Chapter 16 Guest Wing #3
Nights are her happiness. She pages Eli, and he meets her in the orchard. They roll under the Jonagolds and kiss with sticky sweetness. Sometimes, Laurel brings her plaid comforter, and they fall asleep outside. So long as they wake up early, she can sneak inside before her parents notice.
One morning in June, Laurel opens her eyes at dawn.
From where they lie, uphill, she looks down into Lower Orchard.
The weeping willow stands in bands of mist. Everything is dewy, verdant; during summer, the orchard grows so rapidly that Laurel can almost hear it.
In a spasm of rebellion, she turns off Eli’s battery-powered alarm clock.
She feels at peace, burrowed beside him; they shouldn’t have to leave each other.
Hours later, Eli jostles her awake. The sun is warm on her cheek, and early morning’s clear air has turned humid.
“Wake up,” says Eli. “Your mom is coming.”
Laurel moans. Her earlier resistance seems idiotic now. If Clare grounds her, she may not be able to see Eli for weeks. She scrambles into a seated position, but it’s too late to hide or flee. Instead, she grabs Eli’s hands. They cling like teenagers always cling: as though the world is ending.
Footsteps rustle through grass. Laurel sees legs move between the trees. But the mules and baggy jeans don’t belong to Clare. Their owner is a teenage girl with waist-length hair and a pendant necklace.
“You rang?” asks Nita.
Laurel gasps. Nita carries a purple JanSport backpack, and she isn’t alone. Three other people come to stand beside her.
“I had a friend visiting when your alert came in. This is Charlie,” Nita adds. “She was my roommate after you at McMurdo.”
In box braids, jean shorts, and a polo shirt, Charlie Two steps forward to wave.
“And I couldn’t break out of boarding school without my boyfriend,” says Louis.
A long-haired boy in black nail polish extends his hand.
“I’m Zachary,” he says.
Laurel throws her arms around each person in turn. With the sun fanning out behind them, they look like a team of angels.
“Wow,” says Eli. “This is…”
“More than you bargained for? Don’t worry,” Nita says. “Everyone is up to speed. When we got your alert, Louis messaged me on AIM. The four of us met at the Greyhound stop in Yuma.”
Laurel looks from Nita to Louis. “What did she tell you?”
“The truth,” Louis says. “The two of you are aliens, and you probably want us to help you get home.”
—
Laurel leads the group to the kitchen. Clare sits in the breakfast nook with a cup of coffee and the paper. Pete is making pancakes by himself for the first time. Aside from a spilled hill of baking powder, he seems to be managing well.
“Laurel? I thought you were still asleep.” Clare sets the paper down. “And who are all these people?”
Laurel introduces them as her friends from Antarctica.
“Ms. Salter, these are for you,” Louis says, presenting a trio of sunflowers.
Clare seems to find the flowers familiar. She looks behind Louis, into her garden, where three of her own stalks are headless.
“They took a Greyhound cross-country to surprise us. Can they stay here?” Laurel asks. “Just for a little bit?”
“All of them?” asks Clare.
Laurel turns to Pete. “Dad?”
“Excuse me,” Clare says. “You can’t just ask your father.”
“Why not?” says Pete. “Don’t I have a say here?”
Though his tone is light, it contains an undercurrent of challenge. Pete’s development, in middle age, has been even more rapid than Silas’s. He’s begun to exert himself with Clare, testing his authority.
“If they’re willing to sleep in Laurel’s room, I don’t see the harm. Life is short,” Pete says. “And we can always use extra hands in the orchard.”
—
They make two blanket nests: one for Nita and Charlie, the other for Louis and Zachary.
Laurel promises her parents that they’ll spend tomorrow pruning.
Today, she brings the visitors to Jenifer Street.
A sandy slope leads into Lake Monona. They rotate between the water and the sand.
In late afternoon, everyone naps—except for Laurel and Louis, who smokes a joint while wrapped in a towel.
“That’s not legal anymore, you know,” says Laurel, nudging him with her shoulder.
He shrugs. “Let them arrest me. I basically live in juvenile detention already.”
“I’m sorry, Louis. Is it awful?”
“Sometimes.” Louis looks at Zachary. “But not completely.”
“You do seem happy,” says Laurel.
Louis passes the joint to her. “Well, the last time I saw you? Let’s just say that it wasn’t my best season. I was an arse. I felt badly as soon as you left.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. I assumed I’d scared you.”
“It wasn’t that you scared me. It was that you made me sad. After what happened to your daughter…I couldn’t believe you’d have to go through that with your son,” Louis says. “But I am a good friend. I told you I’d come if you needed me.”
“And you did,” says Laurel.
