Page 101 of See You Yesterday

The lingering pain when we wake up.

“Oh my god,” I say quietly, tightening a fist around the pair of socks.

Lucie pauses patting moisturizer onto her face. “Jesus, Barrett. They’re just socks.”

The reason we’re trapped, the reason we always wake up back here. That place where, if Dr. Devereux is to be believed, parallel universes shouldn’t meet but do. The connection point.

It’s Olmsted.

DAY THIRTY

Chapter 38

“THIS HAS TO BE A mistake,” Lucie says in all her September 21 indignation.

“No,” I say calmly. “I don’t think it is. Excuse me.” I throw back the sheets and slip out of bed, grabbing a few things before shutting the door behind me, leaving Lucie and Paige staring.

In the eighth-floor laundry room, I open up every dryer until I find it: my missing sock, an innocent swatch of blue. As though it’s been waiting for me.

I get dressed right there in the laundry room, pulling up the socks like they’re battle armor, zipping up my favorite jeans, and smoothing a wrinkle in my Britney tee. I tie my hair back, preparing to wage war against the dorm that’s been out to get me since the very beginning.

We’re going home. We have to. Miles and I can’t have a real relationship in this vacuum—we need to move forward. And I can’t handle being the only one to remember the proposal, even if in some other dimension, some other Barrett is still celebrating with her mom and Jocelyn, throwing around ideas for their wedding. I want to give them a happily ever after in every timeline possible.

As always, my mom’s text arrives at half past seven. Right on time today, despite Olmsted’s terrible reception.

How do I love thee? Joss and I are wishing you SO MUCH LUCK today!

Thank you, I type. I’m going to need it.

“This is extraordinary,” Dr. Devereux says on the screen. Behind her, Ada Lovelace hops up onto an antique chest of drawers, her white tail flicking back and forth out of frame. “You visited me, and I gave you advice?”

We’ve just finished explaining our predicament to her—again. It’s ten to eight, and we were the first people in the physics library. Miles hooks a casual hand on the back of my chair. Casual—that’s what our touches have become. I want to be closer to you, this one says.

“Seventeen Grand Avenue,” I say.

Dr. Devereux’s eyes widen, and she leans in toward the screen, as though examining us more closely will jog her memory. “I haven’t had visitors in years.”

“You had this theory about connection points,” Miles says. “Places where parallel universes could send information to each other, where they just barely touch, even though they’re not supposed to.”

She nods, mouth half-open, tucking a strand of gray hair into that haphazard bun. If she didn’t believe us before, she definitely does now. “That’s right.”

“We thought,” Miles continues, “even though it seemed like a long shot, that if we found one of those connection points, we might be able to get home.”

“And we think we might know where it is.” I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. That we might really be this close. “Or at least the general area. So I guess what we’re wondering… is what we’d specifically have to do to get out of the loop.”

Dr. Devereux blinks at us. “You found one? You realize the odds of that must be one in a trillion, right? Less, even.” Ada Lovelace meows, clearly enjoying the sound of her voice, and Dr. Devereux beckons her to jump into her lap. “You have to understand, this is all theoretical. I could tell you something truly wild—you need to stand in a certain spot and speak a certain phrase directly into a northeastern-facing wind three times on the night of a full moon. But I wouldn’t know what’s going to happen if you do. It may very well be nothing.”

“We’ve dealt with plenty of that over the past few months,” Miles says. “You said something about getting to a place where the gravitational pull is strongest.”

“That does sound like something I’d say.” She tents her fingertips, considering all of this. “If it were me, yes, I might try getting as close to the center of the earth as possible—at the time of the reset. If you really have found a connection point, the gravitational force might be substantial enough to knock you back into your proper orbit.”

“Like… a basement?” I ask.

“Possibly,” she says. “There’s also the chance this is something else entirely, which I probably told you as well. You may have made a mistake, and the universe could be trying to set you two on the right path. In that case, it wouldn’t matter if you said the phrase only two times into a southern-facing wind on a moonless night. If the universe thinks you’re ready, then…”

“Then we’d go home.” Miles’s voice is strangely flat.

“Just to be clear,” I say, “there is no magic phrase, right?”

---