Piper hadn’t come back like Brady said she would. And before I went to the police, I knew there was one more question I had to ask him.
Brady’s car was parked in front of a large redbrick apartment building. It didn’t take much to find him, since the old-fashioned White Pages at the bottom of our kitchen utility drawer told me there was only one Picelli in town.
I rode my bike up to the end of the street, which I had never been down before. It wasn’t an ugly building, but being set as it was at a slight distance from all the other apartments, down near the end of the road, with only a service station and a car wash across the street to provide a view, it struck me as a deeply depressing place to live.
I parked my bike and walked up to the entryway, my heart beating faster as I went inside. I was suddenly kicking myself for coming here, for this whole stupid plan. But I knew I had to give Brady a chance before I went to Piper’s parents.
Picelli. There it was in the building directory. I rolled my neck a bit and let out an exhale, and then I pushed the little button next to his name. The door buzzed immediately and I went upstairs.
The man who opened the door to Brady’s apartment was about thirty-five years old. He looked vaguely like Brady—same wavy dark hair—but I couldn’t figure out their relationship. He was much too young to be his father, seemed too old to be a brother.
“I’m his cousin,” he said when he saw me staring.
“Oh.” I offered a weak smile.
The cousin went back to the couch, where he had been playing a video game. “He’s in his room,” he called out over his shoulder. He gave a slight nod of his head towards a closed door near the kitchen, and then forgot I existed.
It was a small place. There only seemed to be two bedrooms—the one Brady was apparently in and another one across the hall. Glancing into the slightly open door of the other room, I saw an unmade bed and a bunch of clothes on the floor. A poster for some sort of band was on the wall. I didn’t recognize the band—a bunch of guys wearing black. That must be the cousin’s room, I figured. So if Brady’s in there and his cousin’s in here . . . where did Brady’s parents sleep?
I knocked on the door with as much confidence as I could muster.
“Yeah,” I heard Brady reply. It was clear he thought it was his cousin knocking, but I couldn’t find my voice to tell him otherwise. I nudged the door open instead and poked my head in, only to find Brady on his bed, reading a book with no shirt on.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I stammered.
“Oh jeez,” he said, getting up and looking for a shirt to put on. “Hold on.”
“I’m sorry, I would have called. I didn’t know, um, the number.”
“Let me just . . . hold on.”
I didn’t know where to look, so I stared at the floor while he put on a sweatshirt. The awkwardness of it made us both start to laugh.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. His tone wasn’t cruel, just curious.
“I needed to ask you something.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” He looked out the window, from which the whirring of the car wash filled the room with constant sound. “Do you want to sit down?” He pushed some clothes off a wooden chair by a desk and offered it to me. My eyes wandered to the unmade bed as I crossed the room, then darted away again.
“I used to smoke,” Brady said, out of nowhere, as he sat on the edge of that bed. “Stupid habit, don’t start. I mean that.”
“Okay.”
“It was just something to try to look cool, you know? My friends would come over and sit where you are, and I’d smoke and blow it out this window.”
I nodded, letting him talk. It was nice to hear his voice.
“When you walked in, my first thought was to reach for a pack.” He laughed again. “But I don’t smoke anymore.”
“When did you stop?”
“Um, probably about two years ago. My dad, he has a bad lung. Lifelong smoker. So . . . stupid habit.”
“Where is your dad?” I asked, although I knew it was none of my business.
“Up north. He’s been working on a salmon boat since December. He’ll be back next month.”
“Oh.” I struggled for something else to say. “You live with your cousin?”
“Jack. Yeah. He’s a good guy. Works at the station across the street.”
It felt weirdly grown-up, discussing other people based on what they did for a living. Was this how adults talked?
I had a million more things I wanted to know about Brady’s life, but I didn’t want to pry too much. Mostly I wondered where Brady’s mom was. Somehow I knew, however, that that was a question I shouldn’t ask.
“Did you tell anyone?” he asked now, before I could speak.
“Tell anyone?”
“That I took you down.”
“Oh,” I nodded. “Just Kieren.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “That figures.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean, I thought since he already knew about it, and—”
“It’s fine,” he cut me off. “I can handle Kieren.”
I swallowed down a sudden rush of apprehension. Brady didn’t say anything else; he just sat examining me like I was a math problem he didn’t know how to solve. “Brady, I have to ask you something,” I repeated.
He nodded. He reached for his jeans’ pocket, probably looking for that imaginary cigarette pack again but, remembering that it wasn’t there, he put his hands on his knees.
“What did Piper bring back from DW?”
He looked up at me. A smile cracked across his lips. “You’re so smart. You figured it out right away, didn’t you?”
“Well?”
