“New cologne,” I told her. “It’s called Blitzen.” And I quickly hurried to my room, closing out any conversation.

Once in my room, I immediately grabbed my phone. I hadn’t spoken to Katie since the weekend, but she was the only person I could share this with who wouldn’t think I was out of my mind.

New development, I texted, then I got dressed, and worked on a game plan without patience to wait for a response.

I bounded out of my room, about to head downstairs and out the door, but I passed Hunter’s room, and what I heard gave me pause. He was in his room playing electric guitar. Hunter didn’t have a guitar, or the skill to even play one in our original world. Neither of us had been musically inclined. He looked up and saw me.

“Hey, listen to this,” he said, and played a complicated riff. When he looked up at me for validation, he saw I was wearing multiple layers of confusion along with a jacket. “What’s up? Going somewhere?”

In my previous life, I would have told him it was none of his business—but then, that Hunter wouldn’t have cared enough to ask. I hesitated, then offered him an entry into my world. “If I told you, you’d think I was nuts.”

“And how would that be different from any other day?”

I looked at my phone. Katie hadn’t responded. Maybe she had changed her mind and decided I was ten-foot-pole material. Or maybe she was with Layton and wasn’t free to text me. Either way, I couldn’t wait on this; I had to move now. I didn’t tell Hunter what was up. Instead, I just said, “Wanna come with?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s dead around here.”

He put down his guitar and grabbed a hoodie. The fact that he’d come with me without even knowing what I was up to said a lot about him. It said a lot about us as brothers. This reality was not all roses and puppies—but if there was one thing that tipped the scale and made me think that this might be the better place to be, it was Hunter. Not the money, not the car, not the home theater, but having a brother who felt like a brother. Used to be we tolerated each other, and only barely. A textbook case of “I love you but that doesn’t mean I have to like you,” which I think he once actually said to me when we were younger, and our mother forced us to hug it out after a fight.

“So where are we going?” he asked as we got into my car. “Do you need me to navigate?”

“The skate park,” I told him.

“You? The skate park? You don’t even own a skateboard.”