In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel Read online

  The rolling of the ocean.

  “I can’t.” Now she’s completely lost. “I drove, and Adam won’t have a way back.”

  “Sean can take him, can’t you?” Kyle asks.

  The younger Dooley offers a creepy smile. “Sure, Mol. You and Kyle go back in your car, and I’ll make sure Z gets home.”

  “You would?” She looks to Sean, then seems to remember Adam is the one she needs to check in with. “No, I should take him home.”

  “I’m closer to Z’s house anyway,” Sean offers.

  “I don’t know,” she says again, close to tears.

  “It’s fine, if that’s what you want,” Adam says, always good at convincing people of things that aren’t true.

  “You’re sure?” she asks, and he nods. “Okay, I’ll give you a call tomorrow?”

  Adam would bet his scholarship that he’ll never hear from her again.

  With arrangements finalized and keys exchanged, the two groups start in different directions. When Molly and Kyle are no longer visible, Sean stops walking, and Adam realizes what should have been obvious ten minutes earlier.

  “You’re not really giving me a ride,” he says flatly.

  Sean snorts. Adam sighs.

  Burst of pain as Sean’s knuckles crack across his nose.

  Adam’s eyes close, and he must bring his hands to his face, because there’s nothing blocking Sean’s fists from a series of quick jabs into his left side.

  Swinging back blindly, bare feet slipping in the sand, Adam fails to connect with any part of the larger boy.

  The last fight he was in, ironically with Sean Dooley, was thirteen years ago, and Adam is amazed at how stunningly bad he is. Apparently he’s not good at everything.

  “Who’s the better third baseman now?” Sean demands.

  If the statement weren’t immediately followed by a fist to his cheek, Adam would find it hysterical. There was never any question of who the better third baseman was. Adam was simply the third baseman who didn’t get caught with a crib sheet during a trig exam.

  By sheer serendipity, Adam manages to duck the next body blow but trips on nothing, lands flat on his ass.

  He must look extraordinarily pathetic, because Sean’s anger extinguishes to cold fear, perhaps realizing that assault is more serious than cheating on a math test. It’s a moment Adam could take advantage of. Sure, he feels like crap, but he can tell his injuries aren’t serious. He could kick Sean’s legs from under him or spring to his feet and exploit the element of surprise.

  But he’s got only 265 days; Adam doesn’t need to prove shit to Sean Dooley or anyone in Coral Cove anymore.

  So he stays down.

  Blood falls from his nose, darker than the surrounding sand.

  “Stay away from her,” Sean says, but it seems halfhearted. He doesn’t bother kicking grit at Adam, doesn’t mumble “bastard” under his breath; he simply walks away.

  Inching back on his elbows, Adam eases down until his head touches the ground. He concentrates on the throbbing pulse on the left side of his face, experimentally shifts his jaw, runs fingers over bruised ribs.

  A slight chill in the air, it’s no longer hot at night. Florida does have seasons, but he’s never owned a winter coat, has seen snow only on TV.

  Part of Eons & Empires had taken place during a nuclear winter, where survivors trekked through falling ash and dead earth, everyone bundled in scarves and boots. For all its faults, the movie did a really good job of making it look cold; the New York University brochure is full of vibrant pictures of students walking the snow-covered city campus.

  She’ll understand, she’s probably known for a long time.

  After high school his mother had left to model or wait tables or go to school. She’d made it as far as Atlanta, lasted four years, and returned with a two-year-old son and no explanation. Anna Zoellner moved back into her parents’ house, worked at their store, got a nursing degree and a job at the local hospital, and never talked of leaving again.

  Not sure how long he lies on the beach, Adam feels water licking his fingers when the tide comes in. His nose has long stopped bleeding when he finally stands.

  It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the road, another ten before he finds a sports bar with lights on. Five minutes more of holding a quarter in the phone booth before he musters the courage to dial his mother.

