Inevitable, page 11
“Please!” Nathan begged. “Just tell me what the problem is!”
I happened to glance back at his handsome, worried face. The air outside was freezing, and soft flakes of snow fluttered to the ground.
“Get away from me! It’s all your fault! I never should’ve come here!”
“What?” he gasped, having no idea what I was saying. I didn’t either. I slipped and fell into the thin layer of snow covering the ground. My skin was so cold and I hated it inside this body. Suddenly, Nathan put his arms around me and picked me up. He was so big and there was nowhere for me to go, but he was the last person I wanted to see.
“Calm down! It’s going to be ok. No matter what it is, you’re going to be fine. I promise!”
I struggled, feeling like I was going to throw up all over him. I shook, raving like a lunatic.
“You did this to me, Nathan! How could you? I have to get away,” I cried, tears streaming down my face. Even though I was blaming him, vindictive and torn, he never stopped trying to comfort me.
“Just stay here with me, Apoxy!” he said, a soothing look in his loving brown eyes that managed to calm me just a bit. I managed to say something almost sounding normal.
“As soon as you blink, I’ll disappear.”
“Then I’ll never blink,” he promised, but he did, and I vanished into thin air.
Chapter 7
That should’ve been the end of the story, and for a long time it seemed like it would be. Having escaped to the infinite, I could look objectively on all that had happened. All of those sensations he had put in my body had somehow tethered me to it. He made me care about him in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. I wasn’t just doing him a favor or giving him what he deserved for his self-sacrifice anymore, I had wanted to be near him to bask in the warmth of his affection.
I should’ve stopped caring and forgotten about him, but I couldn’t seem to do that either. As the days ticked by, I continued to watch him, and it ground away at me to see him from before and after but not to be able to be with him in the present.
And to be honest, I suspect he felt the same way. I don’t know how he rationalized my sudden disappearance. Maybe he chalked it up to being drunk, or maybe he started to get some inkling of what I really was, but either way he never forgot about me. In his spare time, he’d hole himself up in his room and write unsent letters addressed to “Dear Apoxy,” as though he somehow knew I’d be able to read them, as though I really was that girl he kept in his mind.
It turned out my mishap wasn’t the only change that took place that night. Cammie had taken my little demonstration to heart more than I could’ve never imagined. When Nathan brought me later, she couldn’t even be angry anymore.
“She’s baffling!” Cammie declared, which I have to admit I preferred much more than “psychotic.”
The idea I had given her started to grow in her mind, consuming her thoughts and keeping her up at night. Those five little words held a mystery she just had to wrap her head around.
“Have you ever wondered if you’re not the only you?” she asked Nathan one day while they were staring at piles of bills.
“Umm, no,” Nathan replied. “I have enough trouble keeping track of one me. I don’t need to worry about any more. Now come on. We need to figure this out.”
They had finally missed their first mortgage payment and were forced to fight with the electric people and the water people to keep their utilities on. Cammie started talking about giving up her summer study programs in favor of a summer job, but for right now she couldn’t stop thinking about this idea.
“I’m serious. What makes us think that the universe is so simplistic that it only manifests itself in one way? There could be countless worlds just like our own that are so close we could touch them!”
“Whoa, what is this about? You’ve been acting strange ever since…”
“I met Apoxy,” Cammie finished. “I know I should probably forget about her, but I can’t.”
“That makes two of us,” Nathan added.
“I’m going to try and do some research on this and put something together for the state science championships this summer. If I could somehow demonstrate that parallel universes exist, do you have any idea what kind of a breakthrough that would be?”
This stunned Nathan, who leaned away from Cammie to get a better perspective on her.
“I thought you were going to do medical research and be a doctor. Isn’t that what you always wanted?” Nathan gasped. Considering how seriously Cammie took her studies, a shift like this was monumental.
“I know I did,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment to let it sink in. “And my advisor is freaking out about this, but I have to go with my heart. I really believe I can put these pieces together. Energy. Space. Time. Mass. Probability. Besides, I’m tired of feeding pills to mice anyway.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out then,” Nathan conceded.
“Not yet, but I will,” Cammie promised.
True to her word, Cammie worked tirelessly to develop a new experiment for the state science championships. She immersed herself in quantum physics, tearing through textbooks that most people would find impenetrable. After months of researching, she finally hit on something promising. Nathan might not have even known about it if it weren’t for a loud crashing sound that came from her room.
“Is everything ok?” Nathan asked through the door, using his knuckles to nudge it open. Cammie’s room, which was surprisingly girly, had a strange contraption clamped to the pink wall.
“Wait, no! You can’t come in!” Cammie said, rushing to the door, but Nathan had already pushed it open. She had clear plastic goggles on her face, crossing her arms as Nathan barged in.
“What’s going on in here? What’s all this stuff?” he asked.
“It’s not ready yet. I haven’t even connected the electrodes,” she blabbed.
Nathan stood staring at the wall, where three vertical glass tubes were spaced just a few inches apart. The ones on the left and the right fed into smaller plastic tubes that had balloons on the end. At the bottom, a small metallic bridge connected all three together. It looked kind of like a trident.
