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Robin Brande

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Beschreibung


(Book 1 of 4)


NO ONE IS GOING TO BELIEVE ME.

High school senior and amateur physicist Audie Masters has discovered what no other physicist has been able to prove: that parallel universes do exist, and there is a way to journey into them. She also discovers something else: a parallel version of herself, living the kind of life Audie never could have imagined for herself.


Now Audie is living that life, too, full of adventure, romance, and reality-bending science. It’s all more than she could have hoped for—until something goes wrong.

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INTO THE PARALLEL

PARALLELOGRAM, BOOK 1

ROBIN BRANDE

RYER PUBLISHING

INTO THE PARALLEL

Parallelogram, Book 1

By Robin Brande

Published by Ryer Publishing

www.ryerpublishing.com

Copyright 2011 by Robin Brande

www.robinbrande.com

All rights reserved.

Cover art by nordenworks/Deposit Photos

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

About the Author

Also by Robin Brande

For Further Reading

To many people, science has become the new magic.

—Walter “Skip” Whitfield, Ph.D.

1

They said it couldn’t be done.

Well, that’s not exactly true.

They said it couldn’t be done by a 17-year-old girl sitting alone in her bedroom on a Saturday morning.

Well, that’s not exactly true, either, since it’s not like there’s some physicist out there who specifically made that prediction—“A seventeen-year-old girl in her pajamas? Never!”—but the point is, no one is going to believe me even if I can prove what happened, which I’m not really sure I can.

But I know I did it. I was there. I didn’t imagine it or dream it or go into some sort of altered state that confused me. I felt the wind. I smelled the dog’s breath. I saw our mother. I drank some tea. It all happened.

So if she’s real—and I know she is—I just have to prove it. Go there again and this time bring something back. Like a strand of her hair or a piece of her fingernail.

Something with her DNA on it. To prove that she is me.

2

It’s been going on for six months.

Six months of trying every day, sometimes twice a day, the big earphones over my head to block out any outside noise, while the voice on the CD says things like, “Imagine yourself into clouds. Be the rain. You are a flower—let the butterflies fan your face.” An hour or more of that every day, with it never, ever working. And why should it? If you think about it, it’s totally ridiculous.

But I knew I had to try something, and this was as close to an idea as I had.

It was all about the vibrations.

There’s this theory in quantum physics—a really respected theory, even though a lot of physicists still disagree with it—that says the smallest building block of life isn’t the atom or electron or quark, it’s actually tiny, vibrating strings. Superstrings that change shape and speed and tone depending on whether they want to turn themselves into subatomic particles or elephants or galaxies.

And what turns them from amorphous, random strings into cotton balls or horny toads is the particular way they vibrate—fast or slow, big waves, little waves, strings composing the universe the way violins create the sound of an orchestra. Strings in you and me. Strings in alien life forms, if there really are any. Vibrating strings as the basic building block of every single universe that might be out there.

So when my best friend Lydia mentioned one night that her yoga instructor had been teaching them all how to change their vibration, my ears shot up like a terrier’s. I don’t usually ask her too much about yoga—it’s just too weird for me—but this time I had to know.

“What do you mean, change your vibration?” I asked her. Casually. Because I knew if I showed too much interest, she was bound to launch into one of her lectures again about how yoga will change my life and why aren’t I coming to class with her and how can I keep living this way, and all of that. Ever since she got wrapped up in it a few years ago, she thinks it’s the answer for everything.

Of course, she accuses me of thinking physics is the answer for everything, so I guess we’re even.

“Raise your vibration,” she repeated. “You know, take it from a level 200 to a 310.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh-huh.”

We were chopping onions for her mother, who was making dinner for all of us, and I waited a few more seconds, really concentrating on my onion, before asking Lydia some more.

“So . . . how does he do it?” I said. “You know, get your vibration up.”

Lydia scraped her choppings into a bowl and reached for the clump of garlic. “You meditate,” she said. “An hour every day. He guides you through it until you can free your mind.”

“This is . . . in class?” I asked. Lydia goes to yoga every day after school, and teaches there a couple of times a week.

