Undone (4 page)

“What are you guys up to tonight?”

I shrugged. “Probably the usual.” Trying to re-create a machine that will open a portal between universes.

“I’m heading down to Roxy’s place,” she said, gesturing to the apartments behind Eastview. “Her parents are out of town and she’s having a party. You guys should come by.”

I nodded.

“What about tomorrow night? Do you have plans?” she asked.

“Um, I’m not sure.” Probably doing the same thing as tonight.

“Would you want to go see a movie or something?” I didn’t react and she hurried on. “We could go with Courtney and Reid and then grab dinner after?”

“Oh . . . yeah, maybe,” I said. I knew Marissa liked me. This was the first time she’d asked me out, but she always sat near me at lunch and leaned into me or touched me when she talked. She was cute, and I liked her. I mean, we were friends. At the same time, though, it just felt wrong to lead her on when I’d be keeping two huge secrets from her: that I was from another universe, and that just this afternoon I’d been stalking another girl.

Whether fate and the signs were real or just part of my imagination, when I thought about what my life would be like on the other side of the portal and about the girl that I’d make out with in a darkened movie theater and tell my secrets to and introduce to my parents, she always looked like Janelle.

“I have to check with Eli,” I said, trying to come up with an excuse. “I think he wanted me to help him with something this weekend.”

“Oh, okay,” Marissa said. She sounded like she was trying not to be disappointed, and I felt like a jerk. “Maybe another time.”

I nodded and dug my phone out of my pocket. “I gotta get going.”

Marissa nodded. “Have a good weekend,” she said, as she started down the hill.

“You too,” I said, and I texted Eli back.
I’M ON MY WAY.

W
here have you been?” Reid asked me when I got to his place. His foster parents didn’t mind that we’d turned their garage into a workstation. They fed us dinner but left us alone. It was ideal.

I ignored him and looked at Eli. The question was his, even if he wasn’t the one who had spoken it out loud. I spit out the details.

“So you went to her English class
and
fixed her truck today?” Reid said. “So much for backing off.”

“What does it matter? You’ve been dating Courtney since Christmas and nobody gives a crap.”

“This isn’t about him,” Eli said throwing his hands up.

And that was the problem, for me and for Reid. Nothing was ever about him. It was always about me. I got us into this mess and I needed to get us out.

I shook my head. “Let’s just leave it alone.”

“Oh right, because that will solve anything,” Reid said.

“Look, you can’t be a hero every time Janelle Tenner has a bad fucking day,” Eli added.

Reid pointed his finger at me. “You’re risking everything. What if someone finds out we came through a portal and now we can do some freaky shit? They’ll quarantine us in some lab and do tests on us. We’ll never get home.”

“I was careful,” I said. “No one saw me.”

“That isn’t the point,” Eli said, his voice rising.

“Really? Then what is the point?”

“You shouldn’t be standing around and waiting on some girl when we have more important things to do,” Eli yelled.

“You both were here,” I said. “And I’m here now.”

“Two hours late,” Reid said.

“I’ve spent every free second thinking about getting back. What have you done?” I yelled. “You can’t give me two hours to do something that might make me feel good about what I’m doing here?”

“I don’t care if you feel good,” Eli yelled. “We need to get home!”

“Maybe we’re never going to get home!”

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought it. For six years we’d been trying to replicate what got us here, with just half of Reid’s father’s notes. It was hard to not feel doubtful sometimes.

It was the first time I’d put that doubt into words, though. It was the first time I’d uttered them out loud. For a long time I’d taken the lead on this. I’d promised them both we’d figure out a way to get back.

Now I’d just admitted I didn’t know if I’d be able to deliver, and it stunned all three of us into silence.

I needed to take it back, but as soon as I opened my mouth, Eli tackled me. I hit the ground hard, my shoulders slamming against the concrete floor of the garage. My insides twisted from the impact, and the wind fled from my lungs. I blocked Eli’s incoming punch with my forearm, but he swung a second time and connected with my jaw.

Then his hand came down on my chest, and I felt energy rip through me.

Above us Reid moved in, to help Eli or to pull him back, I couldn’t be sure. I put a hand up, stiff-arming Eli to keep him off me.

Like that, with the three of us emotionally charged and wrestling for some kind of control over our lives, I was overwhelmed by a memory of home.

