The Universes Inside the Lighthouse Read online

  Ben, who had not been completely oblivious to nor opposed to Emma’s flirtations, noticed that Emma and Charlie had stopped two-stepping and were now looking off to the side. He came and joined them, giving Emma a quick side-hug.

  “Hey, guys! What are we looking at?” he said. Then, seeing The Girl, his eyes lit up. “That’s her!”

  Suddenly, Emma was not so sure about this plan anymore. Although she had been the one to bring Ben in on this mystery from the start, she now wished she hadn’t. Looking at The Girl, she knew she couldn’t compete. Where her own shoulder-length hair was a nice-enough dark auburn, The Girl’s was shimmery blonde, almost white, the color of starlight, glowing in the late afternoon sun. Her skin was flawless, as if it were lit from within. She moved with grace and poise. Emma was certain The Girl was also confident and smart, outgoing and funny and fun. All the things she knew her own awkward, slightly weird, strange-humored, self-conscious, shy self not to be.

  And, of course, both Ben and Charlie were gawking at The Girl.

  “Well, well, well, my man!” said Charlie. “No time like the present!” Regardless of whether he saw Ben as competition, he was not going to wait for the other young man to make the first move. Before either Ben or Emma could say a word, Charlie was across the dance floor and by The Girl’s side.

  By the time Ben and Emma caught up, Charlie already had The Girl laughing.

  Manifesting the warm, welcoming confidence that Emma remembered so well, Ben joined in the laughter without knowing what was funny and immediately extended his hand. “I’m Ben,” he said, holding The Girl’s hand slightly longer than Emma thought was really necessary.

  The Girl flashed a smile of perfect teeth. “I’m Eve,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too! I live here,” said Ben, his arms wide to indicate all of Wishing Rock, “and I thought I knew just about everyone, but I don’t think we’ve met. Do you live on the island?”

  The charisma and self-assurance emanating from both Ben and Eve made Emma wince with envy. She couldn’t begrudge Ben being nice to The Girl. After all, she liked that about him: he was kind and friendly to everyone. Still, she felt a lump of jealousy growing in her chest, and part of her wanted to run away. Emma could sense that Charlie now shared her own misgivings about this plan. This was not going according to script at all.

  “No,” said Eve, averting her eyes, “we’re just visiting.”

  “From Seattle?” said Charlie, reasserting his presence. Reaching for an empty cup with one hand, he held out an open palm to the punch bowl while looking at Eve, his raised eyebrows asking whether she’d like a drink. She shook her head. Charlie dipped the long-handled scoop into the punch bowl and poured himself a glass, then poured another for his sister.

  “No, we’re not local.” Eve smiled and offered no more information. “Are you two from Wishing Rock, as well?” She looked from Charlie to Emma.

  “We’re just visiting the island for the summer,” said Emma, sipping her drink carefully so as not to spill it. “We’re staying in a cabin up north a bit. You said ‘we’—who’s ‘we’? Is it that man you were with a couple minutes ago?”

  Eve nodded. “That’s my dad,” she said.

  “So, where are you from?” Charlie asked. “‘Not local’ doesn’t tell us much! Unless ’Not Local’ is the name of a city I haven’t heard of?” He laughed at his own joke.

  Eve laughed, too, a soft, gentle laugh that Emma suspected would be described as “like the wind.” “No, we’re not from around here. A ways away. Nowhere you’ve heard of, I’m sure.”

  “But you’ve been to the island before?” asked Emma. Normally, she wouldn’t be so direct, but this girl was clearly evading their questions.

  And she managed to do so again, as her father walked up and draped an arm over his daughter’s shoulders. “Hello!” he said. “I’m Milo.” He reached out a hand to Charlie.

  “Charlie,” said Charlie, shaking Milo’s hand.

  “Ben,” said Ben, next in line for the handshakes.

  “I’m Emma,” said Emma, “Charlie’s twin. Nice to meet you. We were just asking Emma about your past visits to the island?”

  Like father, like daughter. He avoided the question and instead turned to Eve. “We have to go now,” he said; then, to Charlie, Ben, and Emma, “I’m so sorry … uh, some friends just called. They need us to …” He trailed off without finishing.

