The Secret Sea Read online

  She didn’t say, We don’t have any other choice, anyway. Because it was true, and there was no need to say it. Zak knew that his life depended on Khalid’s being able to find the right medicine in an alien world. Soon.

  “I believe in you, buddy,” he whispered. “One-double-oh.”

  Khalid turned and sprinted away. Moira adjusted herself into a more comfortable sitting position and took one of Zak’s hands in both of her own, resting them on his belly. “This is all going to work out,” she said very persuasively. “You’re going to be fine.”

  He didn’t believe her. He closed his eyes and lied. “I know I will.”

  There was no point in either of them telling the truth.

  THIRTY

  Khalid emerged from an alley onto the middle of a sparsely traveled block. There were more of those odd cars puttering by. Some of them were painted bright white and had signs on them that read FOR HIRE. He figured he’d spotted his first alternate-universe taxi. He almost put his hand up to have one pull over—“Take me to the nearest pharmacy!” he would bark to the cabbie in his very best action-hero voice.

  But whatever money he had was waterlogged in his wallet. And probably not worth anything in this universe. He’d noticed the signs by the canal, advertising UPTOWN GONDOLA! for various amounts with the weird symbol. His money would be no good here.

  His clothes, still damp, clung to him uncomfortably. His shirt was pasted to his chest, and his underwear felt as though it had become a second skin. Two dunks in the water, and even on a warm night like this one, it would take a while to dry out. In the meantime, he was a wet, bedraggled kid standing on the sidewalk by himself, with no idea where to go but no time to dawdle.

  Up and down the block seemed to be stores and restaurants, but nothing that looked like a drugstore. He would kill for a good old Duane Reade at this point. Maybe they didn’t have them in this universe. Or maybe it was called Reade Duane. Or maybe …

  Stop it. Stop it! Zak’s—

  He cut himself off. He didn’t want to think the words hurt or in trouble or in bad shape, because he knew that those words were just ways for his brain to keep him from thinking the truth, the only word that really described the situation: dying.

  Time was of the essence, and any forward movement had to be good. Standing around here wouldn’t help Zak.

  A sign told him he was on Fourth Street. The architecture was similar to that of his own world, except for the strange lighting on everything. He craned his neck to peer up at the facade of a building, feeling like a gawking tourist. In a way, he supposed he was a tourist, a visitor to a strange flavor of his own home. It was as though he’d left his apartment and come back later to find that someone had stolen a few things, left most of his stuff, and added some mysterious new belongings.

  Eggs and oatmeal, he reminded himself. This is all about eggs and oatmeal.

  Bad move. The thought just made him hungry.

  The buildings were striped at regular intervals with what he now realized were very flat, transparent pipes. They looked like oblong glass tubes, filled with something that glowed. It wasn’t neon—it wasn’t harsh and too bright. This substance gave off a gentle, warm light, and the overlapping fields of brightness gave nighttime the feel of a pleasant twilight.

  He was surprised to recognize Father Fagan Park at an intersection, though the sign called it DRENNAN-YOUNG PARK. It was definitely Father Fagan Park, though—he knew it by sight. Weird. More alternate-universe strangeness.

  If he was at Fagan Park, then that meant he had to have walked to Sixth Avenue. A street sign at the corner told him that he was, in fact, at Sixth, though the subtitle read COLUMBIA AVENUE. It should have said AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS.

  He’d walked something like eight blocks from the Broadway Canal without seeing anything helpful. Maybe it was time to ask someone for directions to a doctor.

  He stood on the corner of Charlton and Sixth, gnawing at his lower lip. He slipped his sunglasses on and felt a little better, a little cooler. He looked around for someone who seemed willing to help a lost kid.

  And that was when he noticed something weird. Well, another something weird. Even though it was nighttime, it was August and still warm out. All the men he saw wore short-sleeved shirts or T-shirts. But all the women were covered practically from head to toe in long skirts, full-sleeved shirts, high collars. And hats. They all wore hats. Most of them carried small fans.

