Down World

by Rebecca Phelps

  “Sorry, sir,” Brady said.

  “Go in, you’ll miss the lesson.”

  Brady nodded and began to take my hand again.

  “Eh-eh, none of that,” the man said, grabbing my hand away from Brady’s. He nodded in the direction of the end of the hallway. “Go, young man, or I’ll have to report you.”

  He then quickly led me down a separate hall, and all I could do was stare back over my shoulder at Brady as we walked. He must have seen the sheer terror in my eyes as I was dragged farther and farther away.

  “Meet you here after school, sis,” he called, trying to keep his voice on an even keel.

  I could only nod before the man opened a door and all but pushed me into a classroom.

  The room was packed with about thirty to forty students, all sitting in cramped little desks and writing in notebooks. It honestly didn’t look too different from a normal class, except that all the students were girls and there was no teacher in the front of the room. Instead, an old-fashioned tape recorder sat on a desk, reciting phrases in Russian and repeating them in English.

  Nobody looked at me as I found a seat on the floor next to several other girls around my age. I pictured Brady being led into a similar room full of boys.

  I didn’t have a notebook, so I just sat and listened. A girl next to me saw that I wasn’t writing and looked at me, confused.

  “You’ll get in trouble,” she whispered, ripping several blank pages out of her notebook and handing them to me, along with an extra pencil.

  “Thank you.” I glanced at her paper and realized she was transcribing everything said on the voice recorder, first the Russian phrase and then the English translation.

  I didn’t know how to spell in Russian, of course, so I just scribbled the words phonetically. It was a weird assortment of information, mostly recipes. Apple pie, potato casserole, meatless lasagna, and all followed by details of what to substitute if you’re missing any of the ingredients. Rhubarb for apples. Canned syrup for vanilla. Ketchup for tomato sauce.

  I wrote as quickly as I could, but couldn’t keep up with the pace of the recorder.

  Another phrase in Russian was quickly etched by the girl to my side, followed by the English:

  “President Koenig will rule for one thousand years.”

  Everybody wrote this down, and I struggled to write faster.

  “The study of mathematics makes women infertile.”

  I almost laughed at this one, until I saw the room full of girls quickly copying it down. No one smiled, and no one looked up from their papers.

  I leaned over to the girl next to me, whispering, “Isn’t there a real teacher?”

  She glanced over to me, then addressed her paper. “Are you new or something?”

  I flinched. Brady had warned me not to give myself away. “I just transferred.”

  “Why bother?” she asked, dismissing me as an idiot. But then a second later, she added, “The real teacher comes on Fridays. Not that you could tell the difference.”

  The day wore on in this fashion, and the recordings never seemed to end. Every now and then, the old cassette tape would click as it reached its end, and a student would get up and switch it over to the other side. When that side had finished, the student selected another tape from a large stack and put that one in. Nobody moved while this happened.

  I wanted to kick myself for leaving my father, the one family member I had left, all to go on this hopeless and ultimately futile journey. None of this had brought me any closer to the real goal, saving my brother. This was nothing but a nightmare flip side to our world, and I needed to find Brady and get out of here as quickly as possible.

  “Class dismissed,” the recording announced, with no warning or fanfare.

  I looked up and realized that the sun had started to go down, and felt completely disoriented. Everyone around me began to pack up and leave, without saying a word to each other. They formed a neat single-file line and began to worm their way out of the room.

  The line began to shuffle down the hall, and all the girls quietly and neatly took their turn entering a large women’s bathroom and then filing back out, all while the others waited patiently. Again, no one spoke. The whole process took about half an hour before I could get back to the front of the building and wait for Brady.

  Buses appeared, apparently to take the long line of girls off to some other place, but I couldn’t leave because the boys were not yet out. Afraid that standing around and waiting would make me seem conspicuous, I quickly decided to get into the line for shoes. It was the same length as before, apparently because no shoes had arrived.

  I waited about fifteen minutes before a guard came by, quickly grabbing everyone’s arms and examining them briefly before moving on. When he got to me, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I simply let him take my arm.

  “You haven’t had your shot yet,” he said in English.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  He made a note in a notebook, and without looking up, he said, “You have to have your shot first. Do you want to spread the disease?”

  The people in line before and after me seemed to hear this, and they all slowly stepped away from me.

  “No, sir.”

  He then looked up at me expectantly, and I glanced over at the long line for shots at the clinic.

  I nodded and left the shoe line to walk over there, all while staring desperately at the front door of the school and waiting for Brady to come out.

  The line for the shots was longer than before, with the same single nurse administering them. I waited for half an hour, feeling so hungry that I was growing weak in the knees. I didn’t dare ask anyone about eating, and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to do so.

  At last, a long line of boys began to make their way out of the school, single file and neatly ordered. Head after head waltzed out, and I began to panic that Brady would not be among them. But finally, I saw him, his head down and walking in unison with the others.

