By that afternoon, I’ve figured out the first part of a plan. It’s something I thought of months ago, but decided it was too complicated and probably too much. Now I’m thinking that too much sounds about right.

See, there are a few kids with marks that don’t really do anything on their own. What they do is alter the effects of powers granted by other marks. So far as I know, none of them do anything permanent. Most of them only affect marked people who are nearby.

The two I’m interested in right now are Glenn and Grace. His mark scrambles the effects of other nearby powers. They might work differently, or they might not work at all while they’re in range. Hers amplifies them.

Glenn is a bit of a pariah. Nobody wants to come within three feet of him, because who wants their power to go haywire? I’ve heard that he’s one of the few marked kids who was told they don’t have to attend The School, but he insisted that it’s his right under law. I don’t get it, but maybe his old school sucked.

Grace is annoying. Tons of people want to be her friend. That’s another thing I don’t get. Having your power boosted sounds handy if you ever really need it, but what are the odds of being near her when that happens?

What I’ve noticed is that someone has gone to some lengths to keep these two apart. They’re always on different lunches. They’re never in the same classrooms. They always enter the auditorium for events on opposite sides from each other.

That means that somebody besides me thinks that interesting things may happen if they get too close to one another. What would make it even more interesting is for the right person to be in both of their ranges when they meet. I have a few candidates in mind, but I haven’t settled on anyone yet.

The second part is where I’m stuck. I’ll only be able to make this happen once, if at all. Bringing them together with the right other person will be fun, sure, but what’s the point? Grace is annoying, but no more so than any popular kid. Glenn is already an outcast, so I don’t want to pile on. I’ve been so wrapped up in what I did to myself that I haven’t been paying much attention to anything else.

This is the part Marie usually helps the most with. She has spreadsheets of every significant rumor and social happening in The School—had those spreadsheets. She might still have them, but she’s stopped sharing them with me if she does. I have my backups, of course; I’m not stupid. But they’re a week out of date.

I can’t figure that part out right now. It’s going to take a while to make the first part happen, so I can’t wait around until I’ve figured out the second. I need to go ahead and set things in motion. I’ll figure out the rest later.

“Sorry we can’t ever do this at my place,” I say.

It’s Wednesday evening and I’m hanging out with Denise, doing homework at her dining room table. I’d like to have her over to my place every once in a while, but Mom would go ballistic.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry about your mom.”

We both finish in time to squeeze in an episode of Marked Hearts before I have to go home.

“How accurate would you say this show is?” Denise asks.

The show is set in a fictional version of The School. It’s not very good, which is a shame because the show it’s a spinoff from, Queer Hearts, is actually decent.

“Well, as far as I know, none of the kids I go to school with are in their late twenties.”

“Fair.”

“And there are at least a few kids who aren’t supermodel beautiful.”

“How about Emily. Is she?”

She won’t let go of this. She’s convinced that I’m into Emily. As if. I pretend she didn’t say anything.

“But we do have daily attacks by supervillains, and the principal is a reformed clone of the Archmage, but fighting against his own evil nature. So that part’s dead on.”

She snort-laughs.

She drops it and we spend the rest of the show trying to figure out which one of the three Henrys is the real one, which one is the clone, and which one is the impostor from a parallel universe.

By Friday afternoon, I still haven’t figured out the second part of my plan. I have, however, eaten lunch with Bella and friends two more times and spent another evening hanging out with Denise. I’ve barely had time to keep the first part in motion. It turns out that having a social life can interfere with scheming. Who knew?

I’m standing outside The School watching Checkers pop in and out, teleporting the other kids home. My hope is that watching the kids waiting their turns will inspire me. Or at least make me annoyed enough at one of them to make them my target.

What am I even doing? I don’t need to prove myself to anybody. I get out my phone and get ready to send a message that should cancel the whole plan.

“Frank?”

I turn around to see Len.

“Yeah?”