  Even fashion was screwy over here.

  He took a right onto Sixth and headed uptown. He actually knew SoHo and lower Manhattan better, but given that the island seemed to be missing a big chunk of itself down there, he figured there would be more opportunities for discovery if he headed north. He vaguely recalled that NYU had a campus not far from where he was. Maybe there was a medical center there.

  He tried to pay more attention as he roamed up Sixth, but his energy was beginning to flag. It had been a long, exhausting day. Running from the police in two universes, being tossed into the water twice. He hadn’t eaten since lunch, and it was long, long past dinnertime now. The excitement and adrenaline of the day were quickly ebbing, and even the mere eight blocks he’d walked since leaving Zak and Moira felt like a hundred miles. There were some street vendors out, and the smell of cooked lamb and roasted almonds and fresh sausage made his mouth water. He couldn’t pay, not with the money in his pocket, but maybe he could borrow some food.…

  A hot rush of shame blasted through him and rattled him awake. His parents would be mortified if they knew he’d even considered such a thing.

  He trudged along, more tired and hungry and weak with each step. Even his reading comprehension began to suffer—he imagined strange signs in the windows and doors of the places he passed by, signs that made no sense:

  N♀

  read one.

  ♂NLY

  read another.

  Were there different letters in this universe? He dredged up a memory of some boring story Zak’s dad had told once as he showed them an old piece of mail from a billion years ago. The s had been written as an f, so that the word basket looked like bafket. Khalid and Zak had nodded politely through Dr. Killian’s mini-lecture and then spent the better part of the next day at school substituting f for s when they talked to anyone, which worked hilariously until they had to say suck, at which point their parents were e-mailed about their children’s “inappropriate use of words.”

  A million years ago, a caveman in this universe ordered pizza instead of sushi, and now their alphabet has twenty-eight letters. He stifled a nervous giggle.

  Different letters. Different fashion. Different accents.

  Different lighting. Different cars. Different Manhattan.

  All Khalid wanted was a sign for a hospital. Or a doctor. Or a pharmacy.

  Where Sixth should have met Waverly Place, he finally got one.

  * * *

  The sign read ART ST., but it should have said WAVERLY PLACE. Khalid recognized the bend of Greenwich Avenue a block ahead, which meant that this was Waverly, no matter what the sign said.

  He didn’t really care, though. All he cared about was the store on the corner, the one that looked exactly like a good ol’ Duane Reade, even though the sign said COHEN & CO., with the two Cs interlocked like chains. He resisted the urge to dash across the street and run into the store, not wanting to draw attention to himself. He was too tired to run, anyway.

  Inside, the cool blast of air-conditioning revived him for a moment. He got his bearings—the place looked like any other drugstore he’d ever seen. He wandered the aisles. Fortunately, there were no additional letters here. Most of the brand names seemed familiar: Advil, NyQuil, and others were all on display. There were others that he’d never seen before: Paramol, Na-Prox, Bellsyn.

  Think, Khalid. Think. You’re not gonna find it over the counter, right? It’s gotta be with the pharmacist.

  He meandered to the back of the store, where the pharmacy counter was. A metal grate—
just like back home—had been lowered, and a sign revealed that the pharmacy would be open again at 8:00 AM.

  Great. What was your plan, anyway? To ask real nice for some heart medicine?

  He mentally kicked himself. He had to do better than this. He had to have a plan. Moira was the genius, but Khalid was good at tricking people. There had to be some story he could tell that would get him the medicine he needed.

  But even then, he’d have to wait until morning. And by then Zak could very easily be—

  Nope. Uh-uh. Not going there. Road closed ahead. Do not enter.

