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Robin Brande

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Beschreibung


(Book 3 of 4)

Parallel universes have their own rules.

High school senior and amateur physicist Audie Masters has done what no other physicist has ever done before her: discovered a parallel universe. She’s also found a parallel—and very different—version of herself.


Now what?


As Audie struggles with the dangerous effects of traveling to a parallel universe, now she wonders if she’s gone too far.


Can what she did be undone?


Will she ever reclaim her life as it used to be?

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SEIZE THE PARALLEL

PARALLELOGRAM, BOOK 3

ROBIN BRANDE

RYER PUBLISHING

SEIZE THE PARALLEL

Parallelogram, Book 3

By Robin Brande

Published by Ryer Publishing

www.ryerpublishing.com

Copyright 2013 by Robin Brande

www.robinbrande.com

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Vegorus/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

About the Author

Also by Robin Brande

1

I can’t blame Halli for what she did. She knew she was dead. I know now, too.

What do you do when your real life is over, and all you have left is this one? You do the best you can. And if you’re Halli Markham, you do a better job than I’ve been doing, pretending to be her.

“I’m not like you,” she told me. “I can’t be you.”

I know that. Any more than I can be her.

But that’s what we’re doing, both of us. Living our opposite lives, messing them up in so many ways, maybe improving them in others.

So I don’t blame her, for most of it.

Just for that one thing.

But that one thing—I’m not sure I can get over it.

2

When Halli was growing up, she and her grandmother, Ginny, did a lot of dangerous things: exploring the Amazon; climbing the Himalayas; rowing across the Atlantic; trekking to the North and South Poles. The list goes on from there—Ginny Markham was a world explorer, a world adventurer, and she took Halli everywhere with her from the time Halli was a baby.

But even though their adventures were dangerous, Ginny always emphasized two things: one, that preparation is the best defense against everything that can go wrong. And two, when everything goes wrong anyway, face up to it and keep on going from there.

So Halli learned to anticipate. And Halli learned to adapt. To look at her situation with a cold, hard eye, and not wish things were different than they were, but to deal with exactly what was happening at the moment.

So if a rope failed, a bone broke, if Halli and Ginny were lost somewhere in the middle of a violent storm, Halli learned to be quiet. To stop. To assess her condition, her surroundings, her options.

Is it any wonder, then, that once it sank in—the conclusion that Professor Whitfield and I had come to that the real Halli was dead, and I hadn’t saved her from that avalanche at all, but instead had split off a new parallel universe where the only Halli who had ever existed was this new Halli 2, the one who was actually me inside Halli’s body, and there would be no way to reverse it because the original Halli was gone, that connection severed forever—was it any wonder that a calm came over Halli, and she started thinking about what she had to do?

Especially once I disappeared again, ripped out of the body—my old body—that I’d been able to visit temporarily and share with Halli somehow. Now I was gone, and no matter what Halli and Professor Whitfield tried over the next several hours, they couldn’t bring me back.

So as night fell, and my mother was calling to the daughter she thought was me, asking her what kind of takeout she wanted, and Professor Whitfield told Halli they’d have to try finding me again in the morning, Halli was already thinking about what to do next.

Because just like Ginny said, if things go wrong, you have to be able to rely on yourself. No point clinging to a rockface after your climbing partner has just fallen, and crying because it’s all so sad and frightening. You’d better figure out a way to save yourself. You can cry about it later.

So Halli began making a plan.

3

Meanwhile, me.

Rushed to a London hospital and immediately pumped full of drugs.

Drugs that made me hallucinate. Drugs that kept me in this kind of twilight sleep, never really dreaming, never really awake, but just floating in this sort of sick haze, unable to swim my way to the top of it or force it out of my system. My brain was gooey. Muddled. Limp and useless.

“Halli?” I could hear Daniel saying to me, and if no one was around, “Audie?” I tried to form his name, but it was too hard. My mouth felt too heavy. I don’t think I even got the D out.

Then other voices—Jake, other people—all of them shouting “Halli,” trying to get me to answer, but I was too deep and far away. And why come back when it was all so noisy? What I needed was quiet. And for someone to come dig me out. To grab me by the hair and keep me from sinking further into the deep. To sweep away all the haze and the gunk, and help me clear out my mind again.

