Undone: An Unraveling Novella Part 5

She shook her head, and for a second I wondered why she would have moved the phone. Then I saw that she was biting her lip, and I realized something was worse.

Eli seemed to recognize it too, because he sat down next to me. I reached over, touching her hands, forcing her to settle them in her lap. "I'm home now," I said. I squeezed her hand.

Tears rolled down her face. I wanted them to be happy tears, but the way her shoulders quivered and she refused to look at me, I knew they weren't.

"Everything is going to be okay," I added. Because wasn't that what we all needed to hear? That I would just finally get home and everything would be okay. For seven years I'd thought my biggest problem was that I was missing. I just needed to get home and everything would be the same as it was. This was the first time I realized that maybe just being back wouldn't actually fix anything.

My mom offered me a weak smile. Then she looked at Eli. "A lot of things have changed."

From the way she said it, I knew the changes hadn't been good.

It was my brother who told us what those changes were.

My mother stalled by making us tea and insisting we tell her what had happened to us. We sat on the couch and told her how we had opened the first portal and fallen through. I told her about the ocean and Janelle pulling me out. I left out the details of foster care and school, focusing on all the time we spent trying to re-create the machine.

For some reason I couldn't tell her about opening the portals ourselves. Maybe it was because she was so dodgy with my questions, or maybe it was how small she looked when she curled herself into the corner of the couch, her long, thin fingers around her cup of tea. I had wanted to tell my family everything: the good, the bad, the ugly. I wanted them to know it all.

Now, though, sitting across from her, I wasn't sure she would be able to handle everything we'd been through.

Instead I told her I'd fallen in love.

"That f.u.c.king girl," Eli said.

I punched him in the arm.

I rambled about Janelle, telling my mother about her family, her friends, her brother. I even told her about how I'd taken her to Sunset Cliffs to watch the sunset.

Finally Eli had heard enough and we called Derek.

He was there within minutes. He left his car running in the driveway. He didn't knock. He threw the door open and ran through the house. Before I had the chance to register him, he tackled me to the ground with a hug.

"What happened to Reid?" Derek asked as soon as my mother had gone up to bed.

I didn't answer. I had forgotten how much Derek looked like me. It was a little like seeing myself in a broken mirror. We were so similar. He was a little taller, and maybe a little thinner, at least in the face. He was also a little more put together. His clothes weren't wrinkled, and his hair was cut close to his head, but we had been growing into the same man.

No wonder my mother had recognized me so easily.

But I still didn't know how to explain.

"I know something happened," Derek said. "Because he isn't here, and the two of you have been trying really hard not to talk about him."

How could I explain that I had just started to figure it out? I was standing in the middle of that stupid empty house in Park Village in a world that wasn't mine, yet the girl I was in love with was leaning against the wall off to the side. Her best friend was standing eerily quiet and hugging that backpack, while Eli sat across from me in that old patio furniture we'd pulled out of the community Dumpster. I was explaining that not only were we right about the multiverse theory, we were right about there being an infinite number of worlds out there. So many of them that there was an Interverse Agency, a group of military-style cops policing all the different universes, keeping track of the traffic between them. And when I put the pieces together, I was pretty sure that Reid was breaking those laws and was killing people.

How could I explain that to my brother?

I looked at him but I didn't have the words, and what had happened only hours ago had already flooded my mind.

He had looked so guilty. Reid, standing in the doorway. He had looked at Eli and me first. Then he saw Janelle and Alex. As soon as he bolted out the door, I knew Alex was right, that it was Reid opening the portals. That it was Reid pulling the worlds closer to Wave Function Collapse. But I didn't have time to think about that, because Janelle's reaction was much quicker than mine. She went after him before I realized what was happening. If Reid was opening portals, he knew he was killing more people. Who knew what he was capable of doing in the name of getting home?

I took off after them. The sun had gone down, but it was easy to tell what direction they'd gone. The canyon was quiet except for the chase. I called out to Janelle as I ran. Eli was only a few steps behind me, calling out to Reid.

When we caught up to them, Janelle had Reid on the ground. She pulled back and punched him in the face. "Did you do it?" she screamed.

