Schasm (Schasm Series) (29 page)

“Where are you, honey?” she asks. She sounds worried.

“Celia?” I say, my voice starting to tremble. She doesn’t respond, either. Why can’t she see or hear me? Why can’t Alex?

What the hell have I done to myself…to us all?

All around the room, little colorful spots spring from the cracks growing in the walls, the floors…the furniture. My surroundings turn from color to black and I’m overcome by the dizziness that has become far too familiar.

Light explodes in my eyes, and I’m back.

They’re still in the house with me.

Celia is startled now. “Oh!” she shrieks. “Chloe… it’s you!” She hugs me. “When did you get here? I’m so worried about Alex. Have you heard anything from him?”

“You can see me?” I’m so confused.

“Of course I can see you.” She looks confused, too. “Did Alex come with you?” Worry on her face is aging her, making her look more like the Celia I saw at the institution.

“He’s right here,” I say, pointing to the mindless person sitting on the couch. “Can’t you see him?”

She looks…really tries to see what I’m pointing out. She sees nothing. “No, Chloe, I can’t.” Her face falls.

I exhale heavily, on the verge of tears. I tried to gain greater control, and instead I lost more of it. “I have no idea what’s going on, Celia. I’ve been here for a few minutes, but a minute ago you couldn’t see
me
either,” I say.

“Where were you?”

I don’t know how much to tell her. “Paris…we drifted back together.”

Drifted back together.

Oh no…

Alex looks toward me as if he recognizes me…finally. He walks over, wraps his arms around my neck and gives me a firm hug and a kiss on the cheek. But then he turns around and sits down on the couch again.

My heart is pounding. I don’t get it. “Alex?” I yell with excitement.

“Chloe,” Celia says. “Alex isn’t here, honey.”

“But you saw him…just a minute ago,” I say.

“No…I didn’t.”

The line between my realities has become smudged.

A noise startles me. My head whips around to see a familiar shadow walking past the opening of the room. I run in that direction.

“What is it, Chloe?” Celia asks me.

“Mother?”

Every piece of my split life is now colliding into each other like ships in a tidal wave.

I have to get out of this.

I close my eyes and force the drift. When I open them again, I’m standing in the same spot. I walk back into the living room and still see Alex sitting unresponsive on the couch. “Celia, can you see me now?” She stares at the wall with her lost eyes. She isn’t responding to me…I don’t know that I’ve come back to the reality I just left.

I must be drifting from one reality to another, and Alex isn’t responsive in either.

“Dammit.” I hear Alex’s voice shouting from his bedroom.

I run down the hall. “Alex?” I say.

Another Alex?

“I have to find it…where the hell is it?” He’s rummaging through his closet.

“What are you looking for?” I ask. He doesn’t respond. “Alex?” I say again.

Nothing. I must be in a drift separate from everyone.

He pulls out a small metal box with a black lock on the top. He turns the knob in a few different directions until the lid pops open. There are only a few items in the box. He stares at the first one and says, “I’m so sorry, Chloe. I’ll fix this so we’ll always be happy, just like we are here.” My heart breaks.

It’s the picture I found in my mother’s box.

“You were the boy with the red hat…” The boy at the school. The drawing. The photo.

My best friend.

He’s always been here, in one form or another.

He gently places the photo back down into the box. His blue eyes glisten. He pulls out a small, sealed yellow envelope. He stares at it as if he could see right through it, then stuffs it into his pocket.

I’m starting to feel suffocated within my own mind. My chest is starting to feel the familiar swelling of pain that I get when I find myself missing from Alex’s world. I can’t deal with the schism.

My eyes are starting to feel heavy, and my head aches. I’m exhausted from trying to comprehend the multiple different realities I’m drifting between. I lie down on Alex’s bed.

It’s as close as I can get to him.

I fall into a deep sleep, faster than normal. My dreams pull in Alex’s smile and laughter as he told me about our divide, our
schasm
.

We should have just stayed in Paris.

