The Dickens Mirror (61 page)

She glances at the book Lily hugs to her chest like a shield. Nice cover, if a touch freaky: all smoky purples and swirling bright blues, with ill-defined but clearly Victorian-era chimneys, like something straight out of Dickens via
The Twilight Zone
. Set it alongside the first book in the series, and she could see that the designer had echoed those crazy-ass crows in that explosive white glister at the center. A little Jack-the-Ripperish, actually, and not her kind of read; her life’s been enough of a horror show, thanks.

“Sorry,” she says, “I’m not the one who decided to take Kramer’s course.” Though that had been a near miss. When time rolled around to select her junior year classes, her schedule allowed for only one of two electives: animal husbandry, where she’d learn
really useful things like neutering piglets (Holten Prep might be in Madison, but shit, this is Wisconsin), or Kramer’s überserious course on creativity and madness.

Anyway, when Emma saw the choices? These little internal bells went
ding-ding-ding
. Like those red-alert
whoop-whoops
in the old
Star Trek
.

Alarms like that happened rarely, but she always paid attention. The first time, she was twelve and had taken a header over her bike before awakening, splayed like roadkill, to the pop of gravel under a truck’s tires and gulls pinwheeling high above and laughing,
A-hah-hah-hah, look at the stupid huuumannn
. Completely freaked her out—
my face, my face!
—and Jasper, too, who’d just gotten this
feeling
and lit out from his boat for home faster than greased lightning. The craniofacial doc went apeshit, of course:
You have to be careful of your face
. Like,
duh
, yeah, tell me another.

It was later that night, when Jasper checked up on her, that
ding-ding-ding
had gone off, and then this little voice—kind of soft and big-sisterly—suggested that she really did have to suck it up and tell him about down cellar: that inky square that had opened when she touched it. It was something she’d been worrying about all week:
Do I or don’t I?
Like this was a really important moment and her life could go one way or the other, depending—and then that big-sister voice came out of the blue.

So she told him. Jasper listened, then kissed her forehead and told her not to think about it anymore. Oh yeah, right, like
that
would happen. The secret door was an itch in her brain. So, of
course
, she’d gone down cellar two weeks later, just to see.

But the door was gone. Not just painted over.
Gone
. Like someone had … taken it out. She must’ve mashed that cinderblock ten
trillion times before giving up. She didn’t ask, and Jasper never said, although sometimes in dim light and when he tilted his head a certain way, she would think,
Pair of glasses and dark hair …
She could swear she’d seen him somewhere before, and wondered if, maybe, Jasper had been sent special just to watch out for her. Like some kind of guardian angel, or secret protector.

Most recently, there’d been the whole deal with the headaches. Didn’t take her meds. Didn’t like them. Made her all zombified. Whenever a headache came on, though, there’d also be this burn beneath the skull plate between her eyes and a
tug
in her brain, as if she were a baited hook a salmon had decided to test:
Hey, you there?
Like there was something out there, waiting to grab her, take her places. Set her on a different path. It was during those times that she’d think back to down cellar and wonder just who Jasper kept from creeping in or dropping by for a visit.

Anyway, the big-sister voice spoke up again:
Tell your doctor about the headaches
. To her surprise, her doc was cool and all about her not being zombied out. Put her on a different med. The headaches vanished, and so did the burn, those tugs.

So when the alarms went off and that big-sister voice
suggested
she get a little creative about the whole Kramer thing (and no way was she lopping off Wilbur’s balls), she talked her adviser into an independent study centered on the physics of glass, which, considering she gets to spend a ton of time in the hot shop, is sweet. Mainly, it got her out of Kramer’s class, and that was all that mattered.

“You dug your own grave here, girlfriend,” she says now, patting Lily’s shoulder. Everyone in Kramer’s class has to interview someone from the reading list. (Lily had added that they had to
be
living
writers, which Emma’s let slide. Lily’s so clueless sometimes.) “She’s not going to bite you. Just talk to her. Anyway, I got my own crap to do. Come get me in the science section when you’re done.”

