A Thousand Pieces of You Page 3

  “What is that?”

  “Hold your ring up to the hologram, okay?” I do it. The ring glitters, and in the holographic screen, I can see his ring light up as well. Theo grins. “Good. Now I can find you any time you’ve got that ring on, or you can find me. Once you figure out the interface, that is. Okay, where are you headed?”

  “Home, I guess. Once I figure out where it is.” I laugh. Suddenly Theo looks stricken. Why should he look like that?

  “Marguerite—” His voice is very quiet, very serious, not like the usual Theo at all.

  Fear flickers stronger within me, and quickly I search for HENRY CAINE AND SOPHIA KOVALENKA. Results pop up instantly: physics papers, a few faculty photos from when they were younger, and video clips.

  Video of the hovership accident from years ago, the one that killed three dozen people, including two promising scientists and their older daughter.

  I don’t have Dad back. He’s dead here too. The only difference is that Mom is gone too. And Josie.

  My whole family is dead.

  I suck in a breath, hard, as if I’d been struck. As though at a great distance, I hear Theo’s voice say, “Marguerite? Are you okay?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t.

  The holographic screen helpfully starts showing me the video of the wreck, which apparently was a big thing on the news. Right now it feels like that explosion is happening inside my head, white heat and blinding light and everything I love, everyone who really loved me—Dad and Mom and Josie—burning to cinders.

  It happened above San Francisco. The news articles say bits and scraps of the wreckage turned up as far away as Las Vegas, drifting down to earth, sometimes washed down with the rain.

  “Marguerite?” The shimmering of the hologram doesn’t hide the concern on Theo’s face. “Your folks—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. When I came to in this dimension, I looked them up first thing—thought they could maybe help us, you know? I didn’t realize you hadn’t learned what happened to them yet.”

  My heart has been crying out for Dad, over and over, since the moment the police called our house. I’d even cherished a small hope of seeing him again here, at least a version of him.

  But he’s still gone, still dead, and now Mom and Josie are as lost as he is.

  They’re fine! I try to tell myself. That happened in this dimension, but not yours. When you go back home, Mom and Josie will be there waiting for you—it’s not like here, you didn’t lose everything, not absolutely everything—it’s going to be okay—

  But it’s not. Dad is still gone.

  “Why does anybody want to travel through dimensions, anyway?” I choke out. My fingernails dig into the flesh of my forearms, which are crossed in front of me like a shield. The physical pain keeps me from crying; no matter what, I refuse to cry. “They haven’t thought enough about what they might find.”

  “I’m sorry,” Theo repeats. He looks like he wants to step forward through the hologram to get to me. “I’m so sorry.”

  I think, Is this what you wanted, Paul? Did you hate them so much that you ran to a world where they were already dead? So your work would be done for you?

  Once again I remember Paul’s unsmiling face, his gray eyes that seemed to stare through me. I remember the day he watched me painting, his gaze following every stroke my brush made on the canvas. It sickens me now to think that for a little while I almost—

  Theo speaks again, his voice firmer this time. “That accident was a long time ago, and a lifetime away. You’ve gotta think of it like that. All right?”

  His words break through my melancholy, bring me back to the now. “All right. Yes. It was just a shock. I won’t let it get to me again.”

  He does me the courtesy of pretending to believe me. “Until tomorrow, hang in there and stay safe. And if you see Paul . . . don’t let him see you.”

  The hologram blinks out. Though I stare down at my ring, hoping against hope that he’ll call back, it remains dull metal, silent and dark.

  So I go home.

  My blinky ring also has a GPS system, and when I ask it to guide me home, it does. I follow its directions without any idea of where I’ll end up.

  Turns out home is in a particularly posh building—less garish than most of those around, but no less cold. The elevator is one of those glass ones on the outside, which I think are designed specifically to terrify the acrophobic. I expect to feel a little comforted when I walk inside, because her apartment must be, in part, my apartment too. But the minute I see it, I think that I’ve never seen any place that looked less like home.

