Page 1 of Meet Me in Another Life

Part I

Welcome to Forever

Thora wishes she could start again.

She wishes she hadn’t dyed her hair blue, or worn the clashing orange pinafore dress that screams trying-too-hard-to-be-interesting. Above all, she wishes she hadn’t come here, to the thudding crush of the international students’ welcome party. The music rises another notch, obscuring what the boy in front of her is shouting.

“What?” she yells.

He leans close to her ear.“I said, I really feel like we’ve met before!”

She gives him a weak smile and throws back the rest of her half-empty red wine. Shaking the glass in explanation, she slips past him through the dark, strobing space, pushing the bar on the fire escape Out, she thinks with sudden desperation, let me out—to emerge into the cold wind outside.

“Whose idea was this?” she asks the cobbled square, the reconstructed façade of Cologne’s old town. “Who holds a ‘get to know you’ event where no one can hear what anyone’s saying?”

The city doesn’t offer an answer. But Thora knows the noise wasn’t really the problem. The problem was her. Since shestepped out of the Hauptbahnhof three days ago, she has felt a wall between her and everyone else, impenetrable and invisible as glass. She came to this party hoping the music and the drink would blast through it. Instead, she feels like she has spent the night screaming at her own reflection. Nothing from the other side came through.What are you studying? Physics, no way! Where are you from?Echo after echo of the same question, each leaving her more alone than the last.

She walks, not knowing where she’s going. A breeze blows her hair back, cools her heated face. To her right, the square leaks out through narrow alleyways to the flat silk of the Rhine. To her left, past a grassy courtyard, a ruined clock tower points toward the sky, hands frozen at seven minutes to twelve.

Thora doesn’t believe in fate. Still, she thinks some paths are better than others. Here, in her first week of university, on the threshold of so many futures, she feels a sick sense of vertigo. This is supposed to be where her life begins, and already she’s taken a wrong turn. Why can’t she be happy with one party, one city, one planet? What made her this way, gave her this ghost at the corner of her eye?

At the courtyard gate, she stops. Ignoring the padlock and chain, she vaults the railings and drops into the grass, following her shadow until it disappears. Ten steps bring her into a new world, quiet and roofed by stars. Thora breathes in like a swimmer surfacing from a long dive. She’s about to lie down on the grass when she sees someone has beaten her to it: a boy, spread-eagled, head thrown back like he’s trying to inhale the universe.

Someone else might thrill at encountering a kindred spirit. Thora only resents him: this space was hers, and he has taken it from her. She hovers on the grass, orbiting two possible worlds. She’s alone, and it’s dark: she should keep her distance. He’sdrunk, maybe passed out: she should check on him. She sucks in a breath and takes a bet on the second world. “Hallo?” she says. “Um—ist alles okay?”

The boy scrambles to his feet. Thora takes him in. Wide eyes and curly black hair, good-looking in a way that puts her on edge in case he knows it. Short, even accounting for the fact that most people are short from Thora’s five-foot-eleven perspective.

“Englisch?” he says hopefully.

“Oh. Yeah. Please.” She laughs. “As you may have noticed, my German is basically English in a German accent.”

He looks over his shoulder at where he was lying, as if he owes her an explanation. “I was just—” He cuts himself off. “Santiago López. Santi.” The accent matches the name. It takes Thora a moment to register that he’s actually put his hand out for her to shake.

She takes it. “I thought you were passed out. I was coming to check on you.”

“You kidding me? The beers in that club were five euros. I couldn’t afford to pass out.” He looks like he’s laughing at her. “Do you have a name?”

“Of course. Introductions, that’s how they work.” She continues absurdly shaking his hand. “Thora Lišková.”

He lets go of her hand to point at her. “You sound like you’re from England. But your name doesn’t.”

One blessing of the loud party: it kept this conversation from happening.Explain your existence!Thora sighs, hoping to keep it short. “My dad’s Czech and my mum’s from Iceland, but I grew up in the UK.” She shrugs. “Academics. You know how it is.”

He runs a hand self-consciously through his hair. “Well, my father is a bus driver and my mother works in a shop, so—no, I don’t.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I mean—I’m not sorry they’re—” Every word pushes her on to a worse path. What right does he have to do this to her? She laughs under her breath. “Shit. You know what, I’m just going to start introducing myself as Jane Smith from now on.”

Santi throws his hands up in mock-apology. “Sorry for trying to start a conversation.”

“I didn’t ask for a conversation.” She hugs herself, looking up at the stars. “I just wanted to come outside and be alone.”

“Of course. I’m sorry I trespassed in your private city.” He bows mockingly and walks away.

Thora cringes. “Wait.”

Santi turns.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “This whole night—I’ve spent it failing to get through to anyone. I thought it was the noise, or everyone else, but I guess it’s just me. And now—”

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