FYI: This chapter works really well if you play the song above on low volume while reading. Love seeing your comments and thoughts! Thank you again for supporting this story.

*****

I stood in the shadows of our garage, watching my father at his work station in the corner. He was doing his favorite thing in the world: fixing up an old computer, bobbing his head to a song on his headphones. The computer was splayed out before him in a million little pieces, waiting to be put back together by his calloused hands.

After a moment, he looked up and noticed me there. A smile popped into his eyes at the sight of me, and he pressed a button on his phone so the music switched from his headphones to a small speaker. He hung the headphones on a little wall hook, which was Dad's invitation for me to join him.

It was one of his favorite old albums, Buffalo Springfield. Neither of us said anything for a moment as I approached the work desk, surveying his progress so far, and the lyrics to the old song echoed off the concrete walls.

There you stood on the edge of your feather,

Expecting to fly

While I laughed, I wondered whether

I could wave goodbye,

Knowing that you'd gone...

Dad broke the spell by turning the volume down, his head still buried in his work.

"Hand me that DVI cable, will you, honey?"

"Sure, Dad."

After a moment of tinkering with the cable, he spoke again. "I Skyped your brother today."

My heart still caught in my throat whenever Robbie was mentioned. It was hard to believe, even to this day, that Robbie and I had barely any relationship. He'd been raised so far away from me in this reality, and in such a different environment, helping our mom run that little hotel outside of Portland.

"He said the classes are much harder this year at U of Oregon."

I nodded, always afraid of saying too much, giving anything away. "That makes sense," I finally added. "He's a sophomore now."

Somehow the word "sophomore" struck me with a painful throb. A sophomore like I had been when I started a new high school without him, in the old reality where he had "died" at thirteen. A sophomore, meaning I had missed his whole first year of college, just like I had missed the nineteen years before that.

If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the cold night air whipping our faces as we ran from the pyramid house, all those years ago, when Kieren had dared us to spend the night there. And now there was no one left to remember that night with me. My whole life, everything that had mattered, everything I had felt, ripped away day after day.

My brother and I were like two divergent rivers in this plane, twisting away from each other, never intertwining, wending through the earth towards two opposing oceans. I missed him so much sometimes that my bones ached with the pain of it.

A sob escaped my mouth, and once it had started, a tidal wave of sobs followed behind. My father dropped his tools and just held me, rocking me slightly against his chest.

"Oh, Marina," he whispered. "My sweet girl."

"I'm sorry, Dad," I whispered through my tears, not wanting to break away from his protective arms.

"I just don't know what to do for you, honey. You seem so sad lately and I don't know why."

I nodded, knowing there was nothing I could say.

"Is it school? Is it a boy?"

I couldn't help but laugh at that, wishing it could be that simple. Of course, to a certain extent it was. I missed two boys. Kieren and Robbie. And to be honest, I missed Brady too. Brady was never supposed to go through the portal to Yesterday with us all those months ago. The plan had always been for him to remain above, and to forget all about our experience together.

I suppose that had been my gift to him. Letting him forget the reality where Piper left him for Robbie, letting him live in a blissfully ignorant plane where she had never stopped loving Brady back.

But that meant erasing his memories of me too.

"Answer me, honey," my dad implored. "Do you need help? Do you need to, I don't know, talk to someone?"

I cleared my throat, wiping my face off and taking my deep, calming breaths. Within a few seconds, I had managed to stop the tears, but not the worried look on my dad's face.

"No, Dad, I'm fine," I insisted, hoping he would buy it. "I'm just, um..." Think, Marina. Think of something logical. That's what you do best. "I'm worried about school. Because I have a paper to write."

"Oh?" he asked, not quite believing the sudden shift in tone.

"On Genghis Khan. I have to go study now, in fact." I backed away, but my dad's eyes followed me. So I offered him my best smile. "I'm fine, Dad, I promise."

Before I could get to the door to the house, my dad called my name one more time. I turned to look at him.

He seemed lost for what to say. "I just want you to be happy, Marina. That's all I've ever wanted."

I offered him the best smile I could muster. "I know, Dad. Good night."

"Good night," he said as I closed the door.

*

I fell asleep before even opening a book, buried deeply in my cocoon of covers, shutting out the world. I was so immersed in sleep, in fact, that the sound of pebbles clinking against glass only registered as a distant drumming in a dream that was otherwise about swimming in the middle of the ocean. But as the clinking grew louder, the ocean water receded, until I was back in my sheets, overheated and sweating.

The next pebble struck with a bit more force, and I was fully awake. I tripped my way out of the sheets and stumbled to the window, daring myself to believe that I wasn't imagining it. And when I looked out into the wet moonlit street, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

Kieren was about to throw another stone when he saw me. He flushed, embarrassed, looking awkwardly over his shoulder to see if he had attracted anyone else's attention. But the street was deserted. A thin stream of visible breath escaped his lips under the blue light. A quick glance at my bedside clock informed me that it was after three in the morning.