I reached in and grabbed her by the arms. She struggled, but I pulled her back.

"Stay there," I said to him. The last thing we needed was to be running around in the dark in the middle of another earthquake.

Reid's eyes met mine. I saw the answer in them, but I didn't want it to be true. I wanted so badly for him to say no. To laugh it off, to tell me to go screw myself. He didn't say anything.

Janelle shouted again. "Did you?" She struggled in my arms.

I turned her to face me, bracing her against my body. "Janelle, stop."

Suddenly she stopped. Her brown eyes flicked to me. They looked wide with fear and uncertainty, and I wished that I could do something to take back the things that had happened to her, that I could somehow erase all of the things I had brought into her life.

She'd lost so much because of me. Her life, her home, any normalcy this world had offered her. And her father.

I let go of her and turned on Reid. "Did you?" My voice was hard.

Reid stared at me. I couldn't believe that he had done this, that he had been so stupid. We'd known each other since we were babies. We'd gone to preschool together, and learned to play soccer and baseball together, and grown up together in this strange world. But now it was like I didn't know who he was. Opening portals, putting us all at risk, killing people. "Did you kill her dad?" I said.

"It was an accident!" Reid said, his eyes changing as he looked from me to Eli.

Despite the dark, I watched the world move through Janelle's face. The wind brushed back her hair; sadness washed over her face. I was pretty sure she felt exactly what she had when she first found out her dad was dead. Then her jaw set, and I saw the anger come through.

I wondered if this would change her, or if she'd hold on to it forever.

And my heart broke for her.

"Reid . . ." I started, but there were too many ways for that sentence to go.

"Reid didn't make it," Eli said.

I didn't know what Derek saw when he looked at us, but he nodded and let it go. "You want a beer?" he said. He didn't wait for an answer, so we followed him into the kitchen.

"I shouldn't," I said when he offered me one.

"Don't be such a b.i.t.c.h," Eli said, reaching for the beer. It was a can I didn't remember. It was blue and yellow with the shape of a dolphin on it.

"It's pretty watered down," Derek said. "But it's what Dad drank when we were kids, remember?"

I shook my head. I didn't want it. For some reason it was less that I was underage and more that I didn't want to drink something that I had forgotten.

Derek sat down at the kitchen table. "She didn't tell you anything, did she?"

I shook my head.

He looked at Eli and then back at me. "You're going to want to sit down for this."

When you went missing," Derek said, "everything changed, man. Ian came running up from the bas.e.m.e.nt screaming about how the three of you had just vanished. At first we thought he was crazy or that you were playing some kind of prank, but . . ."

"Then you realized it was true," Eli said.

Derek nodded. "Somehow Mom and Mr. Suitor figured out what happened. Dad took me back to our house. He told me Mom would fix it. But she never came home."

"What do you mean?"

Derek bit the skin around his thumbnail and didn't answer. Then he looked at Eli. "You gotta understand that the prime minister's son going missing like that, no one could stop talking about it. Every conspiracy theorist in the republic had a hypothesis and a suspect. Your dad, man, he just lost it. Mom and Mr. Suitor called him to explain what happened, and he showed up with half the military and took the Suitors and my mom in for questioning. The next day they came for my dad. The military questioned them; everyone was looking for you. All everyone talked about was what had happened to you guys. But it went too far. Everyone at that party . . . all the adults were brought in, and they weren't allowed to come home until the three of you were found."

"For how long?" I said. Clearly they were home now.

"I spent two years in a group home before Mom and Dad got out," he said. "I don't know what they did to them in there, but nothing was the same. They tried to recover. We all moved back into the house, but they couldn't even look at each other, so they got the annulment."

"s.h.i.+t," Eli said.

"It's my fault," I said. "I should have been more careful. I never meant to fall in."

Derek shrugged. "It's no one's fault. I just need you to know that part first."

I braced myself.

"Both of the Suitors were executed," Derek said. "Publicly."

I couldn't move. The breath I didn't release burned my lungs. Reid's parents were both dead. Maybe in some screwed-up way that was a blessing. They were all together now, even if he hadn't made it home.

