“And of not wanting to shoot the bison,” Sam said.
“It’s wasteful. All that meat just rots.”
Sadie threw her arms around him. “Sam Masur! I kept hoping I’d run into you.”
“I’m in the directory,” Sam said.
“Well, maybe I hoped it would be organic,” Sadie said. “And now it is.”
“What brings you to Harvard Square?” Sam asked.
“Why, the Magic Eye, of course,” she said playfully. She gestured in front of her, toward the advertisement. For the first time, Sam registered the 60-by-40-inch poster that had transformed commuters into a zombie horde.
SEE THE WORLD IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.
THIS CHRISTMAS, THE GIFT EVERYONE WANTS IS THE MAGIC EYE.
The imagery on the poster was a psychedelic pattern in Christmas tones of emerald, ruby, and gold. If you stared at the pattern long enough, your brain would trick itself into seeing a hidden 3D image. It was called an autostereogram, and it was easy to make one if you were a modestly skilled programmer. This? Sam thought. The things people find amusing. He groaned.
“You disapprove?” Sadie said.
“This can be found in any dorm common room on campus.”
“Not this particular one, Sam. This one’s unique to—”
“Every train station in Boston.”
“Maybe the U.S.?” Sadie laughed. “So, Sam, don’t you want to see the world with magic eyes?”
“I’m always seeing the world with magic eyes,” he said. “I’m exploding with childish wonder.”
Sadie pointed toward a boy of about six: “Look how happy he is! He’s got it now! Well done!”
“Have you seen it?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t see it yet,” Sadie admitted. “And now, I really do have to catch this next train, or I’ll be late for class.”
“Surely, you have another five minutes so that you can see the world with magic eyes,” Sam said.
“Maybe next time.”
“Come on, Sadie. There’ll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that we’re all in the same world?”
Sadie smiled ruefully and punched Sam lightly on the shoulder. “That was about the most Sam thing you could have said.”
“Sam I am.”
She sighed as she heard the rumble of her train leaving the station. “If I fail Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics, it’s your fault.” She repositioned herself so that she was looking at the poster again. “You do it with me, Sam.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sam squared his shoulders, and he stared straight ahead. He had not stood this near to Sadie in years.
Directions on the poster said to relax one’s eyes and to concentrate on a single point until a secret image emerged. If that didn’t work, they suggested coming closer to the poster and then slowly backing up, but there wasn’t room for that in the train station. In any case, Sam didn’t care what the secret image was. He could guess that it was a Christmas tree, an angel, a star, though probably not a Star of David, something seasonal, trite, and broadly appealing, something meant to sell more Magic Eye products. Autostereograms had never worked for Sam. He theorized it was something to do with his glasses. The glasses, which corrected a significant myopia, wouldn’t let his eyes relax enough for his brain to perceive the illusion. And so, after a respectable amount of time （fifteen seconds）， Sam stopped trying to see the secret image and studied Sadie instead.
Her hair was shorter and more fashionable, he guessed, but it was the same mahogany waves that she’d always had. The light freckling on her nose was the same, and her skin was still olive, though she was much paler than when they were kids in California, and her lips were chapped. Her eyes were the same brown, with golden flecks. Anna, his mother, had had similar eyes, and she’d told Sam that coloration like this was called heterochromia. At the time, he had thought it sounded like a disease, something for his mother to potentially die from. Beneath Sadie’s eyes were barely perceptible crescents, but then, she’d had these as a kid too. Still, he felt she seemed tired. Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.
“I saw it!” she said. Her eyes were bright, and she wore an expression he remembered from when she was eleven.
Sam quickly turned his gaze back to the poster.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I saw it.”
Sadie looked at him. “What did you see?”
“It,” Sam said. “It was amazingly great. Terribly festive.”
“Did you actually see it?” Sadie’s lips were twitching upward. Those heterochromic eyes looked at him with mirth.
“Yes, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else who hasn’t.” He gestured toward the horde.
“Okay, Sam,” Sadie said. “That’s thoughtful of you.”
He knew she knew that he hadn’t seen it. He smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
“Isn’t it strange?” Sadie said. “I feel like I never stopped seeing you. I feel like we come down to this T station to stare at this poster every day.”
“We grok,” Sam said.
“We do grok. And I take back what I said before. That is the Sammest thing you could have said.”
“Sammest I Ammest. You’re—” As he was speaking, the blender began to whir again.
“What?” she said.
“You’re in the wrong square,” he repeated.
“What’s the ‘wrong square’？”
“You’re in Harvard Square, when you should be in Central Square or Kendall Square. I think I heard you’d gone to MIT.”
“My boyfriend lives around here,” Sadie said, in a way that indicated she had no more she wished to say on that subject. “I wonder why they’re called squares. They’re not really squares, are they?” Another inbound train was approaching. “That’s my train. Again.”
“That’s how trains work,” Sam said.
“It’s true. There’s a train, and a train, and a train.”
“In which case, the only proper thing for us to do right now is have coffee,” Sam said. “Or whatever you drink, if coffee’s too much of a cliché for you. Chai tea. Matcha. Snapple. Champagne. There’s a world with infinite beverage possibilities, right over our heads, you know? All we have to do is ride that escalator and it’s ours for the partaking.”
“I wish I could, but I have to get to class. I’ve done maybe half the reading. The only thing I have going for me is my punctuality and attendance.”
“I doubt that,” Sam said. Sadie was one of the most brilliant people he knew.
She gave Sam another quick hug. “Good running into you.”
She started walking toward the train, and Sam tried to figure out a way to make her stop. If this were a game, he could hit pause. He could restart, say different things, the right ones this time. He could search his inventory for the item that would make Sadie not leave.