The store shelves science, philosophy, and poetry in the very back, where virtually no one visits—which is exactly why she loves it. Nice cushy leather chairs. Plenty of legroom, with enough space between standing shelves to sprawl on the carpet if she wants. Finger-walking spines, a title catches her eye:
Glass of the Alchemists
. Book’s huge, one of those coffee table things, but it’s put out by the Corning Museum people, who know their stuff. Hefting the book under an arm, she heads down the aisle for what she thinks of as
her
spot: right corner, round table, faux Tiffany lamp, deeply cushioned red-leather wingback with an ottoman. But as she rounds a standing shelf, she pulls up short. Thinks, disgusted:
Shit
.

And then gets another, better look and thinks, kind of breathless:
Holy shit
.

He’s heard her coming, because he looks up from what he’s been reading, a question in his dark blue eyes. “Hey.” Not an invitation but not a
get lost
either. Nice voice, baritone, smooth. Like good chocolate you’ve let melt in your mouth.

“Hi.”
Moron
. She teeters, uncertain if she should turn back or take that empty wingback.

“Oh, hey, sorry.” He’s stacked books on the table between the two chairs and now he moves his closer. “Sometimes I spread out. There’s plenty of room, you want.”

Okay, so he’s not a creep. Her gaze sweeps his stack, though she only recognizes one book because she’s just seen it.
Probably
waiting for that writer to finish up with the questions
. Or maybe he doesn’t like crowds either and will wander back when the signing line’s winding down. She watches him through her lashes as she lays the glass book on an ottoman. In the soft light of the faux Tiffany, his hair is military-short but still shimmers an iridescent purplish-black, like the velvety wing of a red-spotted purple butterfly. His shoulders are very broad and muscular. Yet when he turns a page, he does it with long, delicate fingers. Maybe … a senior? She’s never seen him at Holten. Could be he’s in college or something. ROTC, maybe. That makes sense.

“It’s Plath”—and, startled, she looks up to find his eyes on hers. “Not her poetry, though I really like that, too.”

“Oh.” A blush creeps up her neck. Shit, this is so meet-cute, it ought to be in a book. This is her cue to ask him more, discover how sensitive he is, blah, blah. In ten minutes, he’ll offer to buy her coffee, and by that evening, they’re having a food fight with a tub of popcorn before they collapse, giggling, on a deep shag carpet and her shirt’s rucked up and then he slips his hand under …

She veers away. “I don’t know much poetry.”
Okaaay, conversation killer right there; you go, girl
.

He shrugs. “I do, but I’m not sure I would’ve looked at this either, except the writer back there? Mentioned Plath a couple times, said she’d read a bunch of Plath’s poetry and her diaries, and one of the characters gets all hung up on
The Bell Jar
, so …” Handing over the book he’s been reading—
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
—he opens to a page and points. “I got curious.”

She reads. It’s a passage about remembering every moment—every
now
is how Plath puts it. Recalling what the writer said about timelines and multiverses, she thinks:
Hunh
. “All that talk
about
nows
? Bet your writer knows Barbour, too.”

“Who?”

“Julian Barbour. He’s this theoretical physicist?” Flipping open her backpack, she tugs out a book.

Eyebrows arched, he scans the title. “
The End of Time
?”

She nods. “Basically, what he’s saying is what Plath does, and I think it’s what this writer’s getting at. For Barbour, every moment is its own
Now
and exists forever. The only reason we even dreamt up something like time is because we notice there’s a difference between one
Now
—one moment—and the next. It’s like, uh, you know … when you were a kid and got those books where that drawing of a horse is just a little bit different than the one before?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “Flip ’em really fast and it looks like the horse is galloping.”

“Exactly. But it’s an illusion. We only think there’s motion because our brain processes it that way.” She taps Barbour’s book. “Same concept. There’s no time. There’s only this
Now
and the next
Now
and the next, except they all kind of happen at once.”