  The restaurant is family-owned, and it’s a brother and sister a few years older than him closing up. They hand him a paper cup of crushed ice for his rapidly swelling eye and let him sit in a booth while they flip chairs up onto the tabletops and break down the soda machine.

  Dagger of guilt over the ice cream shop he abandoned what seems like years ago.

  Adam offers to buy something, but the siblings—both round and freckled—give him a plate of French fries, ask which school he attends.

  And he wonders if his whole world would be different if his mother had ever dated anyone seriously (even with Adam, she got asked out constantly but rarely went), ever had other children. A sister to work alongside him at Sally’s Scoops? A brother to tag-team-battle the Dooley boys? Someone to stay behind so his mom won’t be all alone with her books and aging parents, with whom she rarely agrees.

  In her old VW Rabbit, his mother arrives in forty minutes flat. Her full lips thin when Adam slides into the passenger seat and she sees his face. He’s again five years old with a bloody nose.

  “Baby?” she asks.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says, trying not to wince as she examines his cheek.

  “I can run you to work—get X-rays to be on the safe side?” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Have you been putting ice on your eye?”

  Adam holds up the cup of slushy water.

  “Well, keep it on for ten minutes, then off—”

  “I’m okay, really, Ma, it doesn’t even hurt,” he says, as convincing at eighteen as he was at five.

  She drives in silence, and he rests his arm on the door, leans out the window so he won’t have to look at her.

  “Thank you for coming,” he says over the rush of air. “I’m really sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got into a fight, dumb high school stuff.”

  The car eats miles.

  He shifts in the bucket seat, moans when the shoulder belt strains against his rib cage. His mother sighs.

  “Sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  He shakes his head. “Do you maybe have any Advil?”

  She hands over her purse, and he rummages through the contents—worn copy of Ulysses from the Coral Cove Library, pens without caps, dingy plastic picture holder with his Sears portrait as a toddler in denim overalls. He knows that behind that first photo is his school picture from every year. Finally, the white container with the blue label.

  “If you can wait, there’s stronger stuff at home,” she says.

  “This is great.” Shaking out three caplets, he starts to dry-swallow them but feels her eyes on him and takes a sip of the melted ice to wash them down.

  Thirty-eight and she’s still so beautiful, even with her black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her makeup long faded.

  Other than their slate-gray eyes, Adam and his mother look very little alike, his dimples and Roman nose genetic hand-me-downs from some man he’s never questioned her about; no one could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wanted more than the parent he had.

  Molly Kelly is pregnant.

  The realization hits so hard, he jerks upright and has to bear another worried glance from his mom.

  At twenty, Molly is the same age his mother was when he was born. And he has a vision of his mom alone (or maybe not alone) in an Atlanta apartment, deciding to have him, deciding to keep him. He wonders why but knows he’ll never ask, the same way he’ll never ask why she came back to Coral Cove, a place where she probably didn’t fit in long before she was a single mother.

  “Ma?” His voice wobbly.r />
  Concerned again, she turns, clicks her tongue.

  “I got into school in New York,” he says like he’s choking, feels like he’s choking. “And I qualify for this big scholarship—covers everything.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Tone light, but now she’s the one avoiding eye contact, gaze locked on the stretch of highway ahead of her.

  The ache in his head and pain in his side are nothing compared to the sudden crush of his lungs, like he’s breathing through cheesecloth.

  “I’m gonna go,” he says.

  He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until his mother pulls over to the shoulder of the road, unhooks her seat belt, and reaches across the gear console to run the back of her hand down the side of his face that isn’t purpling and unnaturally warm.

  “Of course you are. You know how proud of you I am, right?”

  “I … I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh, shh, s’okay, baby.” Her fingers are cool on his cheekbone. “You’re my good boy.”

  CINCINNATI

  The movie credits are still rolling when Sharon Gallaher, tears streaming down her face, decides she’s going to see Eons & Empires again.

  Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her denim jacket, she checks her Swatch. It’s 2:15 P.M., thirty minutes before the next showing. She could probably hide in the bathroom and sneak into the theater without paying admission again, but she’s already skipped school; the last thing she needs is an irate manager calling her parents. So Sharon goes back to the box office and buys another ticket with the last five dollars in her wallet.

  Afternoon on a Friday, this showing is more crowded than the first, and it takes a few minutes before she finds a spot in the back near two older boys talking about how the film probably won’t be as good as the comic books.

  “Ed Munn didn’t want anything to do with the movie,” the blond guy is saying. “He wouldn’t even let them list him as the creator.”

  He’s wearing a Walnut Hills ring, and Sharon realizes the boys are seniors at her high school. The dark-haired one’s locker is down the hall from hers—he sometimes wears a Star Trek shirt that says BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY.

  Bob of panic in her esophagus that they might recognize her. Then Sharon remembers she’s a freshman with only a handful of friends (most of whom are really only friends with Laurel Young—the daughter of her father’s business partner). These upperclassmen would have no idea who she is.

  Still, the nervousness lingers as she settles into her chair and a preview starts for Jurassic Park. She worries the film will be less special this time with these reminders of her own reality so near. The sensation begins to fade when the film opens with bald Captain Rowen and Commander Bryce fighting over the Neutrocon (which makes alternate-universe travel possible) as their plane plummets toward the desert sand. Sharon is completely absorbed by the time Rowen throws open the aircraft’s hatch and jumps out, sans parachute, at the last minute.

  * * *

  Two years earlier Sharon read her first Eons & Empires comic book the way most twelve-year-olds probably examine their first Playboy—locked in a bathroom, heart tangling in her throat, fearful of being caught in the act of something naughty.

  The couple next door had a weekly date night on Fridays (so completely different than Sharon’s own parents, who were far too practical for such an extravagance), and Sharon babysat the Robbins’ four-year-old son. After putting Elliott to sleep, Sharon would rummage through the Robbins’ bookcases, crowded with volumes crammed three deep—thin pamphlets of poetry, hefty Victorian novels, some books new, others with covers softened by age or notes marking specific passages. Her own house had only her father’s accounting textbooks and a handful of mass-market paperbacks by Mary Higgins Clark and Dean Koontz. Sharon told her friends (well, she told Laurel) that she took the babysitting gig because she needed money, but the truth was she actually preferred reading the Robbins’ books to going anywhere kids her age were headed.

  That particular Friday, Sharon was putting back Lady Chatterley’s Lover (which she’d heard was scandalous but had found boring) when she noticed the stack of comic books behind Shakespeare’s Collected Works.

  Eons & Empires, Issue 1: Rowen Rising was on the top of the pile in a clear plastic sheath. The cover was a washed-out gray with dozens of striking blue Earths of different sizes seemingly bouncing around the edges. In the foreground two women—one a blonde and one a redhead—clung to each other while a bald man in black and a buff guy in white clashed swords. The title and Ed Munn’s name were written in crimson across the top.

  In the same way everyone knows a little about Spider-Man or Wonder Woman, Sharon had a passing familiarity with E&E. Knew Captain Rowen was the bad guy, Jason Bryce was good, twin sister scientists were in the mix, and it had to do with parallel universes and nuclear war. Still, she’d never actually seen the comic books, and holding the decade-old first issue from 1981 gave her a rush of warmth she couldn’t explain.

  Even though it was date night and the Robbins wouldn’t be home for hours, Sharon tucked the issue into her purple book bag, went to the powder room, and bolted the door. Before reading the text she studied each panel—the artwork minimal and haunting, all grays and blacks in World 1, the other universes each a different color palette. It read like a book (a more interesting one than Lady Chatterley’s Lover, anyway). All about Commander Bryce and the Snow sisters traveling to the parallel Earths in the hope of stopping Captain Rowen from blowing up North America in their own world. Midway through volume one, Sharon realized she was dizzy from holding her breath.

