The Art of Saving the World Read online

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “He’s been alerted.”

  He’d said he’d stay nearby. But they couldn’t wait for Dad to subtly escort me out?

  Something was wrong.

  Something was really, really wrong.

  Valk grabbed my arm and dragged me off. “Hazel’s mother requested her presence,” she said over her shoulder. “Enjoy your evening.”

  “I’m coming!” Carolyn said.

  “No.”

  I reached to grab my presents, although I was already halfway to the door. “I’m sorry! Stick around if you want! Order whatever!” I shouted at the table, hoping they didn’t catch the panic in my voice.

  Valk shoved me into the van, which was sleek black both inside and out, and the driver barely waited for the door to close before tearing out of the parking lot. No sign of Dad.

  I sat in the middle row beside Valk. My hands wrung in my lap, my palms slick with sweat. “Is it the rift?”

  The agreement my parents had signed ages ago said that, while I could ask anything I wanted, I wasn’t entitled to answers. We got occasional information about the state of the rift or the MGA’s research, but on a voluntary basis only. The government could be building a nuke right there on our farm and we wouldn’t know.

  It wasn’t a good deal, but by signing the agreement, we at least kept some control over our lives. We all knew the government could keep me at the house whether I wanted to be there or not.

  And truth was, I wanted to be. Even if the MGA gave me the choice to leave, I couldn’t let the rift go haywire and allow people to die because I just had to experience self-serve frozen yogurt.

  Maybe someone was injured. Sometimes things slipped through the rift even when I was nearby, and Mom was still at home—maybe—

  Valk nodded. “It’s the rift.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “How?” I talked as fast as I could, as though that’d give her less time to change her mind about talking to me. “Does it have anything to do with the extra security or that power outage? Is my radius getting smaller?”

  Valk turned to face me. “Maybe,” she said, “but right now—”

  Something thundered across the road.

  The driver yanked the wheel sideways.

  And the world turned over.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The tires screamed across the asphalt.

  No, not the tires. The chassis. I was on my side, weightless, the seat belt slicing into my shoulder—I was upside down, airbags exploding into the side of my face—back upright like a doll flailed around by an angry toddler—

  And then it was over.

  It couldn’t have taken long, but it took minutes—no, seconds, had to be only seconds—to realize it had ended. To realize what had happened.

  Breath returned to me. I sucked it in hard. The world around me was quiet. The engine was still going, but at a soft, intermittent rumble. I heard nothing beyond that and my own breathing, loud and inescapable. A metallic tang hung in the air.

  Someone groaned.

  “Agent Valk?” It came out like a cough.

  The van had stopped right-side up. I sought out the seat belt button, letting the belt slip back. My glasses had flown off my face. I pushed away an airbag and found them folded by my side.

  The back of the van was dented inward. Shards of glass covered every conceivable surface: the floor, the narrow window ledges, the seat.

  “Hazel. Are you injured?” Valk leaned in.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Valk looked toward the driver’s seat. “Holloway, you all right? Can we keep going?”

  No answer. My breath caught in my throat. “Is she . . .?”

  Valk unbuckled and pulled herself up by the headrest, bringing her face side by side with Agent Holloway’s.

  “Ah,” she said quietly.

  The van had rammed into a tree. The front airbags had detonated, but they hadn’t saved Agent Holloway.

  Cold air breezed in through broken windows. I felt hot and ill and cramped all at once.

  Dead. Dead. Agent Holloway was—

  No, no. Maybe she only needed a doctor. I tried to gather my thoughts. Thursday night. Who’d be on duty at the base? “Dr. Gates. Can we call him?”

  “Hazel.”

  “We need help—”

  “Hazel. It’s too late for Agent Holloway.” Valk took my chin. I wanted to jerk away, but there wasn’t anywhere to go, so I just stared, wide-eyed, barely seeing. “Listen to me. Can you get out of the car and walk?”