Brady turned away from me a bit, fiddling with his sheets. It seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything. After a few silent moments, I grew afraid he might ask me to leave.
“Her parents,” he finally said, so softly I had to lean in to make sure I had heard him.
“What?”
“She brought her parents back. Her DW parents.”
“Why?” was all I could think of to ask. “What happened to her real parents?”
Brady stared at his feet for a moment.
I ducked my head a bit to try to meet his eyes. “Brady? Look at me.”
He did, and as always, I had to catch my breath for a moment. But I was feeling brave, and I wanted answers. “No more secrets.”
He nodded, still looking at me. “No more secrets.”
He got up and paced the room for a second. “Six months ago . . . ,” he started, “there was an accident.”
“Okay.”
“Piper’s parents were killed. They were up in the mountains last August. Camping trip. They were hit by a car and went off a ravine. Piper crawled out before the car exploded.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, trying to wrap my head around it. “I saw them on the news.”
“They died in the ravine,” he said slowly, as though trying to help me understand. “And Piper, she went into Today. She found her DW parents in their room and she took them out.”
“So the people on the news . . . ?”
“They’re not real,” he said. “They’re from DW.”
“But they were crying on the news.”
“Yeah,” Brady said. “Piper said they told her they wanted to go home, back through the boiler room. Back to their own daughter, who lives on the other side.”
I didn’t know what to say. My mind was reeling, thinking of those people I had seen on TV. How could they be from the other side?
“She begged them to stay. She said she’d hurt herself if they left. That’s why they were crying. They’re afraid she’s done something to herself.”
I took a deep breath, imagining
how terrified those people must be, living on the wrong side of reality and worried about both versions of their daughter, Piper.
“But they can’t stay here. Can they?” I asked, secretly thinking of my brother.
“No. Being on the wrong side makes everything unstable. It creates a void on the other side, and that’s when things start to fall apart. Buildings appear and disappear. People get hurt. And the longer you stay on the wrong side, the worse it gets. At first, just things that are close to the void are affected, which is why Piper and her parents were the only ones to see it. But after a while, it spreads.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s this thing, right? It’s like energy. It’s like . . . the balance of energy. When the balance is off, everything starts to cave in on itself. One day, Piper was walking to school and the sidewalk changed to a dirt road. One day the trees became a wooden fence.”
“Why?”
“Because she was seeing pieces of another reality. When the balance is off, the worlds can cross. That’s why you can’t take things out.”
“Oh my God.”
“She knew she had to put them back. Before it was too late.”
“But she didn’t do it,” I realized. “She got on the train instead. Why? Where does it go?”
Brady considered the question for a moment. “Oregon,” he finally answered.
I was surprised to hear that I had been right about the train’s destination this whole time.
“What’s in Oregon?”
“There’s this group of people. They live in a little town outside of Portland. They call themselves the Mystics. And that’s where Piper went. To ask them.”
“Ask them what?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t!” I insisted. “I have no idea.”
“If there’s a way,” he stated calmly, “to take people out and keep them.”
I stared at him, and I felt my mouth suddenly go dry. Piper McMahon may have found the answer I’d been looking for since I’d gone into DW.
“And what did she find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Haven’t you talked to her?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
Brady got up then and stared out the window. The dull humming of the car wash seemed almost to be taunting us, adding a hint of the mundane to his story.
“She stopped answering her phone two weeks ago,” he finally admitted.
I stared at his back, trying to process this bit of news. Piper had truly disappeared. Or at least, she didn’t want Brady to know where she was.
“I’m sure she’s called her parents—or, her DW parents, whatever. We’ll ask them.”
Brady chuckled, shook his head.
“Why not?”
“They’re gone, Marina. I went to their house last night. It’s empty. They must have gone home, snuck into the boiler room at night.”
So that was that, then. Obviously Piper hadn’t solved the mystery of how to keep people from DW on our side. If she had, her parents wouldn’t have left.
I felt like the universe was ripping my brother away from me all over again, and I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask for help. Unless . . . unless these Mystics could help somehow.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he continued. “You know where Boulder is? In Colorado?”
I shrugged. I had never heard of it.
“It’s at the foot of the Rockies. The university is there. Piper and I were supposed to move there after school ends in June.”
It was painful to think of Brady and Piper living together in a little apartment somewhere, just like the one I had imagined, in some beautiful college town at the foot of a mountain—it was too perfect.
“She would take classes at the college and I’d get a job. I’ve helped Jack out at the garage a lot. I could do something like that.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That sounds nice.” I suddenly felt overwhelmed by emotion. I felt like the world was spinning without me.
Brady must have heard the defeat in my voice. He knelt down by my chair, so close I could smell the sweetness of his laundry detergent. But I knew he was thinking of someone else.
