Relativity Read online

  In memory of my father,

  John Bishara

  The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.

  —Carl Sagan, American astronomer (1934–1996)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Resources for Learning More About String Theory and Parallel Universes

  Chapter One

  I hold up my phone and snap a photo of the windowless cafeteria, then close-ups of the gory details: paper wedged underneath uneven table legs, yellowed ceiling panels sagging with water damage, deep gouges scarring the linoleum floor.

  I thumb the words Rescue me and hit send.

  Mr. Burton, the guidance counselor, emerges from the men’s room, wiping his damp hands on his pants, leaving dark streaks across the khaki fabric. I tuck my phone into my back pocket and manage a smile.

  “Okay,” he says. “Where were we?”

  “You were just explaining the themed lunches,” I offer, since I’m the only one here, the only new student enduring orientation. And why would that be? Perhaps because you’d need an IQ of 40 to move to this total nowhere, to think Ennis, Ohio, is a great place to call home. Seriously. There’s a McDonald’s, a library that screams 1970, a bunch of half-vacant strip malls.

  Hiking trails? Nope.

  Movie theater? Two towns north.

  Rapid transit system to a thriving metropolis? Yeah, right.

  Look, I’m not saying Dad’s IQ is deficient. He’s not stupid. But he is stupid-in-love, and that’s what fueled the moving vans.

  “Right. Themed lunches.” Mr. Burton seems to have this habit of rubbing the top of his bald head. It’s like he keeps checking for hair. “On Mexican Day they set up a taco bar. Italian Day is spaghetti and meatballs.”

  Authentic ethnic cuisine, right? I swallow the sarcasm and try to sound sincere. Really, I do, because it’s not Mr. Burton’s fault I’m here, and he seems genuinely excited about the food. “I like tacos,” I say.

  He nods and motions for me to follow him. “We have a variety of extracurriculars,” he says as we walk, counting them off on his stubby fingers. “Soccer, drama, cheerleading.”

  He glances at me when he says “cheerleading,” like he’s embarrassed he mentioned it. Yeah, I don’t exactly fit the bill, with my super-short hair and black-rimmed glasses.

  “Crafts?” Mr. Burton points to a fluorescent-yellow poster pinned to a bulletin board. LEARN TO QUILT AND SEW. He’s already shaking his head; he knows my answer is a serious negative.

  “No thank you,” I manage.

  Mr. Burton continues to tick off extracurriculars, and he’s running out of fingers. “Fast-pitch softball is a big deal here. Some kids are trying to start an organic gardening club. I don’t know what you were accustomed to doing in California.”

  “What about a science club, or math?”

  “Sorry, Ruby.” Mr. Burton rubs his head. “You could try to start one.”

  “Try?”

  “Yes, try. If you can find enough interest.” He opens a thick metal door, and we walk outside, across the parking lot, stepping over disintegrating curbs.

  “New goalposts, and a fresh coat of paint on the stadium.” Mr. Burton spreads his arms, introducing the Home of the Bears. The football field reminds me of Hyperion.

  “What?” he asks.

  I didn’t realize I was talking out loud. “Hyperion. One of Saturn’s moons. It’s totally pockmarked by craters, kind of like the football field.”

  “I see.”

  “Never mind,” I say. “It’s nice. I mean, it’s … you know.”

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I fight the urge to check it. It’s probably George, his response to the cafeteria photos and my plea to be rescued.

  “Well,” Mr. Burton says, forcing a smile. “That about does it.” He looks at his watch, then me.

  “I’m sorry.” I know he’s picked up on my sour mood. “It’s just that it’s pretty different here. For me, anyway. I’ll get used to it.”

  Mr. Burton nods. “You’ll adjust.”

  “There’s my dad now.” I point to our black Jeep pulling into the parking lot, going too fast. Dad dodges a pothole and swerves around a pile of broken glass before stopping.

