The Love That Split the World (19 page)

“Are you going to keep playing?”

He shakes his head then tips it back to look up at the stars. “Nah.”

“What—why not?”

“Where would I play, Natalie? You think the tire shop has a league?”

“Didn’t anyone scout you?” I ask. He’s silent for a beat. “They did, didn’t they?”

He takes a deep breath, and his eyes fall down to me. “I don’t wanna talk about football.”

I struggle for a moment, caught between my need to understand him and my desire to clear away that look in his eyes. “Okay,” I say.

He leans over to kiss me, but before he can, someone shoves him hard from behind. He drops forward into the pool, surprised shrieks rising up all around the patio as water splashes up onto legs and feet. I look back in time to see Rachel smugly storming away, and when I turn back to Beau, he’s laughing in disbelief, pushing his wet hair back and wading toward me. I can’t help laughing too as I grab the sides of his dripping face.

“You think that’s funny, Natalie Cleary?” he says, smiling.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, but I can’t stop laughing. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah, I can tell you feel real bad.”

“I do. I feel terrible.”

“Me too.” He slips his arms around my waist and kisses me, then pulls me off the ledge and into the heated water, my dress trying to rise around my thighs and sandals trying to swim clear of my feet.

“Beau,”
I chastise him halfheartedly. More screams erupt as Derek and Luke and Lauren Peterson jump into the pool around us. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” Beau parrots. I splash him and he grabs my arms, pins them to my sides, and kisses me, my stomach
fluttering. He eases back enough to look into my eyes. “Do you forgive me?”

I’m about to answer when I see Matt over Beau’s shoulder. He’s standing at the edge of the patio staring at me, slack-jawed, drunk, and devastated. Not Beau’s Matt.

My Matt. I’m sure of it.

“I need to talk to you,” he shouts over the noise.

Everything’s exactly as it was a second and ago, and yet completely different. The dance team are gathered on the chaise lounges, Rachel among them as if she never left, her hair its usual glossy brown. We’re back in my world now.

Beau turns to look at Matt and must make the same realization because he doesn’t say anything. He looks back to me. “I’ll just be a minute,” I tell him, surprising myself with my decision.

He nods once. I make my way to the steps and climb out of the pool, dripping and shivering in the slight hint of breeze. Matt takes off toward the driveway without a word, and I follow him, my face hot from embarrassment and anxiety.

The Dillhorns’ floodlights are on out front, illuminating the elaborate planter-covered mound in the center of the grandiose driveway. Matt stalks halfway to the street before he turns back to me. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, and he angrily spins away again. When he faces me again, his eyes are watery, and my chest clenches with guilt. “Why are you doing this?” he says.

I take a deep breath and try to stay calm, unemotional. “Doing what?”

He thrusts an arm out in the direction of the backyard. “Who is that guy? Why would you bring him here, when you
knew I was going to be here? Why would you—” He cuts himself off and takes a few more stumbling steps down the slope toward his car.

“I thought you were going to stop drinking,” I say quietly.

“I thought you loved me,” he throws back.

“Really?” I shout. “Did you also think
you
loved
me
?”

“I
do
love you,” he growls. “I love you, and you’re ruining my life. You threw me out like trash, and I still don’t even know why. Do
you
even know why? Because one day you loved me, and the next you didn’t want me anymore, and you’ve
never
given me a straight answer why. And you know the worst part? I’ve
still
loved you this whole time, even though it’s killing me, and then you show up here with some random guy and kiss him right in front of me.”

“Matt, please,” I sob, lunging for his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were going to be here, I swear. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“It’s my best friend’s party!”

“I know, but—”

“Stop!”
he yells, shaking me off. “You were all I wanted. You’re all I’ve
ever
wanted, and I’m nothing to you.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true.” The tears are breaking loose harder, faster, warping my voice worse with each syllable. “I love you, Matt. You know I love you.”

“I don’t know that,” he says, shaking his head. He turns and heads for his car, throwing the door open.

I chase after him. “Matt, I’ll leave. You shouldn’t drive right now.”

