Fifty-Two

Finn

“What happened to all the coins?” Finn asked, peering down at the ground alongside Chess. He saw nothing but an empty stage at the bottom of the screen. “Where’d they go?”

“We lost them!” Rocky moaned. He glanced once over the edge of the railing, and seemed to turn slightly green before backing away, clutching Kafi even tighter. “Our plan failed!”

“No, no, maybe . . .” Lana put a gentle hand on Rocky’s back. She clutched Finn’s arm. “Just let me think. . . . This could be a good sign. It could mean that . . . that . . .”

“You think the coins we dropped all went to the other world?” Chess asked. “You think the pathways are open again? So maybe the lever worked for Emma and Kona, too?”

“Hurray!” Finn cried, jumping up and down again.

“But why . . . If the coins worked, then wouldn’t . . .” Lana seemed to be having trouble getting words out. “I dropped every single coin I had. So . . .”

“Yeah, so did I,” Finn said. He picked up one of the abandoned buckets and turned it upside down. “See? Nothing left.”

“Right,” Lana said. “But those were all other people’s coins. I didn’t just send out coins that other people made. I sent out all of my own, too. Ones that said FIND US. Ones that said SEE US. And HEAR US, HELP US, and TELL OUR STORIES. The complete set. For the very first time. Don’t you see? I sent everything I had to the other world. Every plea! Every hope! Every story about me that mattered!”

“And you expected an answer,” Chess said, as if he understood completely.

Lana nodded. The corners of her mouth trembled. She looked like Kafi when she was about to cry.

“Maybe . . . maybe it doesn’t work exactly the way you thought,” Finn said. He gazed toward the alternate world’s Cuckoo Clock building, as if he expected to see another Morse-code message from Emma. “If Emma and Kona got the lever to work, you can just go visit your double in the other world. Everything will work out somehow. You’ll see.”

He was amazed he could say that so cheerfully when the giant TV screen still blared beneath his feet. But it felt like something had changed, just in the last few seconds.

He peered back at Lana. Then he blinked. Maybe the height was getting to him—he was eight stories above the ground. Maybe he’d been pulled back and forth too many times between the hope of the coins and the despair of the bad smells and the TVs. Or maybe his body was telling him that the one little granola bar he’d eaten back at Other-Natalie’s house wasn’t nearly enough to survive on.

Because suddenly Finn was seeing double.

He saw Lana right in front of him: the tears trembling in her eyes, her wispy hair sticking up, her teeth gritted in pain.

And then, right beside her, reaching out to her, was another version of Lana. One with the same high cheekbones and kind, gray eyes—exactly identical features. But this Lana looked excited and hopeful and a little awestruck.

And confident. This second version of Lana looked completely confident, completely at ease, completely comfortable in her own skin.

Even in a totally strange world.

“Lana!” Finn cried, suddenly understanding. “It happened! You got your answer! Your double’s here!”