I nodded. “And then?”
“And then spring came and we all graduated. But nobody wanted to leave. Our parents couldn’t understand why none of us wanted to go away to college. Dave’s dad threw him out, called him a bum. He and Jenny got an apartment outside of town.
“John started to warn us that we had to be more careful. That we needed it too much, like a drug. He was right, of course. It can become an obsession. Our eyes would be glassed over during the day, wired open at night. We found ourselves unable to talk about anything else. Unable to enjoy anything that didn’t happen when we were inside one of the doors, finding a new plane. Taking risks we wouldn’t take above ground.”
“What kind of risks?”
She nodded, seeming to weigh the question, or maybe unsure how to answer it.
“The different planes, they’re like galaxies. Nobody knows how many there are. Billions, maybe. Maybe more. And it started to become clear that you could do whatever you wanted in these planes. Probability told us we’d never end up in the same one twice, so there were no consequences.
“We started to steal things from the different planes, try on new personalities, crash in empty houses. Dave cheated on Jenny, figuring she would never find out anyway. But she did.”
“How?”
“Because I told her,” Sage said, a sardonic smile on her face. “He’d cheated with me.”
“That’s terrible,” I uttered, without really thinking. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . .”
“No, you’re right. We did terrible things. When you believe there are no consequences, you start making incredibly selfish decisions. And we were all going down that rabbit hole. It was corrupting us, splitting us up. I’m not proud of it.
“Jenny was furious. She wanted to leave. And then John said it was getting too dangerous, and we all had to leave, immediately. It was like the moon had fallen out of the sky.
“I demanded to know why. I wasn’t ready to go. And then John told us. He and your mother had discovered the train portal. It was an accident, of course. They were biking along the track when your mother noticed a squirrel run in front of the train. And she could have sworn she saw that flash of light. You know the one?”
I nodded, flinching at the thought of the train hitting the squirrel, and thinking of my brother.
“They experimented with it for a while, trying to find it and realizing, of course, as you have, that it only exists for a split second when the train is passing. But while they stood waiting, searching, that’s when they noticed. The planes shifted. Buildings disappeared. For a moment, the track itself was gone, and they were in the middle of a great farmland. And then the track was back, and the rest of the city around it. But the colors were somehow off, they said. Like they were home, but somehow still in Down World. They waited until the next train passed to see if the flash happened again. But instead, something else happened. The squirrel leaped back out in front of the train and was immediately struck and killed by it.
“When the train had finished going past, the little body of the squirrel was there, crushed. And everything went back to normal.
“But we knew, all of us, that something had shifted. Things were getting too real, too scary. John had some money a grandmother had left him. He used it to buy this hotel after he found it at the back of an old real-estate flyer. It was going to be a fresh beginning. We were going to move on.”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
“You have to understand,” Sage began, her eyes imploring me. “You try. Every day you try. You try to be good. You try not to think about it. You try to remember what it was like before you knew. And we all pretended for a long while. For the first year we all lived out here together, congratulating ourselves on how well we were doing. But then it would creep in again. Someone would mention another dimension at dinner or wear a bracelet I knew they had stolen from another plane.
“It was too much for your mom, and she left John. She went back home, said she missed her parents. She was done with the portals, done with us. It was her way of moving on, by leaving us. We were nineteen then.”
“And you took her place.”
“I had always been in love with John. I guess a part of me was always waiting for her to leave.
“So your mother met your father, got married, had your brother and you. And then one day, maybe five years later, she showed up here with you by her side. ‘Just a visit,’ they told me.
“I didn’t know it, but John and your mother had been talking on the phone.”
My face must have revealed my shock, or maybe it revealed that I didn’t believe her.
“It wasn’t an affair. Don’t worry. Just old friends. Talking about old times. But John had asked her to bring something. She refused at first. They fought about it. And he told her if she did this one last thing, it would be the end. The real end.”
“What did she bring?”
“It’s a kind of a key,” Sage said. “One that John had built years before. No one knew about it but Rain. Sorry, Ana.”
“A key that builds a portal?” I asked. It was getting very late and we had been talking for so long that despite myself, I felt my eyelids growing heavy. It was all so much, too much to take in. All these things my mother had done. It was like she was talking about a person I had never met.
“A key that builds a portal,” Sage conceded. “I thought John was done with all that. I thought he had moved on, away from the world down below, away from your mother. But I was wrong. And when I saw what she had brought, I knew. I knew that it would never be over. Not for us. And I suppose I also knew that John would never love me the way he had loved your mother.”
“Where are Dave and Jenny?” I asked, thinking of that magical door lurking beneath the surface of the lake, and imagining it swallowing them whole. They won’t come out.
“They left years ago. I don’t know where they are. Now it’s late,” Sage said, taking away my dinner tray. “Get some sleep.”