She laid down her knife and gave me a critical look. “He’s that visiting instructor I told you about—remember, the one I told you that you had to come see? But you were too busy reading Hawkins, or whatever.”

It was true, I’d made up some excuse. Although I probably really was reading Hawkins.

Lydia went back to chopping. “I bought one of his CDs afterwards—the one with the same meditation from class. It’s amazing.”

I picked up a green pepper, ran it under the faucet, and pretended I didn’t care. “So . . . do you think it worked? I mean, do you think it might have changed your vibration?”

“Definitely,” Lydia said. “Can’t you tell? Everyone else has really noticed it.”

I wasn’t sure what a 200 vibration versus a 310 looked like, but I was willing to take her word for it.

“So do you think I could . . . I mean, do you have it here?” I asked. “Could I maybe listen to it? Just out of curiosity.”

Lydia gave a little snort. “Sure. You’ll last about two minutes. It’s not ‘scientific’ enough for you.”

I shrugged. “Just to try. Out of curiosity.”

Which is why I raced over to the yoga studio after school the next day before Lydia could get there, and secretly bought my own copy. Because I could tell right away, after listening to it for just a few minutes in her room, that this might finally be the key—the exact secret I’d been looking for.

Because here’s the story: I need a miracle. Not some woo-woo, yoga-world kind of miracle, but a good honest scientific one. The kind of miracle that saves a girl in my position and sends her off to college so she can begin the rest of her life.

I know I’m good at physics. If it’s not too braggy to say so, I’m great at it. It’s been my life ever since I learned about it in fifth grade.

But there’s a major, major problem, and everyone I’ve talked to about it—from my school counselor to my teachers—agrees: I suck at math. I mean, suck at it like people who can’t throw a ball suck at that. Like, embarrassingly, humiliatingly suck at it. My brain just will not bend itself that way, no matter what I’ve tried.

And I’ve tried. Special books, remedial tutoring, instructional videos, even step-by-step comic books for little kids. I can do addition and subtraction pretty well, and multiplication if I’m not under too much pressure and have enough time, but I swear, there’s something about algebra that makes my skin break out. And geometry? Forget it.

And there’s no college that I know of that will let you into their physics program—or probably any program—if you can’t at least pass Algebra I. So there’s that.

Then there’s the fact that it’s not just any college I want to get into, it’s Columbia University in New York City, where the greatest physicist in the world is currently a professor, and if he could be my teacher I would simply die from mental ecstasy, because I’ve read every single one of his books about ten times apiece, and I know if I could just get into his program and show him how I was meant to be a theoretical physicist and unlock all the secrets of the universe right alongside him, my life would be perfect in ways I can’t even imagine yet. Well, that and this one particular guy falling in love with me, and then I’d be set.

But the problem is the great Professor Herbert Hawkins knows how to do math. He believes in it. He’s a professor of both math and physics. And I doubt if he’d lower himself to even spit on an application like mine, with all my straight As in science and straight Ds in math. Not without something extra—a secret weapon of some sort. A miracle.

Which brings us back to vibration.

I was reading one of Professor Hawkins’s books earlier this year—the new one he has out about parallel universes—and there was this one little line in there about vibration. He said that one of his colleagues threw out this idea at lunch one day about how we might be able to bridge the gap between our universe and any parallel one next door if we could just get the strings to vibrate right. Line them up somehow, get them all on the same frequency, then oop!, slip right past the barrier and end up in another world.

Everybody laughed at him, of course—that’s what physicists do all the time, to spur each other on to even greater discoveries—but I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even sure if I got it. And then it was just a few days later when Lydia said the thing about her yoga teacher and the vibrations, and it all started fitting into place.

Because if it’s true? And I’m the one who proves it? Won’t Columbia University let me in then? Wouldn’t Professor Hawkins see my name at the top of the application and say, “What? What’s this girl doing in with the rest of the stack? Give her to me—I’m calling her this morning. I have to have Audie Masters in my lab.”

