a universe of accidents

It takes Tim four tries to find a universe with a sky that looks like his own.

There’s nothing particularly unique about this universe. It looks the way everything has looked since his dad died, dull and lifeless, a muted sort of blockbuster appearance, like someone was afraid too much saturation would destroy the fine details and so they flattened the image in post, accidentally crushing it all. There are the same jagged hills outside of town. The same abandoned drive-in movie theater that looks one breath away from collapsing. And the same strange formation of turbulent rain clouds he stared at the entire duration of his dad’s funeral.

He hadn’t cried, during it. Even as they lowered the coffin into the ground, down and down, an endless abyss, he stood next to his mom, both of them dry-eyed and blank-faced, and watched the clouds. And when it was over, he’d stood politely as a line of fellow mourners formed to shake his hand, to hug his mother and whisper their condolences, to say how sorry they were for their loss, and he wondered how many of these people really knew his dad.

He hadn’t. Not really. Not in the end. He’d been as much a stranger to him as someone pulled off the street.

He wondered if his dad would like this, all the people in their fancy black clothes, tissues pressed to damp cheeks.

Performative grief, his mother called it later. An act. A show. She hadn’t cried, either.

She’d loved Tim’s dad at some point, he was sure, but by the time he came into the world – an accident, born into a hundred-year storm in the bitter dark of January – they’d already started drifting apart. He knew less about his mom than he knew about his dad, except that accident was her favorite word. An accident that she and his dad had forgotten to pick him up from school again. An accident that they were both working late and forgot to tell him. Eight years old. Eleven. Seventeen. Sitting alone at a table full of cold food, waiting for someone who would never come.

Accident, accident, accident.

She was probably still furious that Magnus had shown up at the funeral. It had shocked Tim as much as it did his mom, but for different reasons.

Magnus and his dad were never close. They worked together in the same R&D department, one of those places that specializes in experimental prototyping backed by a rich broker with too much time to kill. A handful of people, a half dozen unfinished projects scattered across countertops. Nothing that went into that building ever came out quite the same – not the ideas, not the machines, not Tim’s dad.

But Magnus had been in the line of mourners with everyone else, and when it was his turn, he’d said, “Alaina,” like it was a normal greeting, and she’d blinked like she had just woken up and said, “Oh. Magnus. Hello,” and then, after a long pause, gestured to Tim. “This is my son, Timothy.”

Magnus had just smiled a little, something sad around his eyes as heat rushed to Tim’s cheeks and down the back of his neck. “Yes, Tim here has been assisting me in the lab on some of my projects. A very big help. He and my son have fixed quite a few of my mistakes.” He looked around until he spotted the dark-haired boy lingering awkwardly near the curb, his hands crammed into his pockets, and called him closer. “I believe you’ve met my son, Sutton.”

Sutton had never really needed an introduction. Two years older than Tim, he’d long since forced himself into Magnus’s projects, tinkering with machinery, repairing broken bits of copper and cracked metal pieces before anyone could decide if he should even be allowed there. The first time Tim had been waiting around for his dad and pointed out an incorrect equation on a whiteboard, Sutton had looked at it, then at him, and declared, “Dad, this is my new best friend – uh, what was your name?” and that had been that.

Standing there in his black suit, his curly hair as tame as Tim had ever seen it, he looked strange against the pale outlines of trees surrounding the cemetery, his skin and his brown eyes washed out. He’d waited until Magnus had pulled Tim’s mom aside to speak softly with her and said, “Shit, Tim,” and Tim had laughed for the first time in days, rough and quiet and wrong.

“Yeah,” he said.

He didn’t miss the way Sutton’s eyes roamed over him, calculating, analyzing, before landing on the odd shape in his pocket. It was all Tim could do to subtly turn his hip away as Sutton rocked back on his heels, his expression morphing into one Tim couldn’t read.

“Listen, why don’t you come over later?” he said. “We could work on something or – I dunno, watch a movie or whatever. Anything you want.”

It was an easy enough question, but Tim couldn’t wrap his head around it. He felt for the watch in his pocket, traced its outline once, twice, grounding himself in the shape of it even as he felt Sutton tracking the movement.

“Why?” he asked.

Sutton frowned. “Why?” he echoed. “Cause your dad just died, Tim.”

“Oh,” Tim said.

Oh.

He could hear it all around him, a hush of voices muttering things like, “It just doesn’t make sense,” and, “He always seemed so happy.” Nonsense words that floated through the air, dissolving before they could reach him, before they could hurt him.

