Chapter 11 Olivia
I adjust the seat on Mom’s buttermilk-yellow cruiser bicycle in my parents’ garage, raising it to accommodate my longer legs.
I’ve got at least seven inches on Mom. It’s somewhat of a mystery why she has this particular bike, since in my world I’d helped her pick out this model to cruise around her gated community and visit friends.
I guess she chose it for herself anyways.
Mom watches me, an eyebrow raised. “Are you sure you want it that high?”
“I’m sure. You don’t mind me borrowing it?”
“Well, honey, you don’t have a driver’s license, so it’s this or walking. And you can’t get to many places on your feet around here.”
It’s true. It’s a twenty-minute bike ride from here to Wrightsville Beach, today’s destination, and an hour’s ride to the city’s historic downtown.
Mom wouldn’t hesitate to give me cash for transit, but there are no direct buses from outside the gates to either of those places, plus it’s probably a half-hour walk to the community’s entrance alone.
Without this bike, I’d be marooned at the house.
This is my first taste of freedom in two weeks.
“And Dad’s on board with me showing my face in public? I don’t want to upset him any more than I already have.” I drop into the front basket a beach bag containing a hat, water, sunscreen, one of Mom’s recent book club reads, and the bagged lunch Mom was thrilled to make for me.
Mom smiles patiently, even though I’ve already asked her this question. “He gets it. I explained there’s little risk in you being out in public. Nobody will recognize you as an adult. As long as you don’t start telling people you’re Olivia Grainger come back to life, we’ll be fine.”
Although that stings a little, I smile back, putting on a round bike helmet with a flower design. “I won’t. Thanks, Mom. I’ll be back for dinner later.”
I push off, out of the open garage door, and snake my way through the well-tended streets of Landfall.
My parents’ house is about as far away from the gated entrance as you can get, and it’s a ten-minute ride to the barriers that lead out to the main road.
From here, it’s a straight shot along the River-to-the-Sea bikeway, over the bridge onto Harbor Island, and over South Banks Channel Bridge out to Wrightsville Beach.
The salt air fills my lungs and I find myself briefly grinning as I pick up speed on my descent from the second bridge, passing a group of surfers outside the wings joint, the wind cooling my skin in the summer heat. It’s 11:30 a.m. and a scorching day.
I stop at the beach entrance at the end of Stone Street, and lock up at a rack that’s already jammed with bikes.
The condos to one side have awesome water views from balconies decorated with bright patio furniture, and there’s a gorgeous pale-blue beach house on the other side.
It would be wonderful to live here — albeit a little busy with all the tourists and beachgoers.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and step out onto the sand.
As it’s Saturday, the beach is full of families having fun, the sand littered with vividly colored umbrellas, blankets, folding chairs, and plastic buckets.
The warm air buzzes with the sounds of summer — children laughing, music blaring from portable speakers, a parent shouting at unruly teenagers hanging out in the water, the high pitch of a little girl’s squeal, all regularly punctuated by the crash of ocean on shore.
I hold my mom’s wide-brimmed straw hat on my head as a breeze lifts it slightly, and step my way north along the hot sand, thankful for my new sandals. Further away from the Stone Street beach entrance, the family groups start to thin out and my pulse slows. I’ve never been a fan of big crowds.
That’s not the only reason I headed in this direction, though. I know where I’m going, even if I don’t want to acknowledge it to myself.
I stroll along the beach and spot them, out in the wide band of rippling, azure water.
This is where the best surfers hang out.
The shore along Wrightsville Beach is shallow, Jake has told me many times, so they have to paddle far into the ocean to catch the big swells.
I’ve sat here a few times, reading, or sketching a design concept, occasionally looking up to catch him ride a crest in the distance.
I can only tell it’s him by the orange shorts I bought him, and if he wears something different, he’s much harder to spot among the group of weekend surfers.
And during the week, I never have time to join him here, I’m always so busy with work.
If only I could fix that now. Take the time to be together, to let him teach me to surf. I miss him so much. What’s he doing in our reality — assuming that world still exists? Is he looking for me, missing me? I’m overwhelmed with need for him. To see him, touch him, kiss him.
I drop down onto the sand at the exact spot where I last sat happily watching him, which was only a couple of weeks ago. And a whole universe away. On this version of this beach, I have never been here before. And I’m miserable.
I lift off my jersey dress, exposing my borrowed black bikini from Charlotte’s stash in the guest bedroom. Rubbing a fresh application of sunscreen onto my skin, my gaze follows the tiny humans on their surfboards.
How did I get here? Is this world an entirely different physical plane than the one where I watched Jake surf? A brand-new parallel universe that was created when my life path split when I died — or didn’t die — at the quarry sixteen years ago?
I was never great at science, but my favorite teacher at high school was the physics teacher.
Mr. Green spoke of the infinite universe, and how its infinity means there is an infinite chance of an infinite number of worlds exactly like our own, as well as infinitely varying worlds in all the infinite possible ways they could vary.
It blew my mind as a fourteen-year-old who had never thought much about anywhere outside North Carolina.
It sparked my interest in the solar system and what lies beyond.
But I always figured that those mirror universes, if they existed at all, would be impossible distances from our own. When I entered this realm, I didn’t travel anywhere. I was right there at the quarry lake.
Mr. Green put me onto reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, which remain my favorite books.
In Philip Pullman’s stories, the universes are not vastly distant, but instead folded in on each other, just a hand’s reach away.
All that’s required to step through is finding and opening a door between worlds.
The quarry lake. That’s where I supposedly died as a child — but in my world, Jake saved me. It’s clearly no coincidence that in that exact place, I fell, and woke up in this alternate world.
