The woman in both photos is Mom.
But it can’t be! My eyes dart back and forth between the old photo I recognize and the eerie eight-by-ten wall photo. Mom is dead, has been for eleven years. She can’t be in a photo that’s only a few years old.
I put my hand in my mouth and bite down on my knuckles. I’m going to throw up. I gotta get out of here, or scream, or both. I don’t care that it’s raining.
I lock myself in the bathroom, gag into the toilet, then swish my mouth with water. I open the window, pop out the screen, and ease myself through. In an instant I’m soaked. I wipe rainwater and tears from my eyes. Crouched down, I circle the house. The rain’s coming in torrents, which is good. Good because Patrick and Kandy won’t be able to see out the windows. They won’t be able to see me in the driveway.
The Jeep is unlocked. No keys in the ignition, but there’s an Ohio road map in the glove box and an umbrella on the floor. I tuck the map inside the waistband of my jeans, close the car door as quietly as possible, then take off running.
The rain is relentless. I slosh through ankle-deep water at the edge of the road where the storm sewers are backing up. A gust of wind blows the umbrella inside out, bending the metal frame. I keep scanning the horizon for a landmark, but it’s too bleak to see.
I’m cold. Every once in a while a searing jab of pain cuts through my shin, and I limp until it subsides. Finally the rain lets up, and I spot something recognizable—the spire on the high school’s stone building.
After a little effort, I find the courtyard where the Shakespeare rehearsals were going on earlier. The broken umbrella goes into a trash can, and I duck into a nice, deep doorway. Shelter from the wind and drizzle. I yank my T-shirt off, wring as much water out of it as possible, then put it back on.
Kind of stupid. I just soaked the cement. There’s barely enough dry ground for me to smooth out the Ohio road map. I squat down and study the alphabetical listing of cities with grid coordinates. E. E is for “Ennis.” I read the list once, twice. It goes from Englishville to Eno.
“No Ennis,” I mumble.
O. O is for “Ó Direáin.” The map coordinates are H-5.
I flip the map over and scan the northeast corner. Exactly where Ennis should be is a black dot and Ó DIREÁIN in bold print.
I don’t understand. Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati are where they’re supposed to be. It must be a typo, or the map is outdated. Nothing computes.
A bird squawks. Sounds like a blue jay. The sun breaks through a patch of clouds. I look up at the clearing sky, fold the map, and start walking.
Mom could be here, alive. You could go see her.
I press my palms against the top of my head, as if that might slow the barrage of confusion. My vision blurs and the pebble walkway becomes a haze of gauzy brown. Fluid. The sky tips forward. I drop to my knees, breathing deeply, trying to coax away the urge to black out.
You can’t go see Mom! This isn’t right. You don’t belong here, Ruby. You need to get home.
Mom is dead. I don’t have a brother. If I’m somewhere with a dead person and a nonexistent person, I don’t want to be in that somewhere. I need to get out of this limbo land.
Really, only one thing makes sense. Only one course of action feels like the right choice:
Head back to the tree, and get the hell out of here.
Chapter Four
“Damn!” I yank my hand away from the copper doorknob. The static shock and lightning spark take me by surprise. With the humidity from the rain, it seems impossible that the metal could’ve been charged. But it was. Electromagnetic force in action.
I shake the sting from my fingers, and wait while the door swings open. “Here goes,” I say, with a feeling of utter dread. I step into the pulsating oak tree, and a vivid memory surprises me.
I’m ten years old, with Dad, in Jewel Cave in South Dakota. The calcite formations—stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and frostwork—make my brain fizzle. Fizzle in a good way. The cave’s tour guide is an old guy with a mop of yellowish hair. He makes a big deal about a rare formation called a hydromagnesite balloon.
Then he turns out the lights. A complete void. Not a single visible wavelength.
Dad presses my head to his chest. I can hear his steady heart. “They’ll leave the lights off just long enough to spook everyone.”
Right now, inside this dark oak tree, there’s no one to hold me. My own heart beats frenetically, like a maxed-out Geiger counter. I can’t turn the wheel. My hand just keeps slipping around the perimeter.
“Please,” I moan.
One more try, and the disk rotates. There’s a single clank—the out-of-tune bell sound. Fresh air spills through the widening crack, and I grab the edge of the door to hurry it open. Out of the tree and into the blinding sunlight, I cover my eyes with my hands, waiting for my pupils to adjust, wondering what I’m about to see. What if I’m nowhere recognizable again? What if I’m at the edge of our solar system, clinging to an icy rock in the Oort cloud?
Get a grip. You wouldn’t be breathing right now. There’s no atmosphere on a comet.
Wherever I am, I could use a warm, dry sweater. That rainstorm in Ó Direáin left me drenched and shivering. I pull my hands away from my eyes, and as far as I can tell, I’m back in Ennis. It’s got that good, fresh-air smell, and the tree is surrounded by cornfields. I have to admit this feeling of relief, so strong, is a moment of sheer joy. Do I have to call it home? Okay, fine. I’m glad to be home!
Still squinting, I step over the gnarled roots of the tree and walk into the cornfields, looking over my shoulder at the tree, half expecting it to reach out with a limb and grab me, Stephen King–style. So what was that? A passage to another place, a tunnel of some sort. Makes no sense. My scientific brain doesn’t like it, not one bit. Kandy’s voice—brain tumor—resonates through me, and I get a fresh wave of the chills.
There’s nothing metastasizing inside your skull, Ruby. What’s the speed of light? 186,000 miles per second. Layers of the earth? Lithosphere, asthenosphere, mesosphere, outer core, inner core. Layers of a peanut buster parfait? Hot fudge, peanuts, vanilla soft serve.
See? You’re fine.
Fine, but confused and disoriented. Because even though I’ve made this return trek once before, my confidence dwindles once I’m five minutes into the field. It’s like being in a carnival funhouse, in a maze of mirrors. Everything looks the same.
I push the giant leaves aside, burrowing through the cornstalks. With every step my shoes make a sucking noise. I pluck the front of my wet shirt away from my stomach and scrub my head, getting the water out of my hair. All the while I’m eyeing the sky, looking for rooftops.
Finally, a fence. Through the rusting iron, I see a greenish swimming pool littered with inflatable toys. A dog barks. A sprinkler ticks behind me, and I barely escape the arc of water. The next backyard isn’t fenced in, so I limp-jog across the patchy lawn and onto the road, passing bent mailboxes and curbside litter.
There’s Dad—pacing the driveway.
“Ruby!” he calls when he spots me. He taps his finger to his wristwatch. “Where’ve you been?”
I jog to him, grinning. “Dad!” I wrap my arms around him and press my face into his chest. “I kinda got lost,” I say.
He pushes me back, holding on to my shoulders, looking me in the eye. “I’ve been worried sick!” The quiver in his voice startles me. “You don’t know this town, or anyone in it yet.”