The Secret Sea (18 page)

Different letters. Different fashion. Different accents.

Different lighting. Different cars. Different Manhattan.

All Khalid wanted was a sign for a hospital. Or a doctor. Or a pharmacy.

Where Sixth should have met Waverly Place, he finally got one.

*   *   *

The sign read
ART ST.,
but it should have said
WAVERLY PLACE
. Khalid recognized the bend of Greenwich Avenue a block ahead, which meant that this was Waverly, no matter what the sign said.

He didn't really care, though. All he cared about was the store on the corner, the one that looked exactly like a good ol' Duane Reade, even though the sign said
COHEN & CO.,
with the two
C
s interlocked like chains. He resisted the urge to dash across the street and run into the store, not wanting to draw attention to himself. He was too tired to run, anyway.

Inside, the cool blast of air-conditioning revived him for a moment. He got his bearings—the place looked like any other drugstore he'd ever seen. He wandered the aisles. Fortunately, there were no additional letters here. Most of the brand names seemed familiar: Advil, NyQuil, and others were all on display. There were others that he'd never seen before: Paramol, Na-Prox, Bellsyn.

Think, Khalid. Think. You're not gonna find it over the counter, right? It's gotta be with the pharmacist.

He meandered to the back of the store, where the pharmacy counter was. A metal grate—just like back home—had been lowered, and a sign revealed that the pharmacy would be open again at 8:00
AM
.

Great. What was your plan, anyway? To ask
real nice
for some heart medicine?

He mentally kicked himself. He had to do better than this. He had to have a plan. Moira was the genius, but Khalid was good at tricking people. There had to be some story he could tell that would get him the medicine he needed.

But even then, he'd have to wait until morning. And by then Zak could very easily be—

Nope. Uh-uh. Not going there. Road closed ahead. Do not enter.

Taking a new route to the front of the store, he passed a nutrition display. The cardboard cutout showed a guy wearing an impressively expansive Afro and no shirt, revealing huge shoulders and arms. He looked kind of like Barack Obama, which made Khalid shake his head in disbelief. The guy—Obama or not—thrust a foil-wrapped package directly at Khalid, and a word balloon from his mouth read
Try a BarryBar™!
Underneath was a series of cardboard shelves laden with foil-wrapped bars. Khalid groaned quietly at his hunger. Would anybody
really
notice if he swiped one? Would anyone
really
care?

And then they catch you on a security camera and then you get arrested and then you can't help Zak and then everything goes south.

No one was in line at the cash register. Khalid was tempted to beg the guy behind the counter for a BarryBar, for anything at all. But the guy was paying Khalid no mind, instead engrossed in his phone. It was thinner than any phone Khalid had ever seen, no thicker than sturdy cardboard, and it seemed, as best he could tell from his angle, to be all screen.

But there was a familiar logo on the back.

An idea occurred to Khalid.

“Hey,” he asked the guy, “where's the nearest Apple Store?”

 

THIRTY-ONE

Moira found herself hypnotized by the shallow, but steady rise and fall of Zak's chest.
Steady
was the operative word. At least he was breathing, if not deeply. He was in and out of consciousness, sweating, and she could do nothing for him. Absolutely nothing. She'd never felt so powerless and so guilty in her entire life.

She was the one who'd said it was okay for Zak to leave the hospital. With five minutes on Google and her own pride, she'd condemned Zak to dying in an alleyway in a universe not his own.

My darlin' genius lass
, her dad crooned often to her, stroking her hair with pleasure at another straight-A report card, another glowing teacher report, another award or prize or commendation. And Moira had liked the praise, slurped it up like soup, even though she'd known a horrible truth her parents had never known: that she didn't deserve any of it.

Oh, she earned the grades and accolades, sure. But it was
easy
for her. Slide a test paper on the desk in front of her and the answers seemed to glow with their own inner light. It was just a matter of picking them.
Easy peasy, play Parcheesi
, Khalid had singsonged in their youth. That was the world of school to her, and she reaped praise for it.