These tubes and the liquid inside of them didn’t make any sense to Nathan, but then Cammie pulled something out he did recognize.
“Are those my jumper cables?” he gasped. “And where’d you get that car battery?”
“It’s all in the name of science,” Cammie calmed him. “Don’t worry. Everything’s under control.”
Nathan took a closer look at the strange contraption she’d put together. It was really pretty marvelous.
“What is this thing?”
“This is called a Hofmann Voltameter, and it’s a binary gas electrolytic cell. Electrolysis is the process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. That’s what these tubes are for. The middle one contains water, which splits and feeds the gases into these two other tubes. The gas gets collected in these balloons.”
Nathan nodded, putting his hand on Cammie’s shoulder and squeezing her close. He was more than impressed.
“You’re a genius! And you really think this is going to somehow crack open parallel universes?” he asked, making Cammie blush.
“I’m hardly a genius. This is something everybody knows about, and it certainly won’t be taking anybody to any parallel universes. Not by itself at least. But I think it’ll be an important piece. This is where the energy will come from. Here, watch.”
Cammie broke away from her brother and attached the jumper cables to the bottom of the bridge. Sparks fizzled as she attached them, and the liquid in the chamber immediately started to bubble.
“Awesome!” Nathan mused as the bubbles filtered through the liquid in the tubes and the deflated balloons started to expand.
“That one over there is oxygen gas,” Cammie explained, “and this one here is hydrogen gas. This is the reason I’m doing this whole thing!”
Watching the balloon fill up, Cammie glowed. Excitement diffused through her pores.
“Hydrogen gas is pure protons, the subatomic particle with a positive charge. It basically is energy. Now the interesting thing is that protons are made up of quarks, which are these even smaller particles that are so tiny when you look at them under a microscope they sometimes seem to appear and disappear on their own. That’s the only basis we have for a parallel universe. Where do these tiny particles go when they’re not here? They have to go somewhere!”
“I don’t know,” Nathan shrugged.
“Neither do I, but we’re going to find out by using this gas to make larger objects behave like those tiny quarks.”
Nathan was taken aback, and to be honest so was I. Cammie was a brilliant girl, but I never could’ve guessed my little hint could’ve actually lead to something like this. She had a real chance of breaking through the barrier between her world and those existing simultaneously with it.
“Do you think this’ll really work?” Nathan asked her, setting his hand on the expanding balloon.
“It will as long as I can figure out the other pieces. Space is here, the time is now, and the mass could be anything. All I have to figure out is how to add the element of probability,” she reasoned, her hand to her chin in deep thought.
“You don’t have much time. The science championships aren’t that far away. If you could pull this off, you’d be a winner for sure. Might even get you the Nobel Prize before you’re out of high school. Better figure it out fast.”
Cammie shuddered, catching Nathan’s eyes. She’s risked it all on this experiment, and if it didn’t work she’d blow her chance of winning.
*
It was June when Nathan reached a breaking point, and it appeared as though I would as well. While Cammie was working fiendishly on her experiment, Nathan continued to fight in vain against bill collectors. Something had to change or else they’d never dig themselves out of debt. Sucking up his awful feeling of apprehension, he scheduled a meeting with Barb for one day after his shift had ended. She still always made him feel uncomfortable, reminding him of the manipulative ways of his ex-girlfriend, but he was out of options and running out of time.
He gave a confident smile to the secretary on his way into the office trailer, and she motioned him toward Barb’s cubicle. Infrequent shaving had left him with about a week’s worth of growth on his face, and the beard made him seem more rugged, unpredictable even. Taking a deep breath and straightening out his hair, he knocked and entered as soon as he could.
“Come right in,” Barb called from behind her desk. She pushed some papers to the side and scooted her chair closer to the desk, seeming very eager. Nathan took a seat in the chair, scratching at his chest right below the shoulder while she drank him in. “So what’s this all about?”
Nathan gave her a firm look, leaning to one side and gesturing to her with his hand.
“I thought you’d be the person to talk to about this ever since you started helping out with operations management,” he said, but it was a lie. The real reason he came to her was because his sex appeal had always had a strong impact on her, and if he needed to use that to get what he needed, then so be it. “I’ve been working hard ever since the day I started, almost no mistakes, and I’m putting in more time here than anyone else in the factory. I think it’s time I got a raise, don’t you?”
Barb blinked, taken aback, and that was her only reaction for a few moments as Nathan held a steady, strong gaze. Her enthusiasm faded away, leaving behind a calculating, serious expression that matched his own.
“Oh, is that what this is about?” she asked, and Nathan nodded. She played with her pen a second and made some funny motions with her mouth. “I’m sorry to say this, Nathan, but you haven’t even been here a year. I can’t just give you a raise, in fact, none of us can. There are rules in place for the company delineating how these things are done.”
Rebuffed, Nathan cleared his throat. That wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he wasn’t about to give up.
