“When did you talk to her?”
“Friday night, late. Or I guess early Saturday morning.”
“This past weekend? Where is she?”
“She wouldn’t say. She didn’t trust me. Imagine that,” he said.
I couldn’t believe he’d talked to her only three days ago. She had to be free from Berg.
“What’s her number?” I demanded.
“Not happening.”
“Linus, she’s me,” I repeated. “I have to find her. I can help her.”
“I don’t think so. She wasn’t particularly pleased to know you’d called me.”
“You told her about me?” I was so excited. “What did she say?”
“I told you. She’d never heard of anybody named Althea.”
Right. She wouldn’t know about me. For all she knew, I didn’t survive when I leapt out of our mind and left her behind. She had no clue I was seeded into anybody else. Come to think of it, she’d been furious when I was leaving, so she might still be mad at me. How strange it was to be imagining what the other version of me was thinking about this version of me. It was like a Ping-Pong match between the same player.
“Listen, I know this is hard to believe,” I said. “But if I could just talk to Rosie, I know I could make her understand.”
“Good luck with that. She’s not answering her phone.”
“Haven’t you tried to find her?” I asked. “I know Berg had her at the Onar Clinic in Colorado. I have that address.”
“Of course I’ve looked for her,” he said. “She’s in hiding. She said she was with friends, but when I tracked the address connected to her phone number and paid a visit, they said they didn’t know her. Then they said the phone I was tracking was stolen. I think they’re lying, but for now, I’ve hit another wall. She doesn’t want to be found, and they’re keeping her secrets.”
“I don’t have any friends in Colorado,” I said, puzzled. “Who were they?”
“A teenage girl and her older sister. They were getting ready for their mom’s return from deployment overseas.”
I gnawed the inside of my cheek. “How long do you think Rosie’s been away from Berg?” I asked.
“She said a couple weeks. We didn’t talk long. She was kind of scattered, honestly.”
“Upset?”
“Yes. And different,” he said. “I couldn’t put my finger on it. You talk much more like the Rosie I knew, except your voice is wrong.”
A little thrill hit me. “Then you believe me?”
“I don’t know what to believe, but I agree we have to find her,” he said. “Where do you think she’d go? Back to Doli?”
That seemed doubtful. I was pretty mad at my parents and she probably was, too. “When I tried to call home, my parents didn’t believe I was me because of my new voice. They’ve blocked me.”
“What’s your last name?” he asked.
I hesitated only a second. “Flores. From Holdum, Texas. You aren’t going to tell anybody about me, are you?”
“What do you think I am? The host of a TV show? Just kidding,” he said. “I won’t say anything.”
I could hear typing on his end, and then a pensive humming.
“What?” I said.
“This Althea Flores I’ve found was in a motorcycle accident last fall. She was in a coma.”
“That’s right. For six months. I woke up at the Chimera Centre in Iceland. It’s a private hospital and research center.”
“This girl is kind of athletic and Hispanic looking. Big eyes, maybe blue. Are you saying that’s you?”
“That’s me,” I said. “But my eyes are gray. I’ve gained some weight lately, too.” Understatement.
“Who’s this Tom Barton?” Linus said. “Your boyfriend?”
“Althea’s boyfriend,” I said.
A contemplative tapping came over the line, like Linus was beating something with a pencil. “Does he know about the real you?”
I picked at the hem of my shirt. “Not exactly. I’ve only met him once. Yesterday. He knows about my Rosie-ness in theory, but I can tell he doesn’t get it.”
“So he doesn’t know about me yet then, either.”
“No,” I said. “Should he?”
More tapping noises from his end.
“Your voice is all Texas and you look completely different, but otherwise, you do sound a lot like her,” he said. “Even this wildly unlikely story about being in another body is the sort of thing she’d come up with. This was always my problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was nobody else like Rosie Sinclair,” he said. “Ever. She was, I don’t know. Herself. Completely original. Completely, just, Rosie.”
It was the nicest compliment I’d ever had, and the hardest, too, because it applied to a girl I could never be again. “You are the only one who’s ever come close to understanding who I am,” I said.
A silence stretched between us like a long, fragile thread.
“Even though it’s impossible, I guess I want it all to be true,” he said finally. “I miss her.”
An ache tightened in my chest. “Me, too,” I said.
What a bizarre thing to share with him. I stared absently toward the window.
“Do you think she’d come back to Forgetown?” he asked.
Leaning back against my pillow, I remembered Forge and the other people I’d known there, like Burnham and Janice. I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever get them to believe I was Rosie. At least with Linus, I had some inside information from our private conversations.
“She’ll come and find you,” I said. “I don’t know when or where, but she will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
I glanced down at my hands. “She’ll want to see you,” I said.
It was what I’d want if I were her. I wondered if he understood this. He made a shifting noise with the phone on his end.
“She didn’t sound like she wanted to see me,” he said quietly. Then his voice became brisk again. “What should I call you? However you know Rosie, I can’t deny that you do.”
“I’m still Rosie, even though I’ve changed.”
“What should I call the other one, then?” he asked. “Rosie Two? Or are you Rosie Ego and she’s Rosie Id?”
I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. He had a point. I couldn’t keep claiming to be Rosie anymore, but I wasn’t Althea, either. I needed a name to reflect that. Althea still sounded to me like Diego and Madeline’s daughter from her pre-coma life. Tom called me Thea, and that worked a little better.
“You can call me ‘Thea,’” I said.
“Thea.” His Welsh accent gave the syllables an appealing lilt. “We should keep in touch, Thea. If I hear anything more from Rosie, I’ll let you know. You do likewise.”
He was wrapping it up. He was letting me go.
Perfectly understandable. I couldn’t blame him. I’d just failed, once again, to convince him of the truth.
“All right,” I said. “Sweet dreams.”
“You, too.”
20
ROSIE
WAFFLES2067
HOURS LATER, OUTSIDE BILLINGS, Montana, Ian and I pull into a gas station. The miles have worn our tension down to a latent threat, like the line of sand mix that edges the road and invites a skid. Ian gets out to pump. I pull on my boots, check my pocket for the vials and syringes, and step out, too.
“You should stay in the car,” Ian says.