I almost scream when he grabs my upper arms and shoves me
against the side of the car. “Stop pretending you care what I do.”

“You don’t have to leave,” I say, breathless, trying to touch his shoulders, to calm him, though he keeps knocking my hands away. “I’ll go. I’ll leave. I’m sorry.”

His fingers dig in deeper, and his eyes are unfocused as he slams my back against the car door again. “How could you do this to me?” he shouts. “Tell me why you ruined us.”

“Matt, please.” His hands are shaking, or I’m shaking, or both, and tears blur my vision. “You’re hurting me.”

“Tell me
why
.” He slams me backward again. Hard, too hard. Stars swirl behind my eyelids. I’m not hurt, but I’m shocked, scared, shivering madly. His mouth is an inch from mine, and I’m terrified he might try to kiss me, when suddenly someone rips him backward into the street.

He staggers to gain his balance and moves toward Beau, who throws a punch to Matt’s cheek and sends him reeling back again. Next thing I know, there’s an all-out brawl in the middle of the street, and kids come running down the side of the lawn to see.
“Stop!”
I shriek, but they ignore me.

Beau has his arms locked around Matt’s neck, and then he’s kneeing him in the stomach. I try to haul Beau off Matt, screaming all the time. “Beau,
stop
,” I’m sobbing over and over again. Matt trips backward and lands on the ground, breathing hard as Beau advances on him.
“Beau,”
I plead.

He stops, turns to face me, and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

Matt scrambles up, blood dripping from his lips and the split across his check, and stumbles toward his car. The whole time he’s staring at me, furious, shaking his head. He gets in his
car and pulls away, his tires squealing.

I don’t know how long I stand there. I don’t know which version I’m in anymore. Does it even matter?

I finally turn to head back, finding Beau and a hushed crowd of my classmates watching me.

“Take me home.”

Beau walks over to his truck and gets in without a word. I follow, my legs wobbling like Jell-O in an earthquake and my eyes desperately avoiding everyone staring after us as we back down the driveway.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.

“Yes, I did.” His voice is low and he’s driving fast, won’t look at me.

“You should’ve stayed out of it.” He laughs harshly. “I’m serious, Beau. You really hurt him.”

He shakes his head. “You mean like he was gonna do to you?”

“He wouldn’t have hurt me,” I insist, though I’m still shaking, still seeing the unfocused, almost bloodthirsty look in Matt’s eye.

“Natalie, you really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get
what
?”

“Forget it,” he says. Neither of us speaks for the rest of the drive, and when we pull up in front of my house, he turns the car off, and we continue to sit in silence. Finally, Beau speaks, without looking up from the steering wheel. “I may drink too much and get into fights now and then, but I would
never
hurt you, or anyone else I care about. You don’t deserve that. No one does. You shouldn’t be scared of someone you love, Natalie.”

“I have to go.” I get out of the car and run inside before he can see the tears really start to fall.

I wake up in the middle of the night again, and this time I know right away: I’m not alone. My eyes focus on the rocking chair.

Grandmother is there, but for once she’s wearing different clothes: an open pink robe over a faded blue nightgown. Her skin is less wrinkled, her hair swept into a neat bun.

“Grandmother,” I say, sitting up.

She seems blind, the way her eyes move across the room. “Don’t be afraid, Natalie,” she says, and then she’s gone.

“Grandmother,” I say into the night. “Grandmother.”

No response. I try to think about the song Beau played in the band room that night, the feeling it gave me. I try to tune in to my own anxiety. That part’s easy—there’s a lump in my chest and a weight in my stomach, that indescribable feeling that something’s wrong.

I hear Gus whining at the door. I get out of bed to let him into the hall, and he trots right to the stairs, thumping clumsily down to the foyer. A light from down in the kitchen reaches the fringes of the stairs, and hushed voices drift along it.

I creep down the steps and follow the hallway to the kitchen. Mom and Dad are sitting at the table across from one another, and when Mom notices me standing in the doorway I see that her eyes are red and puffy. Dad turns around and looks at me, revealing his own sunken and dark gaze. “Hey, sugar cube,” he says softly.

