He flicks three switches in quick succession, the clicks loud in the silence of the room.
‘Hi.’ I hear her voice in my head, like she’s a part of me. The effect is bizarre but also strangely comforting.
‘Hi.’ I don’t say the words out loud, merely think them. I look at Tyler and he nods.Keep going, his eyes tell me. ‘So this is kind of weird,’
‘Just a bit,’ the other Bethany says.
‘You’re in my head.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow. Fuuuck. It actually works. Which Bethany are you?’ I ask.
‘Umm …’ She sounds unsure, like she has no idea how to answer that question. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Every Bethany whose life I skipped through had a thing. So what’s your thing? Then I’ll know which one you are.’
‘Right. Umm … Tyler, my Tyler, said we were one of the last. Apparently it’s easier to talk to the people in the least diverging worlds. But I don’t think I have a thing.’
‘We all have a thing,’ I assure her. ‘That’s basically our constant. Oh … are you the one with the bullet journal?’
‘Yes. But that’s not athing, that just helps to keep me organized.’ She sounds almost put out and more than a tad defensive.
‘You know you’re me and I’m you and you really don’t need to mask the weird, right?’
I don’t hear it per se, but I know she’s laughing. ‘You’re so right. So, yeah, the bullet journal is my thing. The current thing anyway. It’s been revolutionary.’
‘And you’re in the right world?’ I ask her, remembering the scrawl in the corner of the journal. The one that suggested she wasn’t where she should be.
‘Yes. There were a few weeks when things were odd, not like properly odd, but just a few tiny details were wrong. But everything is right again.’
‘Cool.’
‘So now it’s time to get you back home.’
‘I can’t risk it,’ I tell her.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you could all get scattered and stranded in a world that isn’t yours,’ I reply.
‘And that’s why we would all say yes to taking that risk.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She takes a breath. ‘We’re all the same. Deep down. You know that. In fact, you just said it yourself. We’re all Bethany Raven. And so the reason you don’t want to risk it, because you can’t bear the thought of stranding the rest of us, is exactly why I can put my hand on my heart and tell you that all of us would give you the nod to go ahead with reversing the experiment and sending you back to your world.’
It still isn’t making sense.
‘Jesus Christ. AmIthis stubborn? Bethany, you don’t want to get us stranded.But you are already stranded. For you, ending up in a world that isn’t your own isn’t just a risk, it’s a fact. It’s happened. You’re there and you shouldn’t be. So trust me when I say that all of us would help you get home. Because you would do the same thing for us.’
‘Oh. Ooohhh.’
Chapter Sixty-Three
‘You get it now?’ the other Bethany asks.
Maybe. ‘But …’