That’s my door. A tear in the fabric of the universe. A hole I fell through.
Maybe it’s a door only for me, because my life path split there sixteen years ago. Maybe all worlds are full of holes between alternate realities, which vary from person to person, all depending on their life choices and decisions, big and small.
Infinite possible worlds, infinite outcomes.
I smile at myself, glad nobody is privy to my preposterous internal ramblings. They’d think I was crazy.
Not Jake, though. Jake would appreciate the theory, and he’s always loved the idea of infinite universes. But I can’t explain this to Dad, or even Mom.
For Mom, my resurrection is simply a God-given miracle, and that’s that. No alternate timelines or parallel universes involved. That would go against her new-found religious beliefs.
And Dad, well, he doesn’t believe any of it.
I’ve caught him staring at me several times over the three days since I moved into the pool house. Like he can’t believe I’m here. He’s trying to reconcile this incredulity with the undeniable fact of my physical presence. Of our shared DNA.
Last night at dinner, as Mom and I talked about more shared childhood memories, Dad listened hard, nodding almost imperceptibly.
A camping trip when I was eleven and poor Charlotte, only five, was stung by poison ivy, her arm swelling to epic proportions.
The pair of kittens we adopted when I was eight, only one surviving — which became our long-time cat, Tabasco.
The swallow’s nest in the attic in our big old house that three-year-old Charlotte came across and wanted to keep, and was inconsolable when Dad got rid of it.
I watch as a group of surfers lying flat on their boards paddle their way gradually toward the beach.
They’re beautiful, tanned, toned. Three guys and a girl.
As they approach the shallow shore and stand, lifting their boards under their arms to wade the last section, the fairest-haired guy breaks from the group, waving farewell.
He heads in my direction, still a way off, as his friends head north toward the pier.
His coloring and physique are just like Jake’s.
Still, it’s not surprising I’d think of him, considering where I’m sitting. Everything here reminds me of him.
The fair guy gets closer, pushing his hand through his wet hair, the gesture familiar, his arm obscuring his features. My heart begins to race.
No.
He walks right toward me, as he drops his hand, hitching the board further up under his arm.
Oh my God.
It is Jake.
My heart beats so fast it feels like it might explode. My guts churn, bringing me dangerously close to vomiting on the sand.
He’s only about thirty feet from me now.
What should I do?
I can’t say anything to him, I’m supposed to be dead . . . Yet I can’t pass up this opportunity. He knows I exist, and that I was at the hospital asking for him. Even if he doesn’t believe me.
Maybe he’ll believe it, if he sees me.
This could be my only chance.
He is steps away, and I’m still staring right at him. He gives me a polite, unrecognizing smile, squinting in the sun. It breaks my heart. I guess I thought he’d know me. Regardless of what world we were in.
“Jake.”
He stops, holding his hand against his forehead to shade his eyes, staring at me. I can almost see his mind whirring, trying to work out if he knows me.
“Uh, hi. I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
I scramble to my feet, brushing sand from the back of my thighs. I blow out a sharp breath. Now or never, Liv.
“Yes. Yes, well . . . I mean — I’m Liv,” I blurt out in a rush. “Livvie. Livvie Grainger.”
Jake freezes, then slowly steps back. He drops his surfboard with uncharacteristic carelessness onto the sand. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. It’s clear that the man I love, have loved all of my life, doesn’t know me.
It takes him several seconds to speak.
“You — you’re the woman. The one the police told me about? Claiming to be Livvie Grainger?”
I nod, pressing my lips together. “That’s me.”
He narrows his eyes, obscuring the ocean-blue irises I’ve studied countless times. I know every shade of blue in those eyes, every gray fleck, the bright streak of turquoise in his left eye.
“What do you want? Why are you pretending to be her?” His voice is low and harsh.
I step toward him, hands out. “I’m not pretending.
I’m really her, Jake. I’m really me. I know it’s been a long time, for you, but .
. . don’t you recognize me?” I take another step.
“I can tell you everything only the real Liv Grainger would know, all about the times we spent at the quarry lake, the day we found it — well, your dog, Ginny, found it and we followed. Look, here’s my scar.
” I sweep my hair from my face to show him the mark on my eyebrow.
“That’s from when you chased me around your parents’ coffee table and I fell into it, and your Dad had to take me to ER because there was so much blood.
Remember? I can tell you hundreds more things. It’s me, Jake, I swear.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “It’s impossible.
You can’t be Liv. I watched her die when we were twelve years old.
I couldn’t save her. I saw her body on the rocks below.
It broke me. You can’t be her.” He’s furious.
“You’re just a woman who looks like she would look now, and you’re using that fact to . . . to scam us.”
“I get it, Jake. I know this sounds insane.” I run my hand through my hair, unsure how to go on.
“But, for me, you did save me that day. I slipped, but you caught me. I lived, and we grew up together, and fell in love.” He throws me an incredulous look.
His mouth now firm, a tiny pulse beating at his jaw.
I soldier on, determined to get this out.
“There are two versions of events and, somehow, they got mixed up. So, I’m here now, in the wrong version. In my world, you and I are engaged, Jake. We’re going to be married in August. I know it sounds crazy—”
“It doesn’t sound crazy. It is crazy. You’re delusional.” Jake picks up his surfboard, backing away from me. “I don’t know what you want, but don’t come near me again, you hear? Stay away. I mean it.”
He strides off down the beach, his back and shoulder muscles flexing as he carries his surfboard, his skin lightly tanned and gleaming. He’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
He doesn’t believe me. Doesn’t know me. But he’s here, and I’ve spoken to him.
And two things are clear.
I love him.
And he despises me.