NINE

Dani

The three of us sit at my kitchen table. Mae has her arms wrapped around herself once more, and Toby is sat staring into his un-drunk cup of tea.

“Her arms disappeared, Dan, her hands disappeared into nothing,” he looks from Mae to me and back again. “Please tell me I was imagining it. Please?”

I curl my fingers around my cup of tea.

We haven’t been back long. When I arrived home, my father was already asleep, and it was just me and the empty house. I made myself busy tidying up and prepping dinner until Toby and Mae walked through the front door.

Neither of them spoke, and we waited in silence as I boiled the kettle and prepared the tea. If Mae was impressed by how the kettle boiled or by the machinations of the fridge, she doesn’t show it.

Toby, on the other hand… well, I’ve never seen him so quiet.

“No,” I say finally. “You weren’t imagining it.”

Toby blinks at me. “What the hell is going on here, Dan?”

“Tell me what happened first, and then we’ll piece it together, I promise.”

Toby raises an eyebrow at me but doesn’t argue. He explains how they went out for the day, how Mae has never been to the beach, how they got on the bus, how they’d just gone over the bridge when suddenly Mae started to disappear. He explains how he got the bus to pull over and how he half-carried Mae back across the bridge and into town.

“By the time we got back, she was her full self again,” Toby says, voice shaking.

I close my eyes. Trying to connect the dots.

“That damn bridge,” I whisper.

“What about it?” Toby says.

“That’s where all of this started, where the old woman got me.”

At Toby’s confused expression, I realize I’ll have to explain. When I’m done, Toby is leaning back in his chair, his eyes so wide, as if he’s trying to take in the whole picture all at once.

“Mae and I, we’re not twins, we’re the same person,” I say.

“But you’re not, are you?” Toby says. “You’ve lived very different lives, you can’t be the same if you haven’t had the same experiences.”

I frown. “She’s my past life, and I’m her future. We’ve got the same soul.”

“Okay, so you’re made from the same stuff,” Toby says, shrugging. “Same ingredients but different cakes.”

I’m not sure how much I like that analogy.

The corners of Mae’s lips twitch. “I would like some cake.”

Toby grins. “I’ll go grab some in a minute.”

I roll my eyes. “No. We need to figure out what happened today before we do anything.”

Both Toby and Mae look to me.

“Maybe the two of you can’t leave the town?”

I shake my head. I don’t think that’s it.

“Mae, when you started to disappear, did you feel as though something was pulling at you?”

Mae leans forward, arms still clutched to her chest. “I felt like I was a ball of thread…” she says slowly – her eyes vacant, as though traveling back to that moment, “…and something was tugging me apart.”

“Like a puppet being cut loose of its strings,” I murmur.

Toby looks at each of us in turn. “This is so creepy. You know that, right?”

I ignore him. “I don’t think we disappeared because you were going outside of the town, Mae. I think we disappeared because we were getting too far apart from each other.”

I can see it so clearly. I look at Mae on the other side of the table and imagine a silver thread trailing across it – leading from my chest to Mae’s heart. Then I imagine the thread snapping, and Mae and I turning into nothing before Toby’s very eyes.

I blink, and the image is gone.

“I don’t understand,” Mae says slowly. “Why must we be near each other?”

I shrug. “The old lady said I had something to learn and something to give in return…” I run a hand through my hair. “God knows what that means.”

Toby reaches out a hand and pats my shoulder. “I somehow don’t think you’re gonna figure it out tonight, mate.”

I rub my eyes. “No, but… we need a plan.”

Toby retracts his hand, offended. “No, not a Damn-Dani Plan.”

I let out something remarkably similar to a hiss as Mae glances back and forth between us. “I’m confused… a Dani… plan?”

Toby laughs. “Dani likes to make plans. She likes to make lists and slide shows detailing everything she’s going to do and what’s going to happen. And then she likes to throw an absolute fit when her plan doesn’t go quite according to, well, plan.”

“I don’t throw a fit,” I snap.

“Uhm, may I remind you of the biting incident?”

“He deserved it!”

Toby laughs again, louder than before. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but it definitely wasn’t part of your plan.”

“I’ll bite you in a minute,” I growl.

Mae looks between us again, from Toby’s still grinning expression to my angry, etchy frown. I can almost see the cogs working in Mae’s mind – how utterly mad we must appear to her, I think.

“Either way,” I say, trying to steer them back to topic. “There’s a lot to do and figure out. My dad still needs looking after, I still have to get on at my new job, which pretty much leaves the weekend.”

“Again, I ask, is this a good time to be starting a new job?” Toby says.

I take a deep breath. “There is no good time, only time!”

Toby shakes his head, a smile still tugging at his lips. “Okay then, let’s make a plan.”

And so, huddled around my kitchen table, we do.