Which is why every day for the past six months I’ve been applying myself to vibrations. Diligently turning myself into clouds and raindrops and wisps of air as the yoga teacher drones on in my headset, and trying as hard as I can to change my vibration from whatever it is to whatever it needs to be.

And then this morning it finally worked. I didn’t even realize it until suddenly there was this cold wind blowing against my bare leg. I reached down to pull the sheet up over it, but there was no sheet. There was no bed. Just cold, hard ground.

I gently peeked open one eye.

And there I was. On top of a mountain somewhere, sitting on the dirt, the wind whipping over me something fierce.

And there she was. A young woman. Sitting just a little distance away from me on the edge of a cliff, her legs dangling over, hiking boots on her feet. Her eyes were closed, her face tipped into the sun.

She had long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. I could only see the side of her face, but what I saw was enough. I drew in a breath.

She must have heard me, because she turned and her eyes got wide. We both stared at each other for one long frozen moment. Because of course we recognized each other—we were each other.

My brain was still having a hard time catching up. I’d done it. It had worked. The truth is maybe I hadn’t really believed in any of it until that moment—a theory is a theory, and it doesn’t mean it’s right—but now there I was, in a parallel world, staring at a parallel version of me.

I didn’t know what else to do. I gave her this little dorky wave and started to say, “Hi. I—”

But that was it. Whatever I thought I was going to say—“Hi, I’m Audie. Hi, I’m from another universe. Hi, I think you’re me.”—I never got it out.

Because right about then her dog decided he’d better kill me.

3

He was a big boy, maybe a hundred pounds of yellow, snarling Labrador, and even though I’ve always heard those kinds of dogs are supposed to be friendly, apparently that was only in my own universe and not this one. In this one he looked ready to rip my throat out.

“Easy, Red,” the girl said, but she didn’t seem all that concerned. The dog maneuvered in front of her, his legs rigid, ears back, hackles mohawking down his spine. Meanwhile the girl still sat there looking at me curiously like I was some new kind of animal that had just appeared.

The dog started edging toward me, growling so loudly now I could actually feel the vibration of it in my stomach. This wasn’t what I expected just from listening to a meditation CD. Where were the fluffy flowers? Where were the happy clouds?

“Red, relax!” the girl said. “It’s just a holo.” She picked up a rock and flung it at me. She was just starting to say, “See—” when the rock hit me and bounced off.

Her eyes narrowed. She picked up a second rock and pitched it at my chest.

“Ow! Can you stop?”

The girl sprang to her feet. She pointed at me with an outstretched arm and started shouting.

“What are you? Did Ginny send you? Where did you come from? What do you want?”

It was hard to make myself heard over the dog, who was now more worked up than ever, slavering and barking, just inches away.

I held up my arms in front of my face. “Can you call off your dog? Please?”

“What are you?” the girl demanded. “Who sent you? Are you real?”

“Yes, I’m real! Nobody sent me—I sent myself. Now PLEASE!”

And then suddenly everything changed.

The wind shifted direction and blew over me from behind. The dog tilted his head and sniffed. It was like he’d finally just gotten a good whiff of me.

And instantly his whole body relaxed. His ears came up, his mouth popped open, his tongue hung out, and his tail wagged. He went ahead and tackled me, just like I’d been afraid, but he was licking me and wiggling all over like he’d never been so happy in his life.

“Red—” the girl said, but her dog was too busy wrestling with me to notice.

Finally I got control of the situation and was able to sit up again. “Good boy,” I said, patting his head, and that was enough to make him plop down in front of me, chin on my lap, tail swishing happily in the dirt.

The girl stared at me in wonder. “I don’t understand.” But I was pretty sure she did. Whether she was ready to believe it or not, her dog had just confirmed our matching DNA.

Although the truth was, we weren’t exact duplicates. Not exactly. She looked a little taller than I am, definitely way fitter—or maybe just more outdoorsy, although the way she carried herself made it look like her arms and shoulders were a lot more muscular than mine. But aside from that, same square face, same nose and mouth and blue-gray eyes—same overall everything.

