Down World

by Rebecca Phelps

  He brought out a little bag of M&M’s and handed it to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh, remembering all the times he had given me the same gift before.

  “You steal them from the vending machine?”

  He smiled. “I paid for them.”

  I opened up the bag and popped a little candy into my mouth, feeling the sweet, familiar zing of sugar melting onto my tongue. I offered him one, but he shook his head.

  “They’re for you,” he insisted. “I wanted to thank you, M. For going.”

  “I’m not doing it for you.”

  “I know that. And I understand why you didn’t want me to go with you.”

  “It made more sense for Brady to do it. He’s eighteen. He can buy the tickets and stuff. And like he said, he was going anyway.”

  Kieren nodded, and his eyes seemed to search mine for a trace of emotion when I talked about Brady.

  I was feeling a million emotions in that moment, but they were all about Kieren. Memories of the past, thoughts of the present. Ideas about what our friendship had meant, and what kind of a future we could ever hope to have. If Robbie came back, could we put it all behind us? If Robbie was here, could we be friends again? Could we be more? And what if Robbie never came back?

  It was as if Kieren could read my mind. He took my hand, and I let him. We both sat, staring at our hands, our fingers intertwining.

  “If there’s a way to get him out,” Kieren began, “you call and you tell me. And if it means . . .”

  “Kieren?”

  “If somebody has to take his place . . . if that’s what they say it takes, to balance the energy again, then I’ll do it. I want you to know that.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “But if it does,” he said. “And somebody else needs to go in . . .”

  “Stop it,” I said, no longer able to even entertain the idea of it. This is what I had been afraid of. I knew Kieren was feeling desperate, and I knew what kinds of crazy thoughts were in his mind. “I’m not going to let you do that.”

  “But then you’ll have him back,” he said, looking right into my eyes with such complete sincerity that it was scaring me to my bones. “And then . . . and then you can forgive me.”

  I held his gaze for another moment, but then I had to look away. It was too much. That’s what Kieren had wanted all this time. That was why he had been obsessed with DW, with getting Robbie out. All this was to get me to forgive him, something I had tried to do so many times, but always failed.

  The train pulled into the station with such force that it made wind swoosh down the platform, blowing my hair into my eyes. It was the first relief I had felt all day from the oppressive heat, and I wished I could sit there and feel it on the back of my neck for a while longer. But the train stopped and the doors opened.

  Brady walked up and nodded that it was time to go.

  “I’m coming,” I assured him. Brady carried my suitcase. I turned back to Kieren, who stood up, still holding my hand.

  “Will you text me when you get there?” Kieren asked.

  “Yes,” I said, but then I remembered about my phone. “I have to leave my phone off. But I’ll text you from Brady’s phone when we know something.”

  I started to walk away, following Brady onto the train, but then stopped and ran back to Kieren at the last minute. I threw myself into his arms for one last hug. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I whispered to him.

  He held me for a moment, like he had done in his rec room.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” he whispered back. His hand swept a piece of hair off my cheek, and I had time for one more look into his deeply sad eyes before running to meet Brady on the train. We made it on just in time, with the doors closing right behind us.

  Brady and I took our seats, and I stared out the large picture windows, at Kieren standing alone on the platform. And as the train pulled out of the station, and his figure grew smaller and smaller, I was struck by the crazy cycles of life.

  I had become the girl on the train.

  Brady was polite but withdrawn the whole ride. I stared transfixed out the window, watching as we wound through forests I had never seen, towns I didn’t know existed, and miles and miles of the nothingness that lay between them. Every now and then, when I saw something completely new, I would tug on his sleeve to get his attention. And he would look for a moment and smile at me, before turning back to his phone or a book he was reading.

  Up and down the train, I saw only children and myself staring out the windows. The adults were busy, like Brady. And I realized that maybe in some ways I was still one of the children, and Brady had already crossed over to the other side of whatever it was that happened when you no longer stared out windows, wondering who was out there.

  For lunch, I pulled out a couple of granola bars, and Brady shared some PB&J sandwiches he had thought to pack. That was it for the food. I had wanted to bring a bunch of canned soup and stuff, but couldn’t figure out how to get it into my suitcase without my father noticing.

  By the time the train pulled into the station, I guessed it was about 10 p.m. I was hungry again and very tired. Brady offered to carry my suitcase for me, but I refused. I had to show him that I wasn’t completely incompetent.

  He used his phone to guide us to the hostel, which was thankfully only a few blocks away. Again, I stood back from the counter while he explained to the teenage boy who worked there that I was his kid sister, and he had reserved us two beds. I started to get goosebumps when he said it. I had never stayed in a hostel before and didn’t really understand if the beds were going to be in the same room or not. But as it turned out, this hostel was more like a military barrack. Each large room had four bunk beds in it, and boys and girls stayed in different wings, with a common room full of computers and vending machines between them.

