The Art of Saving the World Read online

  Her turn to reach out. I let her fingertips brush my cheeks, pluck my hair.

  “How?” she asked.

  “The rift.” I smiled wryly. “In the backyard. It’s like a hole through reality. One theory is that it teleports objects here. Another theory is that it’s a portal to another time or dimension.”

  Researchers had spent sixteen years agonizing over that question. Just like this, an answer dropped into our laps. Nowhere on this Earth, nowhere in its past or future, was there another Hazel Stanczak with my face, my mole, my voice, my birthday, my family.

  The rift connected to another dimension. I had an answer.

  And countless new questions alongside it.

  “It’s never sent people,” I said. “Not that they’ve told me about. You—”

  “This rift—it’s not new? It’s been around a long time?” she asked suddenly.

  “My whole life.”

  “And you’re still living here?”

  “Right. Here.”

  If she didn’t have a rift, she must not understand how literally I meant that: Right here. This house, a one-and-a-half-mile radius, and never, ever past it.

  If her world didn’t have a rift—

  She could go past my radius.

  She was me, and she could go anywhere she wanted.

  “I got here twenty minutes ago, I think.” She talked slowly, as though still working through it herself. “I remember falling. Everything was fuzzy and flashing. People helped me up, asked questions, and put me in a room. It had a thick glass wall. They didn’t stay. They were worried, I think. Nervous. There was noise in the distance. Suddenly, the glass cracked. Part of the wall collapsed. I could walk right out. But it was dark and people were yelling and I thought they might lock me up again. I didn’t know where I was. Then I ran into Mom, and I saw the house, and . . .” She jerked upright. She snatched her handbag onto her lap, flicking it open. “My phone. I’ll just call my parents. That’s it. They’ll—I’ll call.”

  She rummaged around in the bag. Her teeth pushed into her lower lip in frantic concentration. An orange pill bottle rolled out. Lip gloss, a receipt, keys, a folded sheet of paper. She tossed the first items back in the bag, but her fingers lingered on the piece of paper.

  “I don’t think calling will work,” I told her.

  She didn’t answer, instead unfolding the paper and flattening it on the carpet. “This isn’t mine.”

  I edged aside to let the moonlight illuminate the paper. Its surface was littered with sketched lines and rectangles. It took a second for me to recognize what I was looking at. “The grounds.” I pointed at one shape. “That’s the house.” My finger followed a line surrounding the various structures. “The fence.” A scattering of rectangles. “The barns.” One barn had a small red X in one corner.

  “Something is written on the other side,” she said.

  She was right. A faint impression of letters shone through. I turned over the sheet.

  Hazel Stanczak, it said.

  We held our breath.

  There was a red X below my name, same as the one drawn within the outline of the barn.

  Find your answers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Our eyes met.

  “That’s not mine,” she said.

  “It was in your bag.”

  “I’ve never seen it before. Where I’m from, that barn doesn’t even exist. What’s inside there?”

  “No clue. That’s Barn F. It’s off-limits to me. Most of them are.” I studied the note. “Did an agent slip it into your bag?”

  “Agent?”

  “Yeah. They’re responsible for putting you in the cell, I’m guessing. I—I’m sorry they did that.”

  “Why are there agents here?”

  “The government needed to contain, secure, and research the rift. They couldn’t exactly move it elsewhere.”

  “Can your agents get me home?”

  I remembered what my parents had told me about the week I was born. The rake and the stone had gotten violently sucked into the rift, disappearing to who-knew-where. If the rift was a portal, perhaps this Hazel only needed to step inside and she’d be back home.

  Or perhaps it’d wipe her from existence.

  “I doubt they know how,” I said.

  “Which Hazel Stanczak does it mean?” She tapped our name on the paper. “Me? It was in my purse.”

  The floor shuddered. My head snapped up. All I saw out the window was the moon, distant tree tips, and part of the observation tower.

