Relativity (19 page)

Dad extends his hand, but I’m beyond his reach. “Where are you going?” he calls after me as I trot toward the bike. I bite my lip, ignoring the jab of pain my leg inflicts with each stride.

“Ruby!” Dad shouts as I ride off, a hint of panic in his voice. “Come back! It’s starting to rain.”

I glance over my shoulder at him, still standing at the end of the driveway, his arms outstretched like he’s expecting me to return to him, to simply fold into his embrace.

I can see them from the high school parking lot. Two boys stand in front of the giant oak tree, their bikes on the ground.

“Get away from there!” I scream, limp-hopping toward them.

They look at me, panic on their faces. Like they’ve been caught. One glances at his bike, then his friend. I’m feeling my fair share of panic, too.

“Whatever you do, don’t touch the knob,” I say. “It electrocutes the hell out of you. Heck. It electrocutes the heck out of me.”

They stare at me, mouths open.

“It’s worse than putting a fork in an outlet, trust me.”

“Who are you?” the bigger boy asks. He’s wearing a SpongeBob T-shirt.

“Police,” I say. “Go home and forget about it. It’s under investigation. We’ve got the whole area under surveillance.”

The smaller boy looks up, searching the sky for a helicopter, for hidden cameras. His hair is still that baby shade of white-blond.

“That’s right. We’re recording this,” I say. “It’s top secret. If you speak a word to anyone, we’ll know. They’re processing the video footage now. In ten minutes I’ll know your names and where you live.”

“But—”

“I’ll be in touch,” I say, patting SpongeBob’s back. “Just keep quiet and everything will be okay.”

I scan the sky, looking for a helicopter, for hidden cameras. Gray cloud banks gather, a light drizzle becomes steady rain. Under the tree’s umbrellalike canopy of leaves, we stay dry.

“Hurry home.” I twist an imaginary key over my lips.

The smaller boy is first to his bike. In his rush, he has a hard time finding his balance. He finally gets his feet firmly on the pedals, then zooms madly down the hill, toward downtown Ó Direáin.

“Wait up!” the bigger kid calls. He glances over his shoulder at me then disappears, mud flicking behind his bike tires.

I sink to the ground, wasted. My hands tremble. My leg throbs, hot. What can I do? Will they come back? For the next half hour, I stand sentinel at the top of the hill. No sign of them. And I can’t wait any longer; it’s time to go.

I brace myself for the static sting, and it’s fiercer than I remember. My teeth still vibrating, I step inside the oak and wiggle my fingers into the gardening gloves, ready to turn the cold and slick steering disk. The sunlight of Universe Four trickles around the edges of the door until it seals shut, and I’m once again alone. In the dark.

This time, when the door opens and I step out of the tree, I’m in the middle of the woods. Here in Universe Five, I’m surrounded by trees—elm, oak, hickory, and maple. Other than the twittering of birds, it’s quiet. No sign of Ó Direáin’s high school, no sign of Ennis’s corn-fields. No sign of human existence.

Maybe this is it. This could be the happy-family universe. I’m thinking it’s good to be in unrecognizable territory. That’s what I need. A totally different world. Maybe our house is on the edge of a national park. Or maybe Ó Direáin or Ennis was developed a few miles away, and I’ll find civilization if I walk a while. Mom, George, Patrick, the dogs.

And Dad.

My nerves are still firing after our knock-down. In a good way. I feel plugged in, energized. And it’s a relief to get some of that
heavy-as-lead anger off my chest. It makes me wonder … if I’d gone to war with him back in Universe One, I might’ve created a different quantum junction and in turn, an alternative path. Maybe I could’ve talked him out of moving to Ohio if I’d spoken up for myself.

If only.

I attempt to mark my position on Mom’s GPS, but it can’t find a satellite signal. Shaking it and calling it a piece of crap doesn’t seem to help. If I walk a very short distance I might not get lost, and maybe I’ll be able to see the purple glow of the tree if I get disoriented. Even better, I pull a few sheets of blank paper from my notebook knowing I can poke them onto low, skinny branches as I go.