“She needs rest,” I heard a woman say. “Miss Markham needs her rest. Clearly she’s exhausted.”

No, Miss Markham needs to find the real Miss Markham. Miss Markham is Audie Masters. She’d like to go home now. Her mother brought her some soup. She was just about to see her mother when suddenly Jake and Sarah and that reporter burst into the room and ruined everything. Now where am I? What have you done with her? With me? What’s happening?

“Audie,” Daniel whispered. “We’re doing everything we can. I hope you can hear me.”

I can. I could. Then it was back into the deep dark void for me.

4

Halli rose at dawn and went for a long run. It was Sunday, the day after my miraculous and all-too-brief visit, and Halli needed to mull over everything she had learned. She always did her best thinking when she was on the move.

Over the past week she’d gone running at least twice a day: in the morning, as soon as my mom left for work, and again in the afternoon before my mom came home. In between, Halli spent hours cooped up in my room, talking to Professor Whitfield and his lab assistant Albert, alternating between trying to bring me back and learning everything she could about how to pretend to be me.

And part of that involved pretending to be sick.

My mother understood immediately. She had been expecting it for weeks. She kept warning me I was pushing myself too hard, not getting enough sleep, never taking a break from obsessing over getting accepted into Columbia University. My application was due November 1, and I kept promising her I’d relax after that. But she knew in her heart that it would all finally catch up to me, and when it did I would crash hard.

So when she came home from her business trip and found Halli—theoretically, me—coughing and sniffling and dragging herself out of bed, my mother declared that school and my job were off-limits for a few days, and I was to stay home and do nothing but rest. Halli nodded meekly, let my mother heat up cans of soup for her and fuss over her a little, and then leapt out of bed as soon as the coast was clear and took off running every chance she could get.

And it was fine for that one week. Halli figured it was temporary. She would work with Professor Whitfield to find me and reverse what had happened, and then she’d be back to her old life in no time.

Meanwhile, it was interesting to learn about this other universe she’d dropped into: how the technology worked, how the people lived, what everything looked like. It wasn’t so different from experiences she’d had many times before, visiting new countries and learning the language and the customs.

But mostly Halli was interested in the terrain. Ginny had taught her that was the first and best way of getting grounded in a new place: find out where you are and where everything else is around you.

“I need maps,” Halli told the professor.

“Maps of what?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“Halli, we need to keep working—”

“I need maps.”

She was so insistent, he finally gave in. Showed her how to access maps on my computer. “But don’t do it now,” he told her. “We have to keep working. Come on, Halli, we need your complete focus.”

Reluctantly, she agreed. And returned to the more tedious business of mapping out my life.

“See if you can find any identification numbers,” Professor Whitfield and Albert suggested. “Passwords...her driver’s license...bank information...notes...e-mails...pictures...” Anything and everything that would let Halli slip into my life and pretend to know what I should know.

Albert had the bright idea of using my social security number and student ID to hack into my school records. That way they could find out what classes I was taking, what rooms they were in, and what my teachers’ names were, in case Halli had to take it all a step further and go to school as if she were me. She couldn’t just stand there in the hall and ask someone passing by, “Excuse me? Do you know me? Where do I go?”

Halli took one look at my class schedule and didn’t like what she saw.

“Physics? World History? English Literature?” she said. “I won’t know any of those. Don’t you think people will notice?”

“We’ll coach you through it,” Professor Whitfield promised. “And maybe it won’t come to that. Let’s keep working.”

The problem wasn’t just that Halli had never been to school in my universe, it’s that she’d never been to any school, period. Ginny taught her everything she needed to know: foreign languages, navigation, survival skills. Halli never spent a day of her life sitting in some classroom taking quizzes or writing essays. And the only thing she knew about physics was what little I’d taught her so far. That wouldn’t help if Mr. Dobosh called on her and asked her to explain some esoteric principle that I would clearly understand. Halli was right—people would be suspicious.

With all the work involved trying to learn to be me, it’s no wonder Halli had to take as many breaks as she could to go out running. I’ll be the first to agree that having to cram in someone’s life in just a few days—not to mention having to learn as much as you can about how to function in a strange place in general, with technology you’ve never seen, around people who expect you to know who they are—can be totally mentally exhausting.

