“And that’s possible.”
Alice’s head wobbles. “Oppenheimer—you know, the atom bomb guy—proved black holes were physically possible.”
“Wait—the ‘I am become Death’ guy?”
“The very same, though he was actually quoting from the Bhagavad Gita. Anyway, Einstein seemed to think wormholes were another logical step. But he also posited that a wormhole wouldn’t last long before collapsing.”
I sit forward. “You think there’s a wormhole in Union, Kentucky?”
“Of course not,” she says. “If there were, we’d all be experiencing time slips. I think there’s a wormhole . . . in you.”
I must be gawking. The idea that an eighteen-year-old girl who’s afraid of the dark might actually encompass a hole in time is almost funny. In an I-want-to-sob-in-the-shower kind of way.
“Think about it,” Alice hurries to add. Her sudden giddiness is in direct contrast to the desolation I feel in my abdomen. I imagine a tumbleweed rolling through my rib cage, then getting caught by the pull of my inner black hole and soaring off into darkness. “If all time is actually simultaneous—and the passage of it is an illusion—then maybe people like us have wormholes in our very consciousness. The other moments always exist, and an anomaly in our perception allows us to interact with them—which makes sense since this all started with a dream state. As soon as your consciousness stops traveling, it tries to snap back to where it should be on your time stream.
“It’s trying to wake up and perceive time as the human brain is meant to—in a linear fashion. Even if you could find the right time where Grandmother’s hiding, I doubt you’d be able to keep yourself there. I’m guessing the Closing is the point at which your perception gets locked back into place and starts moving along your moments as it should—exclusively forward, at a steady pace.”
“There has to be a way, though. If Grandmother can do it—”
“Theoretically, there is,” Alice says. “I don’t know that I’m on the money with all this. But assuming I am, I’m still convinced that hypnotherapy’s the key. Pinpointing that trauma, and using it to stimulate the brain activity that creates the visions—time slips—is our best bet.”
“What about Beau?” I say. “How does he fit into all of this? Is he a wormhole too?”
“Well, that’s the thing that doesn’t add up.” Alice stands and picks her way over to the whiteboard that’s wedged between the bookshelves. She draws a line on the board then starts scribbling branches stemming out from it until it looks like a sideways tree. “This is a totally different theory of time—what I call the ‘many worlds interpretation.’ In it, every decision or action has alternate possibilities. Parallel realities. This is the theory that allows for our Union to coexist with Beau’s, with the division having at some point been created by a decision or series of decisions.” She circles the last two branches she drew. “Hypothetically, even the smallest decision could create two different outcomes.”
My stomach contracts and my shoulders tighten. “Like maybe my parents didn’t decide to adopt me.”
Alice jams her mouth shut. “Or maybe your birth mother decided to keep you. Or maybe someone offered your mom a different job and in Beau’s world, you live in Timbuktu. Natalie, it could be anything—there’s no way to know that hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock one extra time couldn’t have been the point at which these two worlds split. The point is—the two theories don’t strike me as altogether compatible. We’re still missing something important.”
“Couldn’t both theories be true? I mean, what if it’s just one enormous, windy time Slinky with a zillion arms?”
“I have no idea. Believe it or not, I haven’t spent a ton of time studying time travel. I’ve made some calls to supposed experts, but if we’re being realistic, we probably know more than them at this point. They’re operating on math-based theories, with no experiential element.”
“And we’re following trails of silver light and your gut.” I drop my face into my hands and grip my hair near the scalp. “I don’t even care. I don’t need to understand how all this works, or even understand why. I just need to find Grandmother and figure out how to save Matt, or whoever else might be in danger, and we’re no closer to that than we were last week.”
I close my eyes until I’m sure no tears will come, then look up at Alice again. She’s back in her chair, her mouth screwed up and fine lines drawn between her brows. She leans forward and awkwardly covers my hand with hers. A few seconds pass, and she lets go and comes to sit beside me. “We’ll keep trying.”
“Someone’s going to die,” I whisper.
Alice sighs and leans her head back against the couch. “Maybe,” she says softly.