Page 179 of Under Story

Eli finds Laurel as the sun falls with the letter in her hands. For the rest of her life, it will be one of her most precious possessions.

“What is it?” he asks.

She shows it to him wordlessly. As he reads, Laurel’s heart fills to such capacity that she thinks it might split—for she understands why the other couple stripped the house, wiped their laptops, deleted their emails.

They did all of this for her and Eli.

Their counterparts hadn’t meant to be tricky or difficult. They had protected Laurel and Eli’s innocence: knowledge, burden and enlightenment both, would be theirs only if they wanted it. It was an act of radical loyalty to people they would never—could never—meet. Eli and Laurel Two granted them the gift of choice.

—

“Oh, thank God,” says Louis when Laurel returns. “You were gone so long I thought that you’d fallen through a portal.”

“No,” says Laurel. Eli gazes into the distance, not yet having recovered his speech.

“So what did she say?” asks Nita.

Outside, the first stars appear. Fireflies carry their parcels of light. Laurel tells them what she’s learned, keeping certain details to herself. By the end, Nita looks dumbstruck, and Maisie’s cheeks are wet.

“Yeah,” Maisie says. “That’s my best friend.”

“Excuse me,” says Laurel.

“My other best friend,” says Maisie.

“What about the portals?” asks Jules. “Did she have any ideas?”

“She wrote the letter before they left for Antarctica. They only knew about the one at Cape Evans.”

Her response settles over the group.

“Oh,” Nita says.

“Are you disappointed?” asks Charlie.

“I’m not sure.” Laurel scans the others. “Are you?”

“A little,” Jules admits. “I really wanted to figure this out.”

“I still feel like we could, with a few more weeks.” Louis takes Zachary’s hand. “But the Arizona state troopers are probably looking for us.”

They pack the next morning. Louis leaves Clare a second bouquet of her own flowers. Laurel and Eli come to the bus stop, and everyone exchanges addresses before the visitors climb into the coach. As it peels away, Louis blows a kiss to Laurel through the window.

—

June fades to May, then April. She tries to embrace the concept of dayenu, as Olive suggested. But Laurel is only human.

“I don’t want to die,” she says to Eli.

She would miss Wisconsin’s wide-open fields, with their audiences of corn. Watching squirrels race to the base of a trunk and scramble up, up, up. She would miss trees: symphonies, ancients, whole universes each. She would miss music, and hot coffee, and streetlights on rainy pavement; or picking chard in the garden before dinner, the leaves as large as palm fronds and slick with the light spilling out of the kitchen. She would miss eating and sex, cold lakes and hot baths—the capacity for touch. She’d miss having conversations with everyone she loved. And what of the books she’d never read, the questions that she wouldn’t answer? She would miss learning what was learned about the world after she left it.

It is greedy, she knows. But after years of going backward, Laurel wants to grow old.

—

When Fiona Apple releases Tidal, Laurel and Maisie listen over and over. Their favorite artists are getting younger, too. No one knows which albums will be their last.

Laurel doesn’t bother to turn in her homework. She stops raising her hand in class. Instead, she doodles with milky gel pens, or checks on her Tamagotchi. In February, she is called to the principal’s office.