Page 23 of Imaginary Numbers

His voice broke on the last word. He looked away, off at the distant, prismatic horizon.

“Oh,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t . . . Artie. Please. Look at me?”

Slowly, Artie turned his face back toward me, expression unreadable not because of the way my brain was wired, but because he didn’t know how to feel. Everything was jumbled up and tangled, and I’d done this to him. This was my fault. Whether I’d intended to do it or not, this was all still my fault.

“I didn’t let you come to Ohio because I was scared you’d never look at me the same way again,” I said. “I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t good most of the time. I wasn’t myself. Even when I could pull it together enough to chat online, I was still falling apart. Mom was putting me back together every day at first, and then every week, and then . . . they had to wear name tags.”

“Name tags?” he asked blankly.

“So I could tell everyone apart because it wasn’t safe to be around me without an anti-telepathy charm. There was too much of a chance I’d reach out, stumble, and grab something I shouldn’t. I could have erased pieces of people’s personalities and never even realized I was doing it. They had me on house arrest until last year, and I didn’t notice for the longest time, because I was too deep in my own head to know what I was missing. I couldn’t even do math on my own for almost two years.” Endless hours of PBS had helped with that. I could still hear the Square One theme when I closed my eyes.

Artie blanched. “I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me.”

“I asked them not to. Mom and Dad promised not to tell anyone they didn’t have to about how bad it was. They were afraid Verity would show up on our doorstep looking for forgiveness, and I didn’t know what that was, so I couldn’t exactly go giving it to people. I was broken. I made them keep you away because I was broken, and I was trying to put myself back together without any sort of map or instruction manual, and I knew if you saw me—if you, specifically, saw me—and turned away because I was too broken to care about anymore, I’d give up. I’d stop trying to repair myself. There wouldn’t be any point to it. So yeah, Artie, I kept you away. Until I was better. And maybe that wasn’t right and maybe it wasn’t fair, but I can’t change it now, okay? I can’t undo what I did.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Artie.

“Don’t be sorry. And be mad at me, if that’s what you need to do. Just don’t tell me I was wrong to shut you out, and then shut me out because you’re angry. Revenge isn’t going to get us out of here.”

“Here being inside my head.”

“Yes.”

“Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“Why are we inside my head?”

I relaxed a little. If he was asking questions, he wasn’t so determined to stay angry that he’d let us get trapped here rather than work with me. Which, well, yay. “Do you remember the accident?”

“Sort of.” He frowned, forehead wrinkling. “I remember . . . I was asking you why you didn’t call more while you were in recovery. I don’t want to be mad about that—honestly, I don’t—but I am, and it seemed like you didn’t understand why I’d be pissed. And then there was this truck . . .” Artie’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, we got hit by a truck.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, we got hit by a truck. It ploughed right into us. It never even slowed down.”

“And the glass in the car was all floating.”

He could see that, too? I blinked at him. “Um, what?”

“When the truck hit us. I looked over at you before my head hit the wheel. Your eyes were white, and the glass was floating. None of it hit you at all. None of it hit me, either. We should have been cut to ribbons, but the glass from the windows went around us. I remember it was so weird, and I thought I might be seeing things, and then your head hit the dashboard and it all fell out of the air, and my head hit the wheel and everything got real fuzzy for a while.”

I stared. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

Artie paused, expression growing grave. “And then I woke up, and you were standing outside the car. But you were inside the car, too, all slumped over against your seatbelt, not moving, and I realized there were two of you. I thought I had a concussion or something? Only seeing double usually isn’t that literal.”

“Artie . . .” I whispered.

“I know.” He sounded utterly resigned. “I mean, I know now. At the time, though, I couldn’t understand what was happening. Not until she touched me. When you’re inside my head, it usually feels like . . . like a sunbeam in October. It’s warm and it’s welcome and I want it around as long as it wants to be there. This lady, though. Her mind felt like sticking my hand into clear water and hitting a layer of slime I didn’t know about. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t fight, and she was inside me. It was awful. And then I was asleep, and it didn’t matter anymore.”

The other cuckoo. She’d followed me somehow, and she’d arranged the accident, and it was her fault that Artie wouldn’t wake up. I should have been relieved to know that he wasn’t injured beyond our capability to fix. Instead, I was livid. She had no right to chase me. She had no right to endanger the people I cared about, and she absolutely had no right—no right at all—to do things to Artie’s head without his consent.

“I hate cuckoos,” I muttered. Louder, I said, “I’m in your head because you won’t wake up. There’s nothing so physically wrong with you that you should be in a coma, but I’m afraid you’re going to wind up in one if we don’t do something. Do you trust me?”

Artie stared at me. “What kind of a question is that?”