Undercurrent (19 page)

“Cal, omigod, your forehead! What happened?”

“I got hit by a potato,” I say. It sounds almost funny. “A big, raw one.”

“What? How did that happen?”

“Someone threw it at me,” I admit, beyond lying anymore.

“Why on earth would they do that?”

“The same reason anyone would,” I reply. “Because he hates me.”

“Oh, Cal. Sit down on the couch. I’ll get something for the swelling.”

My mother returns a minute later with a dish towel full of ice cubes. She sits down and presses it against my forehead. I grit my teeth, grunting at how sore my head feels. “Who was the idiot who threw it?” she asks.

“It doesn’t matter. And he isn’t an idiot. He was just scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of me.”

“Why?” my mother asks, the sympathy draining from her voice. “What did you do to him?”

“I don’t remember doing anything. But he thinks I did, and that’s enough. And I only made things worse. Besides, it doesn’t matter what I do—it’s what people think that counts.”

I decide to shut up. We sit there for a while. My forehead is stinging from the cold. I take the ice pack from my mother and try holding it up myself, removing it every so often to reduce the freeze. It’s better. I’m just feeling numb.

“Tell me what happened to Cole,” I say.

My mother looks at me, shocked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, tell me what happened. Exactly. Why Cole is the way he is.”

“You know what happened,” she says. “You were there.”

“No,” I tell her. “I mean, I don’t remember anymore. Ever since the falls, I don’t remember much of anything. So I need to hear it again. I want you to tell me everything—tell me like I wasn’t there. Do you understand? When it happened. Where it happened. Everything.”

“You really don’t remember? Cal, there
is
something wrong! You need a doctor!”

“No. I don’t want to talk about that. Just tell me. Now.”

My mother’s face looks like a question:
Why are you doing this?
But when I don’t budge, and sit staring from under the ice pack, she finally gives in.

“It was summer,” she says, “just before we came to Crystal Falls. You and your brother were upset about moving, about having to leave all your friends. So your father and I decided to take you out for a treat, to a fancy, new water park that had just opened up about an hour away.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I remember that day perfectly.”

“Then why do you want to hear it again?”

“Because,” I say, wincing as I press the ice pack too hard. I don’t know where this is leading. It was one of the last nice days we had together as a family, as far as I remember.

But my mother looks confused and upset, like I’m torturing her on purpose. She carries on. “Your father and I went on a few rides with you guys, but soon we had enough. So we found a picnic table in the shade and just sat and read while you and Cole went off.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Go on.”

“Well, you were gone for about an hour or so when—” She breaks off. Her eyes fill with tears.

“Mom,” I say. “When what?”

“When we heard people shouting for help. And saw lifeguards running by. We looked up and saw people crowding around the bottom of the big slide.”

This part I don’t remember. My mother looks away, toward the window. She swallows hard and sniffs. I give her a moment instead of pushing her.

“I decided to go see what was going on,” she finally says. “Your father stayed behind, telling me not to be another gawker. But I had a terrible feeling. So I ran up—there was a hill—and heard someone say they’d just taken somebody out of the pool at the bottom of the big slide. I couldn’t see much, because of the people in front of me, except that it was a teenager who wasn’t moving.” My mother fights back a sob. “And then I saw the red-and-yellow bathing suit. . . .”

Cole’s surfer trunks.

“No,” I stop her. “That’s wrong. Nothing happened to Cole on that slide. I went down just after him.”

“No, Cal,” my mother tells me. “Don’t you remember? You were too scared to go up, so Cole went by himself. But he started showing off, like he used to, and he went down headfirst. And somehow he fractured his spine.”

“No!” I shout. “That didn’t happen. He didn’t go down headfirst. Because I went up with him and told him off, saying I would tell on him if he didn’t follow the rules. He went down normally, Mom, I saw him. He was fine, waiting at the bottom for me. I remember. He told me I got nice air!”

“Cal, please stop,” my mother begs me. “It wasn’t your fault. You know what your brother was like back then. He was difficult, a daredevil, and he never listened to anybody. Just like you are now, I suppose, which is why we worry so much about you. But it was just an accident. Even if you had gone up, you could never have stopped him. . . .”

“But Mom, I did go up!” I yell at her. “I did stop him! And it never happened! That never happened!”

Bursting into tears, my mother gets up and races out of the room. I hear her go upstairs, into her room. The door closes.