  Eve looked torn but resigned. “Nice to meet you all,” she said. “Maybe we’ll meet again one day.”

  “I hope so,” said Charlie, setting his emptied cup on the table, “we’re only here for a couple more weeks. Come find us if you can. We’d love to see you.”

  Eve smiled and nodded. Without another word, she and her father left.

  “That’s just bunk,” Ben said, once the father and daughter were out of hearing distance. “What friends are they talking about? Everyone’s here.” He looked around at the hoedown crowd. While clearly not everyone on the island was actually in attendance, there were indeed many people on the dance floor and at the tables, chatting and catching up and having a grand old time.

  Emma agreed. “Total bunk,” she said. Regardless, she was relieved to see Eve go. But what had the other young woman meant with her cryptic, “Maybe we’ll meet again one day”? From the pictures at the lighthouse, it was obvious she had been around for some time. Yet for some reason Ben had never met her, and she seemed to think it was possible they’d never meet again. They’d completed their mission: to find this strange girl. But meeting her left them with more questions than answers.

  The hoedown was over, but a few stragglers had gathered out on the lawn, dissecting the day, discussing who had shown up and who hadn’t, who had said what, who had danced with whom. The clean-up committee had more or less finished their tasks, leaving those who stayed behind to clean up after themselves before going in for the night. The group, including Emma, Charlie, and Ben, was sitting in a circle in the encroaching dark, some bundled in blankets, watching the sky as the stars started to come out, giving their presence to the night. Only the lights from the building illuminated the evening.

  Wishing Rock was made up of a menagerie of residents, some of whom had lived there for decades. None of them had recognized the strangers. And so Ben explained the unsolved mystery, with the help of Charlie and Emma—how Eve was in all the pictures at the Balky Point lighthouse, how she’d been at the parade, how they still knew nothing about her.

  “We were just curious about her,” said Ben. “Something seems strange in Eveland. Still does. Now more than ever.”

  “That’s why we had this potluck,” added Charlie. “We wanted to find her.”

  “Well, I’d say you accomplished that,” said Ed, who was bundled up with his wife, Ruby, tightly wound together in their hand-tied quilt like two caterpillars in a cocoon.

  “Yeah, but not really. Like she said, who knows if we’ll ever see her again?” said Charlie, feeling alone in his own blanket, wishing a young blonde companion would join him.

  “I’ll bet you a million dollars you’ll see her again,” said Ed with a mischievous grin.

  At this, Ben, who knew Ed’s sense of humor and also knew he wasn’t much of a gambler, was suspicious. He narrowed his eyes in the dim light. “Why? What do you know?”

  Ed replied by looking behind Ben and pointing with his chin to the space beyond the young man. “Too bad for me you didn’t take that bet. I’d have held you to it, you know.” He winked.

  Ben, Charlie, and Emma twirled around. In the fading light they could just see two figures approaching from the parking lot. The secretive father and daughter had returned and were walking toward the gathered group.

  The boys and Emma got up to greet the pair, meeting them a bit away from the rest of the group. Something’s different, thought Emma. Hadn’t Eve’s hair—now silvery in the moonlight—been loose before? It was in a ponytail now. But that’s not too unusual, she thou
ght; girls put their hair up and down all the time. As often as they changed …

  “Your clothes,” she said, out loud. “You changed.”

  Emma was sure she saw a fleeting moment of panic on Eve’s face, but perhaps it was just a trick of the moonlight.

  But then: “You changed too,” Emma said to Milo. “You both changed your clothes.”

  Piquing Emma’s suspicions, Milo and Eve ignored her completely.

  “Hey, again, kids! Say, we forgot to ask you something when we were here,” Milo said with an affectation of nonchalance. He presented a picture he was holding. “Have you seen this man? Ever? Not just recently, but … ever?”

  Something about the way he said the words made Emma pause. “Ever? Does he live here? For how long?”

  Charlie pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight to look at the picture. The bright light seemed harsh in the soft early evening, casting eerie shadows, blotting out stars, and making the night seem far darker than it was. The photo showed a young man, maybe early twenties, with harsh, uninviting eyes, the color of a raven. He was neither frowning nor smiling. The man’s ebony hair, shorter at the neck but longer on top, covered his forehead and curled slightly into his eyes. He was dressed all in black, dark like the night sky.

