The haze of white was retreating, revealing heads of red and brown leaves below a blue sky. The boathouses, the highway across the river, the rushing water that indicated a nearby dam . . . This had to be the Schuylkill.
“You all right?” Alpha asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. I’m . . . I’m going to see my Tara again.” She closed her eyes and inhaled a shuddering breath. “Thank you.”
Water seeped from my clothes. “My first time on a boat,” I whispered.
Alpha looked at me incredulously. I could picture the others’ faces the exact same way.
I turned onto my side and coughed and laughed and sobbed until I no longer could.
We set off a flare.
I tended to Alpha’s injury the best I could, and then we waited.
I made silent plans.
I made plans for New York City. For Poland or Hong Kong. For frozen yogurt in Philadelphia. For a dorky selfie by the Rocky steps just because I could. For a cruise, maybe; I wanted to see the ocean.
By the time the MGA picked us up, Alpha was still here.
The agents asked a thousand questions. I wanted to ask just as many, in return. But all I did was curl up in the van, murmur something about my parents, and sleep.
EPILOGUE
After Alpha was dismissed from the hospital, we explained what happened half a dozen times. Facet still furrowed his brow and leaned in over our dining table. “One more time. Sorry, Hazel—I know you must be tired, but this is important. So you were on that roof . . .”
After all this, he still didn’t believe in the Powers That Be. He was apologetic about it, sure, and he kept smiling encouragingly and saying how glad he was that I was all right. Even though I knew he’d brought me to Philadelphia and stood up to Valk in an attempt to save all of us, I also knew now that had more to do with the rift than with us.
So I didn’t smile back. I just repeated the story, word for word.
“The others fell into the rift,” Alpha eventually cut in. “They jumped, and the rift closed. They’re probably in their own worlds. Sorry. Should’ve been honest about that.”
Facet went silent. I doubted he bought it.
“And you?” he asked her.
“I decided to stay.”
Nothing about her face betrayed the lie.
Mom had left one of the guest beds for Alpha. When I entered my room the first time after fishing myself from the Schuylkill River, that bed was the only thing that betrayed anything had changed.
Alpha stepped inside behind me, and I fell quiet as she studied my room, knowing that hers must’ve been nothing like it.
On the second day, Dad told Facet that he’d have to find a new headquarters, and that his agents had until that evening to leave the grounds.
Facet refused.
I told him that if he listened, I’d voluntarily visit once a week and give the MGA the knife to study.
Facet agreed.
“Why?” Alpha asked that night.
We lay in the dark, our beds side by side.
I didn’t need to ask what she meant. It’d been over two days, and she was still here: My mirror image, flesh and bone.
“I miss them.” Her voice cracked. “If this world really is permanently closed off, then . . . then I’ll never . . . Why am I still here? Wasn’t I included in the deal?”
“I specified all of you.” I hesitated. “All of you who wanted to return home.”
“I wanted. I want.”
“Maybe it’s like back in Damford, with the trolls,” I said. “Consciously, you were willing to sacrifice yourself. But the trolls reacted to what you were feeling, not thinking. Maybe the Powers That Be did that, too. This world is safer, and Mom’s alive . . . What if, subconsciously, you wanted to stay?”
“No.” Her voice was so harsh I flinched.
The room plunged into silence. My breathing felt too loud. I turned my head toward Alpha. She was looking straight up, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“No,” she repeated.
A tear trickled past her temple.
Then, softer: “Maybe.”
The next morning, I woke up and realized: “Neven knew.”
“What?” Alpha sat upright, so awake I wondered whether she’d slept at all.
“Neven must’ve known you were staying. She said she’d let your family know.”
“Let them know what?”
“That you’re safe, I think.”
“Ah. Good.” She looked away, her lips pressed together. “That I’m here proves I’m not as brave as you thought, huh?”
“Braver,” I said.
She peered at me warily.
“Feeling that fear, and still choosing to return home? That’s bravery.”
Alpha made a noncommittal sound.
I could guess at everything running through her mind. For all our differences, we were still the same. Even Torrance, who’d spent years with Alpha, had been convinced I was her.
So maybe I was braver than I thought, too.
One morning, I looked for my maroon zip-up hoodie and realized Red had borrowed it.
I went through my closet another time, yanking out shirts and bras and wrong-color zip-up hoodies with so much force I almost tore them.
A knock on the door.
I glared at my closet. “Yeah?”
Mom peeked inside. She saw the pile of clothes around me but said nothing. “Dad and, um, other Hazel will be done at the clinic soon. She’s healing nicely. Do you want to come down for lunch?”
At first I had devoured every meal put in front of me, reveling in proper meals rather than cold pizza or wrapped sandwiches.
Now a normal lunch seemed like just that again: normal.
I shrugged on a hoodie (not the maroon one) and followed Mom downstairs, where Caro sat at the table. Her school hadn’t reopened yet, so she was staying with us for now. We still had to figure out long-term living arrangements.
(I’d thought I would want to leave this house behind.)
Yet another celebrity scientist was on