“What happened to you?”

“You mean beside the obvious?”

“Yeah. Did you lose your nerve along with your dick?”

I lock my phone. On the one hand, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. On the other, fuck this guy in particular.

“Ooh, too bad, Len. I was just about to message you to see if you wanted in. Guess I’ll need to change the plan around a little so Kyle can help instead.”

“What? No, man, I was just fucking with you. What do you need me to do?”

I regret everything.

I gave up on epic after settling for Len. The way I saw it, the most his auditory hallucinations were going to do was scare the crap out of everyone in the auditorium. I told him that “his part of the plan” was to stand right behind Grace and make a loud thrumming noise come from the ceiling. 

What he didn’t know is that Glenn would be right there, too, hidden by circumstances that were annoyingly complicated to set up, and largely irrelevant right now.

What is relevant right now is that some other kid, who I didn’t get a good look at, walked by at exactly the wrong time. Now there’s a wavering distortion at the edge of the auditorium, a very real noise is shaking the building, and a section of the ceiling is on the verge of crashing to the floor.

A couple of the more quick-thinking kids are steering everyone around the area under the unstable section of ceiling, but there’s one girl directly under it, right next to the distortion. I recognize her as Alex Green. 

In normal circumstances, Alex is one of the fastest kids at The School. I saw her clocked at over two hundred miles an hour once. Now it looks like she’s almost frozen in place. The distortion must be an after effect of Glenn’s, Grace’s, and the unexpected kid’s marks interacting. It’s screwing with her mark.

For once, I would be deeply grateful to see Emily.

With a horrible rending, cracking, screeching noise, a section of the ceiling tears mostly free. Within two or three seconds, it’s going to smash anyone under it to a pulp. Well, fuck.

I take two steps, and consider the fact that I should have started three seconds earlier.

I flicker into position inches from Alex, already shoving with all my strength. She goes tumbling clear as I stumble. I try to flicker to the cafeteria. I can feel the distortion clawing at my mark’s power. I’m still here. 

To my bedroom. Still here. 

To the locker room. Still here.

I see a streak of blonde and red out of the corner of my eye. 

No time. Anywhere! I think, just as Emily crashes into me.

I’m somewhere else.

We’re somewhere else.

I’m sailing through the air above a city I don’t recognize with Emily’s arms wrapped around my waist. I try to flicker away, but nothing happens.

“Stop squirming!” Emily yells, “If I have to hold tight enough not to drop you, I could hurt you.”

I stop squirming. A few seconds later, she lands on top of a vaguely football-shaped building and sets me down. I immediately try to flicker back to school. Still nothing.

“Where are we?” Emily asks.

“For some reason, we’re on the roof of a very tall building.”

She glares at me.

“I have no idea,” I admit.

“But you teleported us here, which, I thought you couldn’t take anyone with you?”

“I can’t, but with Glenn and Grace and whoever else’s mark joined the fun, I don’t know. Why the hell did you tackle me, anyway?”

“A fifteen foot chunk of ceiling was falling right onto—”

“Yeah, I saw it; that’s why I teleported away. You could have stayed out of it.”

She stares at me, hands on her hips.

“Oh, right. Forgot who I was talking to.”

“Can you teleport us back to school?”

“If I could, I wouldn’t be standing here. That jump pulled more out of me than ever.”

“Are you going to recover anytime soon?”

I can still feel my mark, barely. It has migrated to my chest; well, the top of my left breast, to be more specific. I pull down my top a little to look at it. It’s pretty blurry.

“I’d guess maybe four, five hours, based on when this happened after I girled myself.”

Emily pulls out her phone, looks at the screen, then holds it up over her head, looking at the screen. 

I pull out mine. No signal. Weird, we’re in the middle of a city.

Emily looks around.

“I see at least three cell towers, but no signal.”

“Did it fry our phones?”

“Maybe, I guess. But just the radios?”

I have no idea.