It was Christmas Eve, the last one I spent at home. The house smelled like pine from the Christmas tree and vanilla from the cookies my mother was baking. There was soft jazz holiday music playing—my father’s favorite. I knew all the words to every song, because I’d heard the album so many times. Our dog, Hope, was wearing a bright red bow around her neck, chewing a bone shaped like a candy cane. I had my hands wrapped around the warmth of a mug filled with eggnog. It was the first time my mother had let me have some.

“I know what all your presents are,” Derek whispered in my ear. “But I’m not going to tell you.”

I turned to look at him, and I didn’t need him to tell me. From the smile on his face, I knew I was going to get everything I’d asked for.

Suddenly the energy inside my chest flared, like a dam breaking open. It burst out of me, throwing Eli off me, making the lights flicker.

A chill swept through the room, the air smelled damp, and with a flash a black hole opened up in front of us.

One second it wasn’t there, and the next it was.

A portal.

I
pushed to my feet. We stood there for what had to be a full minute, just staring at it.

It looked exactly how I remembered: huge and unnaturally black, like a pool of oil. Yet something about the portal made it seem like a living thing. I couldn’t help wondering if it remembered us, too.

Eli was the first one to speak. “Holy shit.” He reached out to touch the rippling black.

I caught his hand. I wasn’t sure what touching it would do.

“It’s a portal,” Reid said.

“Yeah, we caught on, dude,” Eli said.

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at it. After six years of trying to replicate that stupid machine, here we were, standing in front of a portal we’d created on our own. We didn’t need a machine. We might have been able to click our heels and go home at any point during the past six years, and we were too thick to know it.

“So why are we standing here?” Reid said. “Should we go through or what?”

It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know where it would take us.

Eli must have been thinking the same thing. He looked at me and asked, “Can it get us home?” and the hope in his voice gave me pause.

“I don’t know if it’s that easy.”

“Why not?” Reid asked.

I didn’t know how many universes there were. This one wasn’t parallel to ours—at least it didn’t seem like it was. We had portaled out of a garage and into the Pacific Ocean. Landmarks were different; societal structure seemed different. We’d never seen a double: anyone who looked like us or our parents or even anyone we knew. That all suggested there had to be more than just two universes. There could be hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of universes out there. There was too much I didn’t know, so I settled for what I did. “I don’t know where it goes.”

“So what?” Reid asked. “We can just go through and figure it out.”

“And then what?” I shook my head. “If it doesn’t take us home, it could take us someplace worse.”

Eli nodded. “We’ll figure it out.” Suddenly he let out a laugh and punched me in the shoulder. “You just opened a fucking portal with your mind!”

It wasn’t really my mind that did it, but this wasn’t the time to argue with him. We’d opened a portal for the second time in our lives. We might not know where it would take us, but if we could get a portal open, we were halfway there.

Halfway home.

I smiled. We had a shot: We could really get home.

I’d been playing the optimist and saying it for six years, making promises and assurances that I would figure out a way to get us back. But for the first time, I actually believed it.

We were going to get home.

S
omehow, even after opening the portal, getting home ended up feeling farther away than it ever had before. For 148 days, I had done what I was supposed to do. I’d stayed away from Janelle and spent every free moment of my spring and summer with Eli and Reid trying to figure it out. But at the end of those 148 days, we still had more questions than answers.

How many universes were out there?

How could we open a portal that would take us home rather than somewhere else?

What kind of side effects would there be this time?

Would we even make it alive?

We’d opened a dozen more portals. That had gotten easier, but the problem was once the portal was open, we didn’t know what to
do
with it.

It felt hopeless. I wasn’t even sure what we were trying to accomplish anymore. Each time we opened a portal, it was just . . . there.

This was our last chance. We had to do something different. We couldn’t keep living in two worlds: physically in one and mentally in another.

We couldn’t keep killing people, either.

D
ude,” Eli said, glancing back at me from his bike. “Do you really think this will work?”

I didn’t know. That we were so close and yet home was still so out of reach wasn’t lost on any of us.

“I don’t,” Reid said, as we pulled onto the dusty shoulder of Highway 101.

“I wasn’t fucking asking you,” Eli said. “I was talking to Ben.”

I didn’t need to answer him, though. I’d told him what I thought at least a hundred times. Saying it again wasn’t going to make it sound any more hopeful.