She stood and turned off my bedside lamp, revealing how dark the nights were here in the middle of nowhere. Slowly a bit of starlight started to glow through the drawn curtains, and I was looking at it as I finally acquiesced to the sleep that my body seemed to crave.
As Sage tiptoed out of the room, one last question escaped my lips. “Is her name really Rain?”
But she was already gone.
CHAPTER 13
I woke before dawn, engulfed in blackness. The quiet was deafening, and I had no idea what time it was. Maybe 3 a.m., maybe 4 a.m. I tried to relax my body and go back to sleep, but then I heard a soft rapping on the door. Was that what had woken me up? Did I hear it in my dream?
Another round of rapping came, accompanied by Brady’s voice, whispering with an urgency that made me forget for a moment that I was too embarrassed to talk to him.
I stood to open the door, growing worried about what could possibly be so important that he would wake me up so early for it. I cracked it open, the bright light of the hallway making me squint. I still wasn’t entirely awake and I could feel myself shrinking away from the world outside.
“I have to come in.”
I was glad to close the door behind us, shutting out the harsh lights and bringing him into the safe space of the quiet room. But he immediately turned on a lamp.
“What’s going on?” I asked, waking up even more as the look on his face confirmed that something was indeed quite wrong.
“You got a phone call,” he said, holding up his cell phone.
“Okay.” My mind was racing. Nobody knew to reach me on Brady’s cell phone. I rubbed my eyes, the thoughts processing all at once. “Who?”
“Your dad. I didn’t answer. He didn’t leave a message. But I saw your home number come up on the ID.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Marina. I didn’t know what to do.
”
“How did he . . .”
“He must have traced the source of the emails. Or, I don’t know, would your friend Christy have told him?”
I caught my breath, thinking very clearly now. Brady was right—there were only a handful of options. One was that he had traced the emails. My dad was a genius when it came to computers, but I was pretty sure even he wouldn’t have the technology to do something like that. But the police would. Oh God, were the police involved?
“Christy wouldn’t have told him,” I said, talking more to myself than to Brady.
“Even if there were an emergency?”
I looked at Brady, and I had never seen him so worried. “What emergency?”
“Your mother?”
“Kieren would have called if she were back.”
“What if he doesn’t know?”
“Just stop!” I shouted. “I’m sorry, but please stop. I have to think.”
I started to pace, and Brady sat down on the edge of the desk, staring at his phone again as though somewhere inside of it all the answers lay hiding.
Brady’s phone beeped. I ran over to look at it.
It was a text from my dad: I know where you are.
I grabbed the phone out of his hands and stared at it while Brady leaned over my shoulder.
Another text came a second later: Stay there. I’m on my way, crossing the Oregon border now.
Brady muttered something under his breath that I didn’t catch. My eyes were fixed on the phone, and the message that seemed too awful to be true.
My heart sank. If my dad came here to take me home, then that would be the end of it. We had officially failed. And I had humiliated myself in front of Brady. And for what?
“It’s over,” I said. “It’s all over. We lose.”
Brady looked up from his phone. “What do you mean, ‘we lose’?”
“Well, we failed, didn’t we? We didn’t save anybody. My dad will be here in the morning to take me home, and that’ll be the end of it. I just made everything worse.”
“That’s not true. Listen, things couldn’t be any worse than they were before. And when we get back home, we can try the doors again. I’m sure they’ll work this time—”
“Stop!” I shouted, surprised by my own anger.
“What?”
“Just stop making things up, Brady! God, you lie about everything. I’m not a child and I’m not an idiot. So stop.”
I could tell I had really hurt him, and I immediately regretted it. But I couldn’t help myself. I had never felt so frustrated.
Brady stood, and I was afraid he was going to leave. “What do I lie about?”
I sighed, wondering if I really wanted to do this with him, if it was even worth it. “Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
“Okay.” I turned to face him. “Your dad is not in Alaska. Is he?”
Brady stared at me like I had stabbed him with a knife.
“Good night,” he said, turning to leave.
“You can’t do it, can you? You can’t be honest with me.”
“What do you want?” he asked, turning to me.
“I want you to tell me the truth, just once.”
“I came here to help you.”
I could tell he was getting angry, so I tried softening my tone. “Then help me. Don’t make me do this alone.”
“When have you been alone, Marina? I’ve been with you the whole time.”
“In the lake,” I reminded him. “You wanted to kiss me back, I know you did.”
He didn’t say anything, looking down at his feet.
“Why didn’t you? Because of Piper?”
“Of course because of Piper,” he said, still not looking at me.
“She left you, Brady,” I reminded him. I took a step towards him, trying to catch his eyes, to get him to acknowledge me.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he said, still addressing his feet.
“It means everything.”
“Your mom left you. Did you stop loving her because of it?”
