Dr. Raj hustled me into his office, then began wiping at a white board covered with calculations. When he faced me, hands clasped, I realized I was about to hear a lecture.
“Lightning. It strikes the planet twenty-five to thirty million times a year. Mortality rate for lightning strikes is between five and thirty percent. One man, Roy Sullivan, was the human lightning rod, surviving seven strikes. People rang medieval England church bells violently to keep lightning from striking the towers. Commonly inscribed on the bells was fulgura franco.” He wrote this on his board. “This means I break up the lightning flashes.”
“Dr. Raj,” I interrupted. “All interesting facts, but could you skip to the good part, please, where you remove the GCA from my blood before another storm hits?” Dad had given me advice, years ago, that if you want to accomplish something but are afraid, you must act as if you aren’t afraid, as if you’re confident the thing you want to come true will actually happen. For now, at least, I needed to act as if 1560 were real, as if Blanche Nottingham truly was a consciousness trying to take over control of my body.
“Yes, yes, certainly. Electricity is drawn together when positively charged protons move toward negatively charged electrons. Lightning is negatively charged, the surface of the earth is positively charged, so the lightning is pulled down to the ground. Lightning happens!” He flung up his hands energetically.
I began to pace the small room. “But what does this have to do with my consciousness?”
“Yes, yes, certainly. Here is the key.” He returned to his board. “As a bolt of lightning approaches the ground, an upward streamer emerges from the object about to be struck. When the two meet, the bolt from the cloud hits the earth at the same time a return bolt from the earth is shot back into the clouds.”
“Wait. Lightning moves from the cloud to the ground, then back up to the cloud?”
“Precisely.”
“Why don’t we see that?”
“Happens too quickly. Lightning moves at 320,000,000 feet per second.” Raj looked at me. “Remember the GCA I injected into your system before the lab experiment?”
My mouth seemed to have stopped producing saliva. “Not likely to forget that.”
“Somehow, inexplicably, the drug changed the electrical charge of your glial cells, which must contain our conscious minds. Remember the orchestra I described at the beginning, the conductor being the intralaminar nuclei oscillating at forty hertz? Together the GCA and your nuclei oscillating at a different rate have created the conditions for transport. So when the lightning strikes, your consciousness is the opposite charge of the cloud and is pulled from your body and taken up to the cloud on the return bolt of lightning.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re telling me that, basically, I’m riding lightning?” Fire trucking insane. “Let’s assume your theory is correct. Thanks to the GCA, I’m charged the wrong way. How do we recharge my glial cells so they’re repelled by lightning, not attracted? How do I get my orchestra back to forty hertz?”
Dr. Raj dropped into his chair. “That, Jamie Maddox, is an excellent question.” His shoulders slumped. “I do not know how to counteract the GCA.”
My pulsed raced. “Wait. You said you’d solved it.”
“The reason for what happened, not how to fix it.”
“How long will this stupid GCA remain in my system?”
“I cannot know for sure.” He checked his calendar. “It has been seven weeks since the initial episode.”
My jaw tightened. “So you haven’t solved anything.”
“Not true!” He leapt out of his chair and returned to his whiteboard. “Why London? That one was easy—because that is where you, Meg, and Ray were when you were taken by the lightning. I assume Meg has gone to the same place as you and Ray. But why 1560? That is more interesting.” He scribbled a series of numbers on the board and stood back, beaming. “Your brain has three basic types of waves—delta, which is between one and four hertz, theta, between four and eight hertz, and finally gamma, which runs from thirty to seventy, with some spikes as high as one hundred. Your gammas, however.…” He tapped the board for emphasis. “Yours spiked to four hundred and fifty-seven hertz.”
I winced. “Intense.”
“Very! And that is the precise number of years you went back in time.”
“That fits nicely, but why did Ray go back the same number of years? And what about Meg—we have no idea where she ended up. Wouldn’t our brains spike at different rates? Does it have to do with the strength of the lightning?”
He shook his head. “I checked the records. You all spiked up to four hundred and fifty-seven hertz.”
“But as the amount of GCA in my blood decreases, wouldn’t the spikes be lower? Wouldn’t I start traveling fewer years back in time?” The thought of popping up into an entirely new time made me twitch.
“Either the pattern has already been set, or the GCA stays constant for a long time.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, squeezing gently. “But how does this help me stop traveling back to 1560?”
“I will solve this problem. Do not fear. Together we are making history.”
