Down World

by Rebecca Phelps

  I came into the room, still trembling. The weakness in my legs wouldn’t go away.

  “Jesus, M, why’d you bike to the station in the rain?”

  “It was only driz-driz-drizz . . .”

  “It’s okay, don’t talk.”

  Kieren took off his sweatshirt, glued as it was to his body, and then he came and helped me with mine. I was too cold to be self-conscious about it at that point. He reached down to feel my shoes and socks.

  “Your feet are soaked. Okay, wait here. I’m gonna get you some sweats and a T-shirt. Take those shoes off.”

  I started to untie my shoes, but my fingers were numb. My teeth were chattering so loudly, I couldn’t hear anything but the clackety-clack of them hitting against each other.

  Kieren came back in, wearing dry clothes himself and with some things for me, and saw how helpless I was. “Here,” he said, reaching down to help me with my shoes. “Your pants are drenched. You need to change.”

  “T-t-turn around,” I said.

  “It’s fine, M. I’ve seen you in a bathing suit, like, a million times.”

  “I was ni-ni-ni-nine.”

  He just laughed and turned around. “I’m not looking,” he promised. I changed my clothes as quickly as possible while the feeling returned to my fingers. When I was done, I sat on the couch.

  There was a laundry area in the corner, and Kieren went and threw my things in the dryer.

  I found a throw blanket next to the sofa and wrapped myself in it. I was already starting to feel sleepy, but I knew I had to head back home as soon as the rain stopped. I couldn’t still be gone when my dad woke up in the morning. All he needed was one more scare.

  “Feeling better?” Kieren asked when he came back over to the couch. I nodded. I couldn’t help but stare at Kieren’s face as he sat down next to me. His eyelashes were the same as I remembered, and so was the way his hairline came down a bit over his right eye.

  He laughed then. I don’t know why. Maybe just the awkwardness of being so close. “I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”

  “Why were you on the tracks?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “Kieren, please.”

  “I just . . . I go there sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, looked at his feet.

  “It’s how I feel close to him,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him. “It’s like, some people visit graves. I visit where he died. It’s stupid, I know.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “He’s not at his grave,” Kieren said. “I feel like . . . like he’s somewhere else.”

  I had to admit that I felt the same way about Robbie. But still, the coincidence that Kieren was on the tracks after what had happened with my mother, after what she had apparently shouted, just seemed a bit too convenient. What more did Kieren know? What wasn’t he telling me?

  “Do you promise there’s no other reason?” I asked. “You said you were working on taking Robbie out. Is that why you were there?”

  “No, that’s not it. When I know more about that, I’ll tell you.”

  I started to protest, but then he looked me in the eyes and took my hand. “Promise.”

  I nodded, feeling hopeless.

  “We’ve done all we can for now, M.”

  I thought of Robbie, and all the times we had played together in this very room. The endless games of Candyland; the time Kieren had taught us five-card draw, something he had picked up from an old movie he wasn’t supposed to watch.

  The tears came hot and full, plopping down on the sweatshirt Kieren had just given me. I couldn’t stop them, and I didn’t try. “My mom is gone,” I said. “She’s been missing since last night, and I have no idea where she went.”

  I couldn’t tell if Kieren was surprised by this statement, or if maybe he had already known somehow. He pulled me to him, and held me so tightly my ribcage strained under the pressure of his arms.

  I felt Kieren’s lips on my forehead as he whispered things I couldn’t understand. Words that fell around me like the raindrops that still splattered against the roof. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll fix it.” I looked up at him, and his lips landed on mine for just a moment, before he seemed to catch himself and sit back a bit.

  I was struck by the irony of it: my first kiss happened at the worst moment of my life.

  “Why don’t you sleep?” he asked. “It’s still raining. You’re tired.”

  “I have to get home. My dad will be worried.”

  “Sleep,” Kieren insisted, helping me lie back and covering me with the throw blanket. “I’ll wake you before dawn. Promise.”

  My eyes didn’t need any more encouragement than that to close. I felt the rough corduroy of the couch hit my cheek as Kieren stood and turned down the light. I could feel the warmth of his body fade away from me, like a train pulling out of a station.

  CHAPTER 9

  Weeks passed, and she didn’t return. My father and I fell into a pattern, trying to do “normal” things like eat dinner, do the dishes, fold laundry. At first, we talked about her all the time, like she was just out at the grocery store. “When Mom comes back . . .” “When you talk to your mother again . . .”

  Then we didn’t talk about her at all.

  Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, trying to feel her presence in the world. I knew she wasn’t dead. Was she in DW? If so, how did she get in there? Was she looking for Robbie? Would she come back if she didn’t find him?

  The questions had begun to drive me insane. I would pace in my room at night, touching things to be sure that they were solid. That they hadn’t disappeared.

  Late May came, and the seniors graduated. Christy and I watched the ceremony from the back of the auditorium.

  “Could you help me with something?” I asked Christy in a whisper.

