Behind me, Four stepped out of the car. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said. “I can buy us some soda. Want any?”
“Iced tea, please,” I said.
“Iced tea,” Rainbow agreed.
Four smiled, a quick flutter of amusement. “That’s what I was getting.”
Moments later, she was gone.
Rainbow sat slouched in the back seat—she’d kicked off her shoes, both feet up on the seats.
“You, me, nighttime, a gas station,” I said. “It’s becoming a habit.”
She smiled wanly. “Yeah.”
“I like your girlfriend,” I blurted out. “She seems tough. And sweet.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Rainbow said. “My girlfriend doesn’t have a problem looking me in the eye.”
I bit my lip.
“I’d somehow thought that once I’d convinced this Tara I was telling the truth, she’d be like my Tara. Things would be normal between us. Comfortable. I don’t know why I thought that. Stupid.”
“How did you convince her, anyway?”
“Told her stuff about her mom she hasn’t told anyone else. The locations of certain birthmarks. The name of the plushie she still sleeps with. God, no wonder she freaked out.” Rainbow shook her head. “The way Tara looked at me . . . We never see our loved ones as strangers. Y’know? Whenever Caro or Mom or whoever looks at us, even if they’re tired or mad, they see us. There’s recognition. The way Tara looked at me had none of that. Blank. Apprehensive. It hurt. I miss . . . We were on a date, by the way. My Tara and me.”
I blinked at the abrupt topic change. “Yeah?”
Rainbow stared at her feet as she talked. Her lips screwed into a smile that felt anything but sincere.
“Before I arrived in this dimension, Tara and I were out for my birthday. And our four-month anniversary. I’d been sitting across from her, eating breadsticks. I went to the bathroom and . . . Poof. I showed up here. I keep wondering whether she thinks I sneaked out of the restaurant or got kidnapped. Or whether, if I ever go home, I’ll reappear in front of that bathroom sink, and for Tara no time will have passed at all.”
I thought: Hazel Stanczak went missing on her sixteenth birthday.
And: Never seen or heard from again.
Died in a dimension not even her own.
“Wait . . .” I paused. “Four months? How did you two meet?”
“Internet. Early summer, I messaged her about art she’d done of an actress I liked. We talked every day from then on. We met up a month later.”
“Alpha knew her Tara since age eight,” I said. “Their parents met in some kind of troll-fighting group.”
For the first time, Rainbow looked away from her shoes and up at me. “I knew Alpha and her Tara couldn’t have met online,” she said. “But this . . . What are the odds? Different worlds, circumstances, and somehow Tara and I end up in the exact same position. What does that mean?”
“Fate?” It felt feeble.
“True love, bringing us together across dimensions?” Rainbow scoffed. I saw a glimmer of uncertainty, though. “Mentioning that to my Tara would probably be coming on too strong.”
“Yeah, that’s more of a six-month-anniversary kind of topic.” I smiled crookedly. “Do you plan on telling her any of this?”
“If I get home? Yes. Everything. I could never keep something this huge from her. If she actually believes me . . . Wow. She’ll freak out about Neven. What about you? Any special someone you’ll tell?”
“No special someone.” It was embarrassing to admit—sixteen and I’d never even gone out on a date, let alone have a gorgeous (and possibly fated) girlfriend like Rainbow did.
At least Rainbow kept the gender ambiguous. As nervous as the topic made me, somehow I couldn’t stop wanting to know more about the other Hazels. Every last detail of their lives.
Maybe it’d help me figure out my own.
“I don’t get much chance,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound pathetic. “Can’t go anywhere but Franny’s Food or mini-golf, can’t invite people home.”
“Oh, of course. Jeez.”
Rainbow’s pity felt itchy and awkward. “It’s all right,” I said. “Look at Four. She grew up normally and we’re not that different.” I paused to consider that. “Therapy and stuff aside, I might not be that different from Red, either. I can recognize myself, at least. Parts.”
I peered at Rainbow. If I focused on the profile of her face alone, pretended the colored hair poking out of her hoodie was simply a cheerful scarf . . .
It didn’t work. The shape of her nose and the familiar set of her mouth didn’t mean a thing—not after hearing the fierceness of her voice and the derision in her laughter and seeing her step up to people the way I would never dare to.
Right now, though, with that puzzled frown on her face, she didn’t seem all that fierce. Maybe she was stuck on Tara. Maybe she wasn’t impressed with my not-exactly-groundbreaking observations.
The silence nagged at me. Without really deciding to, I rambled on. “I mean, there’s still tons of differences. There’s you.” I gestured at the hair. “Alpha is obvious. Red wears dresses and has endo and the rest of us don’t. Four . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what would distinguish Four from the rest of us. The zits didn’t count. I had one growing on my chin right now. “Four is bisexual, I guess?”
“Red and I talked, actually,” Rainbow said. “I have some endo symptoms, too, although nowhere near as bad as hers. When—if—I get back home, I’m getting it checked out. And Four’s not bisexual. Maybe biromantic, but she’s not sure about that yet, either.”
“Biromantic?”
“Yeah. You don’t know . . .?” She raised an eyebrow. I hoped it was surprise instead of mockery. “Being into people romantically is different from being into them sexually. I mean, I don’t talk about this much, but . . . I like girls, but I’m not sexually attracted to them. Or anyone. Tara and I do have sex sometimes. It’s nice when it happens”—her cheeks reddened, but she kept talking—“but it’s not like I look at