  “How’d it go? Fine?” Dad leans out the window, his two-day beard uneven, his eyes rimmed with red. I climb in the passenger side and pull my door closed.

  “Ruby will find her place,” Mr. Burton says, shaking Dad’s hand.

  I slide my phone out of my pocket and unlock the screen. Yep. It’s a text from George. Rescuer at your service. Attached is a picture of a kid, front teeth missing, flexing his little biceps in a Superman costume.

  I quickly type, Is that u? and hit send.

  Mr. Burton is still talking to Dad. “I’m available if there are questions or problems.”

  “There won’t be any problems,” Dad says, smiling. “She’s got Kandinsky to show her the ropes. Kandy.”

  Right. My stepsister. Who, according to Dad, will soon be my new best friend. So far, she’s been outstanding at ignoring me. If she bothers to make eye contact, it’s only for the sake of driving home an insult. Such as: Ruby, those glasses make you look so … smart? Anytime you want to borrow my clothes … um, don’t?

  Mr. Burton shifts nervously. He rubs the top of his head. Nope, still no hair. “Mr. Wright,” he says. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, since Kandy is now family and all. But she’s made a few visits to the principal’s office for fighting.”

  “Arguing?” Dad asks.

  “Fist fighting.”

  “Oh.”

  Mr. Burton lets that hang in the air for a minute. “Getting back to Ruby here,” he says. “I need to mention that tattoos are against the dress code. She’ll have to cover hers.”

  My hand goes to the nape of my neck.

  “I didn’t get a good look,” Mr. Burton says, squinting into the Jeep. “What does it say?”

  “It’s an equation. The Einstein tensor.” I turn my head to show him.

  “It’s not gang related?”

  Dad lets out an exaggerated laugh, then adds a horselike snort. “Of course not. It’s just a math equation. Ruby likes that kind of stuff.”

  “The Einstein tensor is used to calculate the curvature of a Riemannian manifold,” I say before I can stop myself.

  Mr. Burton’s face is blank.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I mean, it’s not just a math equation. It’s used for describing space-time.”

  Dad tries to help. “It’s geometry.”

  “You could tutor other kids.” Mr. Burton smiles, seeming relieved he finally thought of something I could do outside of class. He pats the roof of the Jeep. “Okay, then. See you Monday, Ruby.” He wave
s goodbye and heads for a dented pickup truck.

  My phone vibrates, and George’s response appears. Yep. That’s me. 6 yrs old.

  Luv it, I write back.

  What I want to write is Luv *u* and send myself as an attachment. I’d whiz across the continent bit by bit, byte by byte. Ruby particles flying through the atmosphere, a jumble of my deconstructed self. He’d open his messages, and I’d buzz out of his phone, reassembling, downloading 60 percent … 70 percent … Within seconds—with George—I’d be perfectly whole again.

  I cross my arms over my chest, which feels heavy, full of loss. I’ve left so much behind, thirty-five highway hours away. “Honestly, Dad. How do you expect me to like this place?”

  He puts the Jeep in drive, navigating around the shards of glass, the pothole. “Give it a chance.”

  That’s Dad’s new line. Give Willow a chance, give Kandy a chance, give Ohio a chance. We just moved last week. He just got married last month. Give it a chance.

  “The library is the size of a bathroom stall,” I say. “The chem lab is totally outdated.”

  “What can I do to cheer you up?”

  “Move us back to California?” I give him a winning smile, and he laughs.

  “How about ice cream?”

  “No thanks. I’m not five years old.”

  “With all this pouting, you sound like it.” Dad stops at a red light, one of the few traffic signals in Ennis. He rubs his temples. “I did some hunting around on the Internet. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History looks promising. Want to go tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Although,” Dad says. There’s always an although, some caveat. “I’ve got to finalize a copywriting project first.”

  “Of course.”

