Chapter 22
Over the next week, I begin to see the change.
It’s subtle at first. As we pass by students between periods, William exchanges pleasantries and occasional high fives.
Someone in his physics lab helps him make an Instagram account and by the end of the day he has seventy followers.
It goes up to one hundred when a group of sophomores teach him about thirst traps.
(“Two words I’m familiar with separately,” William informs me, “though not together.”) Even though I was hesitant to believe Sumner was right about the harmless hazing, it seems like the initiation worked.
William’s fitting in.
As I’m exiting my physics lab on Thursday, Sumner appears out of nowhere, blocking my path and forcing me to step back inside as he swiftly maneuvers around me.
Cool glass smacks my palm and when I glance down, I see he’s surreptitiously handed me an empty beaker.
Confused, I start to ask what he’s doing, but he’s already half yelling, “No, Carmichael, I don’t think you’re allowed to drink out of those. ”
My jaw drops. What the hell?
Mr. Lombardi’s gaze narrows. “Miss Carmichael, need I remind you of lab safety rules and why we have them? Because it’s important you understand the precautions.”
“No, I—” I look around for Sumner, but he’s no longer beside me. “I know them. It was a joke.”
Mr. Lombardi plucks the beaker from my hands. “Off you go.”
Fuming and flustered, I stumble into the hall just as Sumner appears on the other side of me, nearly giving me a heart attack. His uniform shirt is noticeably, tragically wrinkled. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t have a demerit by the end of the day.
His mischievous smirk returns. “You’re red.”
A stop sign’s spitting image, I’d imagine. “Why would you do that?”
“Because we needed this.” Something heavy slides into the pocket of my skirt. “And I saw an opportunity.”
My hand closes on a cylindrical object. I pull it out, revealing a roll of permalloy foil.
So I was the distraction. We’ve been gathering materials all week, borrowing items we need from classrooms without explicit permission from instructors in case the answer was no, but some things have been harder to come by.
Our instructors don’t have strong enough magnets, for example, and the isoborometer requires heavy-duty ones.
Since the hardware store in town doesn’t carry them, it meant we had to request a special order.
Minor setbacks compared to the unsolved equations.
Sumner has a regatta on Friday, which means the three of us work well into the evening without him. Lionel measures the vortex’s precise parameters and returns with a map showing how far it spans, concluding its boundary lies within the wooded area I’d crossed right behind Segner.
“This,” he says, whirling his laptop toward us, “allows us to engineer the experiment digitally first.”
Once it’s replicated in the program, we go through trial and error recreating the mechanics until his software tells us we have several unresolved issues. That isn’t news. There aren’t any updates to the original academic article either, so we’re going to have to find answers on our own.
William’s usual chipper demeanor becomes subdued. Lionel pulls his laptop closer.
“Okay,” he says, thinking. “It’s a long shot, but I’ll run it through a different program overnight to see if it can solve the incomplete equations.”
As it turns out, it cannot. Lionel’s laptop won’t turn on the next day, and we’re back to square one.
I really try not to stress.
It doesn’t help that Analiese pesters me with questions about William, but I can’t pretend like I’m clueless.
She sees us hanging out together. So I continue to provide vague details to keep William off her radar and offer her other noteworthy reporting topics, like the gala.
That’s not the angle she wants, however, so I become an expert at changing the subject whenever William does come up.
After I leave my scheduled library hour with Analiese on Saturday, I head toward my dad’s favorite hiking trail with his journal tucked in my jacket pocket.
The climb is memorized in my soul, a steady incline with healthy switchbacks and a life-altering lake view framed by the majestic Adirondacks.
His place reserved for thinking. It might serve me now.
Glimpses of the changing season unfurl before me.
There’s a loamy aroma of balsam hanging in the chilled air mixed with the earthy breath from the conifer trees, which transforms into the rich scent of clay and brittle leaf dust as I enter the surrounding forest. Cheerful warbling sings from the treetops and peters out when a flock of birds take flight.
