The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(14)

Hannah sighed. “You are right.”

“I also noticed that the cars are more rounded. Bubbly. Not like they were in the 1950s but—”

“I saw a flying ambulance,” she blurted.

“I saw a flying taxi,” he replied with an uneasy smirk. “I was building up to that.”

“Zack, what the hell’s going on?”

In addition to acceptance, Hannah’s new friend was five steps ahead on the road to understanding. From the moment Zack ruled out the Rip van Winkle scenario—thanks to a discarded, date-stamped lottery ticket—the wheels in his mind kept spinning back to the words alternate and parallel. He wasn’t ready to verbalize his hypothesis.

“I don’t know,” he said, his knees bouncing with anxious energy. “Until I saw you and your bracelet, I was pretty sure I’d lost my mind.”

“Do you have a history of mental illness?”

Zack eyed her with furrowed perplexity. “Are you suggesting that I’m hallucinating all this? Because I think that’d be bad news for you.”

“No. I only asked because I do have a history. I’ve been hospitalized.”

“For what? Schizophrenia?”

“No. Just . . . emotional stuff.”

“Well, that’s a far cry from seeing flying ambulances.”

“Look, I’m just going by that thing. I forget what it’s called. Where the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

“Occam’s razor.”

“Yeah, Occam’s razor. And right now the simplest explanation is that we’re both having some kind of psychotic breakdown. It’s either that or . . .” She pointed to the latest floating baby stroller to pass their bench. “What do you think’s more likely?”

Zack pursed his lips, exhaling in frustrated sputters. “Denial.”

“Who, you or me?”

“You.”

“What, you think I want to be crazy?”

“I think it beats the alternative,” he said. “I’d love to wake up in a rubber room right now. Because that would mean that nobody really died and everything has a chance of going back to normal. Unfortunately, I’ve never done well with rosy scenarios. After twenty-eight years of Jewish conditioning, I’ve come to believe the darkest explanation is usually the right one. Call it Menachem’s razor.”

Hannah scowled at him. “How can you even joke right now?”

The cartoonist jerked a listless shrug. “Just how I cope.”

“If you’re so convinced this is real, Zack, then help me. Tell me what’s happening.”

“I don’t know!”

“At least tell me how you got your bracelet.”

From the edgy look on his face, Hannah realized she was the one tugging the dog leash now. She also realized that Zack wasn’t as nerdy as he first seemed. Up close, she could sense a thin layer of hardness behind his boyish features, the same uptight strength her sister always carried. Hannah would have killed for some of that now.

“It was pretty insane where I was,” he attested.

“So a white-haired guy didn’t come to talk to you.”

“Someone did, but he didn’t say much. I couldn’t tell if he had white hair.”

“You’d remember him if you saw him.”

“I barely remember my own name after everything that happened. It was . . .”

“Insane,” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he said, with a grim expression. “Word of the day.”

—

The opening crowd at Comic-Con had been only half the size of Friday’s, thanks to all the fresh electrical mayhem. By 10 A.M., the exhibition hall once again bustled with thousands.

Zack manned his rented table in Artist’s Alley, the back-corner mini-bazaar where professionals hawked their works. He’d surpassed his wildest expectations the day before: six sales and ten handshakes from gushing fans of Meldweld. One of his admirers, a statuesque Goth with spiderweb tattoos on her arms, scrawled her hotel information in Zack’s sketchbook. He’d made a note to pin it up on his corkboard when he got home, as collateral against future ego losses.

Ultimately he’d spent Friday night alone in his hotel, text-messaging into the wee hours with his ex-girlfriend Libby. When she mocked him for passing up the chance to bang his first groupie, Zack merely shrugged and chalked it up to arachnophobia. But by 3 A.M., he’d come around to Libby’s way of thinking, as usual. Another non-experience for the King of Missed Opportunities.

The next morning, Zack yawned and doodled from behind his table as the local crowd ignored him. Everyone seemed glaringly tense now, hopelessly thrown by their faltering technology.

Halfway through his latest bored doodle, the convention hall plummeted into darkness.

Zack shot to his feet as countless conventioneers squawked in blind worry. Dozens, then hundreds of cigarette lighters pierced tiny pinholes in the darkness. Though Zack was relieved to learn that he hadn’t gone blind, the preponderance of flames created a new concern. He looked to the artist next to him, a portly man with a Fu Manchu mustache who waved his Zippo like a torch.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zack cautioned.

“What the hell do you want me to do?”