I leap out of my chair and start pacing the length of my room as Dylan’s cryptic, seemingly nonsensical words from the car come flooding back to me.
“For a while, I suspected … I mean, I’m in the library a lot. I see things. So I thought … Well, the point is, I was mistaken.”
He knew. Or at the very least, he thought he knew. The whole time I was suspecting him, he was suspecting me. Was that why he was so interested in helping me? Because he was trying to prove his own theory? Because he was trying to prove I really was the brainwashed zombie he always thought I was?
“… I was wrong about you.”
No! I want to scream aloud as tears spring to my eyes. You were right.
He must have thought I was crazy. Investigating a story that he was so sure I was behind. He must have thought I really had cracked.
I continue pacing, struggling to take deep breaths. To calm the deafening racket in my head. Then, as I reach the end of my room and turn around, my gaze lands on my desk. On the bottom drawer.
I run over to it and, with shaking hands, yank open the drawer.
There it is. The big, black monstrosity. Sitting there like the heavy stone that’s settled in to the pit of my stomach.
I kneel down next to the drawer and run my fingertips over the smooth metal surface of the box, stopping when I reach the four-digit combination lock.
It’s time to crack this code. It’s time to solve this mystery once and for all.
Again, I try every combination I can think of. My birthday, Dad’s birthday, Mom’s birthday, Frankie’s birthday. I even look through my phone to find Sequoia’s birthday and try that, too. Nothing works.
How long would it take to try every possible combination?
I do a quick calculation in my head. There are 10,000 combinations. If I can input one every ten seconds, I’d be done in …
Just over twenty-seven hours.
I collapse onto my back with a sigh and stare at the ceiling. There’s got to be a better way.
Think, Kennedy. THINK.
She’s the same person as you. We share the same brain. The same first fourteen years of our lives. You cracked her email password, you can crack this, too.
What was important to her?
What was important to me?
Dad. Mom. Frankie. But I tried all of those.
What else?
The newspaper. That was important to me. But not to her. Other Me never had a chance to cultivate that passion. She never had the opportunity to feel the thrill of commanding a room full of writers. Of putting an issue to bed after fifty straight hours of reading and rereading and proofing and last-minute cuts and last-last-minute additions. Of handing over a flash drive to the printer like she was handing over her whole life.
She never got to feel the satisfaction of holding that Spartan Press Award in her hand. Of framing that prized issue and hanging it on her wall.
My gaze drifts up to the place where those frames used to hang. I would look at them every day. For strength. For courage. For motivation. On good days and bad days. They were my reminders that no matter what happened, no matter what regrets lived in my heart, something was good.
Life was good.
That life was good.
And now, as I stare at the single frame hanging in their place—my acceptance letter to Windsor—I wonder if life can ever be good again.
Tears blur my vision as I gaze up at the letter. At those familiar words that I memorized oh so long ago.
Dear Ms. Rhodes,
Congratulations! It is on this date, May 12, that we are pleased to inform you …
On this date, May 12.
That was the day that my life split into two directions. Where the choice was offered to me. Where I was so convinced that I took the wrong turn.
That I chose poorly.
But as I lie here on the floor with a lockbox full of dark secrets, I wonder which way was really the wrong turn. I wonder if the mistake that haunted me for more than three years wasn’t a mistake at all. If maybe, it was the best decision I ever made.
But what did Other Me think? What has been going through her head for the past three and a half years? Did she have regrets about that exact same moment in time? Did she think back to that day she got the letter and wish she had taken another path? Did she look at her deathly reflection in the mirror every morning and wonder how her life could have been different?
On this date, May 12 …
Two roads diverge.
On this date, May 12 …
I choose Austin.
On this date, May 12 …
I choose Windsor.
May 12.
I bolt upright and glance at the black box next to me. The keeper of my secrets. The truth I didn’t want anyone to see.
On this date, May 12 …
I become who I am.
With shaking, uneven fingers, I dial in the combination.
0512
Then, somewhere in the farthest dark corner of every single universe, I hear a faint click.