On the other hand—and I don’t say this just because I’m jealous—it was pretty convenient for Halli to have a team like the professor and Albert helping her through all that. Even little things like suggesting she carry my laptop all around the house so they could see our appliances on the screen and explain how they all worked.

I understand that was best for everybody since it meant fewer things for my mother to get suspicious about, but don’t you think I would have loved some help like that when I suddenly had to start pretending to be Halli? I was thrown into her life as abruptly as she was thrown into mine, and I didn’t even have time to properly freak out before there was a knock on her door and some guy standing there who looked exactly like the one I’ve been in love with most of my life, telling me his name was Jake instead of Will, and that he was there to fly me back by private jet to Halli’s parents’ private island, where I was supposed to be the star attraction at a company board meeting I knew nothing about.

Not to mention that Halli’s parents are horrible, her world is confusing, and I never once, no matter how many times I tried, managed to figure out how to work the holographic tablets they have over there. So yeah, I would have appreciated a little help.

I’m not saying Halli had it easy, just in some ways easier.

While she sorted through all my stuff those first few days, searching for clues about how to be me, Halli couldn’t resist cleaning up a little as she went.

I’ve never really minded living in chaos. I know where everything is in every pile in my room, so it’s never seemed important enough for me to take the time to clean. If I’m in there I’d rather be studying or sleeping. But I can understand someone else coming in and needing to bring some order to the place, to sort out what’s useful and necessary from what’s not.

Halli brought that kind of cold calculation to my closet one afternoon. She was sick of having to sort through all the clothes I crammed in there, just to find things that fit. I still had a lot of clothes from back in junior high, and maybe even a few from elementary school. What can I say? I’ve been busy the last few years.

But Ginny never would have let me get away with something like that.

“If you have something, use it,” she used to tell Halli. “If you don’t use it, don’t have it.” That applied to clothing, gear, equipment—everything. Despite all her wealth, Ginny liked to live very simply. She could fit all the essentials of her life into a duffel or two, and be on the move at a moment’s notice. Halli developed that same skill.

By the time she was done cleaning my closet and my room, Halli had filled five garbage bags full of clothes, shoes, odds and ends—anything she couldn’t see an immediate use for and that didn’t suit her regular style.

Gone were some of the pants and shirts I let my best friend, Lydia, talk me into getting over the years, but that never really fit me right. Gone were the flowery skirts my mother always gave me for my birthday. Gone were all the beat-up, worn-out flats and sandals I’ve worn for years because my shoe size hasn’t really changed.

But Halli kept any T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, all my jeans, my shorts, my sneakers—any kind of clothing a person could run in or hike in or generally not have to fuss with. And she especially loved my cargo pants: comfortable, sturdy, practical with all their pockets—just the kind of thing she liked.

She stowed all the bags in our storage shed. She wasn’t about to permanently throw out anything of mine that I might come back and want. Then she settled back into a bedroom that looked more like her clean, sparse house than the place I had left behind.

It looked nice. I’ll admit I was shocked—and maybe even a little hurt—the first time I saw it. But the truth is everything Halli did needed to be done. Nobody can be as ruthless about purging your stuff as somebody else who’s never been attached to any of it. I’m actually grateful that she did it.

And my mom was absolutely stunned.

“Audie, what...?” My mom stood in the doorway of my bedroom, staring around her in shock. I doubt she had ever seen it that clean since the day we first moved into the house.

Halli glanced up from where she sat on my bed, back propped against the wall, my laptop balanced on my legs. She gave my mom a shrug. “I felt a little better this afternoon. Thought I’d do some cleaning up.”

“But...” My mom just shook her head. “Wow.”

Halli smiled politely, then went back to studying the map currently up on my screen.

And even without meaning to, just by that small act of cleaning up my room, Halli already set the stage for everything else to come.

5

When Halli returned from her run, she found my mom sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper.

“Oh!” my mom said, looking up. “I thought you were still asleep. Were you...outside?”

Halli quickly put on the sweatshirt she wore tied around my waist. She didn’t need my mother to see how sweaty my T-shirt was.

“I felt so much better when I woke up,” Halli said, “I thought I’d go out and get some fresh air.”

“Oh.” Since that’s not the sort of thing I do normally—ever—my mother gave her a puzzled look.