  Milo smiled at Emma’s question, but the light of the flashlight made the shadows of his cheeks creep up over his eyes. “That’s sort of hard to say. Just … have you seen him?”

  Charlie, too, was growing somewhat wary. “Do you have pictures from when he was younger? I mean, if he’s been here a while.”

  Eve cleared her throat. “Well, you see, he would always look like this, even if you saw him years ago.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other.

  “Just like you?” said Charlie. “Like you haven’t changed in a hundred years? I saw you at the parade and thought you were cute. But then Emma saw you in all the pictures at the lighthouse, and …”

  “… we knew we had to find you,” finished Ben.

  Eve looked at the tall, dark-haired young man. “You were looking for me?” She laughed. In the light, it was hard to tell whether she blushed. She shook her head, dismissing the idea. “No, we just need to find this man. His name is Vik.”

  Emma, frustrated by jealousy, stomped her foot like a two-year-old. “No,” she said. “No, you can’t get off that easily. You’ve been avoiding our questions all night. Who are you, how are you possibly in all those pictures, looking the same every time, years apart, decades apart? Who is Vik? Why wouldn’t he have aged either? What is going on? This Vik, if you think he’s here, why don’t you just find his house? Where does he live? Who are you?” She stopped and breathed heavily, as though winded by the weight of all her swirling thoughts.

  Eve turned her head to Milo, a question in her eyes. He nodded.

  “Well. That’s just the thing, isn’t it.” Eve glanced back at the rest of the group on the lawn, chatting amongst themselves with great animation, all but oblivious to the conversation going on in the shadows.

  “Can you keep a secret?” she said.

  chapter three

  “All right, so, the thing is … we’re aliens,” Eve blurted out, the words she’d been holding in erupting out of her like a burst dam.

  Eve, her father, the twins, and Ben had found an empty setting of hay bales farther away from the sharp ears of Wishing Rock residents. After settling down and a bit of hemming and hawing, Eve delivered the implausible news.

  Emma, Ben, and Charlie stared, saying nothing at first. What was there to say? Of course, aliens, Emma thought. Why wouldn’t they be aliens? And if they were, of course they’d just tell everyone. That makes perfect sense. She couldn’t even think of how to respond to such an outrageous story.

  Charlie spoke first. “So, you mean, alien, like from a foreign country? Are you … Canadian? Eh?” He chuckled.

  Ben, who had magically landed a spot on the two-seater hay bale with Eve, laughed, but then nodded. He nudged Eve with his elbow. “So, Canadian? Canada’s cool. I like maple syrup.”

  “No,” said Milo, from his own hay bale next to his daughter. “Not Canadian. Alien aliens. We’re … not from this planet.”

  Eve nudged Ben back. “Technically, from our point of view, you guys are the aliens,” she said, punctuating her statement with her twinkling ethereal laugh.

  “We are the aliens,” repeated Emma. She was sitting on the hay bale on Ben’s other side, but not the same hay bale as Ben. A hay bale from a distant planet, as far as she was concerned. An alien hay bale. An invisible alien hay bale. “But you’re on our planet.” This made no sense.

  “Well, yes,” said Eve. “But we’re layered on your planet, or you’re layered on ours. We’re layered. So in a way none of us is an alien. Or all of us are.”

  This is definitely making less and less sense, thought Emma. Who are these people, and what are they playing at? “‘Layered’? What do you mean by ‘layered’?” She looked around. As far as she—or any rational person—could see, there was one planet here, and one planet only.

  “Where to start,” said Eve. She looked at her father for help.

  “Okay,” began Milo. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands gesticulating to help him explain. “First thing to know is that this island is what’s known as a ‘thin spot.’”

  Charlie shook his head. “Wait, I’m still getting past the part where you’re not Canadian. You’re alien aliens? Like, you’re from another planet? Is that possible? That’s not possible. Travel through space and all that, I thought it would take millions of years for any aliens to get here, and that’s if they even exist.” He looked at Eve. “You are definitely not millions of years old,” he said. He looked at Milo. “I doubt you are, either.”

