Page 171 of Under Story

“And you did,” says Laurel.

The group walks to a corner store to buy dinner: Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, Fritos and Pop Rocks. They eat their feast at a playground on picnic tables. Afterward, Louis and Zachary race across the monkey bars; Charlie uses her stopwatch for time. The surface of the playground is spongy, and Eli pretends that he’s walking on the moon. Laurel joins Nita, who has commandeered the swings.

“I’m so happy you came,” Laurel says. “How did you know why we used the placemakers?”

“Powers of deduction?” says Nita. “I may be sixteen, but I haven’t lost my marbles yet.”

Laurel pushes off with her feet. “Remember when I asked you why the other Laurel crossed over? It had to do with Celeste, didn’t it?”

Nita hesitates. “How did you find out?”

“I found pictures of her. Artwork. Report cards,” Laurel says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She—the other you—made me promise not to tell anyone. And anyway, that’s all I knew, that Celeste was part of it. Laurel got cagey when I pushed for details.”

“I still don’t understand why they were so secretive.”

“Well, they didn’t have clearance to dive. If someone had found them, they’d have been kicked out of the station. Their reputations would have been tarnished.”

Laurel isn’t quite convinced, but maybe Nita is right. Either way, she feels more content than she has in months. She may still have questions, but she does feel less alone in them.

As the moon rises, Laurel corrals the group. This, she knows, is not the day to break curfew. They dig in their pockets for bus fare and collapse in the last row: legs over legs, heads against shoulders. At home, Laurel sees that she’s missed two pages from Maisie.

—

The next morning, Laurel makes an extra-large pot of coffee while Nita toasts Pop-Tarts. Eli draws the Duoverse on a whiteboard, borrowed from his parents. As the McMurdoans eat, he explains his theory, and Laurel describes her dream. At last, they detail each dive: the miraculous first, the empty second.

Charlie raises her hand. “If you couldn’t find a portal, why would we be able to?”

“It’s a fair question,” says Laurel. She considers the best way to translate her thinking. “We couldn’t have found the first portal without Eli’s research. But we also seemed to need my dream. I think my subconscious knew something that I didn’t know consciously yet.”

Charlie nods contemplatively. Louis holds Zachary’s hand, and Nita closes her eyes as she listens.

“We know that both universes—ours and yours—are connected,” Laurel says. “There are portals where physical material passes between them. But I think that concepts filter through, too. For instance, Christmas exists here, even though Jesus won’t be born for two thousand years.”

“No spoilers, please,” says Louis, covering his ears.

“But Jesus isn’t a real person,” Nita says.

“That’s what I mean,” Laurel says. “Here, he’s an idea, but in our universe, he was a real person.”

Eli makes an equivocating motion with his hand. “We don’t actually know that. The evidence is subpar, to say the least.”

“Okay, Jesus isn’t the best example,” says Laurel. “Take Marxism. Or Darwinism. Ideas spread, and somehow, we’re all plugged into them. I think this happens subconsciously—and if that’s true, then maybe we know more than we think about the Duoverse. After all, we’re little pieces of it, aren’t we?”

“Whoa,” Zachary says.

Laurel smiles at him gratefully. “This time, Eli and I haven’t been able to solve the puzzle on our own. But it might be possible if we put our heads together—all six of us.”

“How, though?” asks Nita.

Laurel has planned for this. In the antiuniverse, the surrealist movement is still to come, so she tells them what she remembers of Hilma af Klint and the Five.

“They wanted to tap into the unconscious,” she says, finishing. “I thought we could try their techniques.”

Under Eli’s drawing of the Duoverse, she makes a list:

Automatic drawing