  The copywriting is numero uno. That’s just the way it is. Oh well, who wants to go to a museum with Dad anyway, after what happened the last time? We were at the de Young in San Francisco, on a Saturday night in April. Behold the disastrous chain of events that ensued: (1) Dad spilled his wine on Willow’s Birkenstocks, (2) she laughed, (3) she wrote her phone number on the program, (4) after a couple of months of long-distance dating, Dad tried to convince her to move to California, and (5) Willow refused, making us move here.

  “Did you know about Kandy?” I ask, putting my fists in front of my face and jabbing into the air. A one-two punch.

  “No,” Dad says, watching the traffic light, still red. “But I’m not going to judge until I know the whole story. She might have been fending off the school bully.”

  “I’m kinda thinking she is the school bully.”

  Dad looks at me sideways. “Give her a chance,” he says. “It’s only been seven days.”

  It’s just not possible. Seven days ago—that’s all?—I was drinking coffee shakes with George, in the back of the East Bay Café, in our usual spot on the leather couch. When I got there, he was hunched over his sketch pad, his colored pencils scattered across the coffee table. And when he saw me, he patted the couch, like always.

  He’d been pissed. About Dad’s sudden marriage, the impulsive move. About me being told rather than asked that we were packing up and heading out.

  And he couldn’t understand why Dad and I weren’t driving cross-country together. Why I was taking a flight by myself to Cleveland, while Dad was driving alone. A twenty-five-hundred-mile drive. Nine states.

  “Holy crap. The photographs you could take!” George had thrown his hands in the air, exasperated. “To have a sketch pad in Nebraska. Are you kidding?”

  “Utah’s got a couple of dinosaur quarries,” I’d said. “And we’d go right around Chicago and the Adler Planetarium.”

  I knew I sounded nerdy, as usual, but George didn’t give me a hard time about it that day—or ever. Which is why I love him.

  “Your dad’s clinical,” George decided.

  “Bonkers.”

  “Daffy.”

  George pulled his iPhone from his pocket. “Thesaurus app,” he’d said. “He’s a lunatic, demented, cracked, brainsick, non compos mentis.”

  “He’s got deadlines, so he can’t take a week off. He’s driving fourteen-hour days so he can get to Ohio by Monday.”

  “No fun.”

  “None of it.”

  The traffic light turns green, and Ennis High recedes in my side-view mirror. Mr. Burton’s pickup bounces out of the parking lot and heads in the opposite direction. I stare at the photo of George in his Superman costume, while Dad yawns and strums his fingers on the Jeep’s steering wheel.

  We drive in silence the rest of the way home. Home? It’s Willow’s home and Kandy’s home, but not mine, not Dad’s. Our home is across the bay from San Francisco, a little apartment in Walnut Creek with blue carpet, an always-cold swimming pool, and a Thai grocery store across the street.

  I slam the Jeep door a little too hard. The house looms over me. Three stories of peeling paint, shutters that hang by rusted screws. Dense ivy strangles the porch columns. The front door is swollen with rot and age.

  “Let me get that.” Dad gives the door a hard shove and it opens.

  Inside, it’s quiet. Dad makes a beeline for his laptop, which is perched on the coffee table in the living room. Above the couch is one of Willow’s enormous oil paintings, gray with streaks of black and navy. It looks like a threatening rain cloud. I’m half tempted to get Dad an umbrella, but I suppose that would support his theory that I’m acting like a child.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Kandy’s off somewhere getting her nails done,” Dad says. “Willow’s in her studio.”

  “Looks like you’re busy too,” I say, motioning to the piles of paperwork.

  He nods. “The label for the spinach-artichoke sauce is killing me.”

  “A delicious source of iron?” I try. “A heart-healthy pasta topping?”

  Dad wrinkles his nose. “That’s all been done before. I’m trying to create a story, something fresh.” He deepens his voice. “In the year 1864, an Italian farmer planted his first tomato plant.”

  “When was the last time you slept? That’s a question for you, not a suggestion for the sauce label.”

  “I tried last night.” He winks at me and starts shuffling through a stack of file folders.