  Taking a new route to the front of the store, he passed a nutrition display. The cardboard cutout showed a guy wearing an impressively expansive Afro and no shirt, revealing huge shoulders and arms. He looked kind of like Barack Obama, which made Khalid shake his head in disbelief. The guy—Obama or not—thrust a foil-wrapped package directly at Khalid, and a word balloon from his mouth read Try a BarryBar™! Underneath was a series of cardboard shelves laden with foil-wrapped bars. Khalid groaned quietly at his hunger. Would anybody really notice if he swiped one? Would anyone really care?

  And then they catch you on a security camera and then you get arrested and then you can’t help Zak and then everything goes south.

  No one was in line at the cash register. Khalid was tempted to beg the guy behind the counter for a BarryBar, for anything at all. But the guy was paying Khalid no mind, instead engrossed in his phone. It was thinner than any phone Khalid had ever seen, no thicker than sturdy cardboard, and it seemed, as best he could tell from his angle, to be all screen.

  But there was a familiar logo on the back.

  An idea occurred to Khalid.

  “Hey,” he asked the guy, “where’s the nearest Apple Store?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Moira found herself hypnotized by the shallow, but steady rise and fall of Zak’s chest. Steady was the operative word. At least he was breathing, if not deeply. He was in and out of consciousness, sweating, and she could do nothing for him. Absolutely nothing. She’d never felt so powerless and so guilty in her entire life.

  She was the one who’d said it was okay for Zak to leave the hospital. With five minutes on Google and her own pride, she’d condemned Zak to dying in an alleyway in a universe not his own.

  My darlin’ genius lass, her dad crooned often to her, stroking her hair with pleasure at another straight-A report card, another glowing teacher report, another award or prize or commendation. And Moira had liked the praise, slurped it up like soup, even though she’d known a horrible truth her parents had never known: that she didn’t deserve any of it.

  Oh, she earned the grades and accolades, sure. But it was easy for her. Slide a test paper on the desk in front of her and the answers seemed to glow with their own inner light. It was just a matter of picking them. Easy peasy, play Parcheesi, Khalid had singsonged in their youth. That was the world of school to her, and she reaped praise for it.

  But shouldn’t praise come for hard work? Shouldn’t it come for something she struggled with and conquered?

  But the world kept telling her she was a genius, and so when the time came, she never even considered for a moment that she might read Zak’s chart wrong or misunderstand some of the jargon she’d read on her phone. And she’d taken him out of the hospital, and now …

  Zak coughed and came to, groaning, his hands flapping weakly for a moment as though seeking purchase midfall. She knelt down next to him.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry. Khalid will be back soon.”

  She hoped. With their phones ruined after their unforeseen swim, she had no way to tell how long he’d even been gone. It was getting darker out, but the omnipresent glow from the buildings around them kept her from telling how late it was.

  The alleyway smelled exactly like an alleyway would and should, in any universe. She and Khalid had laid Zak down with his head and shoulders inside an old packing crate of some sort. It wasn’t made of cardboard—it consisted of a milky white sort of material that felt like plastic but was soft. Better to have his head in there than on the hard, filthy ground.

  The alleyway was so familiar that for a moment she doubted her own hypothesis about traveling to another universe. But the Broadway Canal flashed in her memory, and she knew she was right. Tommy had said there was a special, powerful connection between him and Zak. That connection had somehow been powerful enough to breach the wall between “apartments” and pull Zak through, with Khalid and Moira along for the ride.

  Fortunately, this universe was similar enough to their own. She imagined it was analogous to the evolution of marsupials and placentals. Or even the duck-billed platypus. They were all mammals, but they had little tweaks and distinctions because of their environments. But you’d never think a kangaroo wasn’t a mammal.

  Save it for your memoirs, Moira. Zak needs you here, not theorizing.

  She leaned in to blot at the beads of sweat on Zak’s forehead with the end of her shirt, which had managed to dry by now.

  Zak’s eyes fluttered open and jittered back and forth until they focused on her.

  “All I want is to see my brother,” Zak said, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I just want to see him again. There aren’t even any pictures of him in the house, Moira. It’s like they erased him. I just want to see him one more time.”

