“So?” he says. “I mean it.”
I don’t argue, but I don’t believe him either. A part of me wonders if he’s still drunk right now, whether I should really be in the car with him while his eyes look like that and his clothes smell like that.
I think about the Other Matt Kincaid as we drive, the one who’s best friends with Beau, a slow-talking, whiskey-drinking Super Senior. I can’t imagine it, but then again it outwardly makes more sense than the idea of me with Beau.
Beau and Rachel. That makes sense, but the thought drives me crazy.
“What are you going to NKU for anyway?” Matt asks as we’re getting off the exit.
“Counseling,” I tell him.
His eyebrows flick up. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really, no.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he says.
“No.” The silence swells between us, unspoken words burbling up under my chest until I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t say them. “You really hurt me, Matt.”
“I was a jerk.”
“You were supposed to be better than that.”
“Believe me,” he says. “I thought so too.”
As soon as he pulls into the parking lot, I jump out of the car even though we’re still on the opposite side of campus from Alice’s office and it’s pouring rain. I can’t sit next to him any longer. Everything Beau said itches under my skin. Beau is under my skin, and Matt doesn’t even know he exists. As I march toward the building, Matt drives alongside me, rolling the window down. “How will you get home?” he asks, clearly worried, and I look up, wiping raindrops free from my lashes.
“I’ll figure it out,” I tell him. “Please leave, Matt.”
He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like he’s trying to supply his tongue with words. “You know, this isn’t all my fault,” he says, anger ebbing into his voice.
“What isn’t? You forcing yourself on me and then hooking up with a girl who used to be one of my best friends?”
“God, Natalie,” he snaps. “I made a mistake. You don’t need to keep rubbing my nose in it like I’m a dog who pissed on the carpet.”
“I’m sorry if I can’t forget about something like that in the course of a few days, Matt,” I shout back. “You scared me—don’t you get that? I didn’t feel safe. I thought you were going to . . .” I trail off, unable to even say it aloud.
Matt scoffs, cheeks turning livid. “Just say it, Natalie,” he almost screams. “That’s what you really think of me. You think I would rape you.”
“I didn’t say that,” I say, shaking badly now.
“You might as well have.”
“I was scared,” I answer. “I told you to stop, and you didn’t listen. You’d never acted like that before. What was I supposed to think?”
“Sometimes,” he says, shaking his head at the steering wheel, “I can’t even believe what a raging bitch you can be.”
My mouth falls open, the retorts I’d prepared slipping from my mind, leaving me empty and trembling. “Don’t ever talk to me again,” I say. “Don’t call me. Don’t come to my house. We’re done, Matt.”
“No problem,” he spits. He rolls up his window and speeds off.
I close my eyes, letting the rain soak me through, and my stomach floats upward within me, the sensation that lets me know the world’s changing around me. When I open my eyes again, the buildings are gone, replaced by rolling hills and thick thriving woods that shimmer and shake in the rain, but I set off toward where Alice’s building should be anyway.
With the buildings gone, it’s like Matt doesn’t exist. Like no one exists and so nothing bad can happen. The whole world feels safer and more tender, but I can’t stop crying and shaking.
I just need to keep going. Don’t think about Matt. Don’t think about the countdown or even about Beau. I’m getting closer to understanding everything. The whole world, and my place in letting it be born. If I just keep going, everything and everyone will be okay.
With a jerk in my center, Alice’s building pops back into view. I go inside, climb the stairs, and wind down the hallway to her office. “Cancel the rest of your appointments today,” I say when she and Dr. Wolfgang, the hypnotherapist, look up from her untamed desk.
“No can do,” she says, turning the page in her notebook. “It’s your responsibility to get here on time, and if you can’t manage that—”
“I know who the Others are.”
Alice pales. “Dr. Wolfgang, I think we’re going to have to reschedule.”
“Alternate realities occupying the same physical space,” Alice says, drumming her fingers on her mouth. “I’ve never seen concrete evidence before, but it makes sense.” She scribbles in her notebook, stops writing for a moment, and starts drawing tight circles with her pen as she hmmms.