And Halli decided right then and there that it was smarter to make up a longer-lasting excuse than to have to keep sneaking around.

“I was thinking about it the whole time I was sick,” she said. “I realized I need to start taking better care of myself.”

“Well, I agree with that,” my mom answered, as Halli suspected she would. “I always say you need more sleep. And honey, I know you don’t want to keep hearing this, but I really think you have to stop pushing yourself so hard about Columbia.”

“Hm.” Halli nodded without saying more.

“Are you hungry?” my mom asked. “I think there are still some waffles.”

My favorite Sunday morning breakfast—mainly because I can make them myself. Just pop them in the toaster and wait. That’s about the level of my cooking skills.

“Actually,” Halli said, “I was hoping we could go to the store this morning. There are some things I’d like to get. Now that I’m feeling better.”

“Okay, sure,” my mom said. “I need to get a few things, too. Let me just finish my coffee and we’ll go in a little while.”

“Good,” Halli said. “Thank you.” Then she smiled.

And right there, I’m surprised my mother didn’t catch it: the insincerity. A kind of forced smile that only involved Halli’s mouth—my mouth, technically—and never traveled all the way up to my eyes. The kind of smile you give a stranger who apologizes after accidentally bumping into you. “Sorry.” “No problem.” Fake smile.

When I asked Halli, during that short visit I was able to accomplish before being dragged off to the hospital, whether she talked to my mom, Halli’s answer was, “As much as I can.”

At the time I thought she meant she talked to my mom as often as she could—as in, she really wanted to be around her.

What I realize now is that she meant, “As much as I can stand.”

Because the truth is, Halli has never had a proper mother. And by this point in her life, I can’t blame her for not wanting one. Her real mother is awful: critical, shallow, materialistic, and mean. And her father isn’t much better. I spent a whole weekend with them, and it was clear from the start that neither of them likes her.

Plus it’s hard to get past the fact that they abandoned Halli as soon as she was born and let her be raised by her grandmother. Not that Halli wasn’t better off because of it, but something like that doesn’t exactly create the kind of close parent-daughter bond my own mom and I have.

So I understand that having to share a house with someone who looks just like her own mother must have been hard for Halli. And pretending that she loved her the way I really do love my own mother? Well, impossible.

But Halli tried—or at least she tried to do a good job of faking it. For my sake and for the sake of her own situation. And I appreciate that.

Halli left the kitchen and went to take a shower. She stood under the hot water for a long time. Thinking.

All during that first week, she had thought of my body as mine. As something she was temporarily stuck in until I could figure out the physics and take it back.

But now...

She drizzled shampoo into my hand and scrubbed it into my hair. She’d gotten used to feeling the shorter haircut as it slid through her fingers, the same way she had to adjust to all the other differences between our two bodies. We might be parallel versions of each other, but anyone looking at us side by side would be able to tell we weren’t the same person. Halli’s body—the one I was currently occupying—was strong and athletic. Mine was...not. But at least it hadn’t completely broken down during all those long runs Halli took it on. That gave her some hope.

There’s nothing special about the body, Halli could hear Ginny telling her in a memory from long ago. It was one of the worst conversations she ever had with her grandmother, but also one of the most important. It helped mold Halli into the kind of person she was now.

It had been Ginny’s way of telling Halli she should always be prepared, no matter what. But now Halli realized the lesson meant so much more.

She had been thinking about it for the past twenty-four hours—ever since she listened to the professor and me discussing whether or not her old body was gone. Ginny never could have predicted that one day her granddaughter would end up in the wrong universe, inhabiting some other girl’s life. But the lesson still applied—maybe more now than ever.

There’s nothing special about the body.

Halli hoped her grandmother was right.

6

Halli was six when Ginny took her on her first really long backpacking excursion: three weeks high in the Colorado mountains. It was early fall, and the leaves on the aspens had already turned yellow. The temperature fell below freezing at night, and they always awoke to frost on the outside of their tent. But the days were still brilliantly sunny, so Ginny and Halli could hike for miles every day.

It was hard work, carrying all their gear and food on their backs as they trudged up and down steep terrain all day long, but Halli loved it. Ginny made sure she would. She’d introduced Halli to outdoor life almost from the very start. By the time she was six, Halli was strong for her age. She had already spent years learning to hike, horseback ride, paddle, and ski. I think of my own first six years and I can’t even imagine how Halli did all that she did. But Ginny made it seem so fun and normal. Halli wouldn’t have known any other way to live.