The words stung, and I backed away a bit, seeing a flash of regret in his eyes. He took a step towards me, but I kept inching away.
I walked back to the window, where the slightest trace of blue morning light was starting to divide the blackness. It was eerie and quite beautiful, like staring out at the surface of the moon.
Brady stepped a bit closer, and his voice was calm. “I don’t know where my dad is, Marina. Okay? He was in Alaska for a while. And then he was in jail for a while. And for all I know, he’s in Alaska again now. I don’t know and I don’t really care. He wasn’t a very good guy when he was here.”
I turned to look at him from the window and nodded to let him know it was okay to go on. That I would never judge him.
“I don’t have a mom. She left him when I was three. Then she died when I was ten.”
“Oh my God.” My hand reflexively covered my heart, as if to protect it somehow.
“It’s okay. It really is. I’m not sad. I’m fine.”
“It’s not okay.”
“No, it’s not okay,” he agreed. “You’re right. It sucks. But what I mean is that I’m okay. Do you understand the difference?”
I nodded, wondering if I could have survived a childhood like that.
“I don’t have parents. I have my cousin. I have my friends . . .” He paused for a moment. “And I have Piper.”
I nodded, finally understanding what he had been trying to tell me. And I realized how incredibly selfish I had been, trying to get him to leave Piper, when she was really all he had. And for what? So he could be with me instead? No wonder everyone had been treating me like a child. I had been acting like one.
“Okay,” I said, making my decision right then and there.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, let’s go then.”
He shook his head, not sure what I meant.
“We came here to rescue them, didn’t we?” I asked. “My dad will be here in a few hours. If we go now, we’ll be back before he even arrives.”
I looked back out the window, towards the breaking light and the shadow of the trees, slowly emerging into form, which held the trail to the lake. “Let’s go find them.”
We ran hand in hand down the trail, the forest around us becoming clearer and clearer with every step as the light began to flood down through the treetops. It was the opposite experience of the night before, which had been clouded in darkness. With every step, I could feel the urgency of the lake calling to us. I had no idea what kind of portal was under there, or where it would lead. Would we be back in our town? Would I be in my kitchen again, like I had been before? And most importantly, would Robbie be there again, or had I gone too far away from him?
We reached the lake, kicked our shoes off, and dove in wearing our clothes. Wherever we ended up, I hoped it was as warm there as it had been here, because we didn’t bring anything to change into.
We swam out a bit to where Brady had found the hidden doorway the night before. Sunlight was beginning to brim over the trees, washing the lake in a blurry gray. Brady took a deep inhale and I followed suit. And then we both went down. Brady hoisted the trapdoor open and we stared at the blackness inside for a beat before diving in together.
The flash of light passed and we were in darkness. And it wasn’t until I opened my mouth to breathe that I realized we were still underwater. It was terrifying, to be in the dark with water filling my mouth. Were we still in the lake? Were we at the bottom of the ocean? Dear God, would we drown here? I reached for Brady’s arm, and within seconds, my eyes adjusted and a stream of light shot through, illuminating Brady’s face.
He pointed to his own air bubbles, indicating that they were floating downwards. We had become completely turned around in th
e whirl of water. My mind quickly adjusted to the reality that up was now down, and we followed the bubbles like a shot out of the water. I broke through the surface, gasping in a huge gulp of air. I had never felt so grateful to inhale.
Brady popped up next to me and we surveyed the world before us.
We were in the lake, exactly in the spot we had been before.
“It didn’t work,” Brady concluded, and for a second I agreed with him.
But then I noticed the light. The light was different, the sun high in the sky. In fact, everything seemed brighter. The birds were singing from the shore.
“Yes, it did.” My eyes caught a wisp of something then, a small plume of white smoke. It was coming from the little boathouse. Why would a boathouse have a chimney? I pointed it out to Brady as we both paddled on the surface, and he nodded.
We came up on shore, seeing that on this plane, our shoes were not there. I struggled to remain brave as we approached the boathouse. This was the portal Piper had gone through. So it was possible that she was nearby at that very moment. I wondered if that thought had occurred to Brady.
The window of the boathouse was not broken on this side. As we approached, we could smell something cooking. I was reminded of the first time I’d gone into DW, and the distinct smell of bacon that had immediately filled my nose. And for a moment, I was certain of it—I had found my mother.
I almost tripped over my own feet running to the window. My eyes took a second to adjust to the darker light within, but when they did, I saw that I had been wrong. In fact, I had been wrong about everything.
This wasn’t a boathouse. At least, not on this plane.
It was a small cottage. And inside, a man was leaning over a small metal griddle in the fireplace making breakfast. The boats were gone, replaced by a small, neatly made bed. The only other contents of the place were a small table and a rocking chair by another window with a perfectly folded blanket lying over it. Whoever this man was, this was his home. And I wondered how long he had lived here.
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