I feel bad. But what she said isn’t true, I know it. Not unless I’ve gone crazy.

But maybe it’s that simple. I’m crazy—or more like damaged. I sank to the bottom of a raging river; I would have drowned, but the cold kept me alive, and now this is my brain fizzling and popping, making me believe in some imaginary other life.

It makes perfect sense; I just have to prove it.

I go upstairs and turn on the computer. And wait. And wait. I want to punch the screen.

Finally I type in a search. It’s not for “quantum leap” or whatever other nonsense Willow was talking about. But I don’t look up head trauma either or multiple-personality disorder or
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. I search for something else, something simpler, in order to get my diagnosis:

“Cole Harris water slide accident.”

The number one result is a news article dated four years ago. I click it and read.

So it’s settled. I have gone crazy.

CHAPTER 18

Willow phones that evening, but I don’t take the call. My father
unhappily passes along a message that I’m asleep. Mom still hasn’t come out of her room, nor have I, and Dad has come home to nothing to eat. He comes into my room at one point and tries to get me to tell him what happened, but I answer that I’ve just lost my mind, that’s all.

He closes the door and tries speaking to Mom again. But that doesn’t sound like it goes much better.

By the time the phone rings again for me, Dad has had enough. “Cal, would you pick up the damn phone? Some girl really wants to talk to you, and I’m not your answering service. If you don’t feel like chatting right now, you can tell her yourself.”

I sigh and pick up. “Hello?”

“Callum? Sorry, it’s Willow. You were asleep?”

“No,” I admit. “I’m just not in the mood to talk right now. Can it wait until I see you at school tomorrow?” This is assuming I even make it to school. I could be in a rubber room talking gibberish to myself by then.

“Well, I guess it can wait,” she answers, sounding miffed. “I just thought you’d like to hear this as soon as possible, since it concerns your life and everything. . . .”

“Look, I didn’t mean to be rude,” I reply. “I got into a scuffle on the way home, and I’m feeling pretty sore.”

“A scuffle? You mean a fight? With who?”

“With Bryce,” I reply. “But it wasn’t exactly a fight. I was trying to explain everything that’s been going on, but he wasn’t buying it, and he hit me with something.” I decide to spare her the embarrassing detail about being laid low by a vegetable. “Listen, I really think my memory is just screwed up from the accident. Maybe I should stop screwing around and see a doctor.”

“Oh really?” she says, sounding completely annoyed now. “And how did you screw up your own memory but then suddenly know everything about my personal life? Did you ask yourself that?”

She’s right—that piece still doesn’t fit. “Okay, so what did you find out? Anything?”

“Not really. I tried looking up cases like yours on the internet, but there wasn’t much, and it was all pretty stupid and useless. I even tried looking up quantum mechanics, but I didn’t understand much, to be honest. There was a lot about some cat in a box that gets poisoned by gas when an atom does something, and how it can be both dead and alive at the same time, creating two branches of reality.

“The important thing is that it got me thinking. And it made me remember something weird that happened a while back.”

“What?” I ask, feeling lost.

“Well, you know how my half brother and half sister are twins, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I answer impatiently, this being one of the details I used to convince Willow of my story.

“And do you remember studying human reproduction in biology with Mr. Schroeder?”

“Sort of. I was sick that week,” I tell her. “That was the one test I flunked.” It was a big disappointment, because I thought my biology average might have put me closer to making my parents happy and into new-computer territory.

“What do you mean you were sick? You were making dirty jokes the whole class until the teacher threw you out.” Willow pauses. “But that’s the point! Maybe that wasn’t you!”

“What do you mean?”

“Hear me out. As I was saying, we were talking about human reproduction. After class I hung around to ask Mr. Schroeder what the difference between fraternal and identical twins were. I still didn’t understand how my father could have a boy and a girl but that they could still be twins.”

“Well, that’s easy. It’s because they came from two separate eggs,” I tell her. Heck, even I knew that, and I failed the test.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, when we were talking, Mr. Schroeder mentioned that he actually had an identical twin brother.”

“I know that too,” I say. “I met him in the supermarket. I told you that ages ago.”

“No, you didn’t,” she answers, sounding like this is somehow exciting news to hear. “You never even spoke a word to me until recently, as far as I’m concerned, remember? But anyway, you couldn’t have met him! Not here, at least.”

“Why not?”

“Because his brother died when they were kids!”