They mostly walked in silence. Ginny taught Halli that was the best way to see wildlife: elk and deer grazing along the hillsides; nervous marmots chirping in alarm, then diving into their dens; hawks gliding overhead, their wings bent up at the tips as if someone had folded them along a crease.

And bears sometimes. Always from a distance, running away once they caught sight or scent of Halli and Ginny.

“Won’t they attack us?” Halli asked.

“Only if they don’t feel they have a choice,” Ginny told her. “Especially if we surprise them.”

It was why they talked loudly and even sang sometimes if they had to navigate through the thick willows that grew along the streams.

“They won’t be able to see us in here,” Ginny explained. “Let’s give them a chance to get away. They don’t want to meet us any more than we want to meet them.”

By the end of their three weeks, Halli was so used to the routines of the day and the feeling of being out in the wilderness all the time, she stopped worrying about any of the dangers.

Which was a mistake she learned not to repeat.

It was their last morning, and after a breakfast of hot, spicy tea and oatmeal with dried fruit, they packed up their tent and gear one last time and took to the trail. The air was cold enough that Halli could see her breath. She’d had a strange dream the night before, and was lost in thought, trying to remember all of it, when suddenly Ginny thrust out her arm to keep Halli from moving another inch.

In front of them, just a few feet off the trail, were a giant bull moose and his equally giant mate. They were larger than any animal Halli had ever been that close to—bigger than even the biggest horse. The bull’s rack stretched out on each side of his head in a span as wide as his body was long. The two animals stared at them, both on high alert, their nostrils flared, ears erect.

“Back up,” Ginny whispered urgently. “Don’t run. Start backing up. Now.”

Halli obeyed instantly. She knew they were in trouble. Ginny had warned her about moose: how they weren’t like deer or elk, who would just take off if someone approached. Moose stood their ground. They defended themselves. They could easily trample a person to death—and would, if threatened.

Halli’s heart pounded. She followed Ginny’s lead, backing up one step after another until they were out of the moose’s line of sight.

“Now turn around,” Ginny whispered. “Walk quickly, but quietly. Go.”

Halli didn’t argue. Didn’t speak. She knew better. All she wanted was to get away. She hurried without running, keeping her boots as silent as she could against the dirt, looking back over her shoulder every few seconds to see if the moose were following.

Finally Ginny whispered they could stop. She led Halli off the trail to a clearing up ahead of them where they could remove their packs and rest.

“We’ll give them a chance to wander off,” Ginny said. She spread out a few items of extra clothing to help insulate them from the cold ground. Then the two of them sat down to wait.

Ginny smiled at her granddaughter. “Very good, Halli. You did well back there. I’m proud of you.”

Halli blew out a long, cold breath that ended with a shaky smile. She liked the praise, but her pulse still pounded.

Ginny seemed perfectly calm.

“Weren’t you scared?” Halli asked her.

Ginny thought about it for a moment. “No.”

“Why not?” Halli asked. “I was!”

“It was just a situation we had to manage,” Ginny said. “And we did. That’s all you ever have to do, no matter what happens to you.”

“But how?” Halli asked. “You don’t know what will happen all the time. What if it’s something really bad?”

“What if it is?” Ginny answered. “Let’s say one of us got hurt just now. What would we do?”

“Hurt...how?”

They had played this kind of game before. What ifs were Ginny’s favorite way of teaching.

“Let’s say that moose attacked you and broke your arm,” she said. “Now what do we do?”

“Well...we’d have to fix it,” Halli said.

“How?”

Ginny made Halli go through each of the steps, from how she’d get away from the moose while still protecting her arm, to finding the proper materials to set the broken bone, to figuring out how to carry her pack so they could continue hiking out of the wilderness.

“So you could manage it,” Ginny said when Halli finished.

Halli nodded. She actually felt much better now—calmer, more in control of the situation.

But then Ginny took it another step further.

“What would you do if I died?” she asked.

Halli’s eyes widened. She shook her head, not wanting to even consider the question.

Ginny asked again. “Halli, what would you do if I died this morning? What if that moose had killed me?”