I couldn't help but smile at the sight of him there. He held my ID tag in one hand and what appeared to be car keys in the other. Behind him sat a tan Toyota Corolla, the door left open slightly.

His brow furrowed when he saw me—an expression somewhere between relief and annoyance. I held up my index finger to ask him to wait, then turned and threw on a hoodie and some gym shoes. I snuck down the stairs on my tippy toes, even though I knew Dad and Laura could sleep through a hurricane.

I felt giddy, a gurgling in my stomach I hadn't known in a long time. I couldn't remember the last time I had been excited about something.

I left the house by the kitchen door, knowing the front door would make too much noise, and my feet tingled with anticipation as I all but ran around the house to get to him.

He lingered stark still in the street, waiting for me.

"You found me," I breathed as I reached him, unable to fight the urge to smile when I saw his lopsided grimace and his unruly hair.

"I'm sorry it's so late."

"That's okay."

He stared at me for a moment.

"What is it, Kieren?"

A subtle twitch struck his handsome features. "Stop saying my name like that. You don't know me."

The smile was instantly erased from my lips and I took a step back, chastened by his words. He seemed to quickly regret his outburst, or maybe just forget about it. His shoulders hunched in the brisk night air. He rubbed his arms with his hands for warmth.

I knew I should feel cold too, but the adrenaline was keeping my blood flowing. I couldn't feel anything, really, except relief to be so close to him again. "What did you come for?" I asked.

"I was wondering..." he cleared his throat. "Why were you so upset that night? In my rec room, when we were...you know."

"Oh," I nodded, realizing instantly that I couldn't tell him the truth about the night he kissed me on his couch. I was upset that night because my mother had gone missing, and I was desperately afraid that she had followed my brother to the train tracks, that maybe she had even allowed herself to be struck and killed by a train, just to follow my brother into death.

My world was shattering that night. Kieren was the only thing holding it together.

"It's hard to explain," was all I could say.

"Was that..." he began, shy suddenly. Was he blushing? "Was that our first kiss, or whatever?"

"Um..." now I was blushing too. "Kind of."

I suddenly chuckled, a random thought occurring to me.

"What's funny?"

"Well, it's just...we'd kind of kissed once before." I started laughing even harder at the memory and Kieren stepped closer, searching my face for clues.

"Tell me."

"Well, we had this dog when we were little—when I was little, I mean. He was a little dachshund, you know, the little hot dog ones. You used to call him 'Denny's' when you'd come over and Robbie and I would get so mad at you."

Kieren nodded, seeming amused although he had no idea where I was going with this.

"Because his name was Denny, but you'd always joke that you were going to eat him. And one day, he was really old. He was like fourteen and blind and diabetic, and one day he went out into the street and just..." I took a breath, laughing for reasons that probably made no sense to him.

"And just what?"

"Died," I laughed, my nervousness betraying me. "He just laid down and died. And you came over that night, and you were trying to comfort me."

Kieren shivered a bit, but his eyes never left me.

"You were trying to be all warm and nice, and you said..." and here I had to took a break to laugh again, my cheeks flushing with the memory. "You said... 'Don't worry. You can always get another dog!'"

Kieren snorted out a huge laugh, and I couldn't help but laugh with him. I didn't realize at the time what a ridiculous thing it was for him to say, but now it struck me as preposterous.

"I did not say that?" he asked.

"You did! It was awful."

We both broke into a fresh round of snorting, and I looked around the empty street, suddenly conscious of the neighbors.

"Did I think that would make it better?" he laughed at himself.

"I don't know what you were thinking."

I slowed down my breathing, which only made me laugh once more. "And then you leaned down... You were, like, nine I think. And you were trying so hard to be all manly and strong, and I thought it was so cute even though I was so sad. And I had tears on my cheeks. And you leaned down and you kissed me on my wet cheek."

I touched my right cheek at the memory of Kieren's soft young lips grazing against it.

We were just inches apart now, both coming down from the high of laughing, and letting the deadly quiet seep in to take its place.

Suddenly a buzz emanated out of Kieren's back pocket. He took out his phone and stared at it for a moment, his face falling. I knew immediately who it must be.

"Is she wondering where you are?" I asked, instantly regretting it.

He put his phone away, suddenly wary of me again. "Yes."

I nodded.

"How did you know I had a girlfriend?"

Shit. I was caught, wasn't I? Talk yourself out of this one, Marina. "I just assumed..."

"Are you stalking me?"

"No."

But he didn't believe me. He stepped back, his face growing hard and unreadable again. "I have to go," he muttered, heading for his car.

"Kieren, wait—"

"I won't be going through the doors again. Nothing good comes of it," he spat over his shoulder in my direction.

I felt frozen in place as I watched him walk away, feeling the heat that had been radiating off of him seep away from me.

"Do me a favor," he said, looking at the wet street, as he started to put one foot into his car.

"Anything," I promised.

He hesitated only a moment. "Pretend you don't know me."

He slammed the door shut behind him, started the engine and revved the gas to speed away down my street, leaving me like an ice sculpture, moored in the black sea of concrete.

I always do, Kieren. I always do.