Leaves have deepened and darkened in their autumnal hues, shades of ripe plum and glistening ruby and golden mango.
I’m creating a mental checklist of what we’ll need to do for the gala—preparing alumni invitations and seeking community sponsorships—so it takes me a second to realize someone’s calling my name. The crunch of dry leaves brings me back to earth as I turn and find William jogging toward me.
He’s out of breath when he catches up. “Might I join you?”
My skin tingles, hyperaware of his presence. “Of course.”
He smiles in response as we begin our ascent.
Neither one of us speaks for the first few minutes, but it’s not a clumsy silence.
Reflective, maybe. Occasionally an Ivernia student will pass us jogging down, waving as they go.
William eagerly returns the gesture. Otherwise, he clasps his hands behind his back as he walks, posture immaculately straight.
He offers me his arm when there’s a mangled root in our path, and, heart clamoring, I accept his gesture.
Whenever I attempt to pick up our pace, he slows.
I don’t know if this is intentional, but it takes us forever to reach the summit.
William pauses to admire a bramble or spiderweb or an impressively wide elm tree.
After a while I view it through his eyes, all of this enthralling and lustrous, which is why I can’t find it in me to tell him he’s spent two minutes admiring a weed.
“This is different from London, huh?”
We’ve reached the smooth surface of the overlook. It’s a rite of passage to take a photo here to prove you’ve made it, but also because the view is unbelievable. Below us, the lake glitters as its surface shifts in the breeze. The treetops are a gradient of warm color.
His gaze tips in my direction. “It is its own wonder.”
And I melt a little. Because I feel that, too.
“I’ve found myself wanting to write to Caroline this week. About you and Lionel and even Sumner, about my studies and the world’s impressive advancements.” A veil of sadness falls over him. “And then I realized I cannot.”
I’m not sure how to fully express a similar feeling, one where I also ache to talk to someone who is no longer here.
“Do you suspect they believe I’ve disappeared?” he goes on.
A tug of empathy ushers me to provide him some comfort, even if it’s not guaranteed.
“There’s the many-worlds theory of alternate universes,” I say, hearing my dad’s words come back to me now.
“We could be living different lives in other realities. A copy of us in a different setting, different circumstances. Nothing’s proven, of course. But…”
William seems to understand. “Your father discussed possibilities with you?”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “I used to say, there’s another universe where you’re not sick.
Let’s go to that one. And he’d gather his books, and we’d try to discover if it were possible.
So I guess, in theory, we could say a trigger occurred, allowing two universes to intersect—like Lionel said.
And maybe it’s what led you here. We can’t prove it right this second, other than the fact that you are here, but we can’t prove it’s false either. ”
He nods, taking this in. “You’re very intelligent.”
“You’re very complimentary,” I volley. “I’m sure you know that.”
“I speak the truth.”
“For better or worse,” I say, remembering the fat lip Montfort gave him. “Have you always been like that?”
“People should say what they mean. There’s risk in possessing a straightforward nature, but I find honesty breaks down barriers. Caroline taught me that.” His mouth splits into a grin. “For instance, you are beautiful. I enjoy spending time with you. It’s my favorite part of the day.”
My pulse skitters. “That’s just flattery.”
“If you prefer to believe that, then do so. But I don’t have much to lose by speaking it.”
As warmth sinks into my cheeks, I dip my hand into my pocket and remove my phone. “Stand there,” I say.
He’s regal in his stature, a modest smile playing on his lips.
Hair sweeps into his eyeline, but he pushes it away with a quick brushing motion, head tipped toward the sun’s golden stream.
That’s when I snap the photo—half-candid, all him.
When I reveal the result, he makes a delighted sound of approval.
“It’s like you belong here,” I say, braving a step closer to him.
A shadow crosses his face. “I have a confession.” He meets my eyes, suddenly serious.