  It feels like an art gallery, but one of the ones that only shows weird, pop-kitsch art like rhinestone-studded cow skulls. Or maybe it’s like a hospital where they do plastic surgery on celebrities. Stark white and brushed metal, no soft seats, nothing comfortable or cozy, and so brightly lit you could see a single speck of dust—which I guess is the idea. I stand there, dripping wet from the rain, aware of myself as grubby, awkward, and misplaced.

  Never could I have felt like I belonged here.

  “Marguerite?” Aunt Susannah steps out from the hallway in a dressing gown as pristinely white as the decor. I guess I was put into the custody of my Aunt Susannah, of all people.

  Her hair is loose, ready for bed, but still falls neatly to her shoulders as if it didn’t dare put one wisp astray. She doesn’t seem to be that different in this dimension. As she rubs some expensive cream into her face, she says, “You’re back awfully early tonight.”

  It’s after one a.m. What time do I normally come home? “I was tired.”

  “Are you feeling well?”

  I shrug.

  Aunt Susannah lets that go. “Best get to bed, then. You don’t want to make yourself ill.”

  “Okay. Good night, Aunt Susannah.”

  She pauses. Do I not say that to her often? I don’t sense maternal warmth from her; she’s not the maternal type. It’s not that I don’t love her—I do. And she loves me, too. But I’m guessing parenting didn’t come easily to her. Aunt Susannah says simply, “All right. Good night, dear.”

  As she pads down the hall to her room, I go to the other door, to the room that must be mine.

  It’s so—blank. Not as fancy as the rest of the apartment, but there’s nothing about this space that makes me feel like it belongs to me. It might as easily be a room in a luxury hotel.

  But that, I realize, must be the point.

  The Marguerite who lost her family so young is one who has spent the rest of her life trying not to love anyone or anything that much again.

  I haven’t decorated a bulletin board with postcards and prints of images I find inspiring. No easel stands in the corner with my latest canvas; do I paint in this dimension at all? No bookshelves. No books. Although I try to hope this dimension’s Marguerite has some kind of technologically advanced e-reader in her earrings or something, that’s beginning to seem unlikely. She doesn’t appear to be the bookish type.

  The clothes in my closet include a lot of designer labels I recognize, and some I don’t, but I’d wager they’re high-end too. None of them are the kinds of things I’d wear at home—instead they’re all metallic or leather or plastic, anything hard and shiny. Maybe I ought to be enthused that the Caine family money apparently held out a couple of generations longer in this dimension, but all I can think about is how cold this life is.

  Now I have to live in it.

  My hand closes around the Firebird locket. I could take it off now if I wanted, since I don’t seem to need the reminders. But even the thought of being separated from it terrifies me. Instead I close my eyes and imagine that it could help me fly away to a new place, not this life or my old life, but some newer, shinier reality where everything is okay and nothing can hurt me ever again.

  My legs seem to give out, and I flop down on the immaculately made bed. For a long time I lie there, curled in a ball, wishing to be home—my real home—more desperately than I’d known I could ever
wish for anything.

  4

  AS I LIE HERE IN A DIMENSION NOT MY OWN, ON A STARK white bed more forbidding than comforting, I try to paint pictures of home in my mind. I want every face, every corner, every shadow, every beam. I want my reality painted over this one until I can’t see the blinding white any longer.

  My home—my real home—is in California.

  Our house isn’t on the beach; it’s nestled at the foot of the hills in the shade of tall trees. It’s always clean but never neat. Books are piled two deep on the shelves that line nearly every room, Mom’s houseplants thrive in every corner and nook, and years ago my parents covered the entire hallway with that chalkboard paint that’s meant for little kids’ rooms but works perfectly well for physics equations.

  When I was little, my friends would get so excited when I told them that my parents did most of their scientific work at home, and they’d come in for the first time looking around for bubbling beakers or dynamos or whatever devices sci-fi shows had taught them to expect. What it mostly means is papers piled on every flat surface. Sure, lately we’ve had a few gadgets, but only a few. Nobody wants to hear that theoretical physics has less to do with shiny lasery stuff and more to do with numbers.