A male cardinal flits nearby. Fungus-covered logs litter the ground. After a few minutes, the burbling of running water leads me to a stream. A walkway of stones dots the water, so I could cross here and continue on. I study the stream and notice that a few of the stones are small, some spaced far apart. The Basic Coordination Skills of Ruby Wright—let’s take a moment to review, class. Yeah, it’s highly probable that I’ll lose my balance, drop my backpack, and soak everything. Including my change of clothes, Mom’s sweater, my postcard from George, my eight-by-ten family photo, and the little snapshot of Mom and me in my red-gingham blouse.

Makes more sense to check the other directions first. I retrace my steps to the portal tree, following the markers I created with my notebook paper. Then I try the opposite direction. This time I’m stopped by an enormous fallen oak, covered in moss, too big to climb over. I start back toward the portal tree when a rustling noise startles me, and I see movement behind a cluster of skinny saplings.

“Hello?” My voice cuts through the air, a strange resonance in this world of wildlife sounds. An acid taste rises in my throat. The singeing rush of adrenaline feels like poison, making my chest contract.

It might be those two boys. They followed me.

More rustling, then a sudden flutter of wings and a sharp
cluck-cluck
; not more than ten feet away is a startled wild turkey. I leap back, lose my balance, and sit hard on the ground. He’s enormous, a dark-brown mass of brown feathers, probably four feet tall.
Cluck-cluck-cluck!
Within seconds he’s disappeared into the woods, only his red throat visible for a moment after he’s otherwise vanished. An afterimage.

I hold my hand to my chest. Calm down, heart. It was just a bird. A really huge bird, but that’s all.

As I put my hands down to push myself back to my feet, I feel something hard. I look down and pull a narrow shaft of wood from the debris of fallen leaves and twigs. It’s an arrow.

But it’s not a modern, bought-it-at-Walmart arrow. It looks handmade, like it was whittled, and the arrowhead is flint. It’s in perfect condition. It’s new.

I stand up and find myself eye-to-eye with another arrow, this one stuck into the trunk of a tree. Someone’s been hunting in these woods recently. Maybe today. Maybe right now.

My heart picks up the pace, beating the living daylight out of my chest. Blood rushes through my head in dizzying quantities. I’ve got to get out of here.

What’s going on in this universe? The land hasn’t been developed. Did a major historic event take place, or not take place? No wonder
the GPS isn’t working. Satellites were never invented! Is this area still inhabited by Native Americans?

I try to remember which tribes lived in Ohio. Shawnee? Iroquois? What would they do if they found me out here, unable to speak their language, in clothes that would seem foreign to them, with electronic gadgets? I mean, what would they think of my digital camera? Would they murder and scalp me?

I do my best to move noiselessly back toward the tree, but I’m stupidly loud. Every branch that cracks underfoot makes me a target. Why did I have to call out “hello” earlier? Duh!

My tongue turns dry. All I can imagine is that I’m being hunted. I feel light-headed and realize I’m not breathing.

N
₂
and O
₂
in, carbon dioxide out. Breathe, Ruby, breathe.

Four notebook sheets to go. I look over my shoulder. I’m hearing things that aren’t there, seeing things that may or may not exist. Was that another wild turkey? A snake? When a falling leaf hits my head, I swing wildly at air.

And to make matters worse, an undercurrent of disappointment gains volume, crescendos. I have to cross this universe off the list. It’s not perfect, not even close.

The last sheet of paper, then the tree.

My hand on the doorknob, I’m zapped, once again, with a surge of static electricity. It’s strong, the strongest current of electricity so far, but it doesn’t faze me. I’m too focused, putting my shoulder into the door and pushing to hurry it open.

I squeeze through the door and into the tree. My back against the inner wall of the trunk, I slide down to the ground and hold my
head in my hands, blanching with panic. The door closes too slowly. Please, hurry up, before someone else slips into the tree. Finally, the last rays of sunlight are choked out. I exhale with relief.

The tree’s engine purrs rhythmically. And for the first time, I feel safe inside this dark, rotten chamber.

The tree door opens, and I stumble out into Universe Six, onto a pebble walkway, which leads to an iron gate. Beyond that is a cemetery, shrouded in the shade of giant trees. Stupendous. My nerves are still jangling from the last universe. A stroll through Creepyville is the last thing I need.

Relax, Ruby.

