BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (25 page)

“Why is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Someone killed him.”

“Who?”

Damian squinted into the distance, eyebrows tight with concentration. “But this is his style,” he muttered, his voice scarcely a whisper, “but it can’t be . . .” Immediately, he shook his head, as if to clear it. “No, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“What’s whose style?”

“He fears his own reflections. He’s scared of one climbing into the source and replacing him, so whenever he crosses over into a broken symmetry, the first thing he does is off his own reflection.”

“You mean the
source
Charles? But we’re sealed off from him now. He can’t come down here.”

Damian raised his eyes to mine. “Unless he came down here
before
the mirror broke.”

I stared at him, and then the story clicked. “Because the SWAT team cornered him in the source. He must have escaped into our
mirror before it broke.”

“But
why?
” Damian rubbed his jaw, his eyebrows furrowed. “He knows better. He wouldn’t dare crossover in a building full of trigger happy SWAT officers. He’s guaranteed to get himself orphaned that way.”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

His eyes flicked to mine again. “What do you mean?”

“Charles was hiding something from us, right? You said so yourself. Maybe he knows another way out. A back door or something . . . a loophole in the system.”

He stared at me, unfazed. “A back door to what?”

“The source. Why else would he risk coming down here?”

Almost imperceptibly, his eyebrows nudged upward. “Like your father,” he whispered. “Charles crossed over and raided your house yesterday . . . what was he looking for again?”

The hollow thumps of my heart echoed. “My father’s diary.”

“The one he was carrying when he came out of the artifact chamber,” he said. “Blaire, we need to find Charles and figure out what he knows. We need that diary.”

***

There’s still hope
.

Damian eyed my Jeep, parallel parked in front of my house. “You’re positive you’re not home?”

“Trust me, Damian. Since I was spared the havoc you wreaked on my social life in this reflection, I can promise you I’ve just finished an expensive dinner and am now in a limo heading to a preparty at my hot date Josh’s house.”

“Well, whoop-dee-doo for Josh,” he said.

I used the spare and let us into the house and beelined for my bedroom, where I dragged a shoebox off the top shelf of my closet.

The police department had called a week ago to say I could pick up my father’s stuff
—
which I hadn’t had time to do in the source.

Down here, though, I would have picked it up first thing. And this box was where I’d put it. In my hands, the box felt light.

I opened it up and saw why.

“Empty,” said Damian, his arms crossed. “Where is it, Blaire?”

“I should have put it here.”

“Well, you didn’t,” he said. “Remember, these two months have diverged. Can you think of anyplace else you might have put it?”

“I probably studied it for answers, since I didn’t have you and Charles to explain things to me.” I strained, trying to remember some overlap from this other reflection. “It’s harder two levels down, isn’t it?”

“Overlap?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not something you can just will yourself to remember. Don’t worry about it, let’s just search the house. Most likely you left it somewhere obvious. By your bed, or in the living room . . . or in your locker at school.”

We divided the rooms and turned the house upside down. After searching for an hour, we met back in my bedroom, both empty-handed
—
except for a box of leftover Chinese food Damian was munching on.

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

“It’s from yesterday, not two months ago.”

“Give me that.” I snatched the box from his hand and piled some of the chow mein into my mouth. I was starving.

“So there’s a simple solution,” said Damian.

“I can tell I’m not going to like this,” I mumbled through a full mouth.

“Cute,” he said. “We’re going to find your reflection and just ask her where she put the diary.”

“No. We’re not supposed to
engage
our reflections, remember?”

“Considering we’ve already been orphaned, I think the rules have changed,” he said. “Where are you right now?”

“That’s right. I forgot you don’t do high school
—
I’m at this thing called
prom
.” I scarfed down another bite of noodles, slurping one up my chin.

“Get dressed. We’re going.”

I smirked and tossed the empty carton of Chinese food in the trash. “Are you asking me to prom, Damian?”

“Maybe when you stop chewing with your mouth open.”

Chapter 23

If I was
to crash my high school’s prom impersonating . . .
myself
, then I wanted to do this in style. I flicked hair off my forehead, still wet from my shower, and dug through my closet. “Ugh, what am I going to wear
—
”

Damian grabbed my arm. “Look, we don’t have time. Just wear something slutty.”