  We stopped briefly in the common room so I could email my dad from the private account Christy had set up and tell him that I had gotten to camp fine and was sleeping on the top of a bunk bed shared with another nice girl. I then emailed Christy to tell her we were okay.

  Brady and I got a couple of Cup Noodles out of the vending machine and stood silently while they heated in the microwave. When we sat down to eat, I guess he could tell I was nervous. I really had no idea where I was, and no real clear plan for the next day. We had some vague directions of where to find the Mystics, but we didn’t even know what they looked like. I should have been panicking, but I think I was too tired.

  “You okay?” Brady asked, watching me stare at my noodles.

  “What if we don’t find them?”

  “We will,” he answered a little too quickly, as though he had already been asking himself the same question.

  “And what if they can’t help?”

  He nodded and ate his noodles. “Then we’ll think of something else.”

  When we split up to go to our own wings and find our beds, I felt like I was being pulled apart from my conjoined twin. I realized that the only reason I had been keeping it together was because Brady had been next to me. And now I would be completely alone for the rest of the night.

  Well, not completely.

  I walked into the room and nodded at the half dozen other girls already in there. Only one nodded back, and then looked back at her phone. All but two of them were doing the same thing, and those two seemed to be engaged in a very private conversation. I ducked into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then climbed up onto the top of the one bed that didn’t seem to be taken. The light was still on, and the girls were still talking, but I didn’t care. I was grateful that a wave of exhaustion was taking over me, wiping my mind clear of the million thoughts and fears that had been plaguing me. My last thought was that I had forgotten to text Kieren. I opened my eyes momentarily, but then shut them again. I fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed I was standi
ng alone in a cold and empty field.

  When my eyes opened in the morning, it took me a full second to remember where I was, and I almost rolled right out of the bunk. I climbed down, a harsh early-morning light coming through the windows, and tried not to wake the other girls as I grabbed my suitcase and slunk into the bathroom. I changed my clothes quietly in the stall, my suitcase at my feet, and brushed my teeth at the sink. I thought about taking a shower but didn’t want to leave my suitcase unattended while I did it, and I didn’t have any shower shoes.

  In the common room, I ate another Cup Noodles while I waited for Brady, and sat down at the computer. Each guest was allowed twenty minutes of free internet. I checked my email, both my real account and the one that Christy had set up. The only reply was from her, and it was simply a line of emojis showing happy and excited faces. There was nothing from my dad.

  I suddenly thought of Brady, who seemed so comfortable traveling alone. I had asked him the night before if he wanted to email his dad, but he said he was still in Alaska on the salmon boat and couldn’t get emails.

  I decided to look up the Alaskan salmon boats to see where his dad might be. Maybe I could surprise him with it when he woke up, letting him know that I’d found his dad’s boat. It would be nice to wake him up with some good news.

  I typed Alaskan salmon boating into the search window, and several fishing sites came up. But as I started to skim through them, I noticed they all began with the same piece of information: salmon fishing is a summer thing. The season starts in May and it’s over by fall. After that, most of the fishermen come back home until the following season.

  But that didn’t make any sense. Brady told me his dad had been on a boat since December. So either Brady’s dad was lying about what he was doing and where he was living, or Brady was lying about it in order to cover for him. But why?

  I didn’t have time to finish the thought, as Brady walked into the room. I immediately closed the search window and tried to act natural as he poured himself a cup of coffee and came to sit at the table next to me.

  “You gonna eat anything?” I asked.

  “I can’t eat in the mornings,” he said. “Got a bad stomach.”

  I finished my cup of soup and Brady finished his coffee. A light drizzle had begun to fall outside the window.

  “Can I use your phone for a second?”

  He handed it over and I found Kieren’s number. I really didn’t know what to say to him, but I wanted him to know we were okay. So I just typed: We’re here. All is well. I waited to hear the little swooshing sound that meant it had gone through and then handed the phone back.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, not exactly sure what it was I was supposed to be ready for. “Where do we go?”

  “I’ll tell you on the bus.”

  We walked along the sidewalk to a bus stop and waited with a bunch of morning commuters. I tried to act natural, to look like I belonged there, though my paranoid brain was convinced everyone could see right through me.

  “How far?” I whispered.

  He showed me the map on his phone. “Just a few miles. We’ll take the bridge over the river and then keep heading down a little bit.”

  I stood anxiously, clutching my suitcase, and Brady must have noticed how scared I looked. He put his hand on my back and whispered to me, “It’s okay.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded, mostly for his benefit. The bus came, and we took our seats in a back row.

  “So you know the science lab?” he began once we were seated.

  I was still getting my bearings and almost didn’t hear him. “What’s that?”

  “The lab behind the boiler room,” he continued, still speaking quite softly. I kept my head bowed near his so I could hear him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Piper found these notebooks that the Mystics left behind. Most of it was scientific equations that we didn’t really understand. It was pretty advanced. But there were pages and pages of notes too. Ideas about what made DW, about the balance of power.”