Except for our hair. That was the only real difference. Same exact color, but mine is limp and scraggly and sad, whereas hers was long and thick like a horse’s tail. You could have pulled a tractor out of the mud with that hair. Mine breaks if you even try to comb it.

And we were dressed differently, of course. She wore gray pants, hiking boots, a navy blue sweater. It all looked pretty regular—like something I could have bought at an outdoor clothing store if I wanted to. No weird fabrics made out of negative-ionic pulsating supercharged atoms or anything. It just looked like regular fleece and cotton.

Whereas I sat there in the dirt still wearing what I’d had on five minutes before: just my sleep shirt and boxers. No socks, no shoes, nothing else. Thank goodness for the warm dog draped over my lap. He was the closest thing I had to pants.

“I don’t understand,” the girl said. “Any of this.”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” I said.

“But you can explain it?”

“I think so, maybe if I start at the beginning—”

But that would have to wait. Just then a huge gust of wind came up and blasted right through me. I shivered so hard the dog had to lift his head off my lap.

Despite everything, the girl was practical. “You’re going to freeze out here. Come on—I need to get you some clothes.” She headed toward the trees behind her. “Hurry—we have to get to my camp.”

She took off at a trot, and the dog and I jumped up to follow.

But as the three of us made our way through the pines, I couldn’t help having a few random thoughts: like, how did I know it was safe?

And for that matter, how did the girl know I was?

Because, really, what did she know about me? I’d just shown up, suddenly out of nowhere, wearing her same face and body and totally inappropriate clothing, and yet she was trusting me enough to take me back to her camp? How did she know I wasn’t dangerous? How did she know I wasn’t some alien or clone sent to harm her?

And same question for me—how did I know I could trust her?

Because when you thought about it, I had absolutely no idea where I was. Not just where in the world but in what world. The place looked a lot like Earth, but it could be completely different. There might be creatures on it I had never heard of or seen. The girl looked human, but how did I know she didn’t eat her own kind? Maybe she was leading me back to her people, who were going to throw a big party in my honor and then roast me alive.

At least the dog was on my side. He stayed so close I could feel his breath against my bare leg as I hurried down the trail, trying not to jam my bare feet against every rock and twig.

At one point the girl got a little too far ahead of me. I was afraid I’d lost her.

“Audie?” I called out, wondering if it was possible she had my same name.

She didn’t, but she did come back. And she understood.

“Halli,” she said, pointing to herself. “I’m Halli.”

I introduced myself and we both shook hands.

Which, considering the science of the whole thing, might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.

4

Halli led me into a small clearing. And there it was: a normal-looking campsite with a tent and a campfire and all that. Not that I’ve ever camped, but it sure looked like any picture of it I’ve ever seen. No human skulls lying around, no scraps of flesh where maybe the dog had tricked someone else into thinking he was friendly, then ripped the intruder to shreds.

Halli opened the door to her tent and dove in. She backed out again holding an armful of clothes. “Here,” she said, “put these on. Right away.”

Warm black pants, fuzzy red jacket, thick gray socks. All in my size, of course.

While I pulled on her extra clothes, Halli hefted over an armful of logs and then coaxed her campfire back to blazing.

“There,” she said, sitting down across from me and stretching her fingers over the flames. “Warm yet?”

“Almost.” The dog was certainly doing his part. As soon as I finished dressing, he lay down as close as he possibly could to me, rested his chin on my lap, then closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

Halli shook her head. “He doesn’t do that with anyone except me.” She looked me straight in the eye. “But I guess it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” I answered.

“Then would you explain to me how?” she asked. “And who—or whatever—you are?”

“I’ll try in a second,” I said. “But can you tell me something first? Is this . . . Earth?”

“Yes.” But from the look on her face she obviously thought the question was strange.

“Where are we? I mean, specifically, on Earth.”

“It’s called Colorado.”

“We have Colorado, too,” I said excitedly. “I mean, I’ve never been there, but we have it.”

“Who’s ‘we’? What exactly are you?”

It was kind of a rude question to keep asking, but I couldn’t blame her. “I’m just a girl,” I said. “Like you. We have Earth, too. I think it’s just . . . a different one.”