For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine saying yes. Imagined tucking himself into the corner of the living room in the worn-out chair he liked as Magnus puttered around tidying things, as Sutton rewound movie scenes over and over so he could point out background details that would make Magnus shoot Tim looks behind his back, fond and exasperated.

It almost felt real.

But the weight of the watch in his pocket was a heavy thing. Bright red, the edges of it poking out like a beacon. If Sutton saw, he never said. He just waited until Tim nodded and whispered, “Yeah, maybe,” and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“For what it’s worth,” Sutton said gently. “I’m so incredibly sorry.”

He didn’t say “about the accident,” the way the last of the stragglers did, mumbling their condolences on the way out, hurried goodbyes, expensive shoes collecting grass and dirt as they went. He didn’t say “accident” the way his mom did when she called him in the middle of math to tell him what happened.

Just another accident.

When Tim found out how his dad really died, all he could think was that for once in his life, one of his parents had finally done something on purpose.

And the watch in his pocket glowed warm from his touch, waiting.

—

So it takes him four tries to find a universe with a sky like his own.

By the time he finally makes it to his street, the clouds have opened above him, spilling out rain, a harsh wind cutting through his clothes. Everything seems right, in a vague sense of the word. The curve of the road and the spread of the forest, all familiar and worn and muted.

Until he comes to a stop in front of his house and realizes it isn’t his house at all. He doesn’t have a potted plant on the porch, or a string of Christmas lights draped over the railing, and when he catches movement in the dim glow from the front window, he doesn’t recognize anyone inside.

He stares at the house for as long as it takes to settle in front of him, blinking water from his lashes, and then feels for the watch on his wrist and presses his thumb against the rough edge of the button.

Not here. Not this one.

He goes to the next.

—

And then onward and onward and onward.

—

When he finally comes back to his own universe, it’s to five missed calls on his phone, the sound of banging on his front door, his mother in a business meeting across town, across the country, across the world, he can never be sure.

He tries to ignore it. He only needs a second to recalibrate, to steady the dizziness swirling through his head before jumping to the next place, but then Sutton yells, “I know you’re in there, Tim!” from outside and the banging picks up.

Tim sighs. Sutton won’t leave until he sees him in person or figures out how to pick the lock, so Tim does the only thing he can and goes downstairs to face him.

“Sutton, I –” he tries, as he cracks open the door, and Sutton lifts a hand.

“Don’t,” he says. “You’re coming over. Get in the car.”

There’s a finality to his tone that has Tim following him down the driveway without a second thought, folding himself into the passenger seat and curling against the window as they drive the five miles between their houses in silence. Sutton’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel. He’s wearing jeans and a faded gray t-shirt, and with a spike of panic, Tim realizes he doesn’t know how long it’s been since the funeral.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, once they’ve pulled up in front of Sutton’s house and are just idling there, not talking.

“I know,” Sutton says after a beat, and leads him inside.

Magnus is waiting for them when they get to the kitchen. He doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t speak at all, but judging by the way his gaze shifts smoothly over Tim’s watch and back to the pot boiling on the stove, there’s no way he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

He says, “Sit down,” in a soft, firm voice, and Tim does, shoving his shaking hands between his knees so Magnus won’t notice.

“I didn't hurt anything,” he feels the need to clarify, because that was one of the things his dad had worried about, all those nights spent obsessing over the watch in the lab. “I didn’t – I didn’t mess with anything or touch anything or change the flow of time. I promise.”

At the counter beside him, sinking into his own chair, Sutton mutters, “You shouldn’t have been using it at all.”

“Sutton,” Magnus warns, turning to look at them both. He lets out a long breath. “That watch is unstable, Tim. It’s unpredictable.”

“But…” Tim fiddles with it, and he doesn’t point out that his dad left it behind for a reason, that he must have thought there was something worth saving. “It works.”

“Just because it works doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Magnus says, and then, voice gone softer, “Your father never finished it for a reason, Tim.”

Tim looks away. It doesn’t hurt, but why would it? It isn’t real.

“I want you to stay here tonight with us,” Magnus continues, still in that same tone, like he’s calming a wounded animal. He scoops out cups of steaming soup from the pot, measuring them equally. He sets a bowl in front of Tim. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Tim doesn’t say “I’m not alone,” but it’s a near thing, and it’s a lie, anyway. He just watches Magnus turn off the stove, watches him take the seat on Tim’s other side, careful and slow, close but not suffocating.

When Tim reaches for the bowl, the ceramic is warm against his skin, and he has to blink at it.

It’s blue. Vibrant and sharp against the paleness of the kitchen.

No one else seems to notice.

He picks up his spoon.

—

The next universe is wrong the moment he steps into it.