“I should go,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I stood and headed for the door. “It’ll be okay,” I said before leaving. “You’ll see her again. I know you will.”
He only laughed in response, quietly and without a hint of joy. He was still kneeling on the floor by my empty chair. “You even sound like her.”
I let myself out of the apartment, suddenly missing my brother more than ever.
CHAPTER 7
I stood in front of the door to Today, dumbfounded, my eyes blinking in disbelief.
There was nothing but a brick wall, just like the other two doors. I quickly glanced behind Yesterday and Tomorrow, to see if they had changed as well. But they were all the same now. A thick brick wall, with only a tiny slit of an eyehole to confirm that no magical portal lay beyond. Only darkness.
DW was gone.
And with it went any hope I had of ever seeing that magical version of my brother again.
Suddenly I could hear footsteps in the science room above, and I froze. It was late on a Friday afternoon. The school was open only because spring basketball had started, and so the gym door was unlocked. Nobody was supposed to be in the rest of the school. I had been sure the coast would be clear.
And yet the footsteps grew closer. I tried to find a way to hide, but there was nowhere to go. The only way out of this little waiting area was to go back up the spiral staircase. The footsteps began to descend, and there was nothing I could do but steel myself to face whomever it was that was coming.
I was actually relieved to see that it was Kieren, an ironic reaction considering how many years I had spent being afraid of him. He didn’t seem surprised to find me there, and approached me with a steady but serious look on his face.
Kieren looked sad and too old for his tall, slightly skinny body. The light had gone out of his eyes, and it finally hit me that maybe that was the reason I found it so hard to look at him—not because of what he had done, but because all I could see in his face was the shadow of the friend that I had lost.
Kieren went over to the Today door and peeked inside, closing it only a moment later. “So it’s true,” he said with a sigh. He leaned his forehead against the door, as though gathering his thoughts. It seemed to take him a moment to remember I was there.
“What were you doing down here anyway, M?”
“I wanted to see Robbie,” I admitted. “I know I’m not allowed to take him out, but I can see him, can’t I?”
Kieren and I used to talk to each other so honestly, so easily. I wanted to see if any of that still remained between us.
He chuckled. “You haven’t changed. It’s my fault for telling you to stay out. Should have known you’d just do the opposite.”
“You don’t know me that well.”
“Sure I do. I do know you, M,” he added, locking his eyes on mine.
“What happened to the door?” I could hear some of the confidence in my voice fading a bit.
“I told you, there are consequences.”
I must have looked confused, so he went on.
“Things change. Sometimes they disappear. You can’t take things out of DW. You take out something small, like the egg timer, and there are small changes. But you take out something big . . .”
“Like Piper McMahon’s parents,” I finished his thought.
“You know about that?”
“It’s okay. Brady thinks they crossed back over, so everything should be fine again.”
“The damage is already done, though, isn’t it?”
Kieren looked angry suddenly, as though I were rubbing it in his face that I knew so much about this whole thing, despite all his efforts to keep me out of it. “Come on, M,” he said. “You need to get out of here.” He grabbed my arm and started leading me back up the stairs.
“But Brady said . . .”
“I said come on!”
I stopped in my tracks and pulled my arm away. “Stop ordering me around, Kieren!”
“Be quiet, M.”
“No! You never went to visit him. Because you don’t miss him. But what do I expect, anyway?”
“Just stop talking!”
“You’re the one who pushed him in front of that train in the first place.”
“Stop!” Kieren slammed his palm over my mouth to stop me, and though I don’t think he meant to do it, the force of his hand pushed my whole body back against the wall. I gulped with shock.
Kieren immediately pulled his hand away, and the look of surprise in his eyes made me think maybe he had scared himself more than me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
He backed away a step and we both caught our breath. I tried to regulate my inhales so I wouldn’t cry. It hadn’t hurt. It had just scared me.
“I didn’t mean to do that.” He was also breathing very hard, almost as though he were trying not to cry himself. “I really didn’t mean it, M.”
“I’m okay,” I said, despite the fact that the tears were starting to fall down my cheeks.
He reached out to wipe them off and I instinctively flinched away from him, more aggressively than I had intended.
“I just wanted to get you out of here.”
“I’m okay.” It was a relief to see how upset he was. It made me realize that somewhere in this strange body before me, maybe my friend was still hiding.
“I would never hurt you.”
“I know that,” I told him, controlling the tears now. Feeling emboldened by his remorse, by how vulnerable he suddenly seemed to me, I took Kieren’s hand. He looked down at our hands and held onto mine so tightly I was afraid he might cut off the blood supply. “Talk to me,” I said, trying to catch his eye. But he kept looking at our hands.
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