  In the center of the great room is our dinner table, an enormous round wooden one Mom and Dad bought for cheap at a Goodwill back when Josie and I were little. They let us paint it in a rainbow of colors, just goop it on with our hands, because they loved hearing us laugh and also because no two human beings on earth ever cared less about how their furniture looked. Josie thought it was funny to smear swirls on with her fingers. For me, though—that was the first time I noticed how different colors looked when you blended them together, contrasted one next to another. It might have been the moment I fell in love with painting.

  “I guess you think painting isn’t as important as physics,” I said to Paul as I sat at my easel, that one day he watched me work.

  “Depends on what you mean by important,” he replied.

  I could have thrown him out right then. Why didn’t I?

  My memories become dreams as I fall asleep without knowing it. All night I see Paul’s face in front of mine, staring at me, questioning me, planning something I can’t guess. The next morning, when I wake up in this cold, foreign bed, I can’t remember the dreams. I only know that I tried to go after Paul but never could move.

  Surprisingly, there’s no disorientation. From the first moment I open my eyes, I know where I am, who I am, and who I’m supposed to be. I remember what Paul did to my father, that I’ll never see Dad again. As I lie there amid the rumpled white sheets, I realize how little I want to move. My grief feels like ropes tying me down.

  “Come along, sweetie!” Aunt Susannah calls. “Time to make yourself pretty!”

  Not unless the technology in this dimension borders on the miraculous. I sit up, catch a glimpse of my crazy bedhead curls reflected in the window, and groan.

  Apparently we’re going to a “charity luncheon,” though my aunt doesn’t remotely care about whatever charity it’s for; she doesn’t even remember what it is. It’s a society event—a place to see and be seen—and that’s all that matters to Aunt Susannah.

  Still, I know I have to stay put and wait for Theo. If I’m going to stop Paul, I’ll need all the help I can get—and Theo is the only one who can help me. So, for one whole day, I have to lead this Marguerite’s life.

  From what I can tell, it’s not much fun.

  “Come on, dear.” Aunt Susannah trips along the cobblestone street in her high-heeled shoes, as nimble as a mountain goat. “We can’t be late.”

  “Can’t we?” The idea of navigating a whole social event as another version of myself—it’s pretty intimidating.

  She gives me a confused glance over her shoulder. “But I wanted you to get to know the duchess. Her niece Romola is at Chanel, you know. If you want to be a fashion designer someday, you’ve got to make some connections now.”

  In this reality, I want to be a fashion designer? Well, at least that’s creative. “Right. Sure.”

  “Don’t pretend you’re too sophisticated to be impressed by a title,” Aunt Susannah says. She gets like this—brisk and slightly contemptuous—whenever she’s challenged. “You’re an even bigger snob than I am, and you know it. Just like your mother.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I know, I know, to you your parents are saints, and they should be. I’m not saying they weren’t absolutely lovely people. But how your mother used to go on about being descended from Russian nobility! You’d think she personally fled the Red Army with the Romanov jewels in her arms.”

  “Her family was from the nobility. They did flee the Revolution. They were expats in Paris for the next four generations, before her parents finally moved to America. She’d never lie about being something she’s not.” Then I remember that I’m not supposed to have known my mother very well in this dimension, and that here, she’s as lost to me as my father. “I mean, she wouldn’t have.”

  And Mom wouldn’t. She only cares about two things: science and the people she loves. The one who wears her crazy-curly hair twisted back with whatever pencil or pen she finds lying around. The one who let me finger paint the table. Nobody on earth is less of a snob than Mom.

  We’re standing in the middle of the street now, still a block short of the hotel where the duchess and a hundred and forty of her closest friends are taking tea. Aunt Susannah puts one hand to her chest like an actress in a cheesy old movie, and yet I know she’s sincere—as sincere as she knows how to be, at least. “I wasn’t putting your mum down. You realize that, don’t you?”

