Nell waved, and the gnats dispersed and regrouped.
“It’s not even full day yet, and it’s hot,” she said. “Now we’re going to have a bug party. Great.”
Max grimaced.
“You do better, then,” he said disgustedly. He sat down to eat the peach. His hands itched.
“I will. And it won’t be with crazy experiments, either; it’ll be thinking.”
He rolled his eyes. “Experiments seem crazy until they work,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Tell that to Kate.”
Max flushed. Nell was a born expert at poking anthills with sticks. He tried to think of something to say, found he couldn’t, and turned away, clutching the ruined fruit. By the time the others woke, he’d gotten so sick of the stickiness and the gnats that he’d rubbed his hands in the awful dirt until they stung.
The day didn’t get much better as it went along. They trooped up the mountain, and if the gnats were having a party, by afternoon a gang of mosquitoes had joined in. Max looked guiltily at Kate, who had dark circles under her eyes, and then at Susan. He knew she had every right to call him a hypocrite. It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought to have the others watch him as if he were hiding the window from them in his back pocket. At least that was one thing he could say for Nell. She wasn’t waiting. She kept trying to crack the nut.
Unfortunately, her methods were exasperating. After having complained about his peach experiment, she’d gone on to ask the others if maybe they’d dreamed an answer.
Dreamed an answer. Now, that made sense. Max tried to stifle his irritation — and found he wasn’t much good at that, either. It wasn’t just Nell, it was the whole universe he felt miffed at, or parallel universe, or maybe the space-time continuum, if that’s what had gone wonky and sent them through the window. It would have been nice to have been handed some kind of manual before you got pitched into things like this. As it was, he was sweaty and subdued, and every time he looked at Kate, he was both sorry for having scared her and full of regret that the experiment hadn’t worked. Then there was the panic that jolted him regularly as he listened for dogs and thought about being dragged back to the city. Parallel universes stank, and that was a fact.
They trudged up the mountain as the sun burned a hole in the horizon, orange and white against the black stripes of the trees. It was Jean’s turn to carry the peaches, but she and Kate said they were too heavy and had instead decided to share their turns, holding the edges of Nell’s blanket like a sling. The peaches bounced inside it, and every so often, when the ground was level enough to permit easier walking, the girls would bend toward the little hammock they’d made, just to breathe the smell of the fruit.
Max watched them worriedly. He’d counted peaches that morning, only to discover that Nell had been right about her fear of wasting them. Even if they were careful, the fruit would last another four days — no more.
To distract himself from that unpleasant thought, he added another item to the long list he’d been compiling of equipment he could have used in a place like this: a map. He wouldn’t mind knowing where they were heading. For now, away from the city would have to do. But it wouldn’t do forever.
“We’ve got to walk faster,” he said to the others. “Fish could turn into fossils quicker than we’re moving.”
“But it’s hotter than it was yesterday,” Jean said. “And the peaches are heavy.”
“I’ll take your turn,” he said, retrieving the blanket. “You guys just walk.”
But he knew there was only so much anybody could do living on peaches. He needed to find another way.
The sunlight sizzled on the leaves and slicked the dirt with white puddles as he tugged silently at the knot of the problem. Nell was doing the same — minus the silent part.
“Maybe it was you guys being desperate,” she was saying to Susan. She’d given up proposing theories to Max after his reaction to her dream idea.
Susan only shrugged. Nearby, falling pine needles sparked in the sun.
“Can’t be just desperate. There were too many desperate people in that city. We’d have seen it more than once.”
“Were we desperate in that rally?” Kate asked. “Is that what that’s called?”
Nell shook her head. “Desperate! More like crazy. Everybody there was crazy.”
An awkward silence followed that comment. Max knew exactly what she meant. For a second, he’d adored the Genius up there in his ugly red cloak.
“He changed the buildings, too,” Jean said. “Remember?”
You could count on Jean. Thinking about the buildings changing was a hundred times better than having to remember the way the Genius’s voice had gotten inside his head.
“I thought we were just seeing things,” he said. “But now I’m not so sure. What if the buildings really did change? Just like the wind and the peaches? That means we’re not the only ones who can do this. He can, too.”
“But how?” Nell asked. “What exactly did he do at the rally?”
Susan looked away from them, into the trees. “It felt like a song,” she said. “You know how it is when catchy music comes on? It’s hard not to dance, right?”
“Yes, but what about the buildings?” Nell asked her. “Was that just a catchy song, too?”
Catchy song, Max thought scornfully. What did that even mean? He wondered if Gottfried Leibniz had had these kinds of conversations with his sister.
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “But I think I loved him so much for that second that whatever he said — I just wanted it to be true, so it was. Buildings included.”
Max looked uncomfortably at his feet. Mention of the Genius was like a burr in his