  “You should get some fresh air. Go for a walk or something.”

  Dad gazes at the computer screen. “Hmm.”

  “I’m going to unpack some more,” I tell Dad, though I know he’s just tuned me out. Click. Off. He’s in spinach-artichoke land, in Italy, in the year 1864. So I head upstairs to my room. At some point—maybe—it won’t feel horrible to call it my room. Right now it’s just walls, ceiling, and floor, in the wrong city, in the wrong state.

  There are stacks of boxes labeled RUBY’S. I use a pair of scissors to slice through the tape on a smaller box. It’s crammed with DVDs and my old iPod. Plastic hangers go in the closet, and a lace-collared dress I should’ve never packed goes in the trash.

  Under my suitcase, I find Physics of the Impossible, so I put it on the bookshelf, next to Kaku’s other books. Then I sort through a stack of laundry on my bed, and an unfamiliar hoodie surfaces. I hold it up to examine it, and a plastic drugstore bag—full of lipstick and eye shadow—spills onto the tangled sheets of my unmade bed. It must be Kandy’s.

  I sift through the goo tubes. Several are red, and I have to laugh. I’m sure Kandy has no idea they make the red coloring from pulverized beetle shells. Yeah, you’re wearing a scale insect in the suborder Sternorrhyncha on your lips.

  I walk across the hall to Kandy’s room and flinch at the sign on the door: GET LOST, GO AWAY, DIE. It wasn’t there yesterday, so I can only assume it’s for me. Gosh, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I listen for a moment, trying to hear footsteps or voices coming from downstairs. Silence. No sign that Kandy’s home yet, so I open the door.

  In contrast to the rest of the house, her room is bright with color. Three walls are red, the fourth silver. The red walls are
covered with clippings from magazines. Mostly celebrity red-carpet photos. On the silver wall is a framed Wassily Kandinsky print. That’s who Kandy’s named after, which is just plain wacky. I mean, the guy was a Russian painter, no relation. He just happened to be the subject of Willow’s MFA thesis when she got pregnant.

  I toss the hoodie and the bag of makeup on Kandy’s bed, then go to the window to look at an astounding oak tree that’s on the property behind us, about a half mile away. Kandy’s got a better view than I do, the best in the house. I’m guessing the tree’s eighty feet tall, maybe more. It’s crooked and magnificent, surrounded by acres of cornfields. I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in jaw-droppers conjured up by Mother Nature. The Northern Lights, for one. Brachiosaurus standing forty feet tall, volcanoes spewing 2000-degree lava, the Milky Way containing 100 billion planets. All of it seems otherworldly, the stuff of pure imagination.

  There’s something about this ancient oak tree that’s startling in that same otherworldly way. I find myself stopping at any window that allows even a glimpse of it. It’s got this presence, a vibe. It almost seems like it’s watching me back. For a long time—maybe longer than I realize—I’m glued to Kandy’s window. Mesmerized.

  I shudder, shake off the feeling.

  Get a grip, Ruby. It’s just a tree. Go finish unpacking.

  I head across the hallway back into my room just as Kandy reaches the top of the stairs. I smile. She glowers.

  “How was the manicure?” I ask, trying to sound light and casual. My heart is pounding. If she’d come upstairs thirty seconds sooner, she’d have caught me. …

  “Were you in my room?”

  “Um, yeah?” I say. She narrows her eyes, so I hurry to explain. “I found some of your makeup, and I put it on your bed.”

  She looks startled. “You found makeup?”

  “It was mixed up in some laundry—”

  “Whatever.” She points to the sign on her door. “You can read, right?”

  “Sorry,” I say, taking a step back. She’s a little too close; I can smell her mint gum.

  She puts her hands on her hips and sizes me up. “You should’ve kept the bag for yourself. You need, like, a total makeover,” she says with a look of sheer repulsion. “That shade of denim? It is so bad. And those shoes.”