

After the movie, Tesla and Sam walked through the park situated in the middle of downtown. As always, Sam had been great—he kept things casual, made her laugh. He hadn’t even tried to hold her hand in the darkened theater, and Tesla was surprised by her disappointment. She stole looks at him as they walked and talked. It was a chilly night, and his heather gray Irish fisherman’s sweater with the rolled collar and cuffs was big and thick and made her think of a cozy night in front of a fire. His faded jeans and motorcycle boots, the bit of white T-shirt that peeked out below the hem of his sweater were perfect. And that thick black hair, the dark, sultry eyes had always been hot but now—with the newly grown goatee and little soul patch just below his lower lip—Tesla was beginning to realize that moving on might be kind of fun.

“So, you agree or you disagree with my movie review?” Sam said. “Hello?”

“Sorry,” Tesla said quickly. “I partially agree. I like a good explosion as much as the next girl, but I actually need a little character development. Otherwise, how am I supposed to care who survives the hand grenades, the C4, the car chases and automatic weapons, and who doesn’t?”

“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “How could you not care about the fate of…you know, that guy with the gun—okay one of the guys with the guns, I forget which one. I’m pretty sure he was the protagonist.”

Tesla laughed. “Yeah, if I don’t know his name, I’m out. They had good stunt drivers, though.”

“Yeah, but I agree, that’s not enough,” Sam said. “I like the action, I like a fast pace, of course, but there has to be something at stake for somebody that I have a stake in, because the film has made me care. It’s always about the characters—what they want, what they need, what they’re willing to sacrifice.”

Tesla considered that a moment, a small smile playing about her mouth as she thought how much he sounded like Max.

“It builds empathy,” he continued. “Which is crucial, even if it’s complicated. You know, to imagine how the other person feels.”

He’s really a good guy
, Tesla thought.
Smart. Gentle
. They walked in companionable silence in the least manicured part of the park, through a small wood of oaks, maples and birches, the fallen leaves a riot of color under their feet. The only sound was the brittle crunch under their boots, when Tesla paused and Sam continued on a step ahead of her. It was an impulse, she knew, even as she did it, and she might very well regret it, but she reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled him to a stop.

Sam turned and faced her, his eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

“Come here,” she said softly as she pulled him by the hand until he stepped in close. She could see her breath in the cold, night air as she exhaled softly, the fingers of both her hands now entwined with his. She looked up and searched his face. There was just enough moonlight for her to see that his eyes—deeply, darkly liquid—peered intently into hers, and that he waited. He had made his position clear months ago. If she wanted their relationship to change, Tesla would have to be the one to do it.

She shivered once in the cold as she rose up on the toes of her boots and pressed her lips to his mouth, gently but with conviction. His mouth was firm, his lips soft and warm. She pulled her hands from his and laid them on his shoulders to steady herself, and then pulled back to wait for his reaction. Tesla’s hood had fallen back and the November wind lifted her hair from her neck and swirled it around her shoulders. An unexpected shiver ran up her spine and she felt a sudden urge to turn and search the darkness between the trees, certain, for no apparent reason, that they were being watched.

“I’m not sure I know what this means,” Sam said, his voice low and steady.

“I’m not sure
I
do, either,” she admitted, surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. “I wanted to kiss you. So I did. We hang out all the time—we’re close, I think, and—well, we’ve only ever kissed that once.”

“No, we—” he started to say and then abruptly stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he seemed sad. He reached up and gently removed her hands from his shoulders. Disconnected them. “Tesla, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Oh,” she said, taken completely by surprise. “I thought—I mean, you know, you said last summer—”

“I remember,” he said firmly. “It’s just that—why tonight, Tesla? Why now?”

“God, Sam, I don’t know. It was just a kiss! I’m sorry I did it,” she said, embarrassed. This was the second guy she’d kissed today, and he was also the second one to make her feel like a fool for it. She turned and began to walk back the way they’d come.

“Look, Tesla, don’t take it like that,” Sam said as he caught up to her, his boots crushing the fragile, brittle leaves beneath his heels, scattering the ones just out of reach. “It’s just—look I can’t explain, okay?”

“Hey, no explanation necessary,” she said as cavalierly as she could. “Trust me, it’s no big deal.”

They were silent as they left the park and headed, without consultation, to Tesla’s house. Sam stopped on the sidewalk, and Tesla turned to him when she was halfway to her door.

“Don’t you want to come in?” she asked. He always came in. They always watched TV after they went out.

“Not this time.” His discomfort was obvious, so obvious that Tesla felt her face flame in response.

He turned and walked quickly away, just left her standing there—Sam, whom Keisha made fun of for his devotion and Max called ‘your lover-boy,’ in that maddening, sing-song voice that little boys reserve exclusively for their sisters.

What is it with this day
? Tesla thought.
With these boys
? She had no answers, so she went in the house, up to her room, and flopped down on the bed to stare morosely at the ceiling.
What is wrong with me
?

The question was a wail inside her head, a keening that was about her confusion and embarrassment over Sam and Finn, but so much more. That one question encompassed everything, the parts of herself she didn’t understand, her sense of being different, isolated from everyone around her, and the indisputable fact that she was left utterly alone to figure it all out by herself.

She wished, for the ten thousandth time, for her mom.

All Finn could see as he stumbled back to the old Victorian house was Tesla, draped in some long, dark sweater that hugged her body, a loose hood over her hair, grabbing Sam’s hand as they walked a winding path among the trees, in and out of the pools of light cast by the park lamps spaced at intervals along the various walking trails. She had stood on tiptoe to kiss Sam on the mouth, her hood falling back and the wind picking up her fiery hair that put to shame the faded colors of the leaves that moved restlessly at their feet. Finn had stood, a few dozen yards away, stunned and unable to look away.