“Why don’t you just fly us down and we’ll find a payphone,” I suggest.

“It’ll be more comfortable for you if you hang on my back.”

She turns away from me and rises about nine inches into the air. I wrap my arms around her shoulders. With my face in her hair, I can’t help but notice that she smells nice. I turn my head to the side.

“Get us down, please.”

She grips my forearms gently, then floats off the edge of the building. We don’t freefall. Instead we descend at about the rate of a fast elevator. I make the mistake of looking down, then quickly bury my face in her hair again.

“What?” I ask. 

She said something I didn’t make out.

“People are pointing at us and yelling,” she says, louder this time.

I risk a glance. She isn’t kidding, People are turning and looking up. A lot of them pointing, and getting other people’s attention. We suddenly accelerate, but forward, not down. 

“I’m going to land us in that park.” 

There was a park directly in front of us. It’s not huge, but it looks like we can be out of sight pretty easily. In a few seconds we land in a dense little stand of trees.

“Take off your hoodie,” she says.

“Why? It’s cold.”

“Fine.”

She takes off her red leather jacket, turns it inside out and hands it to me. 

“It’ll be too small,” I say.

“It doesn’t have to zip.”

I take off my pink hoodie and put on her now-black jacket.

Once I have a second, I know what she’s doing. I ask anyway, mainly to annoy her.

“Those people saw two girls–” she stops herself “—sorry, saw what looked like two girls, one in a pink hoodie, one in a red jacket. Now we look like two girls, one in a black jacket, and one in a white t-shirt.”

She starts walking in the direction away from the building we landed on. I wait, trying to figure out why I’m annoyed about her correcting herself. I give up and fall in behind her. I hear some shouting in the distance behind us.

In a couple minutes, we emerge from the edge of the park into a parking area, full of cars with Minnesota plates. I point one out and Emily nods. We continue up the street and stop at the next intersection.

“Hennepin Avenue,” she says. “I think that’s in Minneapolis.”

“Why were those people pointing at us?” I ask, now that we seem to be clear. “They were acting like they’ve never seen people flying before.”

“Do you notice anything about the cars?”

“I don’t recognize most of the models,” I say, then I notice something that’s been bothering me without me knowing why.

“They’re running on gas,” I continue. “Fuck.”

We are really, really far from home. Now at The School, they actually teach us what to do if we get caught up in an incursion and end up in a parallel universe. Unfortunately, that advice is to get back to the portal we fell through as quickly as possible. There is no advice for what to do if you pop yourself (and your nemesis) into said parallel universe.

“Let me guess,” I joke, “you’ve been to parallel universes before.”

“Only a few times. None of them were close parallels like this, though.”

I blink.

“We should get off the street,” I say, “and make it less likely that anyone who saw us spots us again.”

She nods and walks toward the huge church.

The church turns out to be the Basilica of St. Mary. We pick up tour maps at the entrance and pretend to care about the church as we try to come up with a plan.

After some discussion, we find a tour guide and ask where to find the nearest library. There’s one about a twenty minute walk away, so we thank him and head that direction.

“What are we going to do for money?” I ask. “I don’t bring my wallet to school.”

“I have a twenty and some change, so we can get dinner, maybe. Hopefully your mark will recover before we need to, though.”

“How’s that going to help you?” I ask, “Unless that was a permanent power up, I won’t be able to take you back with me.”

“I know, but if you tell The School what happened, they should be able to track me down. Especially if we can figure out the point of divergence. Even if you recover first, I’d appreciate it if you’d hang around until we do, or decide we can’t.”

What kind of asshole does she think I am? Of course I’ll do whatever I can to help her get home. Then again, I guess she can’t know that.

“I wouldn’t skip out on you,” I say. “I’m not your biggest fan–” I keep talking over her snort “–but I’m not that big an asshole.”

“Thanks.”