The group walks to a corner store to buy dinner: Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, Fritos and Pop Rocks.
They eat their feast at a playground on picnic tables.
Afterward, Louis and Zachary race across the monkey bars; Charlie uses her stopwatch for time.
The surface of the playground is spongy, and Eli pretends that he’s walking on the moon.
Laurel joins Nita, who has commandeered the swings.
“I’m so happy you came,” Laurel says. “How did you know why we used the placemakers?”
“Powers of deduction?” says Nita. “I may be sixteen, but I haven’t lost my marbles yet.”
Laurel pushes off with her feet. “Remember when I asked you why the other Laurel crossed over? It had to do with Celeste, didn’t it?”
Nita hesitates. “How did you find out?”
“I found pictures of her. Artwork. Report cards,” Laurel says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She—the other you—made me promise not to tell anyone. And anyway, that’s all I knew, that Celeste was part of it. Laurel got cagey when I pushed for details.”
“I still don’t understand why they were so secretive.”
“Well, they didn’t have clearance to dive. If someone had found them, they’d have been kicked out of the station. Their reputations would have been tarnished.”
Laurel isn’t quite convinced, but maybe Nita is right. Either way, she feels more content than she has in months. She may still have questions, but she does feel less alone in them.
As the moon rises, Laurel corrals the group. This, she knows, is not the day to break curfew. They dig in their pockets for bus fare and collapse in the last row: legs over legs, heads against shoulders. At home, Laurel sees that she’s missed two pages from Maisie.
—
The next morning, Laurel makes an extra-large pot of coffee while Nita toasts Pop-Tarts.
Eli draws the Duoverse on a whiteboard, borrowed from his parents.
As the McMurdoans eat, he explains his theory, and Laurel describes her dream.
At last, they detail each dive: the miraculous first, the empty second.
Charlie raises her hand. “If you couldn’t find a portal, why would we be able to?”
“It’s a fair question,” says Laurel. She considers the best way to translate her thinking. “We couldn’t have found the first portal without Eli’s research. But we also seemed to need my dream. I think my subconscious knew something that I didn’t know consciously yet.”
Charlie nods contemplatively. Louis holds Zachary’s hand, and Nita closes her eyes as she listens.
“We know that both universes—ours and yours—are connected,” Laurel says. “There are portals where physical material passes between them. But I think that concepts filter through, too. For instance, Christmas exists here, even though Jesus won’t be born for two thousand years.”
“No spoilers, please,” says Louis, covering his ears.
“But Jesus isn’t a real person,” Nita says.
“That’s what I mean,” Laurel says. “Here, he’s an idea, but in our universe, he was a real person.”
Eli makes an equivocating motion with his hand. “We don’t actually know that. The evidence is subpar, to say the least.”
“Okay, Jesus isn’t the best example,” says Laurel. “Take Marxism. Or Darwinism. Ideas spread, and somehow, we’re all plugged into them. I think this happens subconsciously—and if that’s true, then maybe we know more than we think about the Duoverse. After all, we’re little pieces of it, aren’t we?”
“Whoa,” Zachary says.
Laurel smiles at him gratefully. “This time, Eli and I haven’t been able to solve the puzzle on our own. But it might be possible if we put our heads together—all six of us.”
“How, though?” asks Nita.
Laurel has planned for this. In the antiuniverse, the surrealist movement is still to come, so she tells them what she remembers of Hilma af Klint and the Five.
“They wanted to tap into the unconscious,” she says, finishing. “I thought we could try their techniques.”
Under Eli’s drawing of the Duoverse, she makes a list:
Automatic drawing
Dream analysis
Séance
“For automatic drawing, how about Exquisite Corpse?” asks Charlie. “You fold a piece of paper three times, and a different person illustrates each section.”
“Great idea.” Laurel adds Exquisite Corpse in parentheses.
“I think we should start with the séance,” Louis says. “If a ghost can tell us what to do, we won’t have to bother with anything else.”
“My grandma can communicate with spirits,” says Zachary. “She lives in Lily Dale. The whole town is filled with mediums. I could try to lead us; I’ve gone to some of her sessions. Nana uses a pendulum, but candles would work, too.”
Laurel finds a box of beeswax tea lights in the basement.
They spend the afternoon in the orchard, but that evening, they meet upstairs again.
Summer rain falls gently. Everyone joins hands.
While Zachary asks questions, they watch the flames for an answer.
The only notable sputter takes place when Clare raps on the door.
“Laurel!” she calls, and everyone jumps. “Maisie’s on the phone.”
“Can you say I’ll get back to her?” Laurel shouts. “We’re—making friendship bracelets.”