Halli couldn’t help it—no matter how tough she was already, she was still only six. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t want you to die!”

“I don’t want to, either,” Ginny said. “But I want you to think about what you would do if I did.”

Again Halli shook her head.

Ginny wasn’t having any of that. She wasn’t raising a weak, scared little girl. She was raising a woman just like herself.

“Halli, I’m not saying it will happen any time soon, but it might, and you have to be prepared. I need to know that you’ll be smart and brave and you’ll do what’s necessary to survive. Do you understand?”

Halli gulped back her tears and nodded.

Ginny smiled. “I love my life—especially since you came along. But if I died today, you could go on, couldn’t you?”

Halli shook her head. A single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.

Ginny sighed. “You could, Halli, of course you could. You know that and I know it. You’re strong and brave, and I know you’d make me proud. So what would you have done this morning if I died?”

Ginny wouldn’t let up. She made Halli go through each and every moment—from surprising the moose to watching them suddenly charge forward and attack her grandmother.

“What would you do?” Ginny demanded.

“I’d help you!” Halli cried.

“No, you’d have to run away,” Ginny said.

“No, I’d stay and protect you!”

“You’re too small,” Ginny said. “You wouldn’t be able to help me.”

“But I couldn’t just leave you!”

“Yes, you could. And you’d have to,” Ginny said. “I’m counting on you to always protect yourself if I’m not here to do it—do you understand?”

Halli stared back at her miserably.

“Halli, do you understand?”

The little girl nodded.

Ginny made her resume the story: how she’d run away, hide, and wait for the moose to leave.

“And then what?” Ginny asked.

“I’d go back and find you,” Halli said.

“Why?”

“To see if you were all right.”

“And what if I wasn’t?” Ginny asked. “What if I was dead?”

“Then I’d bury you!” Halli cried. It was the worst conversation she’d ever had in her life. But still Ginny persisted.

“No, you wouldn’t bury me,” Ginny said calmly. “That would be foolish. You’re too small, and it would take too long. Then it would be dark out, and you’d be vulnerable. Think, Halli. What are the three most important things to have in the wilderness?”

Halli wiped her nose on her sleeve. At least she could answer that question. “Shelter, water, and safety.”

“Not food?” Ginny quizzed her.

“No, you can go without food for several days,” Halli recited. “But you have to stay warm and dry, and you need water. And you have to make sure you’re safe.”

“That’s right,” Ginny said. “So what would you do? You’ve come back and found my body, I’m dead, so what do you do?”

Halli wasn’t crying anymore. The worst of the shock was over. Now it was just a lesson.

“I’d look for your pack and find the tent.”

“Good,” Ginny said.

“I’d get the water bag, too, so I could carry that.”

“Good. And then?”

Halli sniffled. “I’d cover you up—can I at least do that?”

“It depends,” Ginny said. “Is it close to dark? Do you have someplace safe to go?”

“I don’t want the wild animals to get you!”

And then Ginny said the words that she couldn’t have possibly known would be so important to Halli now, eleven years later.

“I wouldn’t care,” Ginny said. “Do you understand? I’d already be dead. And there’s nothing special about the body. Once I’m gone, I don’t care what happens to it. All I want is for you to keep going and be safe.”

“How can you say that?” Halli argued. “That thing about the body? You always say we should be as comfortable as possible. You make me stop and put on extra clothes if I’m cold. Or fix something if it’s hurting me—my boots, or the strap on my backpack—”

“We should always be comfortable,” Ginny said. “I stand by that. Because as long as we’re in these bodies, we should treat them well and make them feel good. It’s a nice thing to do. But once we’re done with them—once we’re dead—it doesn’t matter anymore. Do you understand that? It’s just a body. It’s like those clothes you’re wearing. One day you’ll outgrow them, and you won’t need them anymore.”

Halli thought about it. And even though she hated everything her grandmother was telling her, she couldn’t say it wasn’t right. Or that it wasn’t true. Even at that young age, she knew how to be rational and practical.

And now the grown Halli stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom, brushing a set of teeth that belonged to me.

There’s nothing special about the body. Once we’re done with it, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Halli spit out the toothpaste and leaned in closer. She looked into my eyes. She tapped their reflection in the mirror, to see who was home.