“What’s wrong?”

They exchange a look and Mom starts to cry, covering her mouth with her thin hand. Dad tips his head toward the yellow wooden chair beside him, but I can’t move. My feet weigh a thousand pounds, and my heartrate’s like I’m in the middle of a sprint. “Dad?” I urge, my voice little more than a squeak.

He sighs and stands, setting a hand on Mom’s shoulder as her slim frame shakes with silent tears. “Honey, he’s alive,” Dad starts, “but Matt Kincaid’s been in a car accident.”

20

When we get to the hospital waiting room, everything happens at once. Joyce Kincaid grabs me in a hug and cries into my hair. Raymond shakes Dad’s hand but can’t say a word. But the worst thing, the hardest thing, is the drop in my stomach, the flicker in the blue chair in the corner, under the mounted TV.

The flicker during which, for a split second, I see Beau, sitting hunched over his knees, his hands pressed together and resting against his mouth, his eyes on the gray speckled floor. Sitting a few seats away from him are different versions of Joyce and Raymond, both silent. Joyce looks over at Beau, and I swear her lip curls hatefully in blame.

They don’t see me, but I see them over my Joyce’s shoulder as she death-grips me and sobs beside my ear.

I see them, and I know what it means. Both Matts are here.

Oh my God.

The doctor comes through the swinging gray doors. He’s a young, skinny blond guy with wire-frame glasses and a too-big white jacket.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid, would you come with me?” he says. His expression is grave, devastating, and he barely looks away from the wall he’s chosen to focus on. Joyce breaks down further, and Mom gently rubs her back.

“Come on, Joyce,” Raymond whispers as he tries to free his wife from my arms. He leads her closer to those gray doors, toward bad news, and I take a few steps after them.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” the doctor says to me. “Family only.”

“She can come,” Joyce says. “She’s Matty’s girlfriend. She can come.”

I don’t correct her, but my whole body pinches at the
mistake. The doctor nods and takes us inside. I don’t catch most of his words over the noise in my brain, the two sides of me screaming two different versions of the same story.

He was drunk. He wouldn’t listen. There was nothing you could do. He’ll be fine.

You let him drive away. You could’ve called the cops. He’s going to die. He’s going to die twice over, and you ruined his life.

Suddenly I become aware of Joyce’s escalated whimpers beside me, and I return to the sound of the doctor’s falsely calm voice. “. . . induced a coma,” he’s saying. “We’ll need to operate, and then we’ll have to let the swelling go down. It’s possible he’ll suffer from brain damage, but we can’t say how severe.”

“Possible,”
Raymond repeats as he rubs Joyce’s shoulders. “
Possible
, Joyce, not
absolute
.”

She’s shaking her head, her eyes closed tight against her tears, her ears closed off from his words, and I can’t feel my legs.

Can’t feel my legs, or my heart, only the hollow in my stomach.

I’m backing away, but it’s like someone else is controlling my body with a remote. I don’t mean to leave them, but I do. I turn. I run.

I am running away.

I’m running through the horrible gray doors back into the horrible blue-gray waiting room, where everything’s different—the Other Joyce and Raymond sitting somberly in their chairs, far away from Beau, my own parents gone. I keep running.

I run out of the hospital, and then the hospital’s gone. The busy intersection of two highways gone. The Steak ’n Shake, the Christmas Tree Shop, the Check-into-Cash, gone. Everything gone but the trees and rolling blue-green hills, which crash like waves under my feet, threatening to pull me under.

But they can’t,
I think.

As long as I keep moving, they can’t pull me under.

And I run. I run hard, feeling flecks of moisture—not-quite rain—dampen my skin.

Grandmother, where are you?

I’m afraid.

Help me.

Help me.

“Please.” The word tears out of me, wrenched sideways and tattered to shreds by my gasping lungs.
“PLEASE!”
I scream.

A bright white light explodes in front of me and, for a split second, I think,
she’s coming for me. She’ll pull me out of this. I’ll leave it all behind.