But shouldn't praise come for hard work? Shouldn't it come for something she struggled with and conquered?

But the world kept telling her she was a genius, and so when the time came, she never even considered for a moment that she might read Zak's chart wrong or misunderstand some of the jargon she'd read on her phone. And she'd taken him out of the hospital, and now …

Zak coughed and came to, groaning, his hands flapping weakly for a moment as though seeking purchase midfall. She knelt down next to him.

“Don't worry,” she said. “Don't worry. Khalid will be back soon.”

She hoped. With their phones ruined after their unforeseen swim, she had no way to tell how long he'd even been gone. It was getting darker out, but the omnipresent glow from the buildings around them kept her from telling how late it was.

The alleyway smelled exactly like an alleyway would and should, in any universe. She and Khalid had laid Zak down with his head and shoulders inside an old packing crate of some sort. It wasn't made of cardboard—it consisted of a milky white sort of material that felt like plastic but was soft. Better to have his head in there than on the hard, filthy ground.

The alleyway was so familiar that for a moment she doubted her own hypothesis about traveling to another universe. But the Broadway Canal flashed in her memory, and she knew she was right. Tommy had said there was a special, powerful connection between him and Zak. That connection had somehow been powerful enough to breach the wall between “apartments” and pull Zak through, with Khalid and Moira along for the ride.

Fortunately, this universe was similar enough to their own. She imagined it was analogous to the evolution of marsupials and placentals. Or even the duck-billed platypus. They were all mammals, but they had little tweaks and distinctions because of their environments. But you'd never think a kangaroo wasn't a mammal.

Save it for your memoirs, Moira. Zak needs you
here
, not theorizing.

She leaned in to blot at the beads of sweat on Zak's forehead with the end of her shirt, which had managed to dry by now.

Zak's eyes fluttered open and jittered back and forth until they focused on her.

“All I want is to see my brother,” Zak said, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I just want to see him again. There aren't even any pictures of him in the house, Moira. It's like they erased him. I just want to see him one more time.”

“You will. I promise.”

Zak sniffled unself-consciously and wiped his eyes. “Can you do something for me?”

She knew immediately what he wanted. She could just tell. She could always tell, with Zak. “Sure, laddie,” she said with her mother's brogue.

Zak smiled at that and attempted a small laugh, then without warning closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Or passed out. She couldn't really tell and didn't dare try to waken him to be sure. She figured he needed to rest, and even if he didn't … there was nothing else for him to do. Better unconscious or asleep than awake, in pain, worrying.

She wished she could run the streets of Manhattan. Cross the island from east to west and north to south, screaming for a doctor, a pharmacist, anyone who could help. She cursed the summer weather. Neither she nor Zak wore enough clothing that they could sacrifice a piece for her to fashion into a scarf to cover her stupid bright red hair. Maybe it wasn't even anti-Irish sentiment. It could actually just be that hair of hers. There were old superstitions and prejudices about redheads in her own world. People used to think red hair meant someone was evil. Throw in green eyes and they were convinced you were a werewolf, too. Maybe those prejudices lingered here, as crazy as that sounded. Then again, weren't all prejudices crazy and stupid? No reason why this one couldn't persist. Most likely people didn't even remember
why
they hated redheads—they just always had.

She glanced around the alleyway, thinking that if she found something sharp, maybe she could even cut off her hair. Anything to let her go out into the streets and look for a way to help Zak.

“Hey, there,” someone said. “What's the snap?”

What's the
snap
?
she wondered, pulling away from Zak and turning around. An older boy—he had to be fifteen or sixteen—sauntered toward her from the mouth of the alley. He wore a red-striped shirt with a patch in the shape of a top hat sewn onto the left breast, and torn gray jeans over boots. He grinned and licked his lips.