“The night of the Carrington Event, I had been reflecting upon my recent academic pursuits. I remember feeling—desperate, in a way. The only thing I wanted was more time. In fact, I wished for it.” Now he looks bashful.
“I don’t suppose this could have factored into the reason I’m now here? ”
My blood begins to churn in slow motion, my heartbeat a steady chug as realization dawns.
We’d been so focused on gleaning logic from this extraordinary occurrence we hadn’t explored other avenues.
We’d both wanted something that night. I’d also made a wish.
What was it? I’d been so overcome with emotion from finding out Ivernia might close and—
Give me what I need to make this place his again.
Yes, that was it.
This can’t be a coincidence. William wished for more time to focus on his studies, and then he appears at the very school he founded.
Does that mean William’s wish is somehow tethered to mine?
Is he what I need in order to save Ivernia?
It makes his presence less of a puzzle and more of a cosmic purpose fulfilling two separate desires.
And if that’s the case, we don’t need a scientifically unproven generator largely based in theory that might send him back.
We can wish things right. It’s so easy, it’s almost laughable.
My excitement heightens, pulse pounding with newfound reason.
William is here to help fix everything that’s threatened to change in the last month.
It makes sense. And it’s working. The gala was his idea.
Isn’t this the sign I’d wanted? A spectacle from the universe.
One that proves nothing is insignificant and maybe, just maybe, what we do matters.
This matters.
“I made a wish, too.” Emotion coats my throat. “I wanted to save this place for everyone, really, but especially for my dad.”
William inches closer to me, a solemn expression etched on his face. Is this my dad’s doing? Maybe he’d sent an answer from somewhere far beyond the stars. It’s the type of unexplainable phenomenon he would have loved.
“Delaney,” William says softly. “What happened to your father?”
Time is strange. Often it feels as though my last goodbye was yesterday, but at other points it feels as if it were years ago.
I tell William everything. How my dad taught here, then at the community college until he couldn’t.
The hiccups of memory. The unsuccessful drug trial.
How Jared and I wanted to come home before he’d started, but it was his wish for us to stay here.
It was enough to convince us everything might be okay, and we’d held on to that hope until we learned the experimental drug wasn’t working.
I stop when I feel my throat tighten.
Until last spring, I counted on consistency. As if anything were guaranteed. And then my dad’s diagnosis changed everything.
We knew the odds. I didn’t count on a miracle.
We get so many choices throughout life, but not when it comes to leaving.
William places a hand over mine. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
“I had time with him, that last summer before my junior year, but it wasn’t enough.
It was like, even then I could feel him slipping away.
And then I was here at school and I—I never got to say goodbye, not really.
Not to the person I knew.” I run my knuckles under my eyes, catching tears as they fall.
“But life isn’t fair. And his mortality isn’t some grand lesson, it just happens. We get what we get.”
He doesn’t offer me hollow comforts or vague sympathies about how it gets better. I don’t expect it either. As someone precise and direct with his words, it’s not in his nature. I guess he’s like Sumner. No false promises.
The sun begins its descent on the horizon, casting a syrupy golden glow over us. I couldn’t capture the naked beauty with my phone even if I tried, so I don’t. My lungs drink in the renewed mountain air, glacial and fortifying, tears drying into salt on my skin.
The tips of my fingers are freezing, but as I go to tuck them into my pocket, William extends a hand.
An invitation. So I slide my hand into his, marveling at the spark I feel upon first contact.
His pointer runs over my knuckles, and my heartbeat pulses in my throat.
It’s nice, this gentle pressure of us holding on to each other.
A sturdy grasp on this reality, no matter how unusual the situation.
It feels strange and different, but also like the most natural thing in the world.
I’m lit from within, the glow of a thousand twinkling lights radiating outward.
“To be loved by someone who fundamentally understands who we are,” William says after a while, tone hushed, “is indeed one of the greatest fortunes we’re offered.”