Chapter 16 Guest Wing #5
“It really isn’t,” Eli says. “You can think of a detector like a fishing net for particles—and as particles go, neutrinos are especially hard to catch. First of all, they travel at almost the speed of light. And they interact so weakly with matter that very little stops them.”
Laurel waves her hand in a circle to suggest that Eli pick up the tempo.
“Anyway,” he continues, “that’s what Super-K is looking for: a neutrino that’s made it to Earth after flying for billions of years. The photosensors in the tank are like light bulbs in reverse. Instead of creating light, they detect it.”
“Light-catchers,” says Jules. The others look more interested now.
“It would definitely qualify as weird,” adds Eli, encouraged. “When something breaks, people row through the water in boats. You have to lower through the tank on a gondola lift.”
Louis sighs. “I’ve always wanted to go to Venice.”
“Should we be writing this down?” asks Charlie.
“Definitely,” says Laurel. “And we should get in our pajamas.”
Riordan brings their plates to the kitchen. In the bathroom, they change into pajamas and insert their retainers. Finally they unroll sleeping bags downstairs.
“Now tell us,” Maisie lisps.
So Eli describes the mountain that houses the tank: one peak of the Japanese Alps, densely forested with pine trees and often wreathed by fog.
The entrance is a tunnel that leads two thousand meters down.
During repairs, the tank is lit by spotlights.
Scientists row orange dinghies and wear white zippered garments called bunny suits.
Each photosensor looks like an eye the size of a porthole.
The others listen, some sitting, some kneeling, some, like Charlie, on their stomachs, drawing…and Laurel thinks of the time, so many years ago, when Eli recounted Ed White’s spacewalk. Once again, the story transports her. She drifts, carried along by Eli’s narration, his spell.
—
Laurel paddles through glimmering water with Maisie, Nita, Jules, and Charlie. The walls of the tank reach fifteen stories high.
“Oh my God,” says Maisie. “We did it.”
Riordan, Noah, and Zachary approach from the opposite direction. The spotlights reflect the tone of the bulbs, so that the scene is cast in gold.
Eli stands on the gondola.
“I can’t believe this,” he shouts, as the platform lowers.
Laurel hears harried splashing. She turns to see a flat-bottomed black boat that curves to a point at each end. Its bow is ornately engraved, and the seats are upholstered in velvet. Louis struggles to balance on the stern.
“You said gondola,” he tells Eli. The others are dressed in the zippered bunny suits that Eli described, but Louis wears a striped T-shirt and a ribboned hat.
Eli points to the platform. “This is the gondola.”
“Well, can someone else take my boat? I’m not cut out for this,” says Louis.
Jules volunteers for the challenge. Charlie and Maisie join him. Louis wedges between Nita and Laurel.
“So what do we do now?” asks Jules.
Laurel gazes up at the bulbs. “We look for a clue.”
“I bet it’s underwater,” Nita says. “Anyone want to go diving?”
“Nita, please don’t,” says Eli. “This water is incredibly pure.”
“It’s imaginary, Eli. What would you suggest instead?”
“If I wanted to hide something,” says Eli, “I’d put it in one of these bulbs.”
“But…there are thousands,” says Jules. “We won’t have time to look through all of them.”
“Guys?” says Noah, whose right leg has vanished. “I think I’m starting to wake up.”
“Stop that. We just got here,” says Maisie.
A deafening whirr drowns Noah’s reply. Laurel covers her ears, and Louis cowers. The source of the noise is invisible. They can only see what happens in response: one by one, certain bulbs begin to glow a brilliant cobalt.
“What was that?” shouts Riordan.
Eli looks triumphant. “That was a neutrino. And I think these are our clues.”
Cast at an angle, the ring tilts from floor to wall.
“They won’t stay lit for long,” says Eli. “The sensors unscrew from the back. Jules, let’s have your boat take the group on the left. Riordan, Noah, Zachary: you target the ones underwater. Laurel, Nita, and Louis, can you handle the right side of the circle?”
They disperse with their instructions. Some retrievals proceed more smoothly than others: Jules, Charlie, and Maisie work so quickly that Eli dispatches them to help Riordan, whose paddle has become stuck.
Nita rows Laurel and Louis deftly to the wall, where they manage—much less deftly—to unscrew and hoist the sensors.
At last, the entire ring has been removed.
Each bulb sits in a case, secured with bolts. Eli hands out screwdrivers.
“Wait!” cries Charlie. “How can we remember what we find? I always forget my dreams.”
