The Art of Saving the World

at an awkward jog, her heels in the grass slowing her down. She kept looking around, jerking up at every noise, then hesitating as though unsure where to turn.
“Hey!” I shouted. A screeching noise nearby drowned out my voice. I tried again—“Hey, stop!”—but all she did was pick up her pace, going from a jog into a full-out run.
We cleared the barns, headed right for the house. She was ten yards ahead. She stumbled again, and I saw her crane her neck as if studying the house. She went around, slamming open the front door before disappearing inside.
I wanted to sit. Crash my ass to the ground and stare and keep staring until the world made sense. But I had to reach her. I had to see her face-to-face, to talk, to ask . . . to ask everything.
The house looked as though it’d been through an earthquake. A bookshelf had fallen, the books lying in scattered piles on the carpet, and the kitchen cabinets hung open. Broken glass covered the countertops. Something had flung into the TV, damaging the screen. I could still smell the pie from earlier, incongruous apple and cinnamon and dough and—normal.
A glimpse of red, dashing up the stairs. “Hey!” I shouted again.
She still didn’t slow.
I thundered up the stairs after her. She fled into Caro’s room and stopped abruptly. She looked left, right, left—nailed to the floor.
Then she turned.
Saw me for the first time.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
I stared at her, now only three feet away. The moonlight spilling in lit the room just enough to see her face.
My face.
She was wearing makeup. Shiny lip gloss. Blush. Mascara. A hint of pink on her eyelids. Her glasses looked like mine—narrow, black-rimmed, but weren’t quite the same, hers a little simpler, a little thinner . . .
But it was unmistakably, unquestionably, inescapably my face.
The same narrow nose. The same thin lips and the same long chin that, in my more frustrated moments, I thought of as horse face. Her eyes were too dark for me to see the color, but I would bet they were the same nondescript brown as my own, and she had the same mole above one eyebrow, and . . . it was all there.
I was looking in the mirror.
I was looking at some sort of . . . some sort of photoshopped, air-brushed version of my face, but my face nonetheless.
“What’s going on?” she wailed.
(Same voice, too.)
Her hands were tight fists, her face a panicked frown. “What’s—This can’t—
What’s happening?”
I couldn’t stop myself.
I reached out and touched her cheek.
She froze for a moment. Then she smacked my arm aside. She jumped forward, shouldering past me into the hall. She took long steps, her hair billowing out behind her, finally stopping near a painting that’d fallen from the wall. She turned.
“Where’s my room?” she cried. “Where am I?”
I pointed wordlessly at my bedroom door across the hall.
She didn’t move.
“What’s happening?” she repeated, softer now, her eyes scrunched up and wet.
“I think.” I cleared my throat. “I think you came through the rift.”
“The what?”
“You don’t know about the rift?”
Her panic-stricken face said enough.
My mind spun. I was worried about Mom running past the barns, and Dad in town, or perhaps on his way home by now. And about Carolyn and Marybeth and Neil and Imani and Amber-Lynn still at Franny’s, eating sorbets or ordering pancakes; maybe they’d already called their parents and gone home muttering about Hazel Stanczak’s childish party or gossiping about the agent in the diner.
And there was the rift. And the fires on the lawn. Agent Holloway. Director Facet’s phone. And this girl, this me-girl with a me-face and a me-voice . . .
The thoughts raced and twisted and clogged everything up.
All I could do was say: “I think you’re from a different dimension.”
“I’m what?”
I repeated it.
No response.
“You’re Hazel Stanczak,” I said.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“You were born on December third. Your sister is Carolyn Stanczak. Your mother is Sandra Stanczak—you saw her outside earlier. And your father is Ethan Yeo. And, and this is your house, just outside West Asher-ton, except the house looks bigger than you remember, and there aren’t as many barns where you live, and there’s no agents, no observation tower or fence . . . Right?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was so small.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
My legs could no longer carry me. I sank down in Caro’s doorway. The ground felt steady. Smooth. Calm. Everything I wasn’t.
She took a hesitant step closer. “I’m dreaming,” she whispered. “Right? Mom let me have that sip of wine for my birthday, and it interacted with my meds funny, and now I’m having the strangest, realest dreams.”
“It’s your birthday.” I sounded hoarse.
“Yeah.”
“Sixteen,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Mine, too.” I gestured at her dress. “That’s why . . . the clothes?”
She tugged at the rim of her dress. Nodded. “I’m dreaming.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But you’re not.”
She closed her eyes. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to wake herself up or calm herself down. Then she nodded again. She opened her eyes. Her breathing was sharp, trembling, but however scared she was, she still stepped closer. She crouched in front of me.
Her turn to reach out. I let her fingertips brush my cheeks, pluck my hair.
“How?” she asked.
“The rift.” I smiled wryly. “In the backyard. It’s like a hole through reality. One theory is that it teleports objects here. Another theory is that it’s a portal to another time or dimension.”
Researchers had spent sixteen years agonizing over that question. Just like this, an answer dropped into our laps. Nowhere on this Earth, nowhere in its past or future, was there another Hazel Stanczak with my face, my mole, my voice, my birthday, my family.
The rift connected to another dimension. I had an answer.
And countless new questions alongside it.
“It’s never sent people,” I said. “Not that they’ve told me about. You—”
“This rift—it’s not new? It’s been around a long time?” she asked suddenly.
“My whole life.”
“And you’re still living here?”
“Right. Here.”
If she didn’t have a rift, she must not understand how literally I meant that: Right here. This house, a one-and-a-half-mile radius, and