“Well …” He opens to the page he’s been reading. “To me, Plath is more about living in the moment. She was writing about how
aware
she was of every second and how that completely freaked her out, especially since each was precious, singular. Like you always have to be aware of the fact that the end might be just around the corner. You know, walk out of this shop, get hit by a bus … it’s over. Life turns on a dime. So you can’t waste a single second or let one go by without realizing just how remarkable this—all of life—is.” His eyes play over the shop, the books, and then drift back to her face. “When the
Now
is gone, it’s gone, and no getting it back, no do-overs or second
chances. And what if you let pass the one
Now
that was so special, you’ll never see its like again? Where your life could go one way or another, only your chance slipped past because you weren’t paying attention?”

For some reason, tears sting the backs of her eyes.
Don’t cry, you nut. What is there to cry about?
She has to swallow around a sudden knot. “That’s so sad. It sounds … final.”

“Yeah.” His face is still, and his eyes shine. A moment passes, and then he says, “My unit’s shipping out in ten days. Afghanistan? They say advisory role and training and support, but we’ll be armed and on patrol with the ANA—Afghan National Army. We’ll get shot for sure. So I think a lot about
what if
. You know, not making it back. Thing about this
Dickens Mirror
thing that lady wrote? Friend of mine read it and says I’m in it, and so is my brother and his girlfriend. You know, our names? Except, in the book, we’re all dead. We’re ghosts.”

She thinks back to the writer:
Or I’m just messing with your head
. At that, she feels an eerie, almost surreal sensation that is not a tug but breathless and expectant all the same. As if this moment is … a pivot, a branch-point in time: one Emma goes this way, another goes that, still a third does something different, and on into infinity.

“Kind of freaked me out,” he says. “Made me think where I’m headed and how I might not make it back.” After another, longer pause, an edge of scarlet bleeds over his jaw. “That wasn’t a pickup line.”

“I know that.” She slicks her lips. “My friend said I’m in the book, too. I mean, not … not”—she stumbles a little—“you know, a character based on me or anything, or even, you know, me.”
God, babble much?
“That would be impossible, right?”

“Not if you believe the book.”

“Well … but it’s a
book
. It’s made up.”

“But I think that’s her point. We could be book-people hanging out in the real world, or this could all be something one or both of us wrote ourselves. Or we’re real people visiting a book-world, or we live in a
Now
, an alternate timeline that’s a near double for another. In the end, how would you know?”

“You would just
have
to. I mean, all we’ve got are our perceptions to tell us what’s real.”

“Dreams feel real when you’re in them.”

She could’ve sworn that was her thought. Or was it from a movie? She can’t recall.

“So, since you’re in this lady’s book, too … I mean, your name …” When his mouth quirks, she sees a dimple in the left corner. “Does that ever bother you?” he asks. “When writers do that?”

“Oh yeah.” She tells him about Jane Austen, but now she knows: she is
so
never reading this
Dickens Mirror
crap, even if they make a movie out of it. “So what happens to them?”

“Dunno.” His muscular shoulders rise and fall. “I haven’t read it. I might not, actually. I don’t know if I want to find out what happens to that guy with my name.”

“So why are you here? Why bother getting the book, or having her sign it?”

“Just felt …” He shakes his head. “Like this was where I was supposed to be, right now.” He lets out a little laugh. “In this
Now
, I guess. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“Oh.” She knows she could end this right here. Settle back. Some desultory chitchat. For God’s sake, he’s a soldier and he’s leaving the
country
. She’s got a test to study for.

But at that moment, there is that tiny mental
ding
. Not an alarm, but it does get her attention, and then the big-sister voice whispers a suggestion.

“Look,” she says, “you want to get a coffee? We can hang at the café and you can get your book signed. I have a friend up there anyway.” She adds, quickly, “This isn’t a meet-cute, okay? I’d rather take out my tonsils with a fork.”

“Me too,” he says, and does her the favor of not smiling.

They’ll have coffee. He’ll get his book signed. The author is actually an interesting lady. Even spent time in the military, so the writer and he hit it off. The writer tells him to be safe, keep in touch if he wants. She’s also a little goofy, but Emma knows a couple glass artists with some screws that need tightening. (When Lily spots him, she will do the whole eyebrow
he-is-so-HOT
thing, which Emma will pray he doesn’t see, and he doesn’t seem to—or, if he does, won’t let on.)