“Because part of you, the one that says hi, I’m Rima, turns off. Even if they do manage to get their hands on you and I drop you along the way—like into a strange Now? It’s still okay because you’re asleep and everyone expects dreams to be weird. I always find you guys again because we’re tangled, so that’s okay.”
“Oh.” She was starting to feel dizzy. Emma and Eric might get this, but physics had always given her a headache. Had Lizzie just said book-world people like her could go to different Nows? She somehow takes me out of the book-world? How would that work? And God, what does go on between the lines? “So when you come to … to play … if we’re … we’re turned off, what do we do?”
“Not a lot, but that’s also because I always put most of you-you in a safe place, anyway. It would be really bad for you to wake up in another Now.”
“What?” She was startled. “What do you mean, you put me in a safe place? How can you both visit and then put me somewhere?”
“Easy.” Lizzie’s blue eyes, dark as India ink, were surprisingly calm. They were, Rima thought, very deep, as if filled with water found only at the bottom of the sea. “I can … if I trade places with the part of you that’s mostly Rima and just play with … you know … the outside.”
“The outside. You trade …” The words knotted in Rima’s throat. “Places.” She swallowed against a rising dread. Isn’t that what Emma thought happened with this girl’s father and the whisper-man? Something Emma says she saw in one of her visions? “You mean you take our place? Like a substitute?”
“No.” Lizzie’s face gathered into another you silly, and then she pinched her own left forearm and levitated that with her right hand, the way a puppeteer manipulated strings. Rima saw that Lizzie had wound that tiny doll-sized green scarf around one finger, the way you’d knot a string so as not to forget something. “I take you.”
“Take?” A slow horror spread through her chest. “You … you live inside us? But … but …” You can’t take a whole body across. Could she? Wow, she really could use Eric or Emma; this was so Star Trek. Then the idea—intuition, really, a leap—popped into her brain to spill from her mouth: “You’re not taking my body, are you? You’re taking the essence, the energy that makes me Rima. That’s what you bring to different Nows.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Lizzie beamed. “Only I don’t take the whole you-you. I can’t. Well, I could, but then it gets too crowded and another Rima would go crazy, and that’s not fair. Really bad things happen then. I remember a couple times, when I wasn’t very good yet? Other Rimas and Emmas and stuff tried killing themselves because of all the noise in their head. Some of them even ended up in the hospital.”
“Another …” Different timelines. Alternative universes. When she put her hand to her lips, she felt the shuddering thump-thump-thump of her pulse. She’s talking about slipping part of me and herself into another, different Rima. While that Rima was asleep? No, that must be what she means by crowded, why she says the other Rima would go crazy. You’d have two minds—three, if you count Lizzie—occupying the same body.
“Anyway, it’s not for very long,” Lizzie continued in that chatterbox little-girl way, but now Rima thought she detected the hum of another lower, darker, subterranean note. “Like I said, I always get pulled back here. I visit Emma the most because she’s the closest to me. Her lives are kind of cool.”
“Lives?” she said, weakly. Other timelines. Other universes. Other Emmas.
“Yeah. Well, except for homework. I let her do most of that because she’s way smart; I just have to kind of turn off parts of her so she doesn’t wake up all the way—except sometimes when I think she needs help. Like writing her story for this class? I did that for her; she was too freaked. The rest of you guys are way harder to live inside when we play in your book-worlds, because you’re all written out already. Unless we go between the lines and into secret subtexts and stuff, we don’t stay in your book-worlds that much. Not that you’re a bad person or anything, but your book-world life is pretty ooky, Rima.” Lizzie’s too-blue eyes, tinged now with that strange smoke, fixed on hers. “Too many bad feelings, and your mom is kind of, you know, messed up.”
There was more to this, much more, but she had to get out of the room and back down to the others. “We should …” She slicked her numbed lips and tried to get up, to push herself from the floor where she’d knelt next to the little girl. Little girl, my ass, there is definitely something … something … But her legs trembled and felt as weak as water. “You know,” she said, finally planting a foot solidly to the floor, “I think we really should go downstairs …”
Her voice choked off as her eyes fell to the dollhouse—and really noticed the dolls over which Lizzie had been so engrossed for the first time.
There were six: three boys, three girls. One boy had short, muddy-brown hair; a mass of brown curls topped a second; and the third was a wispy blonde. One girl was a luxuriant copper, while the other sported a wild, unruly shock of shoulder-length honey-blonde curls. The third doll was a very light, corn-tassel blonde.
But their faces, their hands … Rima’s heart was inching up her throat. They’re not Barbie or Ken dolls. They’re porcelain. They’re glass.
The dolls’ clothes were all wrong, too. With that Victorian dollhouse, they should’ve worn crinolines and petticoats and lacy fans and velvet trousers with cummerbunds and top hats adorned with diamond stickpins. Instead, the dolls were dressed in jeans, sweaters, jackets, and …
Fatigues. Rima felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and her arms prickle with a forest of gooseflesh. Bode’s wearing olive-green fatigues. So was Chad. Tony’s hair was curly and brown. Bode’s hair is dark brown. Her eyes zeroed in on the girls. The copper color was right. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Lily, but she’d bet the girl had been a blonde. And my hair … The trembling had moved from her legs to her chest and arms … I never can get those curls to behave.
The fingers of a shiver tripped up her spine. Casey said the soldiers in the comic were toys. This wasn’t a coincidence, but still her mind insisted: No, no, don’t be stupid. It can’t be. But Lizzie had said it: I always put most of you-you in a safe place.