Page 53 of What If It's You?

And that’s when it hit me, the answer to Dana’s question just hours before.

When I’d slipped between worlds, I was almost always in the same place I’d just left, at least physically—the train platform, the Pixel lobby, the cheese section of Whole Foods. So if I found the right place to be, at the right time…could Imakeit happen?

It was a long shot at best. I wasn’t entirely sure that was the mechanism, for one thing, and even if it was, I couldn’t know precisely where I’d be inanother fucking universe.

But I could make a good guess. I only made it to Sunday night yoga maybe two weeks out of three, the serotonin rush it gave me leading into another workweek intoxicating but not always enough to overcomeLet’s just curl up and watch a movie and ignore the Sunday scaries. I didn’t know what World O Laurel did while I was gone, didn’t know whether she—I—might have taken a morning run and worn myself out, or opted for a gigantic burrito for dinner that made the idea of physical activity frankly ludicrous. But I had to imagine that other-me was feeling keyed up, the psychic toll of slipping in and out of lives lingering, if not in my memory bank, then at least in my body.

Please, Laurel, let that anxiety drive you to yoga, not to ice cream.

The class let out at eight, the bus I took home picked up at 8:08. If Iwasin that yoga class right now, I had…twenty-five minutes until other-me would be boarding a bus home to Ollie. Handshaking, I opened a rideshare app and dropped a pin near the bus stop, praying that someone was close enough to get me there on time.

Five minutes later, “Perry” pulled up outside the office. I slid into the back seat of his SUV, nerves crackling with anxiety.

“If it’s possible, can you try to, you know…hurry?” I flashed a pained smile. “I promise I’ll five-star you. And tip.”

His eyes flicked up to the rearview, assessing, then he shrugged.

“I can try. Can’t control the lights, though.”

The minutes ticked by as we picked our way along Cambridge Street, through the tangle around Harvard, down Mass Ave…7:58…8:00…8:03…

At precisely 8:06 he slid to a stop a few feet from the bus shelter. I yanked at the door handle, anxiety mounting. Down the block, I could see a gaggle of lithe women clustered outside the yoga studio, mats slung over their shoulders, crop tops visible beneath sleek hooded athleisure as they started to make their way to cars and Tstops or just lingered to chat with a friend. Some of them were even familiar.

“Oh, sorry, the child locks always turn on in this car,” Perry said, squinting at the panel at his elbow. Through the back window, I could see the lights of the bus approaching. I yanked at the handle again, uselessly. The little knob of the door lock had retracted fully, impossible to get my fingers around.

The bus slowed as a car pulled out of a spot down the street.8:07.

“Please,”I said, heart skipping around my chest as the bus started up again. “I need to get out of the carnow.”

“Did that do it?” He glanced back at me, noticed my frantic look. “Wait, that was the windows. How about now?”

With a tinyclickthe lock shot open.

“Thank you,” I choked out as I jerked open the door, spilling onto the sidewalk, not bothering to look back. I darted to the bus shelter, arriving just seconds before the bus lumbered up in front of it, panting with exertion and panic as the door creaked open.

I would be here in my real life, right? Ihadto be here.

“Are you getting on?” The driver raised a thin eyebrow at me.

“I just…I need to…” I clicked my phone to check the time.

8:09.

Had I already missed myself? I paced the length of the bus shelter, hoping to intersect with the other me at some point along its few feet of street frontage.

“Lady, I have a schedule to keep,” the driver said, clearly growing annoyed. I glanced around, waiting for the vertigo to slam into me, for the world to go dark at the edges, but I was stubbornly, insistentlyhere.

8:10.“Hello? You with me?”

“Sorry, I’ll, uh…I’ll catch the next one.”

With a huge eye roll the driver closed the door and pulled away, leaving me to sink onto the bench, body limp with despair. It had been a long shot, I’d known that, but it was the only idea I had.

The me in the other world—the me Ishouldbe—was probably curled up on the couch, head on Ollie’s thigh, both of us reading, or half-watching some random show, or just talking. And tomorrow she’d wake up in an apartment I had no access to in this world, and head in to work, and what was I going to do, keep trying to wait on specific stoops, slow down at specific points on the sidewalk, plant myself in the right place atexactlythe right moment and hope that I was right, not only about my other self’s schedule that day, but about this “same place, same time” thing even working in the first—

A wave of dizziness hit like a freight train. I sat up straight despite the vertigo, every nerve alight.It was happening.

The glowing8:11on my phone screen was starting to waver in and out of focus.

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