  “I think so.”

  “You need to reach the rift as fast as possible. Run. OK?”

  “Aren’t we close enough?” Three hundred yards. Four hundred, maybe. The rift shouldn’t even hiccup at this distance.

  “Go.”

  I nodded—I thought I nodded—and then suddenly I was outside, the chilly air a welcome relief even if it stung cuts on my skin I hadn’t even realized were there. I climbed from the ditch onto the road and tried to stop my legs from shaking.

  Steady, I thought, steady. It’s a short walk. You’re fine.

  At this time of year, it got dark quickly, but there were enough roadside lights to see by. Skid marks stretched out on the asphalt. Farther up the road was a shape I couldn’t identify. I had to walk in the opposite direction, but—what was that?

  Before the crash, something had moved across the road. I’d assumed it was an animal, but this didn’t look like one, whether dead or alive. I fished for my cell phone in my pocket, found it thankfully still intact, and aimed the flashlight at the shape on the road.

  It was yellow. Twisted. Almost my size. It looked like a plant—maybe a fungus—covered in a wispy layer of translucent hairs. Where the plant touched the road, the skin was damaged, revealing cracks of moist orange flesh.

  Last year, something similar had come through the rift. It was the kind of thing that made the MGA wonder whether they were looking at an existing plant that hadn’t been discovered yet, an extinct or yet-to-have-evolved plant from another time, a mutation of some sort, or perhaps something from another planet or dimension . . .

  There was only one reason for this plant to come falling onto the road.

  My hand went to my mouth. How had the rift spat out something that landed all the way out here?

  I turned off the flashlight and rang Director Facet’s cell. He always said I could call anytime, but I reserved it for emergencies. This counted.

  With the phone to my ear, I ran. Past the van, where Valk was crouching by Holloway’s side. Farther down the road. (Facet should’ve picked up by now.) Left, onto the dirt path to my house that was just wide enough for a tank to drive down. The MGA kept it bump-free for a smooth ride, but didn’t want to pave it and attract unwanted attention. (The phone went to voicemail. That couldn’t be good.)

  Deeper into the trees that grew alongside the path. The gate was already coming into sight, and the house and observation tower behind it.

  The rift should be dead quiet right now.

  It wasn’t.

  I’d never seen it act up outside of video, but there was no doubt what was responsible for this chaos.

  Noise scattered across the grounds. Shouting. Panicked voices mixed with barked commands. A strange searing thundering noise, like the kind airplanes made in movies.

  I didn’t have to wait for someone to open the gate. Something had smashed right through the fence, causing the wiring to curl outward and leaving enough space for me to step through. Sanghani wasn’t on guard duty any longer. Nor was anyone else. The only people I saw were silhouettes in the distance, racing from barn to barn or whirling around in disbelief. The electricity was out. The only light came from small fires burning on the lawn and flashlight beams bouncing around the dark. Not the lights in the observation tower. Not the lights affixed to the house and the barns. Even the house inside was pitch-dark, although Mom should still have been awa
ke and waiting for us.

  I called for her, slowing my run. My voice sounded small in the havoc around me. I strengthened it: “Mom!”

  An agent came limping toward me.

  “Have you seen my mother?” I skidded to a stop.

  “The rift,” he panted. “You have to get to the rift. Where were you?” He waved toward the central barn—as though I didn’t know precisely where the rift was.

  “I have to go inside?” Being on the grounds had always been enough to calm the rift. Getting even closer couldn’t make a difference—and I never went inside the central barn without permission. I’d seen how livid Director Facet had been when Carolyn had tried to sneak in a few years ago.

  “Just go!” the agent yelled.

  “Agent Valk is down the road. The van crashed. Can you find Dr. Gates?”

  “The rift—”

  The urgency in his voice nearly jolted me. I spun and took off.

  His words replayed in my mind: Where were you?

  This was my fault.