In the next instant, my feet make sense of an abrupt change in the earth’s texture, from soft and malleable to stiff and flat. The sounds of hooting howls and singing crickets morph into a car laying on its horn, and the aroma of dewy night is now the stench of burning rubber. I’m in the middle of the road. There’s a car just yards away from me, barreling toward me too fast to stop.

For some reason, in that moment, the only thing that occurs to me to do is to cover my eyes. I throw my forearm up to block the screaming headlights when something collides with me, throws me sideways, and the car goes speeding past.

I spin back and see Beau, standing and staring at me as he gasps for breath. The rest of the world has already vanished again, leaving us alone in a clearing in the woods. For a while, we both just stand there, breathing hard.

Finally, reality overtakes me, makes me lose my balance. “They put him in a coma,” I say, my voice throttled. “He might have brain damage.”

Beau doesn’t budge, doesn’t blink. My knees give out. I’m falling to the ground, sobbing, and Beau catches me around the middle as a wail passes through me. He roughly brushes my hair out of my face over and over again, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t see anything. I can’t even force my eyes open.

“It’s my fault,” I sob, and Beau holds me tighter, pushing his forehead against mine, his hands pulling at the hair against my neck. “It’s my fault.”

“No,” he says. “No.” His mouth finds mine, hot and wet with tears, and with every kiss, it’s like my pain is flooding through me to him, and there’s an endless supply waiting to fill up the space.

I take a breath and open my eyes. “Why did it happen in both worlds?”

Beau shakes his head and pulls me close again.

“I can’t do this.” It hurts to say. It hurts to look at Beau, to want him and know I’ll never look at him again without remembering what happened to Matt. “I can’t do this.”

Beau stares into my eyes, deep lines creasing his brows.

“I need to find Grandmother,” I say. “I need your help.”
I need you
.

“We’ll find her.”

She can fix this.

She’ll tell me what to do.

I’ll save him.

Two weeks until I leave.

Six weeks until the end.

She can fix this.

The nightmare plagues me all night, only this time Matt’s there instead of Mom. And we aren’t laughing; we’re arguing, fighting, screaming at one another when the car jerks sideways, dives down into the creek. It starts to fill with blood, and I turn to find a deep gash down the center of his head. I press my hands to the wound, but the blood spills through my fingers and it burns my skin where it touches until my whole body is on fire, burning with the heat of his blood.

It’s my fault.

A boom of thunder wakes me up. I sit up, sheets soaked through with sweat, and see Gus’s snout hovering at eye level.
His front paws are on the bed beside me, back legs on the floor, and he’s whining anxiously, shaking with each ferocious crack in the sky. I bury my face in the thick fur of his neck and try to soothe him, though I myself feel terrified.

“Sorry, Gus,” I whisper, pushing him aside and getting out of bed. I dig through my drawers for some gym clothes and grab my running shoes from the closet. I dress quickly and sneak downstairs to the key dish in the kitchen, sorting through the coins and buttons and other junk for Mom’s car keys. I scribble a note for her and leave it on the island then silently let myself out onto the porch. The rain and thunder have moved off by now, leaving behind a greenish tint to the sky.

I drive Mom’s car to the school, parking behind the field house and staring at my phone in the cup holder for a long moment. There’s something I’ve needed to do, and after last night, I know I can’t put it off any longer. I grab my phone, scroll to Dr. Langdon’s name, and press
SEND
before I can chicken out.

“Hello?” she answers groggily on the second ring, and I almost hang up. Despite her success, I never particularly liked Dr. Langdon. Quiet and stony faced, she never betrayed the slightest emotional reaction to anything I said, nothing like Alice.

“Hello?” she says again, and I clear my throat loudly, but not on purpose. “Who’s there?”

She sighs, and I know she’s about to hang up, so I blurt out, “Have you been checking the oven?”

There’s a beat of silence before she coolly says, “Natalie?”

“She was right,” I stammer. “Grandmother came back and she told me something was going to happen, and it did, and you really need to be careful.”