“So Mr. Schroeder really is crazy if he’s going around pretending to be his dead twin brother.”

“Let me finish,” Willow says. “I remember feeling bad to hear it and saying how sorry I was. But he said it was all right; it had happened a long time ago. And at least he knew his brother was alive and well in another universe. A nearby universe, in fact.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah. I made a joke, saying wouldn’t it be nice to go visit him. But then he got really serious and said that he planned to do exactly that.”

“Come on, Willow. He
is
crazy, then. Totally nuts.”

“Hey, you saw him throwing a message off the bridge. What was that about? Who was it for?”

“Like I said, he was just being wacko.”

“Okay, then explain this,” Willow says. “How come Mr. Schroeder agrees with me and thinks you were a jerk in his class?”

The accusation is really getting on my nerves. Biology was my best subject. I paid complete attention and tried really hard, at least until we got a new teacher.

“No,” I reply. “I never acted up in class. And I did well in biology.”

“Which means it must have been a different class—and a different Mr. Schroeder. One whose twin brother is still alive! Do you get it?”

Willow is talking so fast, I’m having a hard time processing everything. What is she getting at?

The answer hits me like a potato in the forehead.

“Wait, are you saying you think I come from another universe?” I can’t believe that I’ve just said it out loud. “The universe Mr. Schroeder was talking about?”

But instead of laughing at me, Willow yells: “Yes! A universe where your parents did split up but where your brother isn’t paralyzed and where everyone calls you Callum!”

Listening to this, I feel a strange tingling sensation race across my body. It reminds me of the time Mr. Schroeder explained how we are each assembled from the bits of exploded stars. Though it sounds amazingly plausible, I can’t really believe it. Because I don’t feel that special. Exploded stars? Coming from another universe? I’m a kid, that’s all. A kid who goes to Crystal Falls High. There’s nothing extraordinary about me.

“If that’s true, then how did I get here?” I ask. But this time, I’m not lagging behind for long—I don’t even need to hear Willow’s answer, which she yells into my ear.

The falls.

I must have come through when I went over. When I went under.

“But if I’m not from here—if I really came from somewhere else—doesn’t that mean—”

I stop talking, putting the phone against my chest. Willow is saying something, but I can’t hear her. I can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in my ears, knowing that the proof is very possibly only a short jog away from here.

“Willow, I have to go,” I say.

“No, Cal, wait!”

I hang up the phone.

I go to the closet and start riffling through the mess. The phone starts ringing again, but I ignore it, and so does my father. I’m throwing out shoes, balls, gear, all stuff I’ve never seen before. When I find what I’m looking for, I don’t even recognize it, other than noticing that it’s made of wood and has the word
Slugger
burned into it.

Not that it matters. Wood or aluminum, a bat is a bat.

And a bat is a decent weapon.

I don’t answer my father when he demands to know where I’m going or why I won’t answer the phone, which is once again ringing as I put on my sneakers.

Instead I throw on a jacket and go out into the night.

I want to get there in a hurry, but I decide against jogging. With my stomach empty and growling, I’ll need all the energy I have. I’m hoping my body has been working overtime to replace all the adrenaline I’ve used up this week. Is it possible to run out?

I take the turn up to the campground, thankful for the moonlight, since I wasn’t smart enough to bring a flashlight. Looking like a cool, blue river, the road is easy to follow, bordered by the tall grassy field. Still, it’s dangerous going, as a few times I step in unseen potholes and nearly sprain my ankle.

I reach Guise’s seedy trailer, but there’s no dented pickup parked outside. Blue light flickers behind the drawn curtains as I pass. Peeking between a gap, I see that Guise is inside. He’s drinking whiskey and watching TV, his head lolling around like he is seriously out of it. As I move off, I’m startled by the sound of him violently clearing his throat before spitting vilely. I hope it’s into a nearby garbage can.

The disgusting image this creates drives a spike through my stomach. But it seems that the cupboard is not yet bare of adrenaline, because it’s leaching into my system, making my heart pound and my pace quicken. Still, I need to be careful—to slow down and keep quiet. The last thing I need is for Guise to hear something and come looking.

Then again, he’s wasted. He’s not going anywhere. It’s odd, though, that his pickup is gone.

Shaded from the moonlight, the trailer park itself is much darker and harder to navigate. Several times I walk straight into obstacles—trees, poles, sometimes entire trailers—and constantly clatter the baseball bat off unseen objects. Once I even go sprawling over a plastic bench and end up on my hands and knees in the cold dirt. A ninja I am not. But slowly my eyes are adjusting, and I’m walking into things less often, making progress in the direction I remember.