Once we reach the library, it’s surprisingly easy to find the point of divergence. The first question we look at is Emily’s. ‘What happened with the Invasion?’ And the answer is: nothing, it never happened here. Emily isn’t sure how to be sure if the divergence came before that or not, but that’s where I make myself useful. 

Reagan was president when the Invasion would have happened. Vice president was Bush. They had the same list of presidents up to there. Their Reagan survived his second term, though. And the only name I recognize after Bush is Clinton, but it’s the wrong one.

I check a few more facts, and everything points to the two universes being identical up until the Invasion happened in ours.

“No Invasion, no magic, no marks,” I say.

I discreetly check my mark, which has migrated to my right breast, which is a good sign. And it’s less blurry.

“It’s so weird that your mark moves.” 

“Doesn’t yours?” I ask sarcastically.

Instead of answering, she looks away. That’s odd. I make a mental note to come back to that. In any case, I figure I have another hour or two before I can flicker again, so I start looking up the important stuff.

“Hey, they had more Star Wars after Jedi!” I say. “Maybe we should stick around a little while and watch them.”

They also have an IMDB, but it has a completely different layout, and ads. Bleah. Their Internet has a lot more ads overall. There are more similarities on the Internet than I expect, since the divergence happened before it really took off. They even have Google. I wonder if there’s leakage between universes?

The best thing about exploring the internet of another Earth is that it distracts me from the fact that I royally screwed up, worse than I ever have before. From the fact that I may have gotten people seriously hurt, or worse. From the fact that I’m stuck here with the last person I want to be around, or who wants to be around me.

Luckily, I don’t have to talk to said person, since she’s busy doing her own research. I’m curious about what kind of thing she finds important, but decide not to be drawn in. I don’t need to know her any better.

I know the instant my mark comes back to life. It’s a soothing warmth on my skin.

“And we’re back,” I say quietly.

Emily pulls me toward the back of the library and into an empty meeting room. I take her left hand in my right.

“Ready?”

“I’m okay with you trying just yourself. You can send help.”

“Don’t be a martyr,” I say, and picture the cafeteria of The School. Nothing. It’s well after hours, though, so that would make it harder. I try for an easier target—my bedroom.

Nothing.

I look at her hand in mine. She pulls it free.

“It’s really okay,” she says, “I’ll be fine. Just tell them to give me an hour before they charge to the rescue, so I’ll have a chance to buy dinner. I’ve never actually eaten in a parallel universe before.”

I focus on my bedroom again, and flicker away. I flicker back immediately.

“Not my bedroom.”

It wasn’t. There was a girl my age there in her underwear. She was very surprised.

“So you went to your house—”

“Apartment.”

“—apartment in this universe instead?”

“I think so.”

“Do you know how old your building is?”

“Old. I think it was built in the seventies. Oh, maybe I should try someplace that doesn’t exist in this universe.”

I picture the new VR place that opened a year ago. It’s in a whole new building. I flicker.

I’m in a deli. I take a second to look out the window. Yeah, that’s the right street. I flicker back to Emily and tell her what was up.

“I was afraid of that.”

I was, too. I just didn’t want to think about it.

I try a bunch of other places I can think of. I try to remember what it felt like to flicker here in the first place. Nothing.

“Shit,” I say. “What do we do?”

“We eat, then we look for help.”

We each get a slice of pizza for dinner. I would like a soda or fizzy water, but we just have tap. That way, we can afford two more slices each before we run out of money.

We eat in silence. I don’t want to give Emily an opening to start telling me what a horrible person I am. She’s probably waiting for me to do something else wrong or stupid so she can tell me why it’s so wrong and/or stupid. 

“Can you teleport to Los Angeles?”

That question comes out of nowhere.

“Um, I’ve never tried.”

I picture the only place I can think of right away in Los Angeles and push. Nothing. I was able to teleport home(ish) so I’m not sure why I can’t get to L.A. Wait.

“How long would it take you to fly to L.A.?”

