“We hang on to Emma. We let her pull us,” Rima said, and looked back down at them. “We’re inside something or on the other side of a mirror, in the glass, looking out like Alice in Wonderland. What we see through the slit is the … the wrapping paper, the skin, like on a baseball or a clean sheet of paper with no words on it yet. That’s where she pulls us, onto that page, where she is.”
“What?” Bode said. “How do you know this?”
“I don’t, okay? It’s just a guess. But Bode, do you want to stay here?”
“She’s right,” Casey said. “I almost see it, too. But Rima, I still don’t understand how we can use it.”
“Me neither,” she said, and then popped the lock of her door.
“What are you doing?” Bode said.
“What does it look like?” She shoved as hard as she could, felt the door open by six inches. Heavy. “Help me,” she said to Bode.
“What?” Bode turned a swift glance back at Casey. “Can you hold him?”
“I guess I’d better,” Casey said.
“Go, Bode,” Eric said, with a tense jerk of his head. “I don’t understand this, but I know we’re all dead if we don’t do something.”
“Go. I can hold him,” Casey said. “Just do it.”
“All right, I’m letting go,” Bode warned, and then took away his hands. At the end of the seat, Eric’s legs, spread in a wide V, suddenly quivered with the additional strain, and at Casey’s hard, sudden gasp, Bode said, his voice rising with alarm, “Kid?”
“Got him.” Casey’s voice came out strangled. “But hurry. Do it, guys, do it now.”
Without another word, Bode turned in his seat, bunched his arms, and gave his own door a mighty shove.
“Wait,” Rima said, “what about—”
“Faster this way than the back door.” The words squeezed out on a grunt as Bode heaved. There was a loud, piercing, metallic yowl that Bode matched with a drawn-out jungle yell of his own, and then the door was open and he was swarming over his seat, turning around until the weight of the door rested on his back. “Come on,” he panted, and extended a hand. “Come on if you’re coming.”
Trusting in Bode’s strength took an act of will. If he slipped, she wouldn’t fall out, but she’d knock Casey. Then Eric would slip …
As if she sensed Rima’s fear, Emma came through: Hurry, Rima. And: All of you at once.
“She’s crazy. How are we supposed to do that?” Bode said, as he hauled Rima over his seat in a half slide, half fall. Turning her body around, Bode got her facing out. “Okay, you’re here. Now what?”
“Now we all think her hand,” she said, taking one of Bode’s in hers. She didn’t dare look away from that slit, which was either dimming or being covered over, she couldn’t tell. “Grab Casey.”
Emma: Hurry.
“I got him,” Bode said. “Do it, do it.”
“You have to help,” Rima said. “It’s a leap of faith. Think her hand, think of her pulling us, and don’t anyone let go.”
Come on, Emma, come on. Rima fixed her eyes on the sliver of White Space. Do you feel us? Pull us, pull us now.
For a very long second, nothing happened except the slow but inexorable slide of the truck, and she thought the muck might win this tug-of-war after all. Emma. Panic boiled in her chest. Emma, please, help us. Where are you?
“I’m right here, Emma,” she heard Eric say. “Concentrate on me, feel me; I’m here, I’m here. Pull, Emma, pull.”
At that, there was a sudden rush, a whirring. Rima felt herself moving, and she thought, Go. Trust her. Go now.
She stepped
2
OVER SPACE THAT was truly a blank—not black, not gray or white, but absence—and into a flat, hard cold of nothing.
If Bode’s hand was still in hers, she did not feel it. Instead, her body compressed. She was passing through something, but didn’t know what. She could feel her heart struggling in her chest. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came. It was as if she was shifting not from a place but from one thing into another, the way water rearranged into ice or steamed away as vapor, and her one thought, as thin as a plank of wood shaved to the thickness of a single molecule, was …
PART FOUR
HELL IS COLD
EMMA
Outside of Time
“I BELIEVE YOU,” Rima said. She studied Lizzie’s crazy quilt, with its intricate stitchery, oddly shaped blocks of fabric, colorful glass beads, and dangling pendants. Her fingers skimmed a large orange tabby cat embroidered onto a trapezoid of green felt. “I don’t understand it all, but I believe you.” She paused, then added, “I think.”
“Well, I don’t.” Bode was leaning against the mantelpiece of a hearth in which orange-yellow flames crackled and danced. They were gathered in a front family room that Bode didn’t recall seeing in the house, and that Emma was pretty sure hadn’t been here at all, and certainly not this way—strewn with comfortable furniture, a fire already lit—until she and the others trooped down from Lizzie’s room.
“This, I believe in,” Bode said, rattling open a box of matches. Selecting one, he struck it. “Something I can touch and feel,” he said, as the flame gobbled up the match nearly to his fingertips. Wincing, he flipped what was left into the fireplace. “See, that hurt. That was real. So I’m real. I’ll believe in time travel before I believe this other extra-universe crap.”
“Multiverse.” From her perch on an ottoman near Lizzie, who was hunkered on the floor, Emma said, “So, forgetting what just happened to you guys, the reason you’re in Wisconsin instead of Wyoming—”
“You just said you don’t know where we are. Why can’t we be in Wyoming?”
“Whatever. How about the fact that you started the day in 1967 but ended it almost fifty years later? And this is because …?” When Bode didn’t reply, Emma said, “Feel free to jump in anytime.”
“Well, first off, I’m not saying I have all the answers. Second, I could say the same right back to you guys. Like, maybe you’re back in sixty-seven with me, see? It’s all in how you look at it.” Scowling, Bode scraped another match to life. “Real is real. This guy, Tony? Rima and Casey said he got chewed up and then blown to pieces. I saw Chad die. We all nearly got killed.”