Still, there’s something strangely attractive about it, the colors flipped, the sky an odd mess of stars in the daylight and a moon that hangs off-kilter. The whole town is different, run-down and forgotten, a remnant of life instead of a place where someone would settle down to make a home.

Dogs roam through the street. In the distance, a wolf howls, a bird sings. There’s an empty plot of land where his house should be, overgrown, a tangle of weeds and thorns.

There’s no one else here. He won’t find what he’s looking for.

He presses the familiar watch button and starts again.

—

Again and again and again and again.

—

“Why are you doing this?” Sutton asks him, already waiting in the school’s parking lot when Tim comes out of his last class.

Tim glances back at the bus and decides he doesn’t want the fight. He tosses his backpack into Sutton’s car and says, “You wouldn’t understand.”

Sutton leans against the hood, his arms folded over each other, his eyes wide and hurt. “Try me.”

“I have to –” Tim starts, and then breaks off. What does he have to do? He has to find his dad. He has to figure out if he ever knew anything about him at all. If all those missed dinners and missed pickups and long nights in the lab – Tim in the other room with Magnus and Sutton, Tim alone at a table, waiting and waiting and waiting – ever meant anything at all.

He has to know why he did it.

He swallows, his eyes stinging, and runs a hand under his nose. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Sutton pushes away from the car and grabs him into a hug, crushing him close, and Tim just holds onto him while he can, while it matters, and wonders how he never realized just how bright the yellow of Sutton’s car is.

—

Nothing changes in the universes he visits. Nothing important, anyway.

They’re all too similar, slight alterations, different versions of his world that might have been the same ten years ago, fifteen, twenty. Shifted colors and odd skies, empty houses and some full of all the wrong things.

He comes across one that he can enter, because the key is the same, and his room is almost the same. But there’s nothing in the fridge, nothing in the cupboards. Aside from his room, it looks like no one has been home in weeks.

He searches for pictures of his dad and finds none. His mom is still the same, but the only people who stand next to her in these photos are business partners and shareholders, cheap, plastic smiles on their faces as they gather around conference rooms. There are no pictures of Tim.

He takes one from the wall and shatters it against the floor.

—

At home, he can’t stand the empty hallways, the silence, the lingering stillness. He rides his bike the five miles to Sutton’s house and knocks on the door, and Magnus opens it immediately, as if he’d been standing there waiting.

In the kitchen, Sutton is laughing, and Tim shuffles his feet in the doorway and says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting,” Magnus says, ushering him in and closing the door. “In fact, we could probably use your help.”

Tim trails behind him, ignoring the twist of hope in his gut. “A project?”

“Of sorts,” Magnus responds, and turns the corner to reveal a kitchen in full chaos, flour all over the counter, the ceiling, dusting Sutton’s black shirt in splotches of white. Sutton is rolling a ball of dough across a messy cutting board, and when he swipes his hair out of his eyes to glance up, it leaves a streak over his forehead.

“Tim!” he says. “Timmy. Timothy. My dad is a madman. He’s lost his mind. He’s gone insane.”

Magnus snorts lightly. He continues into the kitchen, but Tim stays at the entrance, watching, something heavy and unsure on his shoulders.

“You’re the one who wanted to try this recipe,” Magnus says, pulling a mug down from the cupboard and going about filling it from a kettle that’s started to ring, ignoring Sutton as he whines, “Because you said it would be easy!”

Tim takes a step back. “Should I … leave?”

“Absolutely not,” Sutton says, pointing a finger at him and stirring up another cloud of flour. He coughs and waves it away. “You should come over here and save me immediately.”

Something shifts in Tim’s chest, his heart working overtime, pounding in his ears. The kitchen is warm and bright, and without the high-pitched ringing of the kettle, the sound of Sutton’s laughter echoes off the walls, bouncing around them, filling the space.

Magnus slides up beside Tim and hands him a mug. Softly, he says, “I’m glad you’re here,” and gives his shoulder a squeeze before moving to the counter to help Sutton sort through a tangle of ingredients and recipe pages.

Tim doesn’t have to look to know what’s in the mug. It’s the same drink he makes himself when he stays too late at the lab with them, the sky turning over outside, the world beginning to wake. Just the right amount of sugar, just the right amount of milk. His favorite.

He does look, though, because the brightness catches his eye.

The mug is red. Loud, vivid, red. Just like the watch.

“Tim!” Sutton cries, ducking and swatting at Magnus, who is throwing little clumps of sugar at his face. “Help!”

Tim stares a little longer, letting the color settle.

The watch stays in his pocket.

He sets the mug down and goes to help.