  From Aunt Susannah, “snob” is practically a merit badge. I sigh. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Now, I’d hate for us to be cross with each other.” My aunt comes close and puts her arm around me. “It’s always been just us. You and me against the world, hmm?”

  I could almost believe we had a good life together, if I hadn’t been in that impersonal apartment. Or if I didn’t see through the translucent lenses of Aunt Susannah’s sunglasses to her bored, impatient gaze.

  It’s taken me less than a day to discover that Aunt Susannah resents having to play surrogate parent to this dimension’s Marguerite. What must it have been like for her to live a whole lifetime knowing that? To feel so rejected by the only family she had left in the world?

  “You and me,” I repeat, and Aunt Susannah smiles like that’s a reason to be happy.

  In my real home, it’s never been “just us.”

  As long as I can remember, Mom and Dad’s research assistants have spent nearly as much time at my house as I do. When I was very young, I thought they were as much my siblings as Josie was; I cried so hard the day Swathi gently explained that she was going back to live in New Delhi because she had a job and a family there. Who were these people? How could they be her family when we were her family?

  My parents started being clearer about their assistants after that, but the fact is, most of them have wound up being more or less informally adopted. Mom and Dad always wanted tons of children, but pregnancy turned out to be difficult for her, so after me they stopped. I guess the grad students have had to fill the empty places where my brothers and sisters should’ve been. They sleep on our sofas, write their theses on the rainbow table, cry about their love lives, drink our milk straight from the carton. We keep up with every one, and some of them are important people in my life. Diego taught me how to ride a bike. Louis helped me bury my pet goldfish in the backyard even though rain poured down through the entire “funeral.” Xiaoting was the only one at home when I started my period for the first time, and she handled it perfectly—explaining how to use everything from our friends at Tampax, then taking me to Cold Stone Creamery.

  Still, from the beginning, Paul and Theo were different. Closer to us than any of the others. Special.

  And Paul was the most special of all.

  Mom joked that she
liked him because they were both Russian, that only fellow Russians could ever understand each other’s dark humor. Dad made a standing appointment for them to have lunch on campus together, and, once, let Paul borrow his car. He usually didn’t even let me borrow the car. Even though Paul was so quiet, so aloof, so apparently invulnerable to laughter—to my parents, he could do no wrong.

  (“He’s weird,” I protested to them shortly after his arrival. “He’s like some kind of caveman from back before people could even talk.”

  “That’s not very kind,” Dad said as he poured milk into his tea. “Marguerite, remember—Paul graduated from high school at age thirteen. He began his PhD studies at seventeen. He never had much of a childhood. Hasn’t really had a chance to make friends his own age, and Lord knows he doesn’t get a lot of support from home. It makes him a little . . . awkward, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good person.”

  “Besides,” Mom interjected, “whether by ‘caveman’ you mean Cro-Magnons or Neanderthals, there’s no reason to assume they lacked human speech.”)

  Paul was their research assistant for only a year and a half—but they loved him more than any of the others. He practically lived at our house or in their classes, 24/7. They loaned him books, fussed when he didn’t have a jacket in winter, even baked him a birthday cake—chocolate with caramel icing, his favorite.

  Theo Beck worked just as hard for them. They were never unkind to Theo; I’ve always felt like he belonged, and he’s definitely more fun than strange, watchful Paul. Theo’s black hair is always a little bit wild, everything is a joke to him, and okay, he flirts with me some, but I don’t think Mom and Dad ever minded. I’m not even sure they noticed. So Theo should have been equally beloved.

  But Paul is smarter. More unique. He’s one step over the line that separates “extraordinarily intelligent” from “genius.” I could also tell that Mom and Dad thought Paul needed them more. Theo is cocky; Paul is shy. Theo cracks jokes; Paul seems melancholy. So Paul brought out their protective side in a way Theo never could. Sometimes, I knew, when Theo saw how my parents devoted themselves to Paul, he was jealous.