“Nice try, creep.”

“Here
—
” he pulled me back and rummaged through my clothes, “I’ll pick out your outfit.”

“The hell you will
—
” A black dress landed on my face, and I peeled it off to reveal a knee length dress I had worn only once. One I was definitely not wearing to prom. “Damian, this is the dress I wore to my dad’s funeral.”

Damian straightened up and caught my gaze. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“One, it’s conservative. Two, it has sentimental value.”

“Well, time to move on.” Damian whipped out a knife and roughly cut off the sleeves. Then he leveled the blade to cut off the bottom two feet of the dress.”

I grabbed his wrist before he could cut any more and pushed him away. “Chill, Edward Scissorhands. We’re not going to a strip club.”

“Touch it up how you want,” he said, whacking the knife’s hilt into my palm. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Your dad’s closet.”

“Wait
—
”

But he was already gone. I tried on what remained of the dress, and found it still too conservative.

On a whim, I slashed one of the halters entirely then tapered the material in a straight line from one shoulder to my armpit. Again, I twirled in the mirror. The cut exposed one of my shoulders, my collarbone, a lot of my back.

Not bad.

The dress could fit a lot tighter, but it would have to do.

“A one strap. Nice,” said Damian from the doorway. I spun and caught him cinching a bowtie. The collar of a pressed white shirt stuck up from under a sleek tuxedo that was all creases and hotness. He’d regelled his hair and even managed to find his brand of cologne.

My eyes roved up and down the length of his torso, and I felt my lower jaw plummet, smitten by this new version of him. And jealous; he’d stumbled on a James Bond suit, and I had to hack my dress out of funeral garb.

But it wasn’t the jealousy that rendered me incapable of taking my eyes off him.

“We’ll get you a picture at prom,” he said, catching the desire in my eyes. He extended his hand. “Ready?”

***

A half dozen limousines idled outside Paradise Point Resort & Spa, their drivers leaning against the hoods smoking cigarettes.

I tossed my Jeep’s keys to the valet and pulled Damian toward the ballroom, and the salty air whipped through my hair. We followed a cobblestone path from the parking area around a koi pond, through a jungle of ferns and palm trees hung with lanterns, and emerged on the lawn behind the ballroom. Four bouncers guarded the doors.

Lucky we were two levels down, in a reflection of a reflection, because my student I.D. card faced the right way again. The bouncer studied the card under a blue light, then shined the light into my eyes.

“Have you been drinking tonight?”

“No.” I squinted into the glare and suppressed the urge to swallow, feeling more like a high school student than I had in a month.

“Are you carrying any alcohol, weapons, or drugs?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Where’s your stamp?”

“Huh?”

“We stamped your wrist when you first came through.”

So my reflection was already inside. “It must have washed off,” I said. “We just went out for some fresh air.”

“Uh-huh.” He narrowed his eyes at my I.D. card again and crosschecked his clipboard.

Yesterday I had snuck into a military quarantine zone, and now I couldn’t get into prom? I glanced behind me, hoping Damian could help me with the story, but he had vanished. Typical.

“Where’s Josh Hutchinson?” the guard asked.

“I don’t know. He’s inside. I think. Can I go back in,
please?
”

The guard raised the light to my eyes again, and compared my face to the card. Finally, he gave a nod and moved aside. Home free.

Only not.

A huge woman with bad B.O. and a moustache blocked my path. “Legs apart. Arms out,” she barked.

When I didn’t comply, she grabbed my wrists and jerked them away from my sides. “Legs apart, arms out,” she repeated, this time with attitude.

I spread my legs, briefly feeling sorry for the woman. After all, her night consisted of an endless stream of dolled up, ungrateful teenagers
—
but only briefly.

Her hands clamped around my leg, just above the knee, and without warning she groped the inside of my thighs, roughly feeling all the way up my dress to my crotch, then back down the other leg. My eyes widened. Then she felt around my hips and wrung my waist like she was trying to squeeze water out of me.

I felt completely and utterly violated.

Inside the carpeted hallway leading to the ballroom, I found Damian leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.

“Where’d you run off to?” I demanded, still trembling from the frisk and feeling oddly vulnerable.

