Fifty-Five

Finn

Finn, Chess, and the two Lanas took off after Rocky. They were halfway down the stairs when the giant screen beside them suddenly went silent.

“How did that happen?” Finn asked.

Lana grinned, and it transformed her face. If she and Other-Lana hadn’t been wearing different clothes—Lana in green; Other-Lana in a purple dress—then Finn wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. They looked equally confident, equally certain.

“People stopped paying attention to the screen,” Lana said. “Because they’re talking to their doubles instead.”

“Lana explained this to me through her coins,” Other-Lana added. “The TVs got stronger and stronger the more that people watched them. So just now, when people stopped watching . . .”

“The TVs—including this screen—got weaker,” Chess finished for her. He gazed out hopefully toward the alternate world’s Cuckoo Clock building, where Emma and Kona had used the lever. “Does that mean the Mayor just got weaker, too?”

“I hope so!” Lana said, her grin growing even more.

Hope . . . , Finn thought.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and waded out into the crowd. Finn was pretty sure he could pick out the other-world double in every pair he saw before him: It was the teenager wearing a swimming suit, not the one in drab gray sweats. It was the girl with the fuchsia-colored hair, not the one with hunched-over shoulders and a hoodie hiding her face. It was the old man in the “Wheelchair Athlete” T-shirt, not the one huddled on the ground.

He saw doctors and nurses in scrubs, and men and women in leather jackets who looked like they’d just stepped off of motorcycles. A man in a sweatshirt that said “Proud Stay-at-Home Dad” with smaller print that said “Can’t you tell by all the dried Cheerios on this shirt?” A woman wearing bowling shoes and carrying a bowling ball. Someone in a firefighter’s coat. People with brown skin and black skin and white skin.

It looked like all types of people had dropped everything to come and help their doubles, as soon as they got their full set of coins.

Finn, Chess, and the two Lanas spun through the edges of so many conversations:

“. . . and then I decided to study philosophy because I was curious about . . .”

“. . . I think fifth grade was the most fun to teach . . .”

“. . . the business I always dreamed of creating . . .”

“. . . even though others said I’d never make a go of it, I was able to . . .”

Those were all people from the other world. And the people who looked beaten down and fearful were saying things like:

“. . . the saddest day of my life . . .”

“. . . if only I’d been brave enough to . . .”

“. . . most of all I regret . . .”

Then the deeper Finn and the others got into the crowd, the more he started hearing the same kind of comments from the people of the awful world: “That was possible?”

“How was that possible for you? I never felt that was possible for me. . . .”

“Could I have done that?”

“Is that still possible?”

Finn turned around and tugged on Lana’s arm.

“It’s not fair!” he said. “The doubles are making all the people of your world think that it would be easy to change. To be just like them. But you didn’t have all the chances Other-Lana had. You couldn’t have made all the same choices. Because she lived in a better world.”

He wasn’t really thinking about Lana and Other-Lana. He was thinking more about his mom and Mrs. Gustano, his family and Rocky’s.

They hadn’t had the same lives at all, and it wasn’t just because his mom and Mrs. Gustano had married different men. The Greystones had always been in danger; they’d always faced difficult choices, even though Finn, Emma, and Chess hadn’t always known it.

Everything would have been fine for the Gustanos if Mrs. Gustano hadn’t been Mom’s double.

Lana and Other-Lana met each other’s eyes and smiled.

“Oh, Finn,” Lana said. “I’m not expecting to have the same life as my double. But seeing what’s possible for her, knowing she can understand me and I can understand her . . . It helps me see what’s possible for me, too. It helps me believe I can change—myself and my world. Even though it won’t be easy.”

Other-Lana held out the wand she’d made of all the coins Lana had sent her.

“Lana can choose how she wants to tell her own story,” she said. “And what she told me so far—her story is really more about her hopes for the future, not just her regrets about the past. Nobody’s story is over until they’re dead.”

“No, it’s not over even then,” Chess said. He gestured at all the people crowded around them. “All this, all these people here because of the coins—it’s because of what my mom and dad and a woman named Gina started eight years ago. My dad and Gina didn’t live long enough to know the coins worked. My mom thought for the past eight years that they failed.”

“And then Lana and all these other people kept your parents’ dreams alive,” Other-Lana said. She gazed admiringly at her double. “I’ve never needed to be as brave as you, but . . . I hope that I would if I had to. I hope that I will be.”

So it’s not just that the bad-world people are learning from the good-world people, Finn thought. They’re learning from each other.

He was no longer so sure that he could tell the difference between the people of each world. He let himself get a little lost in all the hope and excitement around him. After all the times he’d been drenched in fear in this world, now it felt like he was surfing on joy.

And then he heard shouts from the side of the stadium—a familiar voice amplified by a microphone or a megaphone: “That’s right! Those are the orders! Seal off all the exits! Arrest everyone here!”

It was the Mayor.

The Mayor, who . . . hadn’t lost all of his power.