She started to say something, but I cut her off.

“I promise I’ll try to explain in a minute, but can you just tell me what the date is? Please?” I wanted to make sure I hadn’t gone backward or leapt forward somewhere in time—because that would open up a whole new set of possibilities. And a whole other set of problems. Not that this set was going to be easy.

September 22nd. Same date and year as when I’d left this morning.

I let out a breath. My brain was going a billion miles a minute. But it all boiled down to this: Professor Hawkins was right. Parallel universes really do exist. And I’d found one. Same Earth, same time, same identical features.

Except for one thing.

“But you’re not Audie Masters,” I said.

“No, I’m Halli Markham. And now it’s your turn,” she said. “Tell me everything you know.”

5

“There are two theories,” I began. “Well, really three. Well, really there are lots of theories—” I stopped myself. Keep it simple.

Lydia always makes snoring sounds whenever I talk about too much about science, so I’ve learned to keep it short. People don’t have the patience for it the way I do.

What I needed was a visual aid.

I untangled myself from the dog, stood up and found a stick. Red immediately got up, too, tail wagging, obviously thrilled I was going to throw the stick for him. Instead I used it to draw two lines in the dirt.

“Let’s say this line is my universe,” I began. “Everything in the universe—all the stars and planets and everything on them—humans and everything else—we’re all confined to this one membrane. A three-dimensional membrane—they call it a ‘three-brane.’” I stopped for a moment. “Is this . . . too much?”

“No,” Halli said. “Go on.”

I pointed to the second line. “Over here is your three-brane. Your whole universe.”

I dug both lines a little deeper. “Usually we just exist side-by-side—maybe even a fraction of a millimeter apart—but we never actually touch. We never communicate or even know the other one exists. Then every trillion years or so, the membranes collide and they blow each other up and we start the whole cycle again.”

“Is that true?” Halli said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

“Well, right now it’s just a theory. It’s called cyclic cosmology. There’s a lot of math and physics to support it, but so far nobody’s really been able to prove it.”

Until now, I thought. I was going to be the youngest Nobel prize winner for physics ever.

I drew five more lines in the dirt. “There are other scientists who say there are multiple universes, not just two. It’s the multiverse theory—a different universe for every possibility. So maybe in Universe X your parents meet and have you, but in Universe Y they meet and hate each other and marry other people and have Child Z, not you. Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” Halli said.

“Okay, so back to our original two universes and their membranes. Whether there are two parallel universes or five million, the fact is none of us knows the other ones exist. We might guess they’re out there, but we can’t prove it. We can’t communicate with each other.”

“Until today,” Halli said.

“Exactly.” I was happy she caught on so quickly. I figured she was ready for the next step.

I drew some squiggly lines in the dirt. “And that’s where string theory comes in.”

Halli blew out a breath. “I’m going to need some tea for this.”

I’d done it again—lost my audience. At least Halli hadn’t made snoring sounds yet.

“Sorry, I’m not very good at explaining—”

“No, you’re great,” Halli said. “It’s just a lot to take in. Without tea.” She smiled encouragingly. “But this is really helping. Don’t stop.”

It was amazing how good that made me feel. Even though technically it might look like it was me telling myself—like I was giving myself a pep talk in the mirror.

But this wasn’t a mirror and she wasn’t me. Halli was a different entity. We might be the same, but we weren’t the same.

Maybe I needed some tea, too.

She quickly brewed some up, first crushing some seeds into the bottom of her cookpot, then adding some sort of ivory-colored liquid on top. The steam from it smelled rich and spicy—something like cinnamon, but not quite.

She poured half of it into a mug for me and the rest into a bowl for herself. Which made sense, I thought, since she wasn’t really expecting company and wouldn’t have brought along a second mug.

But then I did something really stupid. I waited until Halli looked away for a moment, then quickly wiped off the rim of the mug with my sleeve. And instantly felt ridiculous. Because if she had any cooties, weren’t they my genetic cooties, too? We could probably share the same toothbrush and it wouldn’t hurt me. Not that I ever would.