“Blaire, I can’t exactly get felt up by Man Hands over there, I’ve got a Desert Eagle forty-four Magnum in my pants.”

“Is that what you nickname your penis?”

“That’s cute. Come on, let’s go find you.”

A group of girls in pink and purple dresses approached us, and their gazes flicked to Damian. Oh, right. No one at my high school had ever seen him, but
—
Ew!
I felt my upper lip curl; they were practically undressing him with their eyes.

I halted Damian right in front of them and dragged him down by the lapels of his tuxedo for a lusty kiss, forcing them to part around us.

“Focus, Blaire,” he said.

“You’re stiff as a board,” I said. “You’re supposed to look like a high school student, not a hit man.”

“Blaire?” said a voice behind me. I yanked my hands off Damian’s tuxedo and spun to see one of the towering basketball players, Bryce McMahon. Josh’s best friend.

Caught.

***

He glanced between me and Damian, his eyebrow cocked. A full foot shorter than him, his date clung to his arm.

“Hey,” I said, through a swallow.

He noticed my dress. “Did you change?”

“Sort of.”

“Josh is looking for you.” His eyes narrowed on Damian again before his date tugged him away from me.

Behind me, Damian’s hand hovered at his belt, and for a second it looked like he was about to reach for the gun and start killing students.

“No.” I grabbed his wrist. “These are my friends.”

He shrugged and lowered his hand. “We’ll start there,” he said, nodding to the ballroom up the hall. The shadowy dance floor resembled a nightclub. Lasers and disco lights streaked across glittery dresses and twinkled in the chandelier, flashing to the beats of a popular dance song.

On our way to the ballroom, most of the students we passed recognized me and waved. Was I actually more popular in this reflection? I suspected it had something to do with going as Josh’s date.

A girl emerged from the ballroom ahead of us. Instantly, my eyes gravitated to her
—
along with the wandering eyes of the other girls’ dates lining the walls. She had to be someone’s date from another high school. Because I
knew
I hadn’t seen her around.

She was dolled up with pink lip gloss and turquoise eye shadow, and her auburn hair drifted in slow motion behind her; she was a bombshell.

My eyes fell to the contours of her floor length turquoise gown. The fabric hugged the slender shape of her body all the way down to her hips, where it slitted around her upper thigh. A side cutout displayed a lightly tanned section of her waist. From that revealing glimpse of her bare torso, I recognized the toned body of a fellow runner.

She walked unselfconsciously, oblivious to the gazes following her up the hall. Gorgeous, yes. But uptight, prissy, and pretentious. I knew her type. The upturn of her nose and the pout hovering permanently on the edge of her lips gave her away.

For a split-second her eyes lingered on Damian before averting. I don’t think anyone but me caught her.

I veered to the side to get out of her way and pulled Damian with me, but his fingers unclasped from mine. He had stopped dead in the middle of the hallway to stare at her, his mouth agape.

My heart sank a little. No . . . a lot. If Damian ever ogled girls, he did so when we weren’t together. Confronted with this creature, though, I had become chopped liver.

I watched her approaching on a collision course with Damian, dreading whatever was coming. Suddenly, even though I had been staring right at her, her face came into focus
—
and I understood Damian’s surprise.

I
did
know the girl.

Of course I hadn’t seen her at school. Of course I didn’t recognize her; I never had to before. Because until tonight, she had only existed in the fleeting, two-dimensional glimpses I caught in mirrors.

She was my reflection.

A million times I had glared into her eyes, gawked at her face, scrutinized her flaws.

Not once had I actually seen her.

***

At the realization, my heart fluttered.
That
was me?

Once again, the girl’s eyes
—
my eyes
—
settled on Damian, standing right in the middle of the hallway blocking her path. She gave a little scowl, as if daring him to stand his ground. Of course, he did.

I stared at my reflection, transfixed by the way she carried herself, by mannerisms I never knew I had, behavior I wasn’t even aware of. She stopped right in front of Damian and locked eyes with him.

“Are you going to
move?
” she said, lip curled. My God, I was rude. That had to be a recent development, like two months recent.

Damian studied her face. “Blaire, right?”

She rolled her eyes and barged past him. Finally our eyes met, but she quickly glanced away. Not a whisper of recognition. Strange how our minds played tricks, simply failing to process information that contradicted what we knew. To her, I was just some guy’s date from another high school.