Again, silence fills the line. Dr. Langdon never speaks without thinking, never reacts, always plans. “Where are you, Natalie? Are you safe? You’ve made so much progress, and you musn’t—”

“I’m fine,” I interrupt. “You’re the one who’s in trouble, and she’s right. I swear she’s right. So think I’m crazy if you want, but you need to check your oven and your stove and anything else hot in your house, okay?”

“What else did your grandmother say, Natalie? Did she tell you to do something?”

“She’s not my grandmother. Check the oven,” I snap and hang up, tossing my phone hard against the passenger seat. I get out of the car and run to the chain-link fence, pulling myself up it just as Beau and I did on the night of Matt’s party.

I don’t bother stretching. It’s so hot and humid that my muscles are already warm, my skin already slippery with a sheen of sweat. I start at a jog around the asphalt track, and quickly my mind slips into a meditative space I seldom find outside of physical work.

I count my laps—one, two, three, four—until I lose track of distance and time entirely. There’s no end. There’s no point at which I know to stop. It’s an eternal run, with no beginning point for each new lap. Soon it’s as if my whole life has been this run, and I start to feel it through my middle: a quivering veil, like my stomach’s on stage and the curtain’s about to drop.

I keep running, and in my mind, I know I’m breaking right through the veil. The world falls away. For the first time since my Opening, the world falls away, and I know I’m the one who made it happen. The earth is no longer flat and paved under my feet. The damp metal bleachers, the rusty chain-link fence, the
orange and black press box and the unlit floodlights and the goalposts are all gone.

They’re still here, but not
now
. They blip back into view, and I try to move myself backward again, seeking out that roller-coaster sensation in my stomach. But though I have a sense that the veil is trembling, I can’t do it. I can’t move time.

I stop running and bend over, hands resting on my knees, as I try to slow my breathing.

Across the field, someone’s descending the bleachers: a waify blond in shorts and a T-shirt. She steps onto the track and waves but doesn’t say anything. Megan. Not my Megan, but Megan all the same. She begins to make her way around the track at a steady pace, and I start running again too. We jog at opposite ends of the track, falling into sync, never gaining on one another, like two planets in orbit.

I lose track of time again, and it’s only when Megan slows down and heads toward the bottom row of bleachers to sit that I resurface from the depths of my mind. The sun is peeking up, painting the sky a fiery orange.

I finish my lap at a walk and go to sit beside her, wishing she were my best friend. We sit for a while in silence, watching the sunrise. In silence, I can at least pretend I’m with my best friend.

She
is
my best friend.

“I’m sorry,” I say suddenly. “About Matt.”

She forces a smile but doesn’t look at me. “Yeah, me too.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“How would
you
know?”

“I guess I don’t know. But I think it.”

She wipes at her tears with the back of her hand. “Me
too.” She’s silent for a couple of minutes, and I think she’s done talking and wants to be alone, but then she goes on. “I’ve been in love with him since I was ten.”

“What?”
I say, shocked. Is it possible I’d completely missed that in my Megan? When we were ten, I’d hardly given Matt a second thought, but the two of them had been friends for a couple of years already. “Seriously?”

“There’s this kid we went to elementary school with, Cameron,” Megan says. “He was sort of a redneck, kind of poor and usually dirty. We had this glider thing on our playground, and one day Cameron was on it. He fell off and slid across the mulch, and his pants came down. Everyone saw his butt, and no one would walk there for, like, a week. People would scream ‘butt germs’ when they went past it.”

I stare at Megan in disbelief. I have this same memory. Exactly.

“Matt wasn’t friends with Cameron, or anything, but he felt bad,” she continues. “People were being so stupid about it just to make Cameron feel bad, and everyone just sort of went along with it just because. Matt was the first person to use the glider after that—I mean, other than Beau, of course, who was
born
not caring about what anyone thinks. Beau’s always been popular, but he’s not exactly the person people want to emulate. Not like Matt. Anyway, Derek made a big deal about Matt catching butt germs from the glider, so Matt mooned him.” She breaks into an uneasy laugh and wipes at her eyes again. “It’s the only time he’s gotten detention, I’m pretty sure.”