Into the Parallel: Parallelogram, Book 1

Chapter 2

2

It’s been going on for six months.

Six months of trying every day, sometimes twice a day, the big earphones over my head to block out any outside noise, while the voice on the CD says things like, “Imagine yourself into clouds. Be the rain. You are a flower—let the butterflies fan your face.” An hour or more of that every day, with it never, ever working. And why should it? If you think about it, it’s totally ridiculous.

But I knew I had to try something, and this was as close to an idea as I had.

It was all about the vibrations.

There’s this theory in quantum physics—a really respected theory, even though a lot of physicists still disagree with it—that says the smallest building block of life isn’t the atom or electron or quark, it’s actually tiny, vibrating strings. Superstrings that change shape and speed and tone depending on whether they want to turn themselves into subatomic particles or elephants or galaxies.

And what turns them from amorphous, random strings into cotton balls or horny toads is the particular way they vibrate—fast or slow, big waves, little waves, strings composing the universe the way violins create the sound of an orchestra. Strings in you and me. Strings in alien life forms, if there really are any. Vibrating strings as the basic building block of every single universe that might be out there.

So when my best friend Lydia mentioned one night that her yoga instructor had been teaching them all how to change their vibration, my ears shot up like a terrier’s. I don’t usually ask her too much about yoga—it’s just too weird for me—but this time I had to know.

“What do you mean, change your vibration?” I asked her. Casually. Because I knew if I showed too much interest, she was bound to launch into one of her lectures again about how yoga will change my life and why aren’t I coming to class with her and how can I keep living this way, and all of that. Ever since she got wrapped up in it a few years ago, she thinks it’s the answer for everything.

Of course, she accuses me of thinking physics is the answer for everything, so I guess we’re even.

“Raise your vibration,” she repeated. “You know, take it from a level 200 to a 310.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh-huh.”

We were chopping onions for her mother, who was making dinner for all of us, and I waited a few more seconds, really concentrating on my onion, before asking Lydia some more.

“So . . . how does he do it?” I said. “You know, get your vibration up.”

Lydia scraped her choppings into a bowl and reached for the clump of garlic. “You meditate,” she said. “An hour every day. He guides you through it until you can free your mind.”

“This is . . . in class?” I asked. Lydia goes to yoga every day after school, and teaches there a couple of times a week.

She laid down her knife and gave me a critical look. “He’s that visiting instructor I told you about—remember, the one I told you that you had to come see? But you were too busy reading Hawkins, or whatever.”

It was true, I’d made up some excuse. Although I probably really was reading Hawkins.

Lydia went back to chopping. “I bought one of his CDs afterwards—the one with the same meditation from class. It’s amazing.”

I picked up a green pepper, ran it under the faucet, and pretended I didn’t care. “So . . . do you think it worked? I mean, do you think it might have changed your vibration?”

“Definitely,” Lydia said. “Can’t you tell? Everyone else has really noticed it.”

I wasn’t sure what a 200 vibration versus a 310 looked like, but I was willing to take her word for it.

“So do you think I could . . . I mean, do you have it here?” I asked. “Could I maybe listen to it? Just out of curiosity.”

Lydia gave a little snort. “Sure. You’ll last about two minutes. It’s not ‘scientific’ enough for you.”

I shrugged. “Just to try. Out of curiosity.”

Which is why I raced over to the yoga studio after school the next day before Lydia could get there, and secretly bought my own copy. Because I could tell right away, after listening to it for just a few minutes in her room, that this might finally be the key—the exact secret I’d been looking for.

Because here’s the story: I need a miracle. Not some woo-woo, yoga-world kind of miracle, but a good honest scientific one. The kind of miracle that saves a girl in my position and sends her off to college so she can begin the rest of her life.

I know I’m good at physics. If it’s not too braggy to say so, I’m great at it. It’s been my life ever since I learned about it in fifth grade.