As my reflection walked away, Damian stared after her and gave a low whistle. “Clearly I asked the wrong girl to prom.”

“If you had given me more time to get ready,” I said with a sigh. “I could have looked just like that.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, drinking in her backside, his gaze wandering over her butt.

I whacked his shoulder. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Already got plenty,” he said. “You should be flattered. Besides, we need to talk to her, don’t we?”

“How? I barely even recognized her,” I said. “She’s never going to believe I’m her.”

“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Without makeup, you’re not fooling anyone.”

My eyes slitted.

Damian licked his thumb and slicked his hair back, and his eyes wandered yearningly up the hall to where my reflection had disappeared. “Allow me,” he said. “I’ll go talk to her. You just
—
you just go wait in the girl’s bathroom or something.”

I shoved him up against the wall. “I don’t want half my school dead.
I’m
talking to her.”

“This isn’t your school, Blaire. They’re just reflections.”

“They’re not just reflections. These people
—
this world
—
until we find a way back to the source, it’s all we have right now.” I released him. “So let me handle this.”

“Fine.” He straightened up and adjusted his tux. “Go get her, tiger.”

***

I rounded the corner, but the turquoise dress had vanished. Perhaps she had gone into the girls’ bathroom. I wove around a few couples and slipped into the ladies room.

She wasn’t at the sink, and a scan under the occupied stalls revealed white, magenta, and blue dresses. No turquoise.

My gaze flashed to the mirror. Except for the tangled hair, pale skin, and smudged eyeliner, I was indeed the same girl. Every bit as stunning.

The realization flushed me with a hot wave of self-consciousness, and I averted my eyes.

“There you are, babe.” A hand landed on my shoulder, and I whipped around
—

And came face to face with Josh, wearing a turquoise vest, sweaty curls stuck to his forehead.
Babe?

He eyed me up and down. “Why’d you change?”

“Josh, this is the
girl’s
bathroom.”

“And I’ve been looking for you for the last ten minutes,” he said, anger flashing in his eyes. “Who’s that guy you were with?”

“What guy?”

“Bryce saw you with a guy.”

I thought briefly of crossing over through the bathroom mirror to escape him. Of course, then I would have to deal with his source
and
his reflection. “Look, can you just wait outside?” I pushed him toward the door. “I’ll explain in a minute.”

“He better be your gay cousin.” He leaned in to kiss me.

I ducked away. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to kiss my girlfriend.”

Oh.

And then it hit. Two and a half months of overlap crystallized into memories,
real
memories. The confusion stung my heart, and I let out a gasp. It was nostalgia. Nostalgia for what never was, for what could have been . . . for what wasn’t mine.

All the time at ISDI, spent instead with Josh. All those perfect memories, now dangled in front of me just out of reach.

All that overlap.

A hole had opened up inside me, where everything I had lived through in this different life was supposed to fit. Only now it was empty.

The rush keeled me over, and I fell out of Josh’s grip and choked for air.

I was in love with him.

And Damian.

“Blaire, are you okay?”

“I can’t kiss you today,” I said. “I’ll kiss you tomorrow. I promise.”

“What are you talking about?”

I rose to my feet, and pushed past him, staggered into the hall, still dizzy from the overlap.

Still hollow.

***

Josh followed me into the hall. I ran toward the ballroom, and spotted Damian at the edge of the mass of gyrating bodies. I veered toward him. He was craning his neck, looking for my reflection, no doubt.

“Blaire, wait,” Josh said, on my heels.

I just had to touch Damian, feel his skin, kiss him to know that he was real, then it would all be okay
—
wait, what was I
smoking?
Kissing Damian right in front of Josh was a very bad idea. I skidded to a stop and tried to escape them both, but it was too late. Damian had already seen me.

“Blaire,” he hissed, catching me by the waist as I tried to squeeze past him.

I closed my eyes and winced, waiting for two world’s to collide.

“Get your hands off her, punk,” Josh yelled. He stepped between us and shoved Damian hard in the chest. Damian tripped on the edge of the dance floor and tumbled backwards, parting a sea of students. He reached behind his back for his gun. His eyes flicked to me, though, and he lowered his hand.