  I didn’t understand how, though: Franny’s Food was the same distance from the house as school, and I spent every morning there five times a week. An hour and a half at Franny’s couldn’t have this kind of result.

  At the same time, nothing else ever affected the rift. Only me. I did this. Because I’d insisted on a silly birthday party, I might’ve . . .

  People got hurt. Agent Holloway got hurt.

  I tried Mom’s phone. Straight to voicemail. Facet’s rang uselessly, the same as before.

  I sidestepped a fire, leaped over a collapsed chunk of wall, and finally faced the central building. The barn the MGA had built to contain the rift was gigantic, bigger than the house. The roof was damaged. That must’ve been how the yellow plant ended up on the road: The rift had spat it out with such force, it’d gone flying through the gap in the roof and across the grounds.

  The barn’s doors were fake-wood ones twice my height, enough to get a helicopter or tank inside if needed. They stood wide open.

  I hesitated, unsure whether to go inside on my own or to find an agent to accompany me in. The MGA only let me inside the barn for testing once a year. Even during those tests, I rarely saw the rift itself.

  I didn’t have time to make up my mind. Amid all the panic, one voice stood out.

  “Hazel! Thank God!” Mom.

  I backed away from the doors, looking left and right. Her voice had come from around the corner. How had she even spotted me from there?

  I opened my mouth to ask if she was OK, when . . .

  “Mom?” another voice answered. It sounded shrill, scared.

  I stumbled to a stop.

  Carolyn couldn’t have beaten me to the house. Even if she had, Mom had said “Hazel,” and Mom would never mistake us, even in the evening dark. Carolyn was a pre-growth-spurt thirteen-year-old, part Chinese, her hair brown and neat, whereas I was white and gangly-tall and my hair was a dark blond tangled mess. We weren’t hard to tell apart.

  It wasn’t Carolyn calling Mom “Mom.”

  “Oh, honey, honey, thank God, I was so worried!”

  “What’s going on?” The voice sounded frightened and familiar in a way no other voice was. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not safe. Where’s Dad and Caro? And what are you wearing? No, no, never mind, I’ll call them, I’ll find Facet, just go to the house, Hazel, wait in the garage, we have to get away . . .”

  I approached with small steps, dreamy, unworldly steps that I was barely in control of.

  Because the closer I got, the more I saw of the person Mom was talking to.

  The more I saw of a gangly-tall shape. The more I saw of thick, tangled hair. Of a scared face, its pale skin alight in the dark.

  The more I saw of me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mom shoved the girl—shoved me, shoved Hazel—toward the house and took off around the corner.

  The noise around me fell away as I watched. The other Hazel went for the house, her legs shaky. She stumbled on the damaged lawn. I could see why: She wore heels. Short ones, maybe an inch and a half, but taller than I ever wore. She had on white tights and a red dress that swooshed at the bottom. A red plastic flower sat clipped to her hair above one ear, the same shade as the dress. A handbag dangled from one shoulder.

  I didn’t wear dresses. I didn’t wear heels or tights or flowers or handbags.

  Yet there I walked, a bright blot amid fire and panic.

  I was following her before I even realized I’d decided to. She went at an awkward jog, her heels in the grass slowing her down. She kept looking around, jerking up at every noise, then hesitating as though unsure where to turn.

  “Hey!” I shouted. A screeching noise nearby drowned out my voice. I tried again—“Hey, stop!”—but all she did was pick up her pace, going from a jog into a full-out run.

  We cleared the barns, headed right for the house. She was ten yards ahead. She stumbled again, and I saw her crane her neck as if studying the house. She went around, slamming open the front door before disappearing inside.

  I wanted to sit. Crash my ass to the ground and stare and keep staring until the world made sense. But I had to reach her. I had to see her face-to-face, to talk, to ask . . . to ask everything.