My eyes open again; the sun is now setting outside. I pull myself off of the bed that smells like soap and coconut. Like Alex. His scent makes my heart throb again. I return to the living room. The house sounds even more empty and hollow than it did before I fell asleep. I’m more alone than I was at the institution. Living alone, not knowing where I belong, where I am…I might as well be locked in that padded room. Why can’t I just be happy again?

Why can’t I be whole?

I need to go back to…myself, I think.

In the institution.

I wait for Celia to return from wherever she’s gone. I should at least say good-bye to her.

Hours pass, but there is still no sign of her. Now that the sun is long gone, I’m sitting in the dark next to Alex’s mindless body. All I can do is sit and stare at the wall, wondering what mechanical failure happened within our brains to cause this. The emotion of it all is too much. I cry as hard as I’ve ever cried, but the pain doesn’t leave.

My mother was right.

I’m insane.

I feel a hand cover mine. Alex is now watching me. He grips my hand so tight that it causes me to gasp from the surprising pain. He takes his other hand and wipes the tears off of my cheeks. His eyes still show nothing.

I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him with all of the strength I have left in my body. At least one of my Alex’s is still with me. He doesn’t fight me, and I take the opportunity to hold on to him for as long as I can. I knew this wouldn’t last long. I feel his hands shove me away.

His eyes search mine. His movements are abrupt as he leans back into me. My whole head is within his two hands, and his thumbs are pressing into my cheeks as if he were hanging off of a ledge. His lips part mine with a fierceness he’s never shown.

I back away, confused and afraid. His eyes are surprised…and sort of happy. Maybe he is in there somewhere after all.

Is this my Alex?

I lay my head on his shoulder, close my eyes and melt into his body. For this one second, I can pretend that everything is fine.

A moment later, I realize just how not fine it actually is.

As I open my eyes, I see a girl on the other end of the couch with no life behind her eyes, staring through the wall in front of her.

She is me. In a way, at least.

This is the first out-of-body, out-of-mind experience I’ve had since I was unconscious in a coma. I don’t like this feeling.

“Chloe, what was just going on in here?” A voice says from a dark corner of the room. It’s Alex’s voice. Startled, I release my grip from around the Alex I’m sitting with.

I trample over to him and grab his arms. “Alex, can you hear me?”

“I can, yes. Thank God,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.

“I think something bad happened to both of us. I think I might have made things worse than they already were. I didn’t even know it was possible,” I say.

He pulls his arms back to his side. “Yeah…I’d agree.”

“Do you think we can get out of this?” I feel the panic return at full speed.

“I have no idea. This is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.” He looks sad and lost.

I turn away from the other Chloe. “I can’t sit in here looking at our two mindless twins on the couch. It’s freaking me out.”

“You have a duplicate here too?” he asks, looking over to the couch. “Why can’t I see the
other
you?” he asks with a puzzled look.

“I don’t know. None of this makes any sense.”

He shakes his head. “Chloe, I think we are in trouble.”

“Well, we can’t remain like this forever.
Can we?”
I ask as if he’d have the answer, which I know he doesn’t.

He shrugs. “I don’t know if we have a choice.”

There’s an awkward silence between us. I don’t think either of us wants to face reality at the moment…whatever “reality” means anymore.

I reach for his hand, and I try to speak without breaking down. “Take me to the ocean?” I ask, looking for any excuse to get away from the two siting on the couch.

He looks surprised for a second. Then he smiles and shakes my fingers. “Sure. Let’s take a walk.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

TAKEN

“WELL, AT LEAST I WON’T END UP
back in the catacombs again,” I say, trying to make light of this horrible situation.

“You think,” he replies.

I slug his shoulder. “You know,” I say, realizing I never shared this with him, “when I was putting the locket back, I managed to pry it open.” His eyebrows scrunch at that, but I smile. “I couldn’t help myself. I just needed to see what was inside…to know why it was so important.”

“What was in there?”

“A picture of people I only sort of recognize,” I tell him.

He nods. “I guess none of it matters anymore, does it? We’re just kind of hopping through existences.”

The thought of us skipping around and not finding each other again practically kills me. “What if…” I halt.

