Page 67 of Under Story

“I don’t think they will. Something doesn’t feel right. Look around.”

Cautiously, she does. There are no stray clothes. The trash can is empty. One of the desks is entirely bare. Two laptops perch on the other, tight-lipped as co-conspirators.

“It’s too tidy,” she says.

“Don’t you think?” Eli taps the iPhone on his bedside table. A setup assistant appears on the screen. “This must have been wiped.”

Laurel lifts the legal pad the way she might an object from a crime scene. Half of the pages are missing.

“They were planning something.” She thinks of the missing tanks in the dive hut. “Planning the same thing we were?”

Laurel tries to picture a mirror couple—Laurel and Eli Two—on an inverse journey to her own McMurdo. Of course, Laurel and Eli Two would see themselves as Laurel and Eli One.

“Maybe,” says Eli, who is frowning at the trash can. Stuck to the bottom, face down, is a photograph.

He lifts it up. Two people stand in Madison, at Picnic Point. They look exactly like Laurel and Eli.

Laurel dissociates with staggering efficiency. “I don’t want to look at that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it feels wrong. Invasive.” Neither of these words are right, but she can’t think of a better one. Spooked by the whiff of prophecy, she turns it over. “And we can’t stay in this room together.”

“What would we say? There aren’t any extra beds,” says Eli.

This is true: in October, Antarctic summer, everyone has a roommate.

“Besides,” he adds, “we only have to make it four days. ANITA hasn’t been able to crack the anomaly, so you and I are leaving on the fifth. Everyone is pretty dejected. Atmospheric scientists are coming in next.”

Laurel thinks back to her first week in Antarctica. She stood with Jules on a bridge outside Gallagher’s. The atmospheric scientists had left, he explained. A team of physicists had replaced them.

A headache begins to condense. Bowed by the pressure, Laurel sits on the bed. The thought of the couple who slept there is so disturbing that she stands up again.

“Hey. As long as only one of us is freaking out at any given time, we’ll be okay,” says Eli. “Have you eaten?”

Laurel shakes her head. She can’t go back to the galley.

“I’ll get you something. And then you should rest. I’m too worked up; I’ll go to the library.”

“That’s nice of you,” she says. He smiles and touches her knee, just briefly.

Laurel only means to doze, but a deep fog overtakes her. When she wakes, the room is dark. She has no sense of how much time has passed.

“Eli?” she asks.

“I’m here.”

He must have drawn the blackout curtains.

“How long did I sleep?”

His voice sounds far away and intimate at once, like radio. “About twelve hours.”

“You’re kidding.”

A muffled click as the desk lamp turns on. Eli appears in a shaft of light: his lower body shadowed, his eyes owlish.

“No harm done. I brought you lunch,” he says. “And dinner.”