He shouldn’t have been there, of course. She’d told him she was seeing Sam, and he either should have waited to talk to her tomorrow, or been prepared for the sight of…well, of
that
. Finn told himself he hadn’t been spying, not really, he’d been waiting for Sam to pack it in, for Tesla to finally be alone so he could talk to her, tell her about this thing, this
entanglement
of theirs. It was too important to wait, right? Of course it was. Despite what she’d said, she and Sam weren’t together, not really—how could they be? Sam was such a stiff—a
prig
, as Joley would call him—with no sense of humor, especially about himself, and Tesla was too
alive
somehow, too changeable and complicated for it to make any sense to him.

Of course, Sam was also smart, and good-looking, and he treated Tesla like she was made of glass, which set Finn’s teeth on edge, but maybe Tes liked it. Liked being somebody’s princess or something—and right on the heels of that thought Finn remembered that he himself had been a jerk to Tesla that very afternoon when he’d kissed her after fencing and then walked away from her like it was nothing, tossing off a joke of some kind to cover the way he’d felt, the heat and the light that had engulfed him when he’d touched her, her body caught between his own and the unyielding wall behind her, her mouth anything but unyielding, returning every bit of his own intensity.

He shook off the memory as he walked into the Victorian house and closed the door behind him, but the conviction that it was clearly his own fault if Tesla was interested in someone else remained.

Finn entered the kitchen, unaware that he was scowling. He barely registered the fact that two of his roommates were already there, lights blazing despite the late hour, and remained oblivious, even when Beckett asked him a question—twice.

“What is your problem, Finn?”

Beckett’s tone of complete exasperation finally got through to him.

“Which problem would that be?” Finn asked, though he didn’t really care.

“The one where I talk and you ignore me?” she asked, one eyebrow raised pointedly, a cold slice of veggie pizza poised midway to her mouth.

“This is a phenomenon you’re only now noticing?” Joley asked, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Who’s noticing what?” Bizzy walked into the room as she tried to stifle a yawn.

Becket jumped lightly down from the counter where she’d been sitting, tossed the uneaten pizza back on the plate that had sat beside her, and stretched like a cat, her tiny, cropped T-shirt riding up on her ribs, her drawstring pajama pants barely hanging on. This of course gave everyone in the room ample time to admire her flat stomach and the tight little muscles that ran across her hip bones and disappeared beneath the plaid waistband.

“Becket was noticing that Finn doesn’t really listen when she talks,” said Joley, the oldest in the house except for Jane Doane, their boss and landlord, which meant he felt entitled to be amused by everyone else. “Weren’t you paying attention, Biz? It was scintillating.”

“Old news,” said Bizzy. “Besides, I just came in for a glass of water. I was falling asleep over quadratic equations—which actually
are
scintillating. I’m going to bed.”

“Whatever,” said Beckett. “I’m off, too. Any of you wannabe-agents care to join me at the range in the morning? I was trying to ask Finn if Tesla’s anti-gun weirdness was fading at all. You guys are no competition whatsoever, but I’d love to go head to head with her in marksmanship. Her aim is—well, you know. Annoyingly perfect.”

Finn looked up from the spot on the floor he’d been staring at, a blank look on his face. “What?”

Beckett rolled her eyes and left the room.

“I do see Beckett’s point,” said Joley. “Care to explain?”

Finn looked back at his best friend, then looked at Bizzy, who merely raised her eyebrows and shrugged before turning to get a glass out of the cupboard.

Finn smoothed both hands over his full, long curls, flattening them to his head for just a moment before they sprang back up, straight out from his head and then down toward his shoulders, golden brown and utterly unchecked. He exhaled, long and loud, through his mouth, obviously preparing himself.

“Seriously,” said Joley, not without some alarm. “Best just to come out with it, isn’t it?”

“Okay, in a nutshell, it seems like something happened when I jumped back in time last summer with Tes,” Finn began.

“What do you mean? A lot of things happened when you did that.”

“Yeah, I mean something else, something I’m—something
we’re
—just beginning to realize,” said Finn, indicating Bizzy with a glance. “It seems that there’s a thing called
entanglement
, and that when we time-travelled together, Tes and I became, um, entangled.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,” said Joley.

“Biz, help,” Finn pleaded.

Bizzy finished filling her glass from the tap at the sink, then turned to face them both. “Quantum physics. They’re connected—Finn and Tesla—we think. Tangled up with each other—physically, emotionally. What happens to one is felt or experienced by the other, at the same moment. If we’re right about this, they each feel what the other feels, and then of course feel their own response to that. Which the other one in turn feels. It’s pretty complicated, really. Not to mention awesome.”

“Bloody hell—can that actually happen?” asked Joley.

Bizzy shrugged, then took a long, maddeningly slow drink of water. “Don’t know. It’s a hypothesis.”

“Well, bollocks.” Joley seemed, for once, nearly speechless.

“Exactly,” said Finn.

“And what does Tesla think? You know how she gets—
‘you’re not the boss of me’
and all that. She cannot be happy about this.”

“She doesn’t know yet,” said Finn, and though neither Bizzy nor Joley could pinpoint exactly what had changed, some quality in Finn’s voice was decidedly different.

“You must be joking,” said Joley. “Don’t you think she needs to know—you have to figure out how to reverse it or something, don’t you?”