“Okay, so string theory,” I said when she’d settled back down again. I gave her the shortest version I could.

At the end of it she pulled her sweater away from her shoulder. “Strings?”

“Strings,” I confirmed.

Halli pointed at Red. “Different strings?”

“Well, same strings, just like atoms are all the same, but let’s just say they’re vibrating differently to make up the particles that make him.”

Halli considered that a moment, then nodded. She pointed at one of the pines. “Tree strings?”

“Sure,” I said, just to keep it simple. “We can call them that.”

“Fine,” Halli said, “go on.”

The last piece was the meditation CD. And how I’ve been trying to vibrate differently all these months.

“I thought maybe I could do it if I just concentrated really hard.”

“Or maybe if you didn’t concentrate at all,” Halli said. “That’s what I try to do when I meditate—just completely empty my mind.”

“Sure. Okay.” I was too into my own story at that moment to follow up on what she’d said, but I was going to find out more soon enough.

“So I had this idea,” I said, “that in the same way there are gravitational and electromagnetic and other kinds of fields, maybe there’s also a vibrational field that no one’s ever discovered. Maybe they just haven’t been looking for it. And I thought maybe that could be the way to bridge the gap between the two universes.”

I drew a short line in the dirt connecting two of the longer ones. “If I could vibrate past the field, across one three-brane into the other, maybe I could contact that other universe. Your universe. And this morning it finally worked.”

Halli had lifted the bowl to her mouth, but now she paused mid-sip. “Oh.” And then she smiled mysteriously.

“What?” I said.

“Now I understand,” she said. “It happened because of me.”

“What? No—” Hadn’t she been listening?

“I’m saying it wasn’t just you,” Halli went on. “It had to be me, too.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How long did you say you’ve been trying to do this?” she asked. “Six months?”

“Right.”

“And it never worked.”

“I was always too distracted,” I said. “I’m not good at settling down and just meditating.”

“Well, I am,” Halli said. “I’m actually quite good at it. I’ve been doing it since I was little. But do you know when I haven’t been doing it? These past six months. Not until today.”

She sipped her tea and studied me over the steam. Like she was waiting to see the moment when I finally got it.

And then I did.

“You think it’s two-way,” I said. “Sender and receiver.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been calling out, but there was no one listening at the right frequency—until this morning.”

“Right,” Halli said.

“And no one else was ever going to answer because she wasn’t you. She wasn’t like me. It had to be you because our brains are made the same.”

Halli smiled. “And look how smart we must be.”

I closed my eyes. My head was feeling spinny.

“Why today?” I asked her. “Why today and not the last six months? If I’ve been calling and calling to you, why haven’t you answered?”

Halli paused. She set down her bowl. I could tell she was stalling.

Finally she looked me in the eye. “It’s because I haven’t wanted to meditate for the whole past year. My grandmother died a year ago today. She’s the one who taught me to do it, so I guess it’s been my own personal protest not to meditate anymore. I thought it would be too intense—I’d be too sad. So I just gave it up.

“But yesterday I thought I should honor her. So I came up here to camp, and this morning went out on that cliff to meditate. And I called to my grandmother and asked her to come to me.

“But then you showed up instead.”

6

Before I could ask any of the obvious questions, like, Why would your grandmother come if she was dead? Do you believe in ghosts? Do the dead come back to life here?—Halli saved me the trouble and went ahead with her own explanation.

“Do you know my grandmother?” she asked. “Virginia Markham. Ginny.”

So that’s who Halli had been asking about when I first showed up.

It seemed like I should know her grandmother. If Halli and I were exact genetic duplicates of each other, each living in our own universes, then it made sense that our parents and grandparents and every other relative down the line should also be exactly the same. Like I told Halli, all it would take was one person in our ancestry deciding no, he or she would rather go out with this person instead of that one, and the whole gene pool would have been different, meaning Halli or I would never have been born.

So I had to assume that Halli and I had the same grandmother. I also had to assume, based on the fact that Halli was called Halli instead of Audie, that her grandmother would have a different name, too.

“Do you have a picture of her?” I asked.