  It wasn’t that she could identify; it was the exact opposite. The world-hopping struggles between Rowen and Bryce had less than nothing to do with her own life in the suburbs. With her friends (well, Laurel and Laurel’s friends), whose universe was all about ballet flats and grades and getting asked to school dances. With her parents, who were still married to each other, had one cocktail at precisely 6:30 after work each night, paid their taxes, and were absolutely adequate and innocuous in every meaningful way. In E&E, things mattered, decisions had consequences, character was tested.

  And Captain Rowen—wonderful, tortured Rowen—who wasn’t so much evil as misguided, who loved Cordelia Snow with all his heart no matter what universe they were in. Rowen was infinitely more interesting than any of the boys Laurel and Laurel’s friends found attractive.

  For the next eighteen months, Sharon read and re-read every issue at the Robbins’ house on date night, even after Laurel and her friends began including Sharon more and more on trips to the mall and slumber parties. When the Robbins moved to Minneapolis, Sharon stole new E&E comics from the library or the racks of the Waldenbooks at Northgate Mall and hid them in plain sight among the mess of papers and clothing in her room. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the money to buy them—she’d saved almost everything from her babysitting gigs—it was about not wanting to share E&E with anyone, even cashiers and librarians. Talking about the comics had the potential to make those worlds less real, to weigh them down with the boredom of Cincinnati.

  Two months earlier, Sharon, Laurel, and Laurel’s friends had seen Candyman at the Esquire Theater, and there had been a preview for the E&E movie. As the screen filled with the ash of nuclear winter and the dashing Jake James appeared dressed as Commander Bryce, Sharon had felt naked and exposed, everything in her digestive system chugging to a halt.

  “Jake James is so hot,” Laurel had whispered in her ear. “We should see that.”

  Sharon had made an affirmative sound. Movies Laurel’s friends saw were never about the film but were about going to the bathroom in pairs to apply sticky pink lip gloss, about which of the older kids with a driver’s license might give them a ride to Pizza Hut or the Busy Bee afterward. Sharon understood and even had fun when the girls helped her apply blue shadow that matched her eyes or used their curling irons to give her straight black hair body. But the thought of seeing her Captain Rowen battling Bryce and his passion fo
r Cordelia Snow while Laurel and Laurel’s friends discussed the attractiveness of the boys behind them was intolerable.

  That was when Sharon began planning today. Taking a map from the glove compartment of her father’s Taurus, she plotted a course to the mall and checked The Enquirer daily in case the matinee listings changed. She’d even pretended to feel a little sick at school yesterday so her absence wouldn’t come as a surprise.

  Though her parents were usually busy getting ready for work when she left to catch the bus, Sharon made a point of saying good-bye and going out the front door. Instead of heading to the bus stop, she wandered the wooded area behind the house until both their cars were gone, then ducked back inside to call the school attendance office. She’d tried to take on her mother’s slight Midwestern accent as she pretended to be Joan Gallaher explaining why Sharon wouldn’t be coming in.

  Cincinnati isn’t a city designed for walking—even downtown, and especially in her suburb right outside the limits—but the trip to the theater wasn’t bad. Before she and Laurel had quit Girl Scouts, Sharon had earned all the badges for reading maps and using compasses, and most of the journey had been a straight shot along the highway. It was an unusually nice December day, where a jacket was sufficient, and although she brought an umbrella, she hadn’t needed it. The whole walk had taken little more than an hour; it was quite possibly the most daring thing Sharon had ever done.

  As she watches the movie again, Sharon notices subtle details. The filmmakers had kept the color palette the same as in the comics, and much of the dialogue was lifted verbatim as well. She could have recited it along with the actors. And the boys from her high school are plain wrong; the movie is actually better than the comics.

  When the credits begin after the second show and she wanders back into the mall, with its glittery holiday decorations and Victoria’s Secret smell, Sharon is not crying but bone-crushingly disappointed, pining for that world where everything is significant. That it will be another year and a half before the sequel comes out is as horrifying a thought as three more years of high school.