“What if what?” he asks.

“What if, when we see each other like this and we each know of the other’s existence…what if we have a code word?” He doesn’t seem to get it. “What if we signal each other that we’re back in ‘this’ reality, so we’ll know we’re both here together, not with our counterparts instead?”

He smiles. His blue eyes fill with happiness. “Paris,” he says.

“Paris,” I repeat.

“That’s our word: Paris.”

“I love it.” I bring my hand up to his lips. “And I love that city, much more with you as my tour guide.” I nudge him with my shoulder.

“What was your favorite part?” he asks, clenching his hand around mine.

I stop walking again and step in front of him to get in his way. “This.” I clutch his shirt in my fist and pull him into me. He leans his head down, and I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling his face in to meet mine. I press my lips to his and kiss him until my knees give out. He lifts me up with ease, and I wrap my legs around his midsection, forgetting that we’re in the middle of the beach. I’m thankful it’s dark.

I’m breathless and weak as Alex places me back on my feet “Did I take your breath away?” I ask.

His eyes look soft. “You always have.”

Before I can add to the moment, he jerks backwards and turns around looking very troubled. He grabs my hand, and pulls us back to his house. “We need to go home.”

“Is everything okay?” I ask. “You seem startled.” I almost trip over the sidewalk.

“I…I just have a weird feeling.” His voice is quivering.

We reach his driveway, and he races ahead to his front door. “I knew it,” he yells.

I’m running up his driveway to see what could have happened “Alex, what happened? Are you okay?” I ask, trying to catch my breath.

“I’m gone, Chloe.” He points to the couch. “I’m gone. Do you have any idea how bad loose ends are?”

“I…I don’t, no.”

“Are you gone, too?” he asks, sounding frantic.

I look across the room. “Yes,” I say. “I’m gone too. Alex.”

“Where did we go?” I have no answer, but I know I have to find out.

“I need to go find us,” I tell him.

He doesn’t argue. None of this makes sense anymore, so what would be the point in not trying to figure at least some of it out? “How will you do it?”

“I’ll drift…focus on us. If I don’t end up back here, I’ll be wherever we…they…are. If I can reconnect with the part of me I saw on the couch, I should be able to find the other you.”

He sighs. “Okay, then.”

I sit down on the couch and stare across the room at the white wall. I focus on every one of my physical attributes that I can think of. I feel a sense of darkness approaching.

Leaving myself behind, in search of me again…

My eyes open. I glance down and find my wrists are bound with a thick rope. I try to pull them loose, but the knots pull tighter. My skin pinches between the restraints.

I feel another pain on my arm. I see a large bruise in the shape of a hand, confirming that I’m in trouble. My eyes shift upward to see the Alex that I was on the couch with just an hour before, glaring at me with blazing eyes and dilated pupils. He looks crazed.

I attempt to stand up so I can get a better look around, but I’m knocked right back down by a strong blast of wind. My arm hurts. I find a hand-shaped bruise on my skin.

We’re on a boat, and the water is choppy. I try to stand up again, but Alex grabs my arm, his hand over the bruise, and pulls me back down to the bench.

“Alex, what are you doing?” I have no idea who this version of him is, or what he’s capable of.

He places his hands around my bound hands and lifts them up to place them against his chest.
What is he doing?
I’ve seen enough, and I need to get back to let the
normal
Alex know what’s going on.

I clench my eyes shut, trying to drift again, to escape. When my eyes open again, this version of the man I love is squeezing my arm even tighter. I yank my hands out of his grip and kick him to the ground. “Alex, it’s me…it’s Chloe.” I have to try to get through to him.

It does no good.

I close my eyes again and count backward while envisioning
myself
again. I’m back on the floor in Alex’s living room. I look up and find Alex sitting next to me, curled over and clutching his head between his hands.

I reach over and put my hand on his back. “Alex, are you okay?”

He looks up with fear and worry in his eyes. “You’ve been gone so long…too long.” It was seconds for me, who knows how long for him. “It’s bad, isn’t it? I can feel it. He did something to you, didn’t he?”