Halli ducked inside her tent and emerged with a rolled up scroll-looking thing. She unfurled it and laid it flat on her lap. It turned out to be a kind of computer-like screen about the size of a sheet of paper, and practically as thin. Halli pressed the surface of it in a couple of places, then passed it to me.

The face looking up at me was definitely my grandmother’s. My mother’s mother, to be exact. A sweet old lady my mom and I both affectionately refer to as “it’s for you” whenever we see her number on Caller ID, because conversations with her can definitely be . . . less than fun. My grandmother doesn’t really approve of how we run our lives. We’re too poor for her compared to my Uncle Mike and his family, and my grandmother just can’t help bringing it up all the time.

“Did your father send his child support this month?”

“Mom, it’s for you . . .”

“Is that her?” Halli asked once I’d looked at the screen.

“Yes, but her name’s Marion Fletcher over . . . ” I gestured vaguely to my left. “. . .there.”

“But you’re sure they’re the same.”

“Yes,” I said.

A beeping sound came from the screen. The photo on it disappeared, and in its place came a swirl of lights. They lifted off the screen and twisted in the air right above it.

Halli groaned. “I shouldn’t have turned it on.”

“What’s—”

But Halli held her finger to her lips and motioned for me to get inside her tent.

A voice came from the swirl of lights. “Halli? Where are you?”

I knew that voice. It was my mother’s.

As soon as I was safely in the tent, peeking around the edge of the flap, Halli pressed something on her screen.

“What,” she asked dully.

Suddenly a head appeared. My mother’s head. Also her shoulders and a little of her upper torso. Maybe at three-quarters their regular size, but otherwise looking fully real in three-dimensional color. It looked like she was there in person—or at least her upper body was. She hovered over the top of Halli’s screen, talking to her as if they were in the same room.

“We were worried,” my mother—technically, Halli’s mother—said.

“Why?” Halli asked. “I’m sure my dot moved.”

“You shouldn’t be out there alone,” her mother said.

“I’m not alone—”

Halli glanced my way. I ducked back inside the tent. I thought I was supposed to be a secret.

“—I’m with Red,” Halli finished. Then she slowly started edging toward the tent.

She knelt down in front of the door, held the screen high over her head, then coughed. The screen jiggled and the three-dimensional image of my mother lost focus—sort of like bad TV reception. And in that moment, Halli passed the screen to me.

“No!” I whispered.

“Yes,” Halli mouthed.

She quickly skittered away from the tent. I was alone with just her mother.

“Uh. . .hi,” I said as soon as her face came back. I couldn’t resist poking my finger through her cheek—she just looked so real. But of course my finger passed right through. It was just a hologram.

“Red, relax! It’s just a holo,” Halli had said when I first showed up. Now I understood. No wonder she was so confused when that rock she threw at me bounced off.

“. . .traveling with your dog isn’t the same as being with other people,” Halli’s mother was saying. “Your father and I worry about you.”

When I didn’t answer right away, she said, “Halli, are you listening?”

“Oh, sorry, Mom. Go ahead.”

“Mom?” She seemed a little flustered by that. Halli shook her head at me. Her mother cleared her throat and continued.

Meanwhile I stared at her face.

That woman was definitely my mother. And definitely not.

She looked older. More tired. Heavier, too. Not healthy and energetic-looking like my mother. Just generally puffy and worn out and old.

“Are you listening?” she asked again.

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry. How are you?”

Halli waved for my attention and shook her head again. Apparently I wasn’t handling this right.

Her mother seemed confused by my question, too. “I’m. . . fine. I wish I didn’t have to track you down all over the world—”

Halli gestured for me to wrap it up.

“Um . . . I have to go,” I told her mother.

“When are you going home?” she asked.

“Uh . . .” I looked to Halli for the answer. She shrugged like she didn’t care.

“I might stay out here a while,” I told her mother.

“Why?” her mother asked. “How much longer?”

Halli came to my aid. She motioned for me to lift the screen high, then she rushed in smoothly and did the coughing thing again. She jiggled the screen and retrieved it from my hands. I took the hint and ducked back into the tent.

