The Smallest Parallel

Chapter 13

When Marguerite dialed Geoffrey's number, it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Completely unnatural, however, were the memories of the night before. What had truly happened? Was she going mad?

            Geoffrey picked up after a few rings, giving Marguerite ample time to clear the panic from her chest. She inhaled, slowly, fiddling with the locket at her throat.

            "Hello," Geoffrey said, revealing no emotion.

            "Hello Geoffrey," she responded, trying to read the situations and failing miserably. The line went silent for fifteen seconds.

            "I actually have a question," she said, silently debating the insanity of the situation and hoping that her memory was correct. Perhaps she hoped it was incorrect. She wasn't quite sure.

            "And what is your question? Is it something that must be settled by the fairy court?"

            "No. They're retired, Geoffrey. Everyone knows that. I actually had a question about last night."

            She let the words settle between them, dangling on the phone line.

            And then Geoffrey answered her question without knowing what exactly it was.

            "Did I leave my jacket there?"

            Suddenly, Marguerite felt somewhat comforted. It was settled; she had spent the entire night with Geoffrey.

            But where had those memories with Adrien come from? She hadn't dreamt them. If she had dreamt them, she wouldn't have remembered them as fact. Suddenly, she had an idea.

            "I must go, Geoffrey."

            She ended the call quickly, not giving Geoffrey the time to respond.

            She ran down the hall to her bedroom, pausing only once to admire her artwork in the hall of illusions. Once she made it to the door, she knew exactly what she was searching for. At the top of her closet was her book of theories, a compilation she had perfected at the ripe age of fourteen. She felt around in the dim light of the exposed bulb, her fingers brushing over the worn composition book. She exhaled a sigh, pulling it down from the closet and dusting off the cover.

            The journal was just as she remembered it. The cover bore her name in her signature messy, half cursive scrawl. It felt surreal to return to something that she hadn't looked at in years. In between pages were copies of treasure maps and poems she'd shared with Geoffrey over the years. To view these things at this time felt like returning to herself.

            Marguerite felt weak and disoriented from sprinting down the hall, but she couldn't sit down. She couldn't stop herself form pursuing this lead.           

            She flipped the pages, passing musings and half-finished entries until she found what she was looking for. The page was full. The first line read, "Marguerite's Hypothesis on Parallel Universes". It was the best title she could think of at the time. In her messy handwriting, she saw the familiar sentences and she came to believe that her theory had come true.

            For a second, she remembered the theory at the time she had come across it. She'd been fascinated by the idea that time wasn't linear, and they multiple timelines could occur simultaneously. She had been skipping school in favor of reading theories on time and space.

            Yes, she had forgotten her promise to attend school on a regular basis, but this felt more dire at the time. If time wasn't linear, did her attendance of school have any effect on her future? She found herself asking questions like this over and over again in her mind. Eventually, she became stuck within that mental space, and Geoffrey had staged an intervention.