  “Sure,” she answered, her eyes on the stage.

  “There’s this summer camp upstate. I read about it online.”

  Christy glanced over to me for a moment, then back to the seniors. There was a hunger in her eyes, watching them, like she couldn’t wait for it to be her turn. Christy and I had that in common.

  “It’s just two weeks,” I continued.

  “Okay,” she said, clearly not knowing where I was going with this. “Are you—do you want to go there?”

  “No. But I need my father to think I have.”

  Brady made his way to accept his diploma, followed by Kieren, and we stopped talking to watch them. I couldn’t help but feel proud of them both, standing onstage in their caps and gowns as the rest of the seniors filed in beside them.

  But then an odd hush fell over the room. One name had been conspicuously absent from the roll call.

  “We’ll now have a moment of silence for Piper McMahon,” said Miss Farghasian, and a ripping sound of grief caught in her throat at the name.

  The silence was accompanied by much weeping throughout the auditorium. Whispers ensued, everyone adding their two cents to whatever the latest rumors were about Piper’s whereabouts (“She went to have a baby in Ireland” was the most common theory), and then more silence.

  Almost four months had passed and no new information had been given. Some people assumed she was dead.

  Brady kept his eyes downcast, neither crying nor showing any other visible emotion. He looked tired, and seemed to realize that many of the eyes were falling on him. One of the rumors that had briefly circulated had been very unflattering to him, all but accusing him of her murder. But like all rumors, it eventually faded into air.

  “She wasn’t that pretty. She just had a good body,” I heard Holland Pfeffer whisper behind me. The girl next to her responded with a stifled, “Oh my God, stop. You’re the worst.”

  “Why summer camp?” Christy whispered to me, while Miss Farghasian walked to center sta
ge to give what I’m sure she considered to be a Very Important Speech.

  “I want to go to Oregon. It’s a long story, but I think there are people there who know something . . . about my brother, Robbie.”

  “And your dad won’t let you go?”

  I thought about it for a second. “I haven’t asked him.”

  “You know,” she started, “your dad is cool. You’re lucky like that.” I could tell she was referencing her own parental situation with that last dig. Christy’s mother had been the first woman in her family to go to college, and she had let Christy know at an early age that she expected her to follow suit. She’d basically been planning Christy’s life out since birth.

  “If you asked him . . . ,” Christy continued.

  “If I asked, I know what he would say,” I responded, having already had this conversation with myself eighteen times. “He would either say no, that it’s time to move on and let Robbie go. Or he would decide to go without me because I’m too young to possibly understand. Trust me, I’ve been hearing it my whole life. It’s just two weeks. I’ll be fine.”

  She nodded, needing no more convincing. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Help me make up some stationery from the summer camp, for a letter saying that I’ve gotten some scholarship or something and that I can go for free.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, laughing.

  “I know.”

  Miss Farghasian droned on about the bright future that lay ahead for all the graduates, which everyone in the room knew wasn’t exactly true. Probably only about half the kids up there were going to college. And we all knew which half. The other half, the one Brady belonged to, well . . .

  “Okay,” Christy said. “What’s their website? I’ll copy their letterhead and paste it on an acceptance letter. You’ll have to buy some nice paper to print it on.”

  I stole one last look at Brady on the stage in his gown and mortar as we stood with everyone else to applaud the graduates.

  “Thanks, Christy,” I said. She followed my eyeline to Brady. I had told her, of course, about my pathetic crush on him.

  “You know,” she said, “he really is pretty cute.”

  I could only laugh in response, certain that I was blushing.

  I went out to my dad’s garage workshop a week after the graduation and watched him work. This was something we used to do all the time—switching motherboards and fiddling with wires. But it had been a while.

  “Is there something I could do to help?” I asked.

  “Sure, kiddo. Um, bring me that big piece there.” He pointed to a metal box with a million wires coming out of it. “We’re swapping out the hard drives, but first we have to trick them into thinking they’re compatible.”

  “They’re not?” I asked, only half understanding what he was talking about.

  “Not exactly.”

  We worked in silence for a bit, and it was nice to be doing something normal with my dad again. Nice to take a break from not talking about Mom.

  “Thanks for letting me go, Dad. To the summer camp.” The “acceptance letter” had arrived the day before, thanks to Christy.

  “Aw, it’ll be good for you,” he answered, and I could tell by his tone that he’d already given it a bit of thought and this was the conclusion he’d come to. “You need to get out of here for a bit. This can’t be good for you, this thing with your mom.”

  I nodded. So that’s what we were going to call my mom disappearing, huh? A “thing.”

  “I’m just in the middle of a project at work, or else I’d drive you—”

  “That’s okay,” I quickly interrupted. “It’ll be fun to take the bus up with Christy and her mom.” Christy and I had already planned this whole thing out in detail, complete with fake email addresses for the camp. As far as he knew, Christy and I were going to the camp together. Her mom was taking the bus up with us and would come pick us up when the camp ended.