  Milo laughed. “Thank you, Charlie, I am indeed not millions of years old, and neither is Eve. I suppose we misspoke. We’re not from another planet. Rather, we’re not just from another planet. We’re from another universe.”

  Ben stood up, this new bit of information too much to take sitting down. “Another universe? Are you kidding us? Not just another planet but another universe? Do you understand Latin roots? The ‘uni’ in ‘universe,’ do you know what that means? That means ‘one.’ Because there’s one universe. Like the word ‘unique,’ it doesn’t mean there’s more than one like it, it means there’s just the one. Just the one … que. Whatever a que is. But there’s just one of it. There’s one universe, and this is it.” He squinted at Milo. “Who are you, really? What do you want?” He paced as he talked, and Charlie took the opportunity to slip from his own solitary hay bale into the coveted spot Ben had left open next to Eve.

  “I believe you,” Charlie said. “I mean, I’m keeping an open mind. I had no idea aliens would be so pretty. This is why I believe in the school of life, people.” He winked at his sister. “You don’t learn things like this in high school.”

  With a grin, Eve reached out and gave Charlie a one-arm hug. “Silly Earthlings,” she joked. “No, we’re real aliens, Ben. No lies. Total truth. And we’re really from another universe. That’s what Dad was about to explain.”

  Ben sat back down, this time taking the open spot next to Emma. Emma subtly shifted herself ever so slightly closer to the warmth of the young man’s riled-up body. “If you’re aliens, what are you doing on this island?” she said. Then, realizing her insult to Ben’s home, added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with Dogwinkle. It’s a beautiful place.”

  Ben absentmindedly patted Emma’s knee. Emma’s heart fluttered in her throat.

  “As I was saying,” said Milo, “Dogwinkle is a thin spot. Think of a quilt. You know those simple quilts some people make, just layer upon layer of cotton batting, tied together every few inches with pieces of yarn? Imagine that each layer of cotton batting is a universe. And those points where everything is tied together, those are thin spots. At thin spots, the universes are right on top of each other, almost intermingling. At thin spots, everythin
g is possible.”

  Over at the other group of party-goers, Emma saw her parents, Ed and his wife, Ben’s parents, all the others. They were laughing, raising their glasses of wine or punch now and then to emphasize a point of conversation (those who were not completely bundled up in blankets, anyway), oblivious to the idea that there could be—Emma was only willing to give the idea a “could be” status—people from another universe just yards away from them. She wanted to stay annoyed with Eve, but Emma couldn’t help but be intrigued. Another universe? Layered right on top of her own? If—if—that were possible, if it were true, suddenly Earth felt both tiny and infinite.

  Emma decided to go along with this alien deceit, for the time being, for fun. “So Dogwinkle is a thin spot. What difference does that make? Why did you pick this island? Why are you here? And that guy, Vik, why is he here? Why are you looking for him? Is he an alien, too? Is he on the run from the law? Are you bounty hunters? And how long have you been here? We saw pictures of you at the lighthouse. You’ve been here for more than a hundred years. Can you please explain?” Emma felt as though she had a universe of questions growing inside her.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Milo. “One thing at a time! We’re here because it’s a thin spot. On our planet we’ve only discovered interuniverse travel, travel between the universes, in the last hundred years—about a hundred of your years, that is. Our scientists are working on new discoveries every day, but at this point, we only know how to travel at thin spots. That’s where we’ve found the elevators.”

  “Elevators?” gasped Charlie in disbelief. This was only getting better. First aliens, now aliens traveling in elevators. “You came here in an elevator?”

  Milo held up his hands. “No! Ha, sorry, my mistake. We just call them elevators. They’re not literal elevators. They’re … doorways, I suppose. Portals. Here on Earth, as far as we’ve discovered, every elevator is in a lighthouse. That’s rare in the universes, actually, and it indicates that maybe someone knew about the elevators, somehow, when the lighthouses were being built. Most elevators on other planets are just in random spots. The middle of a field, at the edge of an island, could be anywhere. But here, they’re all in lighthouses.”