Page 168 of Under Story

“Eli,” she says, “what do you think déjà vu is?”

He puts his hands behind his head. “Remembering something that never happened?”

“What if it’s remembering something that never happened to you?” asks Laurel.

He waits for her to continue.

“I found something,” she says. “In our bedroom, before I moved to the Center.”

Laurel extracts her wallet and hands him the photo insert. She keeps a photo of Celeste behind the one of Silas.

“Who is that?” Eli asks. He sounds almost frightened, as though the image plucks a string inside him, unknown until now. “Is she ours?”

“Theirs,” says Laurel. “The other us. She was their daughter. Celeste.”

Eli looks at her sharply. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I found out while we were apart. Maybe, for a little while, I just wanted her to be mine.”

Eli holds the picture with both hands, bringing it close to his face. Laurel waits for him to respond, but he doesn’t.

“It wasn’t right. I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Eli…something happened to me here, years ago, the first time I went to the cave. I didn’t tell you about that, either. I felt guilty for having gone at all. And after we found Silas, it seemed so much less important.”

Eli turns back toward her, just slightly. She tells him what happened on the day before they found Silas Two: how she seemed to enter another body, another timeline. She became the other Laurel, who stood in the cave, checking on the progress of her experiment. Then Laurel sensed her double’s distress. She had followed that emotion to a different scene—one that took place at home, in the other Laurel’s office. Someone she loved lay nearby. A weakened person: sick, or dying.

“At the time, I didn’t know what was happening,” Laurel says. “But now I think the other person was Celeste. She must have been a baby.”

She explains what Kenji told her: that there is a window when an infant must enter its mother’s body. She tells Eli about the other Laurel’s miscalculation.

“I wonder if that’s why they wanted to cross over,” she finishes. “To find Celeste again, just like we found Silas.”

Eli listens gravely, but he looks bewildered, too. “Was Celeste born young, like he was?”

“No. But love makes us greedy, doesn’t it?”

Eli sets the picture of Celeste between them on the pillow.

“I want you to keep it,” Laurel says. “I’ve had her with me until now.”

Eli puts his hand over hers in response. Downstairs, a door opens, and someone walks to the kitchen. The microwave begins to hum. Eli’s parents often work from home at night. Laurel rarely sees them touch.

“Say we were to do what you said. Recruit more brain cells,” Eli says. “I’ve already tried the experts. Besides, we’re in high school now. Who would take us seriously?”

Laurel can only think of one person. “Nita.”

“I guess that’s true,” says Eli. “But how do we reach her? No one our age is on email. Most people don’t even have a cell phone.”

In the antiuniverse, landlines had been an easier sell than Laurel expected. The technology is clearly superior: when she talks to Eli, it sounds like he’s standing right next to her. Still, right now, smartphones don’t seem like such a dumb idea.

“We could use the phone book, but then we’d have to go through Nita’s parents,” Laurel says. “Besides, there could be lots of Choudhurys in the white pages.”

They lie there, thinking. Then Eli grabs her wrist.

“Laurel,” he says, “what did you do with the desk from your office?”

—

Eli skids into the Salters’ driveway. The Acura is his for one more year; after that, he’ll lose his license. They open the door of the farmhouse to find Clare waiting in her nightgown.