Tandem

getting kidnapped. Another question pushed its way past the walls I’d erected against these strange sensations and lodged itself in my brain: would I continue to see life through her eyes now that I was in her world? Only time would tell, but I had the distinct impression that I’d had other dreams while I was unconscious—both times— though I didn’t remember them. But I couldn’t count on that now. I had to dredge my memory for any lucid details that could be useful to me here, and hope for the best.

“Now what?” I didn’t want to bring up the future; the conversation about the tandem and its idiosyncrasies had relaxed me a bit, and Thomas’s earlier stiffness and formality had given way to something much more human, much closer to the boy he had been on Earth, when I’d thought he was Grant. I didn’t want to scare that all away by calling his attention back to the situation at hand, but there wasn’t a choice. We had to move forward— I had to, if I was ever going to get home.

“Now,” he said. “We call Gloria.” 

TWELVE

“Who’s Gloria?” I asked. All the easiness I’d felt in talking to Thomas before dissolved in the face of meeting someone else from this world.

“Gloria is Juliana’s personal secretary and aide-de-camp,” Thomas explained. I tried to imagine what this person might be like, but couldn’t. “She knows who you are.”

“She does?”

“She has to,” Thomas said. “I’m going to give you as much help as I can, but there’s only so much I can do—there’s only so much I know. Gloria’s been with Juliana since the princess was twelve. She keeps her schedule and manages her staff. She’ll be an invaluable resource for you.”

“How many other people know?”

“Of the ones you’ll actually meet, it’s just me, the General, and Gloria. And Fillmore, of course.” I grimaced. I thought I saw him smile, but it might’ve just been a trick of the light. “There are a few others, but nobody you need to worry about. I would save all your energy for the people who don’t know who you are.”

He pressed a button on a small console to the right of the door. It beeped and he spoke into it. “Send Gloria in.”

In moments, the door slid open and a tall, brown-skinned woman entered. Her hair was pulled back into a tight French twist and she was dressed professionally, despite the hour, in a gray twill pencil skirt, perfectly pressed black blouse, black sheer tights, and a pair of high black stiletto heels. She carried a square glass tablet in her hand and wore a serious expression.

“Gloria Beach,” Thomas said, stepping aside to let the woman pass. “This is Sasha Lawson.”

Gloria allowed several seconds of silence to go by, fixing me with a penetrating look. “I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lawson, but I don’t think that would be true for either of us. That said, I hope you understand that I’m here to help you. Nobody wants Juliana back more than I do, but until the General manages to locate her, I’m afraid we have no choice.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended, but Gloria nodded in understanding.

“Thomas, turn the lights on,” Gloria commanded. “I want to get a good look at her.” The fluorescents flickered for a moment before dousing the room in bright white light.

Gloria walked a circle around me, regarding me closely. “It’s amazing, really, how much you look like Juliana.”

“I’m not her,” I insisted.

“No, of course not,” Gloria said. “But how you look is the single most important factor in whether or not people will believe that you’re Juliana, which is the ultimate goal. With the right clothes, hair, and makeup, even her own mother couldn’t tell the difference.”

“Where is Juliana’s mother?” I asked. Thomas had mentioned a stepmother, the queen regent, and her incapacitated father, but surely Juliana had a mother as well? My heart burned with jealousy. It wasn’t fair that she had two parents—three, counting her stepmother—while I had none. It’s one of the differences, I imagined Thomas saying. To me, at least, it was the greatest difference of all.

Thomas looked to Gloria, who explained. Juliana’s parents had married when her mother, Alana Defort, was very young; up until then, the king was considered to be a confirmed bachelor, and everyone was shocked that he had not only decided to marry, but also that his wife was so dramatically his junior. She was from an old Commonwealth family that had made millions in textiles several generations earlier, and the only heir to their considerable fortune. Their marriage had lasted just short of ten years, and they divorced when Juliana was eight because the king had met someone else.

“Her name was Evelyn Eaves, then,” Gloria said. “She was a lawyer with the Royal Counsel. Everyone knew that the king had affairs, but to actually marry one of his mistresses was nothing short of scandal. Needless to say, Juliana and her stepmother don’t get along, especially since the king had Juliana’s mother exiled.”

“Exiled?” It sounded like such an old-fashioned punishment for a woman whose sole crime was being a wife the king had grown bored with. Although, kings on Earth had done far worse than that with wives they considered extraneous. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Alana fought the divorce,” Gloria said, pursing her lips in displeasure. She was clearly not enamored of the king or the queen regent. “It was all over the press boards for years, and everyone came out looking just awful. The king considered the bad publicity to be traitorous and forced her out of the country. She now lives just over the border in the Canadian Republic. Juliana is allowed to visit her, but Alana hasn’t been back to the Commonwealth since the divorce was final. She’s not even being permitted to attend the wedding.”

It was hard not to feel sorry for Juliana. I missed my parents every second of every day, but even though they were gone, I was sure that they’d loved me, and each other. It was cold comfort sometimes, but other times, it actually helped to remember that.

Oh my God, I thought with a start. My parents.

“If I’m Juliana’s analog,” I said, the words coming out in a rush. “Then are her mom and dad analogs of my mom and dad?” It seemed like too much to hope for, but was it possible that I might be able to see my parents for the first time in a decade?

Thomas shook his head, and something inside me crumpled.

“It doesn’t really work like that,” Thomas said. “Our worlds … they’re too different now. Maybe a long time ago that would’ve been the case, but too much has changed.”

“What do you mean, too much has changed?”

Thomas took a seat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He looked worn down, tired. I tried not to sympathize with him too much—after all, he’d chosen a life that had put him in the path of danger. But exhaustion didn’t diminish his handsomeness, which at this point seemed to exist only to torment me. It got under my skin, how good-looking I couldn’t help thinking he was, even after everything. Why couldn’t awful people be ugly and good people beautiful, without exception? It would’ve made things so much easier.

“It might be helpful if you can manage to think of all the possible universes as many branches of a tree,” Thomas began. “In the beginning, they were all the same—like a trunk. But as time goes on, changes start to happen—just small ones at first—changes that differentiate the universes, make them unique. In one world, you get up on time for school, and in another you’re late. In one world you eat pizza for lunch, in another you have a turkey sandwich. No big deal, right? But change causes more change, and before you know it, the universes aren’t so similar anymore. Does that make sense?”

Sense? None of this made any sense, really, but it wasn’t so far off from things I’d heard Granddad talk about in the past. “Your basic ripple effect,” I supplied.

“Exactly. At least, that was how it was explained to me.” Thomas fixed his eyes on me, and I could’ve sworn they were brighter than before. “It doesn’t even have to take that long. It’s only been a couple hundred years since the Aurora-Earth LCE and look how different our two worlds already are.”

“LCE?”