Nothing special about the body. Her body was gone. This was her body now, in the same way she had inherited all the clothes in my closet.

Treat it well and make it feel good. It’s a nice thing to do.

She intended to. She already was. But beyond that? What was she supposed to do with this body of mine? Not just with my body—with this whole life of mine?

Use it. Mold it. Make it your own.

Halli knew that’s what Ginny would say. What Ginny would do.

Her grandmother wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. She would have immediately accepted the reality of the situation, no matter how unreal it felt.

“I’m in Audie’s body now?” Halli could imagine Ginny saying. “All right, then, fine—what’s next?” Then she would have taken control of the situation right away—managed it. She wouldn’t have spent a week waiting and hoping I’d return and make everything right again.

Halli went to my room and dressed herself the way she wanted to: cargo pants, sneakers, a long-sleeved T-shirt. She fanned her fingers through my wet hair.

“Audie,” my mom called, “ready?”

Ready enough, Halli thought. It was time to put the first phase of her plan into action.

It was time she seized control.

7

“I’ll get us a cart,” my mom said, but Halli was already heading off in her own direction.

“Oh, okay,” my mom said, clearly surprised. Usually the two of us walk the aisles together just to keep each other company. But Halli neither knew about that nor cared.

“I’ll come find you,” my mom called after her. “I just need to pick up a few things...”

Halli didn’t bother listening. She was on a mission.

Because she knew if her plan were going to succeed, she needed to get to work on my body right away. It had done all right for her so far whenever she took it running, but she was about to start putting a lot more demands on it, and for that she needed strength.

And for that she needed proper food.

No more takeout, no more microwavable vegetables smothered in cheese, no more chips or sugary cereals or any of the other junk my mom and I love so much. Halli needed fresh food. Home-cooked food. And good coffee—she was a snob about that. I remember her taking a whiff of the cheap coffee my mom always buys, and telling me, “We’re better than this.”

So she scooped up a basket from the end of one of the checkout lanes and headed toward the right. She had been in that store once before, and knew exactly where she wanted to go.

She’d gone in one morning while she was out on one of her runs. She had a craving for fruit—not something we normally keep in our house, since it usually goes bad before my mom or I remember to eat it—and she was curious what kinds of food she might find.

But Halli wasn’t in the habit of bringing any money with her, and she forgot that in my world she couldn’t just step up to a cashier and have the person wave a sensor over the microchip beneath Halli’s collar bone, and punch in a code to have the purchase deducted from one of her accounts. Not only do our stores not work that way, but my body doesn’t come equipped with a microchip.

As Halli walked out of the store that day without the banana and kiwi she meant to buy, she made a note of that. Not of the fact that she needed money to purchase food in my world—that was obvious—but of the fact that she didn’t have any money of her own, and would have to ask my mother for anything she wanted.

Halli didn’t like that one bit.

It had been different with Ginny: the two of them were a team. Halli never had to beg or negotiate with her grandmother. They both understood that if either of them needed anything, they would just get it. It had always been that simple.

Of course, it helped that Ginny was rich—very rich. And when she died she left everything to Halli. Money was never a worry in Halli’s life—not like in mine at all. My mom and I have been basically poor my whole life. And that was the life Halli stepped into.

When she searched my room those first few days, looking for clues so she could impersonate me, Halli found my wallet and the whopping $27.52 I had in there. She also found the bank statements showing a little over $2,000 in my savings account—money I’d been accumulating over the past several years to help my mom pay for college.

But that wasn’t Halli’s money. At least not in her eyes.

Yes, she could have gone into my bank at any moment, shown them my ID, and withdrawn every penny I had, but she wasn’t like that. What was mine was mine, what was hers was hers.

And at the moment, nothing was hers.

But she had a plan to change that. One she had been thinking about ever since she learned the day before that she might be stuck exactly where she was.

It was why she was currently loading up her shopping basket with several pounds of potatoes, squash, beans, bananas, apples, parsnips, turnips, onions, carrots, greens—

“Audie,” my mother said, staring in shock at Halli’s overflowing basket. “Honey, we can’t get all that.”

“Why not?” Halli was genuinely perplexed.

“Well...we’ll never eat all that. It’ll just go to waste.”

“No it won’t,” Halli said. “I’ll eat it.”