  It didn’t make sense for the MGA to slip something into her purse. If they’d wanted to give us answers, they could’ve done so directly. They were always direct—they would’ve also told me about this Hazel once the situation blew over, I was sure of it. Even when they refused to tell me about their research or the rift’s activity level, they didn’t dance around it. They let me know straight up that I wouldn’t get any answers from them.

  And that was exactly what this note suggested. Answers. The only reason someone would offer answers in this manner was if they wanted to do it under the radar.

  Sanghani might’ve taken pity on us. Maybe another friendly agent or researcher. I should find out who, ask what was going on and what we were supposed to do . . .

  Except the note was clear. We were supposed to go into that barn.

  “What answers could it mean?” she asked.

  I barked out a nervous laugh. Answers. I’d asked for answers a thousand times over the years. The words came rushing out: “Why did it send you through, the first—only—human in sixteen years? Why today? Why you? Why another version of me? How do we get you back? Why is the rift out of control even though I’m right here? What is it, even? Why is it linked to me?” Something was clenching my throat, making it hard to breathe. “I have no clue. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted those answers—

  But I couldn’t follow the instructions on the paper. Not with Mom wandering the grounds while the rift broke every rule we’d established over sixteen years and destroyed the only corner of the world I’d ever known. What if the researchers needed me in order to quiet the rift?

  “I have to find Director Facet.” I stood.

  So did the other Hazel—scrambling to her feet, note in one fist—but she had other thoughts. “Answers. Maybe they know how I can go back.”

  A strange, apologetic smile flit across her face. I saw a glimpse of braces. I’d had mine taken out last year. She hadn’t been so lucky, apparently.

  We descended the stairs together. There was less shouting outside, I thought, and fewer screeching noises I couldn’t identify. We stepped onto the lawn right as a crash sounded in the distance, loud enough to jolt us, but we kept going, the other Hazel unfolding the scrunched-up note while I scanned the smoke-filled grounds for Facet.

  There weren’t as many agents as before. They’d either left or gone inside the barns. The smell of burned wood sent me flashing back to summer barbecues.

  “I have to . . .,” I said.

  She nodded. The movement caused the red flower to drop from her hair, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  I didn’t know what to say. What if they spotted her and locked her up for questioning instead of letting her find that X on the note? What if they could send her right home? I wouldn’t get to see her again. I had questions, I realized now, questions about her home and life, what it was like being a Hazel who wore dresses and who could go past one-and-a-half miles and not even think twice about it.

  But I needed to find Facet.

  “OK,” I said, and took off. She did the same.

  The closer I came to the barn that housed Facet’s office, the more obvious it was I wouldn’t find him there. The barn had been hit hard. Flames licked at the windows, and one corner had collapsed under something that looked like a boat mast.

  If he’d been trapped, agents would be trying to get him out. Instead, the building was abandoned.

  I spun, trying not to pan
ic. The barns towered over me. People would be congregating somewhere, right, to figure out their orders? It felt like I was missing something, like I was making some giant mistake. Or maybe I already had, and that was why this was happening—maybe all along, I’d missed big honking clues about what I was supposed to do, and I was still missing clues, I had to be, or else I’d know why there was another freaking Hazel here and—don’t panic, don’t panic—

  I wasn’t good at not panicking.

  That panic battered at me like it was trying to get in and only needed me to give a fraction of an inch. Every move I made. Every thought in my head. I kept arriving at the same conclusion: One way or another, I had caused this chaos. The rift was connected to me. I was the only one who could be responsible and I didn’t have a clue how to fix it.

  Find Facet, I told myself. He’ll tell you what to do.

  I only got to take two steps toward the nearest intact barn when a deafening groan cleaved through the smoky air. I turned, ready to run toward safety, but the sound hadn’t come from anywhere nearby. It must’ve come from Barn F, a few dozen yards down—

  Barn F. The barn indicated on the sheet of paper. Where the other Hazel was headed.

  I broke into a run.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dust billowed from one corner of the barn. I scrambled through the rubble until I made it to the barn entrance. The doors stood wide open.

