07:00:40:53
Ben blushes, and that’s all I need.
It’s like he never left, like he’s been by my side the whole time, like we’ve been sharing half smiles, stealing glances at each other, and blushing because we remember too well what it feels like to melt into each other, press our lips together, and forget how messed up the world is.
I let out a yelp and throw my arms around him. I don’t ask what he’s doing here or how long he’s been back or even why he hasn’t come to find me. I just pull him close and hold on to him with everything I’ve got. I revel in how real he is. The feel of him under my hands, the warmth of his skin, the muscles in his arms, the breath in his chest. He’s real.
Only he’s not right.
It’s after I’ve thrown my arms around him that I realize what’s different.
And it’s not just the awkward way that he’s standing limply in my arms, like someone who’s been tackled by a crazy chick he’s never seen before. It’s that he doesn’t feel right in my arms. It doesn’t feel like we fit, and he even smells different—like spices and wet grass.
I know what that must mean.
Flustered, I pull back from him and start rambling. I don’t even know what I’m saying, but it has to be some sort of awkward apology, because he shrugs and runs a hand through his hair, then opens his mouth to say something before shutting it again.
My heart is pounding in my ears and my throat feels thick. A wave of desperation rolls through me, stinging my eyes and carving a hole in my chest. This isn’t fair.
I look at him again, and suddenly all I see are the differences. His hair is a little too short; his eyes are a little too light and maybe not sad enough; his chest is a little too broad; and he’s wearing khaki shorts and an NFL sweatshirt. I fight to suck down enough air to keep from hurling all over his Adidas sneakers.
This guy isn’t my Ben at all. He’s a stranger wearing the same face.
Because there isn’t just one universe, but rather many. A multiverse. There are thousands of different universes, and one theory is that they all started parallel, but when different people in the different universes made different choices, things grew outward differently.
Everyone in this world could have a doppelgänger out there—more than one. There could even be other versions of me living different lives in different worlds.
Just like there could be other versions of Ben.
Like this one.
07:00:38:22
I thought about my Ben Michaels every day.
All one hundred and forty of them.
I try to keep myself busy, and most days I can push thoughts of him to the back of my mind, but I can’t forget him. I’ll be doing something mundane, like teasing Jared and ruffling his hair or helping Cecily at the evac shelter, and a memory of Ben or something he said will just strike me.
Like the time Cee and I were fueling the last of the gas tanks and I told her, “I’ve always loved the smell of gasoline.”
And suddenly I was overcome with a moment and I was somewhere else—Ben and I standing outside Kon-Tiki Motorcycles in Pacific Beach, a breeze coming off the ocean, my skin feeling strangely empty and open. My fingers intertwined with his, I moved into his space and laid my forehead on his chest. His whole body relaxed, as if tension was rolling off his body in waves. His free hand came up and his fingers slipped through my hair before his hand settled between my shoulder blades, and I whispered his name.
There’s always a second where I’m lost in the memory and I feel light and happy. A giddy smile will overtake my face, and it will almost feel like he was just here.
Almost.
Then the heaviness of reality sets in, and I remember that I’m alone. That Ben is gone.
And it’s like my heart breaks all over again.
Nights are worse. I lie awake and think of the way Ben’s lips tasted against mine, or the strength in his long fingers and the way they felt against my skin. Sometimes missing him is visceral—I remember what it was like to have his arms around me, and I can feel their absence.
What I miss most is the way he smiled against my cheek.
But this isn’t my Ben Michaels.
07:00:38:21
We stand there—me and this stranger—for a minute, unsure of what to say next. I still can’t believe he’s real. Ben told me he’d never run into a double in this world. I guess I’d assumed one didn’t exist.
The guy must know I mistook him for someone else, because he says, “I just moved down here from San Clemente.” He gestures to another guy behind him who is a little thinner with dark hair that’s cut a little shorter but has the same curl at the ends, and he has the same deep-set eyes. He looks almost identical. “My brother and I came after the quakes took out our house. We heard there was more food down here.”
His brother—Derek.