“I have to go,” Halli told her mother as soon as the screen was back in front of her and the hologram focused again. “Watch my dot. I’ll probably be up here a few more days.”

“Will you call me?” her mother asked.

Halli coughed again. “Need water. Goodbye.”

Then she pressed the screen and her mother’s head disappeared. Halli sat back on her heels and blew out a breath. Then she smiled at me.

“Very good,” she said.

“I’m sweating,” I pointed out.

“Was that her?” Halli asked. “Same mother?”

“Mostly.”

“Well then,” Halli said, “I’m sorry.”

7

Not really the same mother, I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid it might hurt her feelings.

Because even though the face generally looked the same, the tone—the vibe of the woman—was definitely different.

Or maybe what was different was how Halli treated her mother. Maybe that was the whole wrong thing. Because I would never talk to my own mom that way.

We’ve been a team, my mom and me, since I was ten. Before that we were part of a triad, a trio, a family—but she and I don’t really talk about that anymore. There are no pictures of him on the wall. If there are still photos of the three of us in albums, they’re tucked away in my mom’s closet. When he left, he left us for good, as far as my mom was concerned. If he sends checks now and then the way he’s supposed to, she deposits them like she would any donation she gets at work. We never talk about him. And I’m kind of okay with that.

I used to feel so sorry for Lydia and her twin brother Will. They lost their dad for real—as in dead—back when they were little. I thought it was so sad they’d never know what it was like to have him around as they grew up. But people adjust. I’ve adjusted. Now it would feel weird to have him back.

So whatever weird thing there was going on between Halli and her mother, it wasn’t anything I shared or understood.

But it made me curious about something.

“Are your parents divorced?”

“Divorced?” she said. “No.”

Wow. What an interesting thing. She must have had a whole different life, growing up with both parents. I wanted to hear all about that at some point, but first there were other things I was more curious about.

“What did you mean when you said to your mother, ‘Watch my dot’?” I asked.

“My location on the map,” Halli said. “You know . . . the tracking.”

She could see I didn’t have a clue.

“You don’t have that?” she asked.

“I mean, sure, we have maps . . .”

Halli pulled her shirt down on one side and bared her shoulder. She pointed to a spot beneath the left side of her collar bone. “Don’t you have one of these?”

“One of what?”

“An identifier. A tracking cell embedded under the skin. We all have them.”

I know sometimes pet owners microchip their animals, but I’ve never heard of doing it to humans.

“Does it . . . hurt?”

“Probably,” she said. “But you get it when you’re a newborn, so I don’t really remember.”

I thought about what that must be like: Here’s your new baby, Mrs. Jones, let’s just weigh her, measure her, microchip her—good to go.

“So that means your mom can track you wherever you are?”

“Unfortunately,” Halli said. “But only for another few months. Then I’m taking her off the list—taking both of them off.”

I felt like I should understand—she was speaking clearly, and not only in English, but actually in my own voice. Yet I still didn’t get it.

“I’m sorry—take who off what list?”

“My parents. Off the list of who gets tracking information. Once you turn eighteen you get to decide.”

“Oh, sort of like a friends-and-family plan.”

“A what?”

“Never mind,” I said. “So you’re saying no one can track you once you’re eighteen? I mean, unless you want them to?”

“The government still can—everybody has to register with them. That way if you commit a crime, or you’re lost up on Everest, they can find you.”

“Wow.”

“So you don’t have that?” Halli asked.

“Not at all.”

But it was an interesting idea, for sure. I started thinking about who would be on my list. My mother. My father. Lydia and Will and their mom Elena. And . . . that was about it. Those are the only people I care about and the only ones who probably care about me.

Kind of sad.

“How many people are on your list?” I asked Halli.

“Three. Two now, with my grandmother gone. And soon, zero.”

I was practically sociable compared to her.

I heard a beeping again. More of a ringing, really. I waited for Halli to answer her screen. She didn’t even seem to notice the noise.

Because it wasn’t her noise. It was mine. My phone, my world.

And thanks to that, me back in my own bedroom.