  I had only moved a few inches in the line, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to see me. His eyes scanned as covertly as possible, and when they finally locked with mine, I saw a look on his face I hadn’t seen before—complete relief.

  He walked up to me slowly, casually, and despite every instinct inside of me to throw my arms around him, I knew I couldn’t draw attention to us.

  “I saved you a spot,” I said, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

  Brady stood next to me for a moment, subtly brushing my arm with one finger, so I would know that he was with me. And that was all I needed to feel an ocean of calm.

  “Oh, I just remembered,” he played along. “We told Mom we’d be home for dinner. We’ll have to do this tomorrow.”

  He grabbed my hand and was about to lead me away when a guard, identical to all the others, appeared by our side.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, again in English. It concerned me slightly that all the guards had begun speaking English with us, as though it were obvious that we didn’t understand Russian. What was tipping them off?

  “We have to be home for dinner,” Brady answered.

  “Home?” the guard said, a smile crossing his lips. “How nice for you. But you can’t ride the bus until you’ve had your shot, now, can you?”

  I tugged slightly on Brady’s arm, pulling him back into line. I realized that if it were that easy to leave, there would probably be a lot of people doing it.

  “Of course,” Brady said, clearly arriving at the same thought. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Do you have your papers?” the guard asked.

  “Of course.” Brady searched his pockets, just like he had in the diner. And I wished he could somehow have magic pockets that would miraculously produce all the things he pretended to look for in them.

  The guard looked distracted, surv
eying the line we were in and the two dozen or so people who waited ahead of us.

  I realized we were caught and wondered how we would escape from wherever this guard was sure to lead us so we could go back to the lake. But I never had to finish the thought.

  A guard from some distance away called to the man who had stopped us, saying something in Russian with a calmness that belied the urgent response he received.

  “Carry on,” the guard spat out at us, not even looking back in our direction, before walking over to meet the other man.

  I let out a sigh that seemed to originate from somewhere deep inside my gut, and I felt myself shaking. I wasn’t sure if it was fear or hunger, or something in between, but I couldn’t seem to make it stop.

  “I’m sorry,” Brady whispered to me. “That was close.”

  I stared ahead, trying to control the shaking.

  “We’ll finish up here and then we can go. Don’t worry, kiddo.”

  I nodded, still staring ahead. I could hear my teeth chattering, even though it wasn’t cold.

  Brady put his arm around me, and I could feel the warmth seeping through my shirt.

  The line took another forty-five minutes, and Brady kept his arm around me the whole time. I was eventually able to stop shaking, and a numbness took its place. My mind became locked, unable to process any more of this horrible world. It drifted instead to other times, to watching TV with my brother when we were younger. To Kieren’s hand, holding mine at the train station before we left.

  The shot didn’t hurt. I could barely feel it, in fact. I waited calmly while Brady got his. Nobody spoke. The nurse didn’t even look at us.

  Once we were done, it was clear that we were free to go, as those in line before us had been. We started walking away from the school, back down the road to the diner. It was fully dark now, and streetlights cast a cold yellow glare onto the tops of our heads.

  A few people shuffled past, not paying us any mind.

  “What time do you think it is?” I asked, not knowing how much longer I could go without food.

  “There was a clock in the diner,” he said. “We’ll go peek in the window, then find a place to wait until midnight.”

  “Okay.” I was too weak to offer any alternative. I felt I had no more great ideas. It had been my plan to come here, and so far it had been a disaster. And now we both had some kind of vaccine coursing through our veins—to prevent what, I had no idea.

  Brady led me to the diner and looked in the window.

  “It’s almost eight,” he said. “Come here, let’s try something.”

  I walked with him around the building, down the alley, to the dumpster behind it.

  “Bingo.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, suddenly having to sit down. I found a couple of crates and pushed them together, letting my body plop down on one of them.

  “I used to work in a restaurant. We’d put the day-old rolls and stuff out in the back for whoever wanted them.”

  He came and sat down next to me, a large grocery bag full of old bread in his hands.

  I had to admit, I was a little put off by the idea that the bag had been on the dirty ground, but I was so hungry at that point that the thought quickly disintegrated.

  “Sorry it’s not more.”

  “I don’t even care. I’m about to pass out.”

  We reached into the bag and devoured about three rolls each.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, feeling very calm and very sleepy. And then out of nowhere, my stomach cramped up into a horrible knot. “Oh God.” I leaped off the crate and looked for a more private corner in which to throw up. I held my hair back, falling down onto my knees and letting it all go.

  I tried to sit up, and Brady came and sat next to me, taking my hair out of my hand and holding it back for me. Another wave hit me with no warning, and I had to lean over and throw up again.

  I sat back from the disgusting mess, panting, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, overcome by a flash of heat.

  “Slowly, slowly,” Brady said. “Just let it all go.”