“Write it down as soon as you wake up,” Maisie says. “As soon as you open your eyes…”
But her voice is fading, and so is her body. Noah and Maisie evaporate at the same time. Next Zachary and Jules vanish. Nita’s body leaves before her face, which lags behind, its eyebrows lifted.
Laurel calls for Eli, but no sound comes out. The green gondola is empty. When Louis departs, his straw hat falls, the ribbon flapping like a flag.
“And then there were three,” says Riordan, in a superior tone. He disintegrates as if in punishment.
Charlie goes last, though her voice stays a little longer.
“Laurel,” it says, urgently, “don’t forget to open your bulb.”
Hurrying, Laurel looks inside. Inside the sensor is a letter. She sets it down in the dinghy, whose paddles have begun to melt. All around is the sound of bubble wrap popping: the bulbs burst one by one, leaving ragged-looking holes.
—
Laurel’s body is shaking.
“Wake up,” says Louis, gripping her shoulders.
The others crowd around, blurry. Maisie supplies Laurel’s glasses. Morning light seeps through the basement’s garden-level window.
Eli touches her cheek. “What was your letter?”
The others have written theirs down, each on its own piece of paper. Laurel has to work to put it together, like batting smoke into a shape. Jules gives her a pad and a pen. Laurel writes the letter G.
“Okay,” says Nita. “We have six consonants and three vowels, people.”
Noah spreads them out on the floor.
W N E U G G T I S
“I don’t get it,” says Louis.
“Let’s shuffle them,” says Nita.
“We sing tug,” says Charlie.
“Get sun wig?” asks Eli.
Two hours later, Maisie assembles twin us egg, the most coherent phrase yet. This makes Laurel think of her double, but it still seems more descriptive than instructive.
“I don’t know, guys,” says Eli when they break for lunch. “None of these seem right.”
“What about mine?” asks Louis, who has been arguing for gig sew nut since midmorning.
Riordan yawns. “Maybe we should try again tonight.”
“No way,” says Maisie. “We’re close. I can feel it.”
They soldier on, rearranging, sounding out. Laurel has never looked for so long at single letters. Eventually, they become no more than figures: the line of the I, the snake of the S, the N a zigzag, the U a bucket. Charlie recommends a walk.
The heat of high summer has passed; though the days are long, the air has cooled. The hydrangeas are already turning into wasabi-green buds.
Riordan kneels beside a manhole. Something wriggles in the grate.
“Twig.” He reaches out to free it: a tiny stalk, flexing in the breeze. “If we subtract that from our letters, what do we have left?”
Nita does the calculation first. “U, S, G, E, N.”
“Us…gen,” says Riordan. “Gen…us.”
“Twig…gen…us,” says Charlie.
Jules tilts his head. “Twig genus?”
By now, the others have gathered around Riordan.
“What is a genus, exactly?” asks Zachary.
“It’s a group of related things,” says Nita.
“Related things…” says Riordan, musing. “Things that are related to twigs.” He looks at Laurel and laughs. “You know what that makes me think of? The book your dad used to love—the one about camouflage. There was a whole section on animals that look like sticks.”
—
A note waits in the farmhouse kitchen: Clare and Pete are tending to the sheep. Laurel leads the teens into the living room. It takes a moment for her to find The Book of Camouflage; the spine, designed to mimic wood, blends into the shelf.
The section Riordan mentioned is the last one in the book.
Laurel flips through pictures of insects and spiders; there’s even a twig-like snake.
She finds nothing unusual. All that remains is the back cover.
As always, a plastic sleeve holds the jacket flap in place.
Just to be certain, she slides a finger under the edge.
Laurel withdraws a piece of paper, folded. It bears her own name.
“Who is that from?” asks Eli.
She has no doubt. “The other me.”
—
Laurel takes the letter outside. To give her privacy, even Eli stays in the living room. She sits on the rope swing that hangs from an oak tree in Upper Orchard.
February 2018
Dear Laurel,
Sometimes I think we’re dancing together.
Celeste used to do ballet, and when she was a teenager, she took partnering classes.
Pas de deux: a dance of two. There were never enough boys, so the girls partnered on their own.
That’s you and me, I thought. We balance each other.
Someone stands still while the other is turning. Someone lifts, and someone is lifted.
If I had lived in your world—if a child was something I could choose, instead of something I inherited—I don’t know that I would have wanted one.
I might have figured that I had purpose already.
But there she was: the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.
They say you can’t remember so far back, but I swear that I do.
I remember the incubator and the dirt under my nails.
There was nothing touching my skin; I’d left the soil, the moisture, the worms. Celeste stood over me. I knew her face before I knew mine.