The Love That Split the World(47)

He looks back up at me. “You’re right, Natalie,” he says. “That’s what kind of person I am. You got me nailed.”

He opens his truck door, and I walk to the edge of the roof. “You shouldn’t drive right now,” I say, scanning the neighbors’ windows in anticipation of flicked-on lights that will lead to phone calls that will get me busted.

For a long moment, he stares up at me, and then he gets in his truck. Furious, I climb down onto the porch railing, drop into the yard, and cross toward him, jerking the passenger door open. “Get out.”

“It’s my car,” he says. “You get out.”

“Why did you come here, Beau?” I say. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Get out, Natalie,” he says again.

I don’t budge, so he clambers out of the truck and storms around it, pulling me out of the cab and closing the door. He starts to make his way back to the driver’s side, and I chase him, cutting between him and the door. “You can’t drive like this.”

He grabs me suddenly by the waist. I grab him back, kissing him as he lifts me against the truck. He burrows his mouth against my neck, tightens his arms around me. We move sideways and he pulls the door open, lifting me into the cab and stepping closer until our stomachs are locked together, my legs wrapped around him, his hands roaming across my neck as he kisses me over and over again.

What the hell am I doing? My anger floods back into me, and I push him away.

He staggers back into the street. “Fine. You want to know why, Natalie?” he says. “Because my whole life I’ve thought I was crazy, but now I know I’m not the only one. And that would be real nice, except the other person—the only other person in the world who sees what I see—is the love of my best friend’s life, and I’m not quite sure how the hell to handle that.”

My heart seems to stop in my chest. I stare up through the darkness into Beau’s eyes. They’re serious and stern, the inside corners of his eyebrows creased. “What are you talking about?”

“The two different versions of Union,” he says. “I know you can see them both.”

“How do you know about that?” I breathe.

“Because,” he says. “I can see them too.”





16


When I finally invite Beau up, I almost regret it. He’s far past tipsy and has a difficult time climbing on top of the porch. The whole time he’s struggling up over the railing to the roof, I’m picturing him falling, an ambulance waking my parents up to find a drunk boy they’ve never met passed out below my bedroom window.

As soon as he’s up, I reach back through the window to help pull him through. He hops down into the closet and pulls me against him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

His body is warm and tense around me, his heartbeat palpable all down my rib cage and stomach. He buries his face into my neck, and there’s a part of me that knows I should push him away—that every second I spend with him makes me want more time, and, even if I weren’t leaving in a few weeks, a boy who doesn’t show up when he says he will but then shows up, drunk, when you’re not expecting him probably isn’t someone I should let myself feel anything for.

Short term, I want nothing more than to stand against him like this. Long term, I know letting this happen will make things hurt worse later.

I pull back and sit down on the floor, folding my knees up against my chest. He sits down across from me. “Tell me everything,” I say.

He looks down at his hands and nods. “It started happening when I was five,” he says. “My mom and Mason would disappear for an hour or so, and then they’d be back, acting like they’d never gone anywhere. It got bigger fast. Sometimes whole buildings changed. There were two different versions of my house. There was the one we lived in, but sometimes while I was outside playing, I’d look back and the place would be all overgrown, the windows busted, that kind of thing. Then it was people. I met a version of Kincaid who didn’t know me.”

“Matt?” I say.

Beau nods. “We’ve lived on his rental property my whole life. Kincaid and I grew up playin’ together, then one day, I went over to his yard, and he introduced himself to me, like we’d never met. He took me into his house, and his dad didn’t know me either. Nicest Raymond Kincaid ever treated me,” he says with the hint of a smile.

“No one lives in Matt’s rental property,” I say.

“Not in your version,” Beau says. I stare blankly at him and he goes on. “When I was ten, my mom sent me to take piano lessons. It never happened while the teacher was watching, but if I played alone, sometimes things would disappear from the room. Little changes, nothing big. When I stopped playing, everything would go back to normal.

“It got worse and worse. My mom would’ve thought I was going crazy if she was around enough. Instead she figured it was just a phase and sent me to live with my dad. It happened less while I was there, but when it did, it was bad. One time my dad didn’t even know who I was, chased me out of the house with a baseball bat in the middle of the night, but when I came back an hour later, he acted totally normal. Anyway, he’d had enough after a year and a half, and when I got back here, it was worse than before.

“I was a freshman when I figured out I could go between them when I wanted. Especially when I was playing piano, or listening to it, or even if I was just thinking about a song. Alcohol makes it easier too. And sometimes, I could go forward.”