  “That’s so gross,” I said, pulling my shirt away from my neck. The heat was still creeping up my face, but I also felt infinitely better. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, please, that was nothing,” Brady said, letting himself laugh. “Piper and I once got into her mom’s wine coolers and she threw up for about two hours. Now that was gross. I mean, it got everywhere. And it was pink.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, feeling slightly better.

  “And her mom was asleep in the next room, so we couldn’t make any noise. Two hours of silent pink puking. Needless to say, I don’t drink anymore.”

  Brady helped me back to the crates, and I sat for a moment with my head between my legs while he put one of his cool hands on my forehead.

  “You must have eaten a bad roll or something,” he continued.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling a throbbing in my arm where the shot had gone in. “Does your arm hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Brady, what was in those shots?”

  “Nothing,” he said, again sounding so confident that I couldn’t help but believe him. “Don’t worry about that.”

  But I continued to rub my arm, feeling a hot sting emanating from the injection point.

  “In the morning, her mom found the empty bottles,” Brady said, continuing his story as he kept his hand on my forehead. “I thought she was going to kill me.” His voice sounded far away, and I could tell he was back in that room with Piper.

  “You’ll get her back,” I promised him. “This isn’t over.”

  He didn’t say anything. I leaned my forehead against his arm, my body racked by a deep exhaustion. And the last thing I felt before drifting off to sleep was Brady kissing the top of my head.

  CHAPTER 15

  “It’s midnight,” Brady said, gently shaking me awake.

  I shivered a bit as I came to, feeling a stiffness and a deep-seated cold work its way through my bones. The only part of me that was still warm was my head, where it had been lying on Brady’s arm. He must have heard it in my breath as I sat up, and he gently rubbed his hands up and down my arms to warm me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I responded. “Just waking up. Are you sure it’s time?”

  “I saw that waitress walk by.”

  We stood up and slowly walked down the alley and back towards the front of the diner, ever vigilant about being watched. But when we got there, we looked into the front window and saw the waitress and four other people standing in a circle waiting for us.

  My first instinct was to hide, but it was clearly too late. They were all staring at the front door, as if knowing that at any moment we would be walking in.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked Brady.

  He said nothing, but instead took my hand and guided me inside.

  “You came,” said the waitress, clearly relieved.

  “Of course,” Brady answered.

  She fired off the names of the other people in the group, one other girl and two guys. Unfortunately, not one name stuck in my head, as I was still deciding privately whether to trust them. Everybody nodded and we stared at each other for a moment, not speaking. I could tell they were sizing us up, too, and I could only hope that we looked trustworthy, because I knew that these people were our only hope of escaping this little piece of hell.

  Brady introduced himself. “And this is Marina.”

  “Do you have your scars?” asked the other girl, and I thought for a moment that I must have heard her wrong.

  “They just got here, I told you,” explained the waitress.

  “They should get marked first,” the girl continued, touching her arm. And I remembered that the waitress had
shown us that mark, the three scars on her forearm.

  “How are they supposed to do that when they’re new?” asked the waitress. I again became aware of a throbbing in my arm where the injection had gone in earlier. Brady must have heard me groan in pain because he became very nervous.

  “Marina?” he whispered to me.

  “It’s okay,” I responded, but I knew it wasn’t. The pain was getting worse and I felt queasy again.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked the waitress, helping me to sit down at the nearest booth.

  “Nothing,” said Brady, sounding defensive. “Her arm just hurts.”

  “You didn’t get the shot, did you?” she spat back at him.

  Brady stood and stared at her. “You’re the one who told us to go to the school all day!”

  “So you would blend in. You were sticking out like sore thumbs walking around in the middle of the day. You weren’t supposed to get in any of the lines.”

  “Well, you didn’t say that, did you?” Brady almost shouted back at her.

  “She looks green,” said one of the boys. “Should we bring her downstairs?”

  “No,” insisted the girl who had spoken before. “Not until she’s had her scars.”

  “This is stupid,” said the waitress. “I told you, they’re from the other side.”

  “We don’t even know if there is another side,” said the other girl, and I could tell this was not a new fight for them.

  A wave of nausea came and went. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this terrible. “Brady,” I said, clutching his arm, “what do we do?”

  He knelt down in front of me and started very tenderly rolling up my sleeve to see the injection point. “Can we get her some water, please?” he asked no one in particular. I could hear the waitress’s bare feet pattering their way behind the diner counter.

  I tried to catch my breath. I was deeply embarrassed to be making such a scene in front of total strangers, especially when we were trying to impress them. But I was also very aware that something was wrong with me, and it was getting worse.

  “What’s all the screaming about?” came a calm voice from behind the group, and we all looked up towards the back of the diner. As the crowd parted a bit, I could see a very familiar face approaching. It was Sage, and for the first time, she wasn’t wearing flowing white clothes and she didn’t have her usual air of absentminded fluttering energy. She seemed quite calm and collected, and devoid of any real style. She looked older here, and a little more worn-down. And despite how sick I was feeling, I couldn’t help but take a private moment to grieve that this place seemed to have gotten the best of her.