“Chap and
chica
, looking for some privacy?” he asked. He pronounced
privacy
the way she'd heard British people say it:
PRIH-vuh-see
.

“We're not hurting anyone,” she said with a bravery she didn't actually feel. Who knew what the laws were like in this universe? For all she knew, it was illegal to hang out in an alleyway.

“Never said you were. But the snap's suspish, don't you think?” He kept coming closer. Moira grimaced. She could easily dodge around him and dart out the end of the alley, but that would leave Zak alone. Defenseless.

She stood up as tall as she could, shoulders back. “Leave me alone. Now.” She hated to add the next part; it made her feel weak. But she had no choice. “I'll scream.”

His eyes lit up. “A screaming
chica
! You go ahead, little red.” He stopped three or so yards from her, grinning. He cracked his knuckles. “Scream all you want. Makes no never mind to why tee. The snap's all the same.”

Moira clenched her fists and checked around quickly, not wanting him to know she was looking, if at all possible. All the cans and bottles in the alleyway were made of some kind of lightweight plastic that was half-dissolved in most cases. None of them would be useful. But there was a loose chunk of concrete just to the left of her foot. And just beyond
that …

“Leave us alone,” she warned. “This is the last time I'll tell you.”

He burst out laughing, as though it was the funniest joke in a string of them. She took advantage of his momentary distraction to stoop and snatch up the piece of concrete. It was a wee bit too big for her hand, but she did her best, hurling it at him with all her strength.

She'd aimed for his center of mass, but the size of the chunk threw her off—it struck him along his right hip, hard enough that he hopped back three steps, howling.

“What the snapping hell!” he bellowed, clutching his side. “You
frau!
You better—”

By then she'd already grabbed the second thing she'd seen on the ground, a wooden plank roughly two feet long. It was split at one end, but otherwise looked—and, now,
felt
—sturdy.

The boy had recovered by now and approached her, though as he closed in, she noticed with satisfaction that he limped on his right side. He snarled.

“Best drop that right now,” he commanded in the tone of one who was used to being obeyed. “Best drop it
right snapping now
!”

“How about I let you have it instead?” she asked, and swung.

Moira had never really cared much for baseball, but she'd done her share of playing it during phys ed at school. And while sports weren't her thing, physics and geometry
were
 … and hitting a baseball was all about physics and geometry. The proper stance. The right swinging angle. The correct amount of force.

Aiming for center mass again, she thwacked him along his shoulder. Hard. He yelped and stumbled to his left, a look of pure shock etched on his face. He truly, honestly could not believe she'd struck him.

“What do you think—”

He didn't get to finish, because Moira reared back and smacked him again. This time, the piece of wood glanced off his shoulder and fetched up alongside his head. The force of the blow was so terrific that the wood shattered at that end. The flesh of his cheek ripped; a spike of wood caught there and jutted out like the world's ugliest piercing. The boy howled in abject pain and clapped a hand to his face to stanch the blood. Blood poured from his ear, too.

“What the … What are you
doing
?” he whined.

The wood in her hands was shorter by several inches now, but the business end projected with wicked, sharp spikes.

“Teachin' you not to mess with the Irish, laddie,” she said.

He backed away from her, still pressing a palm against the gush from his face. “You're in Dutch now! I'll be back! You cow! You stupid, clucking hen!”

Before she could say anything in response, he turned and ran from the alley. Moira actually ran forward several steps, ready to chase him down and re-introduce him to the end of her plank, but she stopped herself almost immediately.

She couldn't go after him. Her hair.

And besides. There was Zak.

“I'll be back!”

She was sure he would be. And this time, she wouldn't be able to surprise him. Despite the warmth, she began to shiver. Who knew what he would return with? A knife? A gun? Maybe just a couple of big friends. That's all it would take.

She rushed to Zak's side. He'd slept through the whole thing. His skin was pale and damp; when she touched his wrist to feel his thready pulse, his flesh was clammy.