  “H-Hazel?” I called out, awkward as it felt to shout my own name.

  Nothing.

  Entering would be stupid and dangerous—I had to find Director Facet already. The other Hazel wasn’t responding, though. If she lay inside injured and I walked away . . .

  (A part of me whispered: If this is my chance to sneak into one of the off-limits barns, the way Caro tried years ago—the way I might have done if I had half her guts—)

  I went in, climbing over an entry gate between two guard stations. I landed on the other side with a thud and swerved, as if the empty guard stations would prove not to be so empty after all. Sixteen years of following every rule they put in front of me, and then—when it really counted, when the world was blowing up around us—I was sneaking around unauthorized areas. Facet would be so disappointed if he knew.

  I bit my lip, which tasted filthy from the dirt trapped in the air. Two hallways on the right, one on the left. I tried to recall the location of the X in that sketched rectangle of the barn, and turned left. This part of the building was relatively untouched. The lights above me were dead—I had to use my phone to see—but the walls were intact and the doors were shut, secured with card readers or retinal scanners.

  Only one door stood ajar. When I creaked it open, my phone lit up a slim, tall shape standing a couple of yards away. Bright red dress, block heels. The other Hazel was using her phone to illuminate the walls, like me.

  She flinched as my phone’s flashlight hit her eyes.

  “Sorry.” I hastily flicked it off.

  “You’re OK.”

  “You came looking for me? Thank you.”

  “I heard a noise.”

  “That wasn’t me. But look.” She wiggled her phone at an observation window. Past it, in a square room, stood a small, white horse. Hip-height, lithe. Its chest moved fast. Something looked off about it even beyond its size. I squinted, tilted my head. The light shifted, and—

  “Scales?” I said.

  “And membrane. Between its legs and body. See?”

  Even the horse’s color was strange. With the flashlight reflecting off those subtle scales, it skewed pale blue.

  “That . . . isn’t from this world,” I said.

  “It’s not from mine, either.”

  The creature must’ve arrived through the rift. If the rift connected to more dimensions than only this other Hazel’s, perhaps the theories on other dimensions I’d read up on over the years were true. Infinite worlds containing infinite Hazels and infinite creatures. This one probably wasn’t even the strangest.

  The MGA had said they didn’t know whether the rift connected to other dimensions. If they’d seen this animal, though, they had to have known.

  They’d lied.

  “That’s a . . .” The other Hazel seemed to struggle to find the word. “A water horse. Like from that show Caro loves.”

  “A kelpie,” I said.

  “The agents put me in a room like this, across the building. This must be where they keep whatever comes through that rift.”

  The horse retreated into a corner, where a pool a few feet wide was set into the ground. The other Hazel lowered her phone.

  “I doubt this is part of our ‘answers,’” she said. “You were right, by the way. Calling didn’t work. I can’t get a signal.”

  She kept moving. After a moment’s pause, I followed. I shouldn’t have been there, maybe (for sure), but now that I was, I couldn’t leave without knowing the promised answers. If the MGA had lied to me about alternate universes, they could’ve kept even more from me.

  The hall smelled sterile, like I imagined a hospital smelled, and it looked that way, too, with blank walls and scuff marks down the center of the dull gray floor. Red-Dress Hazel shone her phone into each cell we passed. Many were empty. Others had plants—repotted trees brushing the ceiling or shrubbery lining the walls. I could swear one plant had been moving and froze only when the light hit it. Malfunctioning solar lights and cameras sat in the ceilings. On each door there was a chart with unintelligible statistics and measurements. They listed dates—recent dates—but what did that mean? Dates of arrival? Dates of testing?

  I leaned into a window, studying a cell that seemed empty aside from a silver puddle in its center. Red-Dress Hazel gasped. Her wide eyes fixed on the next cell.

  I walked closer, not sure I even wanted to know.

  Colors.

