I was strong enough by then that I could open a small portal to any universe we’d already been in just by recognizing the tension of the threads when I touched the Envisioner, and I didn’t need to connect to a second machine. I started using my fancy new portal tricks to pinch us some things from finance bros Yusuf and Hayes’s world, which seemed like a safe bet. Supplies, at least at first. I’d stick my hand on a facet of the machine, open a gateway into a supermarket, and grab some things. Never mind that whoever was in the store saw a hand appearing out of thin air and grabbing a blueberry pie off a bakery shelf. I grabbed a jug of milk to wash it all down from another store, and when I leaned out of the portal, I caught the eye of a mother with her kids who screamed and dropped her carton of eggs on the floor.

“Where’d that come from?” Yusuf asked when I walked back to our camp with the pie and the milk. I just shrugged.

I pinched a video camera to replace my baby, Scarlett, that I’d left at the Compound. And a couple of blankets, lanterns, and logs of quick-start camping firewood. It was so easy. And each time I opened a gateway to nick something, the fireworks started at the back of my brain, the fizzles of euphoria like I was on the dancefloor and the DJ was so plugged into my body that they played the song I didn’t even know I’d needed to hear. Everything else just melted away against the bass thudding in my chest. You can keep going. You’ve got this. As much as I wish I could say it was Figueiredo’s voice in my head, it was mine. Saying the same things I’d tell myself when I’d been hiding in a bathroom stall for ten minutes so I could delay ordering another drink at a bar. You’ll know when it’s too much and you’re not there yet.

Snatching the rings for Yusuf took skill that I’d like to think even Kaori would be impressed with. I opened a gateway into a jewelry shop somewhere, but the kicker was that I opened it inside the jewelry case. If I’d been able to do half this shit as a kid, my mom wouldn’t have pulled fourteen-hour shifts at the ER and I could’ve gotten her the best doctors in the world when she got sick. I couldn’t change the past—not yet, anyway—and I didn’t know what size Yusuf’s fingers were, so I just grabbed an entire little velvet tray of men’s gold rings and zipped the gateway closed to the screams just beyond it.