A lit window appears. I see it now, the same trailer where I was beaten up. There’s a truck parked out front this time, a newer model. It’s only when I get up close that I recognize the bumper sticker.

KEEP HONKING, I’M RELOADING!

Oh no, it’s Ross. Are you kidding me?

But wait. It’s not like I need to say hi. I just need to see his face, the hooded figure’s, with my own eyes. Then I will know for sure if it’s true. Then I can start doing something about it.

And what exactly will that be? I ask myself. Tell my parents? If it’s all true, they’re strangers anyway. Go to the police? I can imagine their reaction, considering they already think I killed a kid.

Another worry occurs to me. If I’m not from here, not supposed to be here, who will miss me if I vanish? As much as I should know this guy, I’m pretty sure he’s psychotic. And he has a gun, and he probably killed Neil. Who can say what he will do?

Suddenly the baseball bat feels a lot less comforting.

I peer through the open curtains for a while. There’s no movement—no flickering, no shadows—and there are no sounds. I think back to hearing Mr. Guise hack up a lung in his trailer—it was like he was standing outside with me. Which means there’s probably no one in there. Either that, or they’re fast asleep. With the lights on.

But what about Ross’s truck? It doesn’t add up. Still, I need to take a look. I have to peek, see if there are any signs of recent occupation. That’s what I came here to do. And that’s what I’m going to do.

I try the door. It’s unlocked again. I hesitate, remembering what that bit of luck got me last time—a terrible beating. But then I open it. And climb the stairs inside.

This time I’m really not fooling around though—I’m going to crack the skull of anyone who comes near me. I can assemble the shards and ask questions later.

But in my sweaty grip, the bat feels like it’s been greased. One swing, and I’m probably losing hold of it. And in these cramped quarters, that swing is going to be pretty unspectacular.

That’s when I see the lampshade, the two eyeholes staring straight at me. They are burning full of hateful flames. I recoil in terror, clutching the bat with about the same menace as I’d hug a teddy bear.

It’s only the lamp, I see, with the shade back on. With a stifled laugh, I relax. But then I look at the floor and see Ross.

At least I’m guessing it’s Ross, based on his length and bulk. And the name embroidered on his work clothes.

His face, however, offers no confirmation. It looks like a caved-in pumpkin that’s been sprayed with red paint.

I stand there, rigid with horror, a scream lodged in my throat.

At that moment a vehicle pulls up, its headlights blinding me through the window. It skids to a stop outside the door. I hear a door slam and footsteps. Unable to move, I just stand there helplessly. When I finally turn, I see myself standing in the doorway shaking my head. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror, except in my reflection I have greasy hair and am wearing a Crocodiles jacket.

“Think fast.” The baseball bat clatters onto the floor as I catch a roll of plastic sheeting. “Since you’re here, you might as well help clean this up.”

“What?” I answer. I’m talking to myself now. This feels like a dream. A really horrible dream I can’t wake up from.

“Help me clean this up,” the other me answers irritably, face hard as he pushes by. “This is just as much your problem as it is mine.”

“Huh?”

“The bastard tried to kill me,” I say—he says—walking over to the body. The other me toes an arm, which flops onto the floor holding a large-caliber pistol. “Must have followed me when I took Guise’s truck to get supplies at the gas station. We have an arrangement, the old bastard and me. Or at least we had one. But with Ross out of the picture, I don’t know how the hell I’m going to keep up my end of the bargain. Any ideas? Do you have any money?”

I stand there, mouth open. The smell of sweat in the trailer is now unbearable. I can’t remember ever reeking like that.

“Whatever. We’ll think of something. Anyway, we’re lucky Ross didn’t make his move at the house—otherwise he might have shot Mom as well. He was waiting for this chance, and he had a good one, all right, with Guise too drunk and deaf to hear a shot. He had the drop on me too—rolled up to the door real quiet, lights off and everything.”

I watch the other me remove the cap from a pop bottle and take a swig. It hisses as he slams it back on the counter.

“But you had to lip off first, didn’t you, big boy?” the other me shouts at the dead body. “Too bad you’re not as fast with a gun as you are with your mouth. Oh, and by the way, about your bumper sticker? Honk, honk! Honk, honk!”