The Love That Split the World(66)

“Your stories are about as funny as The Diary of Anne Frank.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m humorless. I have a life outside of our time together, you know,” she said. “I’m telling you the things you need to know. Later, if there’s time, I’ll tell you about the time I found a latex glove in my salad.”

“No thanks,” I said, subduing my gag reflex. “What even happened to the boy?”

“What do you mean? He left the story.”

“So he stopped existing? Why even mention him?”

“To show you it was a good thing he went the other way.”

“Okaaaaay. And that means . . . ?”

“Look, Natalie, sometimes stories only mean whatever you get from them.”

“I hope this isn’t supposed to be one of those times.”

She surveyed me with heavy concentration. “I guess not. You got nothing, did you?”

“Sorry,” I told her with a shrug.

“The nation this story comes from saw the fox as a symbol of sexual love.”

“Erotic vampire fox—now it all makes sense.”

“Listen up,” Grandmother said, sharper than usual. “Some people think this story is about youth versus age. The child avoids the pain of life while the adults suffer.”

“What do you think?”

“That’s part of it,” she said. “But it’s also about the cost of love. To grow up is to love. To love is to die.”

“Charming.”

“Girl, if I could get up right now, I’d smack you across the head. Joke all you want, but this stuff’s important.”

“So what, I should be like the kid? Veer off and forget about love, live utterly selfishly?”

“No,” she said. “But you should know what to expect from your life, Natalie. You feel things deeply. Growing up is going to hurt. Only you can decide if the pain is worth the love.”

Grandmother taught me that eventually—whether with a thousand tiny fissures or one swift split—love will break your heart. My heart is breaking.





22


“So tell me about your experiences,” Alice says, her eyes wide and pupils dilated. I strongly suspect she smoked pot right before we came, and I kind of wish she’d offer some to Beau, who seems roughly as comfortable as a witch in the middle of being burned at the stake. It doesn’t help that things are so tense between us. Since the hospital, we can barely look at one another, barely touch one another.

He glances sideways at me then back to Alice. “Started when I was five or six.”

“Okay,” Alice says, leaning so far forward over her knees that I’m waiting for her to tip over and face-plant into a stack of books. “Describe that for me—the first time you can remember.”

Over the next hour, Alice manages to drag just about as much information from Beau as I got in ten minutes in the closet. But she seems content, and she doesn’t stop writing once, not even while she’s asking questions, despite most of his answers being four words or fewer.

When she runs out of questions, she starts tapping on her mouth and doing that flip-flopping thing with her head again.

“There’s something else,” I say, taking the opportunity to speak. “Our friend Matt was in an accident. In both worlds. But in my version, I sort of caused it. And obviously I didn’t cause the other one, but it still happened.”

“Hmm.” Alice draws a spiral on the page as she thinks. “So, like Brother Black and Brother Red.”

“I guess,” I say. “But my friend Megan—she’s different in the other world. At least a little bit. In my world, she’s gone off to college already, to train with her soccer team. This Megan hasn’t. But she has a memory that I have too.”

“Sheesh.” Alice rubs at the corner of her eyebrow and blinks rapidly a few times. “This is complicated.”

Beau looks over at me, and I warm under this gaze. “Yeah.”

“It’s still possible it’s just the two of you causing the differences,” Alice says. “Maybe your existence or lack thereof affects some things but not others.”

“But why us?” Beau says quietly.

“That’s the million-dollar question.” Alice chews on the end of her pen but keeps talking. “Why are there two worlds, and why is it you two who can pass between them?”

“And where does Grandmother fit into all of this?” I add.

“Is it possible that, in Beau’s world, she lives in your house?” Alice posits. “Maybe she’s just a lonely old woman whose Closing never happened, and now she’s spitting out advice just to have company.”

“She doesn’t live there,” Beau says. “I’ve seen the family who does.”

Alice scrunches up her mouth. “Didn’t think so. It couldn’t be that simple.”

“And Grandmother knows things,” I say, shaking my head. “I trust her.”

The timer on Alice’s phone starts to beep, informing us our session is over. She swears under her breath and flops her notebook on the desk. “You’re right, Natalie. Grandmother is different. I’m trying to make sense of all this, but we still don’t have enough information. Nothing’s going to help as much as you speaking with her again.”