Page 17

Her bedroom is small and somewhat unimpressive, like everything else she owns.

There’s just enough room for her half-poster bed and a singular dresser, atop which sits a burbling tank.

Inside, Hank the turtle suns himself on a rock.

Morgana lies curled on the bed in a patch of sunlight, looking furious to find Georgina back home again so soon.

For the next several minutes, they stand side by side at the foot of her neatly made bed. Contemplative. Uneasy. In the quiet, everything veers into too-sharp focus. The creak of the floorboards. The clatter of her downstairs neighbor. The distant scream of a kettle.

Orson Auclair, delineated in the midday light. Marked for death.

“What else does Parmenides say?” she asks, because she feels the need to say something.

She expects him to crack a joke. To make light of it. Instead, he thinks for a minute. When he speaks, he’s uncharacteristically quiet. “‘And there is not, and never shall be, any time other than that which is present, since fate has chained it so’.”

The verse ebbs between them. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

“This feels wrong,” she says. “Something’s off.”

“You’re just nervous,” he offers, but he feels it, too. His voice comes out tight.

“That’s not it.” Worry worms into her, cold and wriggling. “There’s not enough snow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the window. In the memory, there was snow piled on the sill.”

A yellow goldfinch chooses that precise moment to alight on the sash. It lingers there for an instant, bright and ephemeral beneath the dripping spikes of ice. It feels like a sign, though Georgina has never believed in signs.

“We don’t need to recreate that moment,” says Orson suddenly. “You need to drift to it.”

Fear clots in her veins. “I can’t.”

“You can.” His confidence is catching. The air crackles with it. “Georgina, you can .”

“Not on command.”

“Not on command,” he agrees, turning to face her. “To me.”

He looks so despairingly confident. So infinitely trusting. So utterly doomed.

“And what if I fail?”

His smile is thin. “Then I die.”

“Not funny.”

“I agree. I don’t want to die, Georgina. I want to live. I want you. That moment – you and me and the snow covering the window – that’s where you need to be.”

She can’t do this. Can’t stand here in the glow of his unearned confidence.

She paces away from him. Paces back. Her stomach is sick.

Her words come out bitten. “The fact that I have a very concrete memory of watching you die suggests that I missed that moment. Maybe more than once. Maybe an infinite number of times.”

“So, don’t miss it this time.” Like it’s as simple as getting off a train at the right stop.

Smiling faintly, Orson leans in and kisses her right on the mouth.

It’s slow and sweet and fleeting. When it’s done, he tips his brow to hers.

No singular moment has ever felt more colossal.

More catastrophic. In a whisper, he says, “My life is in your hands, Georgina Wells.”

He steps back. Her heart feels like it’s collapsing in on her.

“Wait.” She lunges for her dresser, scrabbling for a pen in the messy top drawer. Reaching for his arm, she presses up his sleeve. He looks on as she scribbles her name along his forearm. Georgina . Another roadmap for them to follow.

“What’s this?”

“In case I miss again. Show me your arm. Tell me what happened.”

A muscle works in his jaw. “You’ll never believe me.”

“Try. Promise me.”

“I promise.” His eyes travel over her. Cataloging her. Sizing her up. Like always. “Well,” he says, with a lift of his shoulder, “I’ll see you when I see you.”

And then he’s gone. Out the door, down the stairs, leaving her alone. She wants to race after him. To tell him to stay.

But that way ends in death.

Gripped by a cold intensity, she shoos Morgana off the bed and lays down on top of it.

Flat on her back, arms cast to the side.

Afloat. She thinks of everything she’s been taught.

Summa . Drift. Everything she’s read. Fluito .

Float. Only this time, instead of envisioning a river, she envisions a pool.

Flat and blue and still. Sky mirrored in its depths.

On the other side stands Orson Auclair. Object of her ire. Her affection.

Singultus . Hiccup.

She thinks of its other meaning. Death-rattle.

She sinks. Into cool waters. Into fathomless depths.

Into endless, winking starlight, reflected both above and below, like the night sky refracted off a flat, clear pool.

She shuts her eyes and imagines the feel of fitting back into herself.

What it might be like, to pour out of a pool and into a body.

This fractured soul-piece into flesh and blood.

This hungry, spectral girl into skin and bone.

And there it is – a surge, a plummet, a strange, subdural click .

The rush of awareness, of sheets against skin.

The kiss of cold air on her chest. The frost against the window.

Her breath, harsh against the quiet. And then, quite impossibly, a breath, breaking over her throat.

“Please,” whispers Orson Auclair. “Please, let this be it.”

And then he’s there, her wrists shackled in his grasp, sheets damp and legs tangled. She opens her eyes and finds him peering down at her, his own dark eyes searching. At the look on her face, his mouth turns up in a smile.

“Like a fucking book, Wells,” he whispers.

***

Later, wide awake, she traces circles into his back and watches Morgana bat her paw at Hank’s water. In the window, the sun turns the snow to diamonds.

“I know how I got here,” she says, “but how did you?”

Sprawled flat on his stomach, Orson doesn’t open his eyes. “I’m very charming.”

“You’ve never charmed me.”

“Evidence suggests otherwise.” He flops onto his back and peers over at her. “You told me you were jealous. I used it to my advantage.”

“You seduced me?”

“More like, I talked you into a one-night stand.”

“I can’t imagine how you decided to broach that topic.”

“I find it’s best to be direct,” he says, and his grin is sharp enough to cut into her. “I suggested we fuck each other out of our systems.”

“Ew.” She plucks a pillow off the bed and lobs it at him. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

“Oh, please. You were looking for a reason.”

Georgina pulls her knees to her chest, contemplating him sidelong. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Get me out of your system?”

The look in his eyes is solemn. “Never.”

They lapse back into silence, each of them ruminating over their victory, however uncertain. It’s Orson who speaks first, rolling onto his side to face her. “I’ve been thinking about the theory of predetermination.”

“What, right now?”

He ignores her. “It’s a load of crap. All of it. We’re proof of that – you and me. We did it. We changed something.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“We do. Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow is the day you kill me.”

“I won’t,” she swears. “I’d never.”

He rolls over her until she’s pinned beneath him, leaning in to press a kiss to her brow. Everything, everything, everything sits in perfect alignment. The beat of their hearts. The flow of time between them. Their breath in tandem. Their fate, chained.

“I know,” he says, and smiles. “That was just a hiccup.”