  The house looked as though it’d been through an earthquake. A bookshelf had fallen, the books lying in scattered piles on the carpet, and the kitchen cabinets hung open. Broken glass covered the countertops. Something had flung into the TV, damaging the screen. I could still smell the pie from earlier, incongruous apple and cinnamon and dough and—normal.

  A glimpse of red, dashing up the stairs. “Hey!” I shouted again.

  She still didn’t slow.

  I thundered up the stairs after her. She fled into Caro’s room and stopped abruptly. She looked left, right, left—nailed to the floor.

  Then she turned.

  Saw me for the first time.

  Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.

  I stared at her, now only three feet away. The moonlight spilling in lit the room just enough to see her face.

  My face.

  She was wearing makeup. Shiny lip gloss. Blush. Mascara. A hint of pink on her eyelids. Her glasses looked like mine—narrow, black-rimmed, but weren’t quite the same, hers a little simpler, a little thinner . . .

  But it was unmistakably, unquestionably, inescapably my face.

  The same narrow nose. The same thin lips and the same long chin that, in my more frustrated moments, I thought of as horse face. Her eyes were too dark for me to see the color, but I would bet they were the same nondescript brown as my own, and she had the same mole above one eyebrow, and . . . it was all there.

  I was looking in the mirror.

  I was looking at some sort of . . . some sort of photoshopped, air-brushed version of my face, but my face nonetheless.

  “What’s going on?” she wailed.

  (Same voice, too.)

  Her hands were tight fists, her face a panicked frown. “What’s—This can’t—

  What’s happening?”

  I couldn’t stop myself.

  I reached out and touched her cheek.

  She froze for a moment. Then she smacked my arm aside. She jumped forward, shouldering past me into the hall. She took long steps, her hair billowing out behind her, finally stopping near a painting that’d fallen from the wall. She turned.

  “Where’s my room?” she cried. “Where am I?”

  I pointed wordlessly at my bedroom door across the hall.

  She didn’t move.

  “What’s happening?” she repeated, softer now, her eyes scrunched up and wet.

  “I think.” I cleared my throat. “I think you came through the rift.”

  “The what?”

  “You don’t know about the rift?”

  Her panic-stricken face said enough.

  My mind spun. I was worried about Mom running past the barns, and Dad in town, or perhaps
on his way home by now. And about Carolyn and Marybeth and Neil and Imani and Amber-Lynn still at Franny’s, eating sorbets or ordering pancakes; maybe they’d already called their parents and gone home muttering about Hazel Stanczak’s childish party or gossiping about the agent in the diner.

  And there was the rift. And the fires on the lawn. Agent Holloway. Director Facet’s phone. And this girl, this me-girl with a me-face and a me-voice . . .

  The thoughts raced and twisted and clogged everything up.

  All I could do was say: “I think you’re from a different dimension.”

  “I’m what?”

  I repeated it.

  No response.

  “You’re Hazel Stanczak,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “You were born on December third. Your sister is Carolyn Stanczak. Your mother is Sandra Stanczak—you saw her outside earlier. And your father is Ethan Yeo. And, and this is your house, just outside West Asher-ton, except the house looks bigger than you remember, and there aren’t as many barns where you live, and there’s no agents, no observation tower or fence . . . Right?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was so small.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  My legs could no longer carry me. I sank down in Caro’s doorway. The ground felt steady. Smooth. Calm. Everything I wasn’t.

  She took a hesitant step closer. “I’m dreaming,” she whispered. “Right? Mom let me have that sip of wine for my birthday, and it interacted with my meds funny, and now I’m having the strangest, realest dreams.”

  “It’s your birthday.” I sounded hoarse.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine, too.” I gestured at her dress. “That’s why . . . the clothes?”

  She tugged at the rim of her dress. Nodded. “I’m dreaming.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “But you’re not.”

  She closed her eyes. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to wake herself up or calm herself down. Then she nodded again. She opened her eyes. Her breathing was sharp, trembling, but however scared she was, she still stepped closer. She crouched in front of me.