  “You will. I promise.”

  Zak sniffled unself-consciously and wiped his eyes. “Can you do something for me?”

  She knew immediately what he wanted. She could just tell. She could always tell, with Zak. “Sure, laddie,” she said with her mother’s brogue.

  Zak smiled at that and attempted a small laugh, then without warning closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  Or passed out. She couldn’t really tell and didn’t dare try to waken him to be sure. She figured he needed to rest, and even if he didn’t … there was nothing else for him to do. Better unconscious or asleep than awake, in pain, worrying.

  She wished she could run the streets of Manhattan. Cross the island from east to west and north to south, screaming for a doctor, a pharmacist, anyone who could help. She cursed the summer weather. Neither she nor Zak wore enough clothing that they could sacrifice a piece for her to fashion into a scarf to cover her stupid bright red hair. Maybe it wasn’t even anti-Irish sentiment. It could actually just be that hair of hers. There were old superstitions and prejudices about redheads in her own world. People used to think red hair meant someone was evil. Throw in green eyes and they were convinced you were a werewolf, too. Maybe those prejudices lingered here, as crazy as that sounded. Then again, weren’t all prejudices crazy and stupid? No reason why this one couldn’t persist. Most likely people didn’t even remember why they hated redheads—they just always had.

  She glanced around the alleyway, thinking that if she found something sharp, maybe she could even cut off her hair. Anything to let her go out into the streets and look for a way to help Zak.

  “Hey, there,” someone said. “What’s the snap?”

  What’s the snap? she wondered, pulling away from Zak and turning around. An older boy—he had to be fifteen or sixteen—sauntered toward her from the mouth of the alley. He wore a red-striped shirt with a patch in the shape of a top hat sewn onto the left breast, and torn gray jeans over boots. He grinned and licked his lips.

  “Chap and chica, looking for some privacy?” he asked. He pronounced privacy the way she’d heard British people say it: PRIH-vuh-see.

  “We’re not hurting anyone,” she said with a bravery she didn’t actually feel. Who knew what the laws were like in this universe? For all she knew, it was illegal to hang out in an alleyway.

  “Never said you were. But the snap’s suspish, don’t you think?” He kept coming closer. Moira grimaced. She could easily dodge around him and dart out the end of the alley, but that would leave Zak alone. Defenseless.

  She stood up as tall as she could, shoulders back. “Leave me alone. N
ow.” She hated to add the next part; it made her feel weak. But she had no choice. “I’ll scream.”

  His eyes lit up. “A screaming chica! You go ahead, little red.” He stopped three or so yards from her, grinning. He cracked his knuckles. “Scream all you want. Makes no never mind to why tee. The snap’s all the same.”

  Moira clenched her fists and checked around quickly, not wanting him to know she was looking, if at all possible. All the cans and bottles in the alleyway were made of some kind of lightweight plastic that was half-dissolved in most cases. None of them would be useful. But there was a loose chunk of concrete just to the left of her foot. And just beyond that …

  “Leave us alone,” she warned. “This is the last time I’ll tell you.”

  He burst out laughing, as though it was the funniest joke in a string of them. She took advantage of his momentary distraction to stoop and snatch up the piece of concrete. It was a wee bit too big for her hand, but she did her best, hurling it at him with all her strength.

  She’d aimed for his center of mass, but the size of the chunk threw her off—it struck him along his right hip, hard enough that he hopped back three steps, howling.

  “What the snapping hell!” he bellowed, clutching his side. “You frau! You better—”

  By then she’d already grabbed the second thing she’d seen on the ground, a wooden plank roughly two feet long. It was split at one end, but otherwise looked—and, now, felt—sturdy.

  The boy had recovered by now and approached her, though as he closed in, she noticed with satisfaction that he limped on his right side. He snarled.

  “Best drop that right now,” he commanded in the tone of one who was used to being obeyed. “Best drop it right snapping now!”

  “How about I let you have it instead?” she asked, and swung.