“It’s the military presence,” I mumble. Hopefully that’s enough of an explanation. I can’t force myself to say anything else. I’m too busy looking over his shoulder. His brother looks so much like him, just an older version. I don’t ask what happened to their parents or what kind of lives they used to have. I just stare.
Finally the guy who’s not Ben says something that’s half grunt, half mumble, then bends down and starts picking up the books he dropped.
I almost help him. I ran into him, which is why he dropped the books, but for some reason, I can’t make myself help. I don’t want to get sucked into a conversation with him. I don’t want to know who he is or why he’s here or what he’s like. It doesn’t matter. His similarities and his differences will both feel the same. They’ll hurt.
I look over my shoulder. Cecily is handing two bottles of water to the guy with the broken glasses, but she’s looking at me. I have an overwhelming need to get out of here.
So I do.
I head back to the car, grabbing Cecily and pulling her with me.
“Hey, wait, is that Ben Michaels?” she says. “Oh my God, I thought—”
“It’s not him.” I don’t want to explain what little I know of the multiverse and doppelgängers. Not now.
“But—”
“Cee, I said it’s not him. Do they have anything you want?”
Cecily shakes her head.
“Can we get out of here?”
She must see it on my face, whatever it is that I’m feeling. Or maybe it’s just her good-friend instincts that let her know this is a dead topic. Either way, she nods and moves around to the driver’s side. “Out of here it is.”
I get into the car, my door slamming shut behind me.
Cecily starts the car and we pull away, leaving Ben’s lookalike behind. I curl my hands into fists to keep them from shaking, and lean my head back against the seat.
A few times, I catch her glancing at me, and I know she wants to ask what my deal is. But she doesn’t. Because that’s what makes our friendship work. We tease each other—she’s too high-spirited and I’m too bitchy—but we’re there for each other when it matters.
Which means she knows when I need to be left alone.
I think about Ben Michaels all the time.
Sometimes I wonder if I chose wrong—if I should have asked my Ben to stay. If I had that day to do over, I wonder if I would still make the same choices.
Mostly I just wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
06:12:21:53
Twelve hours later, I arrive at Qualcomm and see Cecily again. Her uncle ran the stadium before the quakes. Now it’s the largest evacuation shelter in San Diego, and running it is a family affair.
Normally I like being here. Something about the way Cee has adopted the shelter and all its inhabitants as her personal responsibility makes things feel a little less bleak. Hanging out and being bossed around makes it seem like we’re all in this together.
But not right now. This isn’t that kind of visit.
When she sees me, she doesn’t sugarcoat it. “There’s another missing person,” she says, her white-blond hair hanging disheveled from something that might have been a ponytail. Her gray T-shirt is dirty, and her jeans are ripped in a few places. If I’d ever wondered what it looked like to carry the weight of part of the city—the homeless part—on your shoulders, now I know.
Our missing person this time is Renee Adams. She’s twenty-two years old, and according to the description, she’s five-four and thin, with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, and brown eyes. The only possessions she has to her name are a white long-sleeved sweater, a pair of 7 jeans, flip-flops, a last-season Coach purse, and a gold ring. She worked downtown, and before the quakes, she lived with her boyfriend in Pacific Beach. He’s presumed dead now, and she arrived at Qualcomm after seeing that her apartment building had collapsed in on itself.
Assigned to a cot in Club Level section 47, one of the areas reserved for single women, Renee kept to herself, spent more time sleeping than awake, and cried a lot. She was even assigned to the suicide watch list for one of the grief counselors.
But she wasn’t in her group therapy session this afternoon. And at this moment, a little past nine thirty on Monday evening—more than three hours past city curfew—she isn’t anywhere in section 47. The all-call announcements in the stadium have gone unanswered. Her cot is empty.
Except for the ripped sheet and a tiny, yellowed fragment that unmistakably used to be part of a fingernail.
I hold a ruler between gloved fingers and take a picture of the measurement. The rip is four and three quarters inches long, half an inch at its widest point, and the nail looks like it might be from her thumb.
I imagine a girl pulled off the cot, reaching out to grab on to something—anything—and catching hold of the sheet. Only sheets aren’t very strong, so it rips easily, and she leaves a tiny piece of herself behind.