I take a breath, clearing my sinuses of the rotten tree smell, trying to calm the chemical and neurological havoc in my body. There’s no deerskin-clad Native American armed with a hatchet tailing me. So stop the rapidly firing neurons, please.

With trembling hands I unzip my backpack and find Mom’s GPS to mark my position before I get too far from the tree. Just in case this universe is a bust and I need to find my way back to the portal. I doubt that will happen. Honestly. Because Universe Five sucked, this one
should compensate and correct. Probability theory, law of averages. Something should be on my side.

The cemetery gate creaks as I push it open, and flecks of black paint stick to the palms of my hands. I wipe them off on my jeans as I take in the tombstones and mausoleums. Actually there’s nothing horror movie about this cemetery. It’s peaceful. The grass is green and mowed, flowers bloom around the newer graves, the walkway is free of weeds.

I wipe my glasses clean and strain to see beyond the confines of the graveyard. I don’t see the school, or any other signs of Ennis or Ó Direáin. The air is crisp, tinged with the smell of apples. A blue jay flits from tree to tree, and I realize that fruit hangs from the branches. I reach up and twist an apple off, taking a bite. It’s sour, not ripe. I spit it out and continue along the pebble path through the cemetery, reading the tombstones and doing the math. Samuel Black was thirty-three years old. He died in 1907. A miniature stone marks the grave of a baby. James Cross was fifty-nine. One loss after another. Beloved mother. Father of eleven. An angel on earth. Forever remembered.

I make my way through the obelisks and cherubs, the statues of saints and the Virgin Mary, speculating on the causes of each death. Cholera, dysentery for the older graves. Cancer, heart disease for the recent. And, of course, car accidents. How many of the dead people I’m standing over were rear-ended, sideswiped? How many flipped, rolled, caught fire? How many would have been okay, if a windshield wiper hadn’t struck with arrow-accuracy?

Oh, please—don’t let me stumble across Mom’s grave in this cemetery.

Stop reading inscriptions, Ruby.

My leg throbs. My head hurts. And I realize I never visited Mom’s grave in California. Never. Not once. We should have gone to plant flowers, to scrub the headstone, to tape photos or something. Anything. I stop walking and consider this revelation. Regret and guilt bubble and combine to form a toxic thundercloud in my chest.

That’s when I see a tombstone, crooked and cracked from age, for a man named Edward Percival Smith.
Perished Whilst Trying to Down the Oak Tree
. Under his name is a picture of an ax etched into the stone.

Willow’s story. It was true? Was this the man who tried to cut the tree down and burst into flames? That means he was killed by the tree in at least two universes. Just a few days ago, I tried to convince myself that the tree was just a tree. A bunch of xylem cells and phloem tissue. Not a serial killer. Now I’m wondering otherwise.

I shake the thought, turning my attention back to the pebble path. Ahead, a large mausoleum dominates, the name
Ó DIREÁIN
carved into the gray granite above the iron door. Ó Direáin!

The mausoleum is the size of a one-car garage. I approach it cautiously, but my curiosity is raging. I need to get inside and look around. The door is ajar, but it’s stiff, reluctant to open. I push and pull, working it back and forth until it loosens enough for me to shoulder through, into the cold room.

There’s no coffin, so I’m guessing the deceased inhabitant is buried under the floor. Natural light filters in through the open door, but I can’t see much. I dig through my backpack until my fingers find the cold metal cylinder of my flashlight. I click it on. The beam of light
reveals nothing until I shine it on the wall to my left. Ten oak trees stand shoulder-to-shoulder—drawings carved into the granite, each no less than four feet tall.

Under the trees, there’s an equation:

D(x) = x – n (mod 26)

Goose bumps spring up along my arms. Modulus 26. What significance does the number twenty-six have? In what system is that number crucial? I can think of nothing else but the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. My brain starts to whir, and I can hear Mom’s voice: D
is for “decryption.”
This has to be it!

I pace back and forth, thinking it through.

In order to get the decrypted value of
x
, you take
x
and subtract
n
positions. A math equation I can understand! If I’m right, all I have to do is shift the letters. For instance, if the encoded letter is an
R
, then I count backward through the alphabet for a set number of letters, and whatever I land on is the decoded value. But it would be nice to know the numeric value of
n
, which is how many positions to shift. Is this what Mom was talking about, what she called a simple cipher?