“I don’t think you understand what you’d be losing if I left. I do the jobs other guys won’t do. I pick up the slack for their laziness. I’ve given every ounce of my energy to this company for nine months,” he argued, but it didn’t faze Barb. It was all a bluff, and she knew enough about him to recognize it.
“In a week, school will let out and there’ll be a ton of guys with your education looking for work. Considering the economy, we might even be able to pay them less than you! No, I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”
Leaning back for a moment, Nathan released an exasperated sigh. He had his fingers to his mouth, trying to come up with a solution. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but he had no other choice.
“Barb, I’ve been working here as hard as I possibly can, but the amount I’m earning is just not enough. We’re going to lose the house. My family needs this. Please, you’ve got to be able to give me something. I’ll do anything.”
He had a deadly serious stare, his heated brown eyes fixed on Barb’s elegant, sharp exterior. She bit her lip and looked off to the side for a moment. Dropping her pen, she rose from her seat and came around to him. Bent over at the hips, she put her hands on the armrest of his chair and looked down on him from such a short distance away.
“There is one thing you could do that would help you,” she whispered, something altogether menacing and dark in her tone. But Nathan didn’t shy away.
“Tell me,” he demanded, and she closed her eyes for a second and brushed her hair back.
“I know a little operation uptown that could use a guy like you. You could do it on the weekends and probably make half again as much as you make here. On eighty-seventh street, there’s a store that sells shower doors, except they don’t sell shower doors. Go around back and take the cellar stairwell to the basement.”
Nathan felt his heartbeat rise and his breathing become heavy. The implications of what she was offering started to hit him.
“What would I be doing?” he asked, and Barb stood up straight and returned to her desk.
“Let’s just say you won’t need to file an IRS tax return for this job.”
The opportunity she presented him with startled him, pushing his thoughts away from any disappointment about his failed attempt to get a raise. His mind tried to wrap itself around what this was, and as a result he didn’t even say goodbye to Barb when he left.
A moment later he was stepping out of the office trailer. Glancing to the left, his eyes caught the rusting roof of the cement factory. They’d begun to prepare for the construction, clearing away space around its perimeter and bringing in supplies and machinery. The end was coming for him.
At home, he sat on the couch, stewing over his decision. He didn’t know what he’d be getting involved with, but he understood it wouldn’t be good. The TV was on right in front of him, but his attention was off to the right, where Cammie sat at the kitchen table doing her homework. Finals were coming up, and she struggled to complete math problems using a chunky, basic calculator.
For some reason, that calculator, good for little more than a paperweight, pissed him off more than anything else. Considering the experiments she was doing, she needed one of those fancy calculators that looked like they could fly a rocket ship. He’d never even needed one in the classes he’d taken, but she had to have one. If she went without one of these super calculators, she’d be stuck right down with him at the bottom of the food chain. It ate away at him, tearing him from inside.
“I’m never going to be able to give you what you need,” he said, a frantic glare in his intense, red eyes. He hunched over, his head low, brooding.
“What?” Cammie asked, the concern apparent when she twisted her neck to look back at him.
“I’m not going to let it go on like this. I have to do something.” He twitched a little, but his voice was still hard. Cammie started to gawk.
“Nathan, what are you talking about?”
He put his head down, his feet bobbing nervously.
“Do you ever think about if you have it?” he asked, and in a family such as his there was only one “it” you could have, Huntington’s disease.
“Nathan…” Cammie said, a little bit of sympathy and reprimand in her voice.
“I can feel it, Cammie. It’s killing me already, dragging me down, just like Mom.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that! It’s not a good attitude. You can get tested, you know. It would at least give you peace of mind.”
“I know what I need to do,” he snapped, shooting up from the couch and breaking for the door.
“Where are you going?” she called, but he didn’t answer. He grabbed his jacket from the rack and blew through the door. Cammie rushed to follow him.
“Nathan!” she hollered.
It was dusk by the time he made it to eighty-seventh street. The warm day was starting to cool off, and the streets were beginning to clear. This wasn’t the best neighborhood, but it wasn’t the worst either, just block after block of dense apartment buildings and back alleys winding around in a maze. It actually wasn’t all that far from where Nathan lived, and he wondered at the difference a few subway stops makes.
Nathan parked his car in the closest available spot, almost a block away, and he made up the distance on foot. A few people passed him, but he just kept his eyes to the worn, somewhat dirty sidewalk. Glancing at the shops and apartment buildings, most everything appeared to be rundown. Once they lost the house they’d have to seek refuge in someplace like this, crammed into an ant colony, everybody hanging their laundry on the patio from five stories up.
There weren’t any lights on in the store that sold shower doors. The shop didn’t even have a title. It just said “shower doors.” A few display models were propped up inside. Reaching back into his memory, Nathan tried to remember if he’d ever seen this store open, but he’d just never known it existed.
There weren’t any people around, but Nathan still looked up and down the sidewalk before he slipped around the side of the building. For some reason, he didn’t want to be seen here, and the whole thing made him uncomfortable. Shutting out any doubtful thoughts, he reminded himself how much better they’d be if this worked out for him.