“When did she go missing?” Deirdre asks, her voice quiet but weighed down with a sense of gravity.
I don’t look at Cecily when she says she doesn’t know. She’s trying to look calm and in charge, trying to hold it together, but her eyes are red-rimmed, and her face has that splotchy look it gets when she’s cried too much.
Deirdre has been an FBI agent for a little more than ten years. She worked with my dad for eight of them. She doesn’t know Cecily like I do, but she can recognize undeserved guilt when she sees it. “Cecily, none of this is on you. The best thing you can do right now is give us information.” Rephrasing, she says, “When was she last seen?”
Cecily swallows forcibly. “She missed the group meetings yesterday, too, which was why someone wanted to check on her after she missed again today. I’ve talked to everyone, and by everyone I mean everyone I could find, but she didn’t know many people, or I guess not many people knew her. So as far as I can tell, the last time anyone saw her was the group therapy meeting on Friday at four p.m.”
Three days.
Even though I’m in jeans and a hoodie, I shiver. My dad used to say that, in an endangered circumstance, like an abduction, if you didn’t find the person within twenty-four hours of their disappearance, the chances you’d find them alive were less than 10 percent. And those chances diminished every hour.
“I’m going to talk to the counselor,” Deirdre says, and I can tell by her tone that she’s talking more for Cecily’s benefit than mine. We’ve been opening enough of these files lately; we have a routine. “Finish up and meet by the ramp. Cecily, if you remember anything—”
“Of course,” Cecily says, her eyes wide and eager to please. Her blond hair bounces with each nod of her head. “I’ll tell you right away.”
As soon as Deirdre’s out of sight, Cecily’s shoulders droop and she slumps into a seated position on the floor.
After I snap a few more pictures and write down the remaining details—Renee’s purse is still here, overturned with a broken cell phone on the floor next to what looks like a drop of blood on the concrete—I turn and look at Cee. “I didn’t know her,” she says.
“There are a lot of people here.” We both realize it’s unrealistic to expect her to know everyone. Even someone with the social-butterfly gene like Cee can’t possibly get acquainted with everyone in a stadium full of displaced people.
“But I don’t know anything about her. Not really,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “Just her name and what people have said about her.”
I want to say something comforting—that’s what Cecily needs from me right now—but everything I think of sounds too cold. Reducing a person to a paragraph of hearsay is depressing no matter what words you use.
“Oh!” Cecily sits up straighter. “I forgot. Someone told me they thought Renee did something with computers. You know, like, for work. They weren’t sure what, but something pretty badass. She’d said something about it one night, about missing her job, and how without computers she was practically obsolete.”
“I’ll put it in the file,” I say.
Cecily laughs. The bitterness doesn’t sound right coming from her. “She thought she was obsolete then. I wonder what she’s thinking now.”
Even though I know it won’t help, I say it anyway. “This isn’t your fault.”
“How could she have disappeared like that?” she asks, picking at her fingernails. “How could any of them? Jennifer Joyce or Clinton Nelson or David Bonnell or—”
I interrupt her before she names all of them. The truth is that she’s right. We shouldn’t be losing more people now. But I don’t say that. Instead I say, “I don’t know, but these are teenagers and grown adults. You can’t be responsible for them.”
She looks up at me, and our eyes meet for the first time tonight.
Her blue eyes are glassy, and I want her to feel better, so I reach for something—anything—that might do it.
“Who knows, maybe they’re not even missing,” I say. “Maybe Renee Adams walked off.” The words stick in my throat. The lie is awkward and forced on my tongue. Someone who loses half a fingernail doesn’t walk off without the last few belongings to her name.
Cecily just shakes her head and looks away.
She knows what I do: that most of the people who are here have nowhere else to go.
“We haven’t found any of them,” she says, her voice hitching near the end of the sentence.
I press my lips and try to think of something useful to say, something to make her feel better. But she’s always been far better at that than I have.
“Where are they all going?” she asks.
I don’t answer, because for the life of me, I don’t know.