“Three hours? Maybe. I might be able to do it in less. I’m not sure just how far it is.”

So that isn’t it. Then I realize that I asked the wrong question.

“How long carrying a hundred and fifteen pounds?”

“Same with anything up to a ton or so, unless of course that one hundred fifteen pounds is a person, and would like to get there alive.”

I wait for her to go on.

“It’s dangerous to go much over a hundred klicks carrying someone unprotected. Even that fast is really uncomfortable. Or so I’ve been told.”

“So, a couple days, with rests?”

“I could do that without resting. Maybe thirty hours? A little less?”

“Could you rip open an ATM?”

“I’m not doing that.”

She is so frustrating.

“I’m not asking you to. But could you? Like, if someone’s life depended on it?”

“Sure,” she answers, suspicious, “Why?”

“So, in theory, we could rob an ATM, I could buy a plane ticket, and be there in five or six hours?”

“I doubt you could fly without I.D. They had a big terrorist attack here, too, just a few years earlier than ours.”

“But we could use some of the money to buy a fake I.D.”

“Where is all this going?”

I can live with her knowing how my power works. Not like in a physics way, but in more of a driving a car way. I explain the basics.

“Why could you get to Chicago, then?”

“If you’d started carrying me that way the moment we got here, we could have been there by the time my mark recovered.”

“Huh. Interesting,” she considers. “So if we can find a place to crash for the night, then a little after noon tomorrow, you could teleport there?”

“Yeah, I think so, but what’s in L.A.?”

“Tiara.”

Emily doesn’t explain why she thinks finding this world’s Tiara will do us any good. The one time I ask, she brushes me off, and I am too dependent on her right now to risk pressing the issue. I hate that.

“We need to find a place to sleep,” Emily announces.

“There are probably homeless shelters.”

“What if they call child protective services?”

She has a point.

“It’s just an idea, but what about a hotel room? We’d have to sneak in.”

To my surprise, she considers the idea.

“Okay. Let’s find something. Ugh, we need Internet access.”

“Um…”

“What?”

“We’re going to need a way to stay in contact anyway. I could steal a couple of phones.”

She hasn’t yelled at me yet, so I hurry on.

“We could try to find a way to pay them back before we go home.”

She sighs. “Let’s do it.”

“Really? You’re okay with that?”

She shrugs. “Capitalism.”

Weird girl.

I step out the door of a very nice hotel room and look for the stairwell. When I open the door to that, Emily is waiting on the other side. I flicker back into the room and open that door for her, too.

I expected her to insist on the cheapest motel we could find, but she suggested this one, saying she’d just as soon cost rich people money as poor people. Also, a highrise gave her a better chance of finding an uncurtained window that showed an empty room. Once she found one, she messaged me and I flickered into it based on her location.

Luckily, the room has two beds.

By the time we settle in, I’m exhausted. Despite her talk of flying thirty hours straight, Emily looks pretty wiped out as well.

We’re each in bed, and the lights are out within five minutes.

“I’m sorry,” I say. 

I really am. For all of it, but this apology is for pulling her out of our world and stranding her infinitely far from home. She doesn’t deserve that.

“Let’s not do this right now.” Her voice is flat. I can’t tell if it’s from fatigue, or if she’s intentionally avoiding showing any emotion.

“It’s just—”

“Seriously. Let’s figure out how we’re going to get home. Then we can talk about other things.” This time there’s a definite edge to her voice.

“Okay.”

Would it really be a bad thing if we can’t get home? I know it would suck for Emily. She has lots of friends, presumably a family who accepts her, and probably a future. 

Me? I’d miss Denise. I’d miss Mom, too, but I sort of already do. I’d have to make sure nobody found out about my powers, of course. Not that they could hold me in a government lab, but I’m not bulletproof, unlike a certain person snoring in the other bed.

I drift off, imagining myself staying in this world. I wouldn’t ever have to turn back.