  “Like you were telling me? About . . .” I looked around to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “About the sidewalk turning into a fence or something.”

  He nodded. “One of the books was somebody’s journal. It didn’t have a lot of useful information in it, just a lot of personal stuff. But the last page was interesting.”

  “What did it say?”

  Brady reached into his pocket and pulled out a well-worn piece of yellowed paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me.

  “See for yourself.”

  The handwriting seemed to belong to a woman, judging by the roundness of the cursive letters. The penmanship was perfect. The paper felt very light, like it had been folded dozens of times and might disintegrate in my hands. I held it very carefully and had to squint a bit to make out the slightly faded text. My jaw dropped as I realized what it was about, and I reread the ending twice:

  Whatever world we found down there, whatever power we discovered, he loves it more than he loves me. More than he loves any of us. He is our leader and our friend, and my only love. And when he goes, because he will go, I know that I will die.

  —S

  I thought that was the end of it, until I flipped the page over and found a postscript.

  But in the meantime . . . I hear there’s an old hotel about an hour out of Portland, in a little town called Preston. And that’s where we’ll be, searching for absolution. We wanted to be Mystical. We wanted to be free. What fools we were. I am so sorry.

  There was no more. “What does she mean? What did they do down there that was so terrible?”

  Brady shook his head and shrugged. “I should tell you that Piper is not the only one who went to look for them.”

  I waited for him to continue.

  “There was another guy named Adam who went a few years ago to ask them about all this. He was obsessed with DW, wanted to learn everything about it. How to navigate it.”

  “And what did he find out?”

  “He never came back,” Brady admitted. “And then Piper went and . . .”

  “And she didn’t come back either. What are you saying? That we won’t come back? That once we go there . . .”

  “No. No, that won’t happen. Listen to me,” he commanded, looking me in the eye. But Brady never needed to remind me to listen to him. He always had my attention. “We’re gonna stay together the whole time, you and I. And after we talk to them, we’re going to leave right away.”

  I nodded, agreeing completely.

  “I don’t know anything about these people. They sound a little crazy to me. So you stay by my side and let me talk, okay? We’ll be fine.”

  And with that, Brady sat back against his seat and looked forward, the conversation over. I felt a chill run up and down my arms. What had I gotten myself into? Did the woman who wrote that diary really have any answers? I started breathing heavily and tried to steel myself against a wave of panic.

  Brady noticed my breathing, and he put his arm around me. I let myself fall into his side, relieved for the warmth he provided and grateful he was there.

  “We’ll be fine,” he repeated. And as always, I believed him.

  The bus let us out in front of a little bench with a tiny, inconspicuous sign over it reading WELCOME TO PRESTON. Only two other women got off at the same time as us, and they started walking away down the long road. We were alone, staring at a one-block business district that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the 1950s. A small pharmacy, a diner, a shoe store that advertised Cobbler Inside. I didn’t know there still were cobblers, and it almost seemed like a movie set instead of a real town.

  And right smack in the middle of it was the tallest building, maybe five stories high, with a sign at the top that simply said: HOTEL.

  “This is it,” Bra
dy said. “Piper texted me a picture of it before she . . . when she got here.”

  We approached the building and I looked for a front door, but Brady stopped me and pointed his finger to a small alley along the side.

  “Around back,” he whispered. “That’s what Piper said.”

  I nodded, and we made our way around the building and down the long narrow alley, with me still lugging my heavy suitcase. An alley cat ran past us and I nearly leaped out of my shoes. Brady laughed at me, and I could only laugh with him.

  The back of the building was nothing special. A little courtyard contained an old couch and a mishmash of overly abused lawn chairs, most of which no longer had seats. A handful of planters contained nothing but dead plants or dirt.

  There was one door, and it had no handle. I looked to Brady, who looked back at me and shrugged. He walked up and knocked.

  “Just a minute!” came a cheerful woman’s voice. I was suddenly struck by the idea that we were in the completely wrong place. We needed to run while we could. But it was too late.

  The door opened and the woman before us stood digging through an old leather purse. “Hold on, I’m looking for fifty cents for a tip. I know I’ve got it somewhere.”

  She was wearing the same white flowing blouse and skirt she’d had on when I had first met her at Pat’s Diner, and she smelled the same, like some sort of bitter cooking oil.

  “Hello, Sage,” I said.

  Sage blinked several times, as if trying to make my shape out against the sun. She looked left and right, seeming not to notice Brady by my side. “Oh God,” she said. “What has she done?”

  CHAPTER 11

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess!” Sage said as she cleared two cats and some half-full Tupperware containers off a couch in a large room that looked like it was the hotel’s office. “We don’t get a lot of visitors.”

  “It’s a hotel,” Brady said, pointing out the obvious, which made me chuckle.

  “Yes.” She seemed to realize the confusion immediately. “Oh, but people come in through the front, of course. And to be honest with you, we don’t get a lot of guests at the hotel either. This isn’t the hip part of town. Sit, sit.”