  That was the first thing I saw. Colors shone brightly in the beam of the light, red and purple and green and yellow. A second later, my brain made sense of the rest. Inside sat a girl our age, half her hair buzzed to a short fuzz and the other half dangling down past her ears in a jagged cut. She’d dyed it every shade of the rainbow.

  She was sitting cross-legged at the back of the cell and stared at us, her mouth open. Her front teeth were big—in a way I recognized. Her face slotted into place: the thin lips, the too-long chin, the glasses.

  That mole above her eyebrow.

  Her mouth moved. The glass was soundproof; we didn’t even hear a whisper.

  “Another?” I said.

  “Holy crap,” Red-Dress Hazel said.

  I stared for longer than I should have. Coming face-to-face with—well—my face was one thing. With Red-Dress Hazel, I could’ve pretended I was looking in the mirror. The makeup, clothes, and glasses were the only things different about her. We even wore our hair the same style and length.

  But this Hazel? I’d looked with envy and awe at women on TV with hair like hers, half dreamed of one day being bold and trying something different with my own. It’d never gone past dreams that even I didn’t take seriously. Hair like that would only make me a target. When that senior girl Kasey had donated her hair to charity and showed up to school with a buzz cut, suddenly rumors were flying around about her creeping on girls in the changing room.

  I didn’t want anyone to think I was gay. Having hair like that—it’d make it so final. As though, right now, there was still a chance I’d someday wake up feeling comfortably straight, and I’d never again have to wonder about who I liked or what I had to do about it.

  The Hazel in this cell didn’t seem to share my uncertainty. The buzzed, dyed-black hair on one side only made the rainbow shades on the other half stand out fiercer. Her glasses were different, too. Whereas mine and Red-Dress Hazel’s were black and nondescript, this Hazel’s glasses were a dark, stylish purple, with winged tips. And she wore a necklace: two Venus symbols, intertwined.

  This wasn’t me given a two-minute makeover.

  This was me from another world. A me as a
lien as that kelpie down the hall.

  A me who—if Red-Dress Hazel’s note was to be believed—held answers.

  Rainbow Hazel snapped out of it faster than either of us. She scrambled toward the glass and pointed at the wall where the keypad lock was. She said something else—shouted maybe—but I couldn’t tell what.

  I aimed my light at the keypad and tapped numbers at random. It didn’t respond. No beeps, no lights. The screen remained empty.

  “Can we break the window?” Red suggested.

  “It’ll be bulletproof.” Everything else on the grounds was. I frowned. “Whoever wrote that note must’ve known we would have no way of getting her out.”

  “Actually,” a voice to our right said, “it’s not her the note refers to.”

  The words were warm, dripping liquid.

  Our heads turned as one. In the dark, something shifted. Uncoiled. Shards of emerald flickered with movement.

  Red pointed her phone down the hall. Shaky light spilled across a pointed tail. A strong, scaled chest. A glimpse of folded wings.

  The dragon stretched its neck. Its head reared to the ceiling, and it looked down on us with faint amusement.

  “It’s me you’re meant to find.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rainbow Hazel dashed to the back of her cell. Red scrambled aside. Her flashlight swept away from the dragon, illuminating the ceiling and a nearby cell for a kaleidoscopic second before she trained it back on its target.

  On the dragon.

  I stood nailed to the floor. Unlike with the kelpie, my brain hadn’t spent a second wondering what I was looking at.

  The dragon barely fit in the hallway. Its front legs were thick as tree trunks, ending in flat paws tipped with claws the size of my middle finger. The paws were clumsy on the linoleum, like they couldn’t get a grip, the toes splayed and mashed sideways and one paw bent almost double. Its body was low to the ground. The hall left little room for its wings, which were folded up against the walls and ceiling. I’d thought its skin emerald, with a paler belly, but as I looked at it longer, the scales appeared brown and gray. The skin was shapeless and wrinkled like a Komodo dragon’s, loosely dangling from the side of the paws and its neck, all the way up to the creature’s smooth, hornless head. And the way it smelled—I couldn’t put my finger on it, something cool and musky . . .