But there’s a major, major problem, and everyone I’ve talked to about it—from my school counselor to my teachers—agrees: I suck at math. I mean, suck at it like people who can’t throw a ball suck at that. Like, embarrassingly, humiliatingly suck at it. My brain just will not bend itself that way, no matter what I’ve tried.

And I’ve tried. Special books, remedial tutoring, instructional videos, even step-by-step comic books for little kids. I can do addition and subtraction pretty well, and multiplication if I’m not under too much pressure and have enough time, but I swear, there’s something about algebra that makes my skin break out. And geometry? Forget it.

And there’s no college that I know of that will let you into their physics program—or probably any program—if you can’t at least pass Algebra I. So there’s that.

Then there’s the fact that it’s not just any college I want to get into, it’s Columbia University in New York City, where the greatest physicist in the world is currently a professor, and if he could be my teacher I would simply die from mental ecstasy, because I’ve read every single one of his books about ten times apiece, and I know if I could just get into his program and show him how I was meant to be a theoretical physicist and unlock all the secrets of the universe right alongside him, my life would be perfect in ways I can’t even imagine yet. Well, that and this one particular guy falling in love with me, and then I’d be set.

But the problem is the great Professor Herbert Hawkins knows how to do math. He believes in it. He’s a professor of both math and physics. And I doubt if he’d lower himself to even spit on an application like mine, with all my straight As in science and straight Ds in math. Not without something extra—a secret weapon of some sort. A miracle.

Which brings us back to vibration.

I was reading one of Professor Hawkins’s books earlier this year—the new one he has out about parallel universes—and there was this one little line in there about vibration. He said that one of his colleagues threw out this idea at lunch one day about how we might be able to bridge the gap between our universe and any parallel one next door if we could just get the strings to vibrate right. Line them up somehow, get them all on the same frequency, then oop!, slip right past the barrier and end up in another world.

Everybody laughed at him, of course—that’s what physicists do all the time, to spur each other on to even greater discoveries—but I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even sure if I got it. And then it was just a few days later when Lydia said the thing about her yoga teacher and the vibrations, and it all started fitting into place.

Because if it’s true? And I’m the one who proves it? Won’t Columbia University let me in then? Wouldn’t Professor Hawkins see my name at the top of the application and say, “What? What’s this girl doing in with the rest of the stack? Give her to me—I’m calling her this morning. I have to have Audie Masters in my lab.”

Which is why every day for the past six months I’ve been applying myself to vibrations. Diligently turning myself into clouds and raindrops and wisps of air as the yoga teacher drones on in my headset, and trying as hard as I can to change my vibration from whatever it is to whatever it needs to be.

And then this morning it finally worked. I didn’t even realize it until suddenly there was this cold wind blowing against my bare leg. I reached down to pull the sheet up over it, but there was no sheet. There was no bed. Just cold, hard ground.

I gently peeked open one eye.

And there I was. On top of a mountain somewhere, sitting on the dirt, the wind whipping over me something fierce.

And there she was. A young woman. Sitting just a little distance away from me on the edge of a cliff, her legs dangling over, hiking boots on her feet. Her eyes were closed, her face tipped into the sun.

She had long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. I could only see the side of her face, but what I saw was enough. I drew in a breath.

She must have heard me, because she turned and her eyes got wide. We both stared at each other for one long frozen moment. Because of course we recognized each other—we were each other.

My brain was still having a hard time catching up. I’d done it. It had worked. The truth is maybe I hadn’t really believed in any of it until that moment—a theory is a theory, and it doesn’t mean it’s right—but now there I was, in a parallel world, staring at a parallel version of me.

I didn’t know what else to do. I gave her this little dorky wave and started to say, “Hi. I—”

But that was it. Whatever I thought I was going to say—“Hi, I’m Audie. Hi, I’m from another universe. Hi, I think you’re me.”—I never got it out.

Because right about then her dog decided he’d better kill me.