"Who executed them?" Eli asked.

Derek looked away. "Your dad. He executed a lot of people," he said. His voice was quiet, his face strained, like he didn't want to tell us what was next. "It was bad. He started throwing people in jail and he held them without cause. If someone looked the wrong way at someone else, he pulled them in for questioning about what happened to you. It didn't matter what kind of alibi they had. Everyone was a suspect."

"But it was an accident."

Derek shook his head. "He set nationwide curfews and lined the streets with military. People who protested were shot."

"He always had the worst f.u.c.king temper, but this . . . I knew he'd look for us," Eli said. "How did it end?"

"People started talking about how to get rid of him. Rebellions broke out . . . and he was a.s.sa.s.sinated."

My brother didn't mince words.

Silence settled in between us. Both Derek and I looked at Eli, while he just stared into empty s.p.a.ce.

"So he's dead?" Eli asked.

Derek nodded.

"When?"

"Five years ago."

Only two years after we'd gone through the portal.

"That's when my parents were released and I got to come home," Derek added.

"My mom?" Eli asked.

"She's alive. I think she remarried a few years back." Derek shrugged.

"What about Dad?" I asked.

Derek shook his head. "He didn't know how to deal with losing you, so he married some woman he worked with and started a new family. He tries to get me to come over a lot, but . . ." He shrugged.

My parents were suddenly on different sides. Derek had chosen my mom.

I nodded, though I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to, if anything. None of this felt real. It felt like a nightmare. I wondered if I would wake up tomorrow and be with Janelle. I wondered how much I was willing to erase, how far I would go back if I could.

Eli looked at me. "Let's go to bed."

We slept in my old bedroom.

The room was the same as I left it, except for the thick layer of dust covering everything. When I was nine, for Derek's birthday, my parents gave him his own room with a new bed and let him paint it and decorate it however he wanted to. Both of our childhood beds were still in my room. They were old wooden beds that had actually been my dad's when he was a kid. You could put them together like bunk beds or separate them.

Eli sneezed as he shook out the comforter on Derek's old bed.

On the window was a dusty picture frame. I wiped my fingers through the dust. It was me, Derek, and our dog, Hope. I hadn't been able to ask about her, not once Derek started telling us how things had changed. Seven years had gone by, but I'd hoped she would still be here. It was clear she wasn't, and if my parents had been in jail and my brother sent to a group home, Hope would have gone to a shelter or new owners. Wherever she was, I hoped she was happy.

The wind whistled through the window frame, and I listened to the muted, faraway sound of the chimes outside. I looked at the bed in front of me and thought of Janelle. Was she getting into bed thinking of me, too?

We shouldn't have left her there in Park Village like that.

The mattress on the other bed creaked from Eli's weight. I pulled my own covers back, the fabric rustling as it revealed flannel sheets with fire trucks on them.

"Remember when we slept over here during that freak snowstorm?" Eli said suddenly. "We were, like, eight I think."

"Yeah, it only snowed, like, an inch, but your dad declared a state of emergency and had a snowplow drive him over the next morning to pick you up."

"I was so p.i.s.sed," he said. "You and Reid and Ian got to all stay here and hang out and play s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+eld and I had to go home."

"They were here for almost three full days. My dad kept joking that if we ran out of food we would eat Reid first because Ian was too skinny."

Eli laughed. "He was really f.u.c.king skinny. I wonder what happened to him."

I didn't want to think about it. He was just another casualty in all the lives I'd ruined by falling through the portal. Everything that had happened herea"our families falling apart, the people Eli's father had jailed or executeda"that was all on me. Plus everything that had gone wrong in Janelle's world, all the people who died from the disasters, the people who were pulled through the portals. If I just hadn't fallen through it that first time, things would be so different.

"How could he do it?" Eli asked. I knew from his tone that he'd switched directions. He was talking about Reid now.

I didn't answer. I didn't know.

Eli must not have expected an answer, because as I stared at my ceiling, I heard him roll over and sigh. I wondered how long it would take both of us to fall asleep. If exhaustion would claim us or if we'd lie awake, unable to relax.