  I suddenly felt an enormous cramp in my stomach, and I realized it was nerves. And maybe a little guilt. I never wanted to be someone who lied, especially to my dad. And for a brief moment, it occurred to me to just tell him the truth. Maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe he would let me go, or even go with me.

  “This kind of a situation,” he began, his eyes still intent on his work, his fingers rigorously plucking out wires one by one, “it’s not good for a kid.”

  I nodded. Someday, I knew, my dad and I would talk about this part of our lives. We would talk honestly. And I would tell him about Oregon. Maybe I’d even tell him about Down World. And the other version of Robbie. Assuming, of course, that someday I would understand it myself.

  Later that night, after my dad had gone to sleep, I went into my bedroom to get ready for bed. I soon heard a rapping on my window.

  I opened the window and looked out, and saw Kieren standing in the street with his bike behind him. He was actually tossing pebbles at the window, like something out of a cheesy old movie.

  I raised my hands in a silent question. What is it? I mouthed. Even though my father was surely sound asleep across the hall, I was afraid to make any noise.

  Kieren nodded over his shoulder, beckoning me to come down.

  I slinked down the stairs and went out through the kitchen door, knowing that my father would never hear that from his room, even if he were conscious. Kieren and I walked several feet down the street before I spoke.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’ve been texting you. Don’t you ever check your phone?”

  I took my phone out of my pocket and saw that it was dead. “Sorry.”

  “We’re having a meeting at the pyramid house. Come on, let’s go,” Kieren said, yanking on my arm.

  “The pyramid house? Wait, my dad . . .”

  “Is he awake?”

  “No, but . . . okay, but I have to be back in an hour.”

  “No problem. Get your bike.”

  Kieren pedaled hard, like there was some urgency in getting there. I had to pump my legs hard to keep up. It was a mild night. Summer had officially begun, and even though it was probably close to midnight, the air was still somehow illuminated.

  When we reached the large, pyramid-shaped abandoned house, Kieren helped me hoist myself up to the window and enter the cavernous living room. There was still no furniture in the place, just as there hadn’t been when Robbie and I snuck in years before. But I didn’t have time to dwell on the memory, because even though there was no furniture, the room was not empty.

  The meeting was already in progress.

  Kieren’s friend Scott, a boy I distinctly remembered as one of the kids who used to tease me at the train station, was talking in a frustrated tone. There were two other guys I recognized from the old days at the train station, but I didn’t remember their names. And standing next to them, listening, stood Brady.

  Kieren and I approached the group together, and I could see Brady looking at us as we stood there, side by side. He seemed a bit flustered, and then looked away.

  “What is she doing here?” Brady asked no one in particular.

  “We need her,” Kieren answered. “Robbie was her brother, after all.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We’re not doing that!”

  “You don’t get to decide, Brady,” Kieren shouted. I had clearly walked into a fight that had begun earlier. “We already talked about this.”

  “That was before.”

  “I say we call it off too,” Scott answered, and one of the other boys grumbled some sort of agreement.

  “Then go home, I don’t care,” said Kieren. But his tone betrayed that he cared very much. “We don’t need you. M and I can do it by ourselves.” Kieren took my hand, and suddenly I was his partner in crime. Except I had no understanding of what the crime was, exactly.

  Brady watched
Kieren take my hand, and he shook his head. “I’m out,” he said. “I’m going home.”

  “Wait, stop,” I demanded, pulling my hand away from Kieren. “Just everybody stop right now.”

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts as everyone reluctantly quieted down.

  “Will somebody please tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “I will,” Brady said. “Your boyfriend wants to go into DW, find Robbie, and take him out—”

  “What are you talking about? You know you can’t take anyone out,” I began, flinching momentarily at the word boyfriend. “Piper’s parents . . .”

  “Take him out through the train portal,” Brady said, completing his earlier sentence.

  “I’m telling you, it’ll work,” Kieren said.

  “You’ll both be hit by the train!” Brady insisted.

  “He’s right,” another boy chimed in.

  “Okay, enough!” I cut in. “What the hell is the train portal?”

  Kieren and Brady exchanged a look. “Sit down, M,” Kieren began. “I have to tell you something.”

  We sat around in a circle. I made a point of not sitting near Kieren or Brady. I wanted to be by myself.

  “The night that it happened . . . the night Robbie died . . . ,” Kieren began, finding his voice as he talked.

  I took a deep breath. So now we were going to talk about Robbie. Okay.

  “We were down at the train station. We were just messing around on our boards.”

  I instinctively put my hand over my heart as he talked. Oh God, this was it. I was going to hear the story of how my brother died. The story that I had been sheltered from for almost four years. This was the moment I had been waiting for, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to hear it.

  “We had worked our way down the track a bit, popping wheelies over the rails. It’s stupid. I know it is,” he added, as though hearing the protests in my mind. “We were kids.”