I told Dr. Raj about my session with Dr. Kroll. His eyes widened. “But that cannot be true. She is trying to undercut the importance of my discovery. I am the first to locate and transport a consciousness! She cannot weaken this by throwing jumbo mumbo at my accomplishment.” He slammed the marker onto his desk. “No, I will prove that your experience is real, not jumbo mumbo. The Consciousness Conference is next year in Tucson, so I must be ready by then.”
I stood. “Let’s focus on now, shall we? The clock is ticking, Doc. Thanks to all the thunderstorms we’ve been having this summer, I don’t know where I’ll be when.”
Dr. Raj gathered together a chaotic stack of readouts. “I will solve this yesterday. You will hear from me soon.”
* * *
There was nothing to salvage from the mess Blanche had made in my studio. Standing there, heart breaking at the angry black slashes, I could not believe that I was Blanche. Why would I ever do this to my own work? Never, never, never.
I didn’t have to replace my smashed computer because Blanche had bought her own. I found it hidden under the desk in the spare room. It wasn’t password protected—thank God her computer skills hadn’t progressed that far—so I could easily take the computer on as my own. Tempted as I was to open Word and read Blanche’s novel-in-progress, I decided not to. Doing so would make her seem more legitimate.
Instead, I reentered the important email addresses I could remember, then sent a long, so-sorry-I-messed-up email to Candace. I claimed that vandals broke into my studio and destroyed all my work. I would have to start over on the Froggity books, but I assured her it wouldn’t take long since I’d already done them once already.
Her reply was speedy, but terse. “So sorry to hear of the break-in. Send all Froggity art ASAP. We are behind behind behind. As for the new books, they have all been assigned. Our stable of artists is now quite full, so we don’t anticipate any more assignments for you.”
If Blanche had been standing before me, all big hair and big bosom, I would have slapped her clear across the Thames. I wanted to open her novel file and perform the equivalent of black angry slashes across it, but instead, I forced myself to close the computer, then sit down and begin sketching the first Froggity painting.
I worked all day and into the evening, texting Chris that I would be home late. She must have called Sam at the pub because a bowl of Thai noodles appeared at my door, along with a cold Mountain Dew. My eyes burned by nine p.m., so I finally shut out the lights, locked the door, and staggered home, surprised it was still light out. Working with such concentration always created in me the sense that the rest of the world had gone into some sort of stasis until I emerged from my cave. Yet men and women scurried down the short street on their way home from a day as long as I’d had.
Chris and I watched TV for a while. Neither of us talked about the tests I’d undergone with Dr. Kroll. We were waiting to hear the results.
I checked the sky before going to bed. No stars, but that wasn’t unusual for London. They were hard to see even with a clear sky. The Weather Channel said the chance of anything more than a light drizzle was low.
I curled around Chris’s back, and she wrapped my arm around her chest. We must not have moved an inch because when I awoke in the middle of the night we were still locked in the same embrace. Rain pattered lightly on the window. There was no wind, otherwise I would have heard the long, tubular wind chimes on the neighbor’s balcony booming like a church organ. I sank deeper into the bed in relief. No thunder. No lightning.
But then a loud boom made both of us jump. A car backfiring, nothing more. But I could feel Chris’s chest tighten, as if she were holding her breath.
“Blanche, is that you? Are you back?”
My heart stopped. Chris thought the noise had been thunder. Without a plan, I nuzzled the back of her neck. “It’s me, princess,” I said, my heart constricting with pain.
Chris squeezed my hand. “Oh, thank God. I have missed you so much.” She rolled over and faced me. Luckily, it was too dark in the room to see each other. She flung her arms around my neck and began frantically kissing my face. “I can’t lose you, Blanche. We have to figure something out. My whole world is gray when Jamie’s in charge. But when you’re here, I come alive.”
I rolled away then gritted my teeth as I pulled her close behind me. If she’d seen my face, she would have known it was me, not Blanche. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” I said flatly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Chris sighed happily and tucked her knees up behind mine. “I love you, Blanche.”
Blanche, not Jamie. Not me.
Chris almost immediately dropped into a light snore, but for me, sleep never came. A fire burned so hotly in my chest that I nearly moaned with the pain of it. Eventually, the burning faded, leaving me a brittle, charred shell. I could not stop the tears now, and soon my pillowcase was soaked.
In the time it took to say one name out loud, everything changed.
Everything.
The life I’d loved was over.
It no longer mattered if 1560 was real or a fantasy. Nothing mattered anymore.