Page 165 of Under Story

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The roads haven’t been cleared, and snowdrifts are ten feet tall. Laurel drives to the NICU with Clare: no Wisconsin storm intimidates her after Antarctica. Her father lies in an incubator. His skin is ashen, but the nurses crow over his full head of brown hair.

“Hi, Dad,” Laurel whispers. “It’s me.”

“What should we name him?” asks Clare. Her eyes are swollen from crying.

“Pete,” says Laurel. “Definitely.”

“Pete?” Clare wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know. What about”—she searches—“Zephyr?”

“Zephyr?” asks Laurel. “Mom, no.”

By the time they bring him home, the Duoverse has done its work. Clare tells Laurel that she’s changed her mind: Pete suits him after all.

—

In Laurel’s world, her father’s heart died early. Here, that muscle composed late, and only partway. Clare situates him in her bedroom, and Laurel fills a stockpile of prescriptions. By eight months, Pete can walk; in ten, he speaks in partial sentences. He has no shortage of visitors, from Clare’s friends to Gary Salter, Riordan’s father.

This time, Laurel doesn’t indulge in fantasy. To yearn for Pete One would only torture her. The Duoverse can’t bring her father back, but it gave her someone else.

Laurel feeds Pete Two and sings to him. She plays white noise to soothe him at night. When he wakes from a nightmare in tears, Laurel holds her father’s hand and tells him not to be afraid. She buys him a set of wooden farm toys for Christmas, but Pete prefers Laurel’s books. Even though he can’t read, he pages through them reverently. His favorite is The Book of Camouflage, one of the few she saved from the other Laurel and Eli’s house. Inside, geckos pass as leaves, and owls blend into bark; a parade of organisms live double lives as sticks. Given her father’s reaction, Laurel is glad to have kept it. She is glad, too, for its protective sleeve, which shields The Book of Camouflage from Pete’s primitive motor skills.

Pete loves to help in the orchard. After years of caretaking, the land is returning to health. Clare and Laurel have thinned the high-density trees, giving each more space to root. Rather than ordering pollen in bulk, they allow the trees to age to youth. The saplings die gifting grains of gold dust, dispersed by wind, insects, and birds.

Laurel convinces Clare to purchase sheep. That summer, they stream into the barn as though they aren’t arriving but returning. The ewes press their heads to Pete’s belly. And love to have their armpits rubbed: bare skin. When Clare plays piano, Agnes leans toward the house, tilting her head in wonder, the large, petal-shaped ears dropping open. Laurel uses the first skein of farm yarn to knit Pete a hat with a pom-pom.

Her freshman year begins in May of 1998. Laurel’s parents drop her off. As she climbs out of the car, Pete waves and shouts, “Good luck!”

—

The McFarland High School cafeteria hasn’t changed since the first time Laurel was a teenager. Ammonia merely dulls the smell of tater tots and gym shoes.

Maisie slams her tray down on a table. “This is such a waste of time.”

“It’s only the first day,” says Noah, rubbing her back with one hand.

“Well, I already hate all my classes. My English teacher assigned two hundred pages of reading. Doesn’t she know that we’re retired?” Maisie says. “Also, math is a joke. When will I ever need to know how to do long division?”

Laurel picks at a plate of overcooked spaghetti. “What’s your elective?”

“Computer science?”

“I told you to sign up for art with Ms. Guillard,” says Laurel.

Riordan and Jules approach from the hot bar. She scoots down the bench to make room for them.

“What are we talking about?” asks Jules. He wears a McFarland track and field T-shirt, and he has Leonardo DiCaprio’s haircut.

Maisie stabs a bag of milk with a plastic straw. “I’m dropping out of school.”

“To do what?” asks Riordan. “Hang out at your parents’ house all day?”

In Laurel’s world, this group hadn’t been friends. She wasted no time here. As soon as everyone moved home, Laurel invited the other five for dinner: Eli, Maisie, Noah, Jules, and Riordan.

“I’ll run away,” says Maisie.

“Please don’t,” Noah says.