Down World

by Rebecca Phelps

  And finally, after the long day and another night had passed, the train chugged its way onto a small platform with a little rundown station next to it, covered almost completely in ivy.

  None of us recognized it at first, and probably wouldn’t have thought much of it had the train not pulled to a stop.

  I looked at Robbie, whose blank eyes were staring out the window like a child seeing a distant uncle that he had no memory of and didn’t want to hug. Piper seemed distracted, reading something in a large book, and barely even looked up.

  “Guys,” I said, standing to get a better look and finally recognizing small things, like the way the awning that hung overhead had a small crack in it, and the way the shadows fell on the stairs leading to the platform. “I think we’re here.”

  We all stood and looked out together, Robbie beginning to shake his head. “No, this can’t be it.”

  “It is it,” I insisted. “Can’t you tell?”

  “It’s too small,” he almost muttered, and I could see him regressing back into himself, becoming once again the child he had been when the accident happened.

  “Robbie, it’s okay,” I told him, trying to catch his eyes. “We’re home.” But he didn’t budge. I looked to Piper, who had finally put down the book. “Help me convince him.” She took a better look at the station, and was clearly seeing what I had.

  “I think she’s right, baby. I think we should get off and look around.”

  “I’ll wait here,” he said, planting himself down on the bed. “You girls go.”

  I sat next to him again, trying to face him head-on so that he’d have to look at me. “Robbie,” I began. “Are you afraid?”

  He didn’t move a muscle at first, his eyes landing somewhere in the space between us. But then he nodded.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  He shrugged. “It’ll disappear when the train leaves. Just like the others.”

  I nodded, understanding how traumatized he must have been from his years on this train, from watching everything that seemed real melt away. But I just had a feeling in my gut. Those other dimensions disappeared because we weren’t supposed to be there. But that wouldn’t happen now that we were home.

  I had to believe it was true.

  “I won’t disappear,” I promised him. And I reached out a hand for Piper, who joined us. “And neither will Piper.”

  “That’s right,” she insisted, seeming to get more excited about the idea of finally being home. “Robbie, we have to at least look. What if she’s right?” Piper was already standing as she said this, combing her fingers through her hair.

  Robbie watched her, and the sadness that came over his face revealed everything. He was afraid he’d lose her here. That somehow she’d go back to Brady now that she could. But I knew that it was possible Brady wasn’t even back yet. And I knew that, in any event, it was time to go.

  “Dad is here,” I reminded him, trying to reel him back in to the positive, to convince him that this wasn’t an illusion. “Robbie, come with me. Let’s go see Dad.”

  Robbie finally looked back at me, and the slight nod of his head was all the encouragement I needed to know that he was finally ready to go. He stood next to me, and I took his hand.

  When we first stepped off the train and onto the platform—the three of us, with our eyes blinking at the light of day—I thought for a second that maybe Robbie was right and that this wasn’t our home. It really did look so different, not just because of the ivy once again covering the building or the extra cracks in the pavement.

  Even though I had been here quite recently, it was like I was finally seeing it for what it really was. The station was small, like a little hutch almost. And it took a full moment for it to really sink in that it was the exact same size it had always been. We were just bigger now. Everything that had seemed so giant growing up in this town was finally reduced to its true scale.

  We started to walk down the stairs, into the deserted parking lot.

  Robbie was nervous, and I felt his hand shaking in mine and his legs falter more than once. We made it all the way to the edge of the parking lot before he stopped walking and started shaking his head.

  “No, no, no, no, back on the train, back on the train.”

  “It’s okay, Robbie. Let’s keep walking,” I pleaded.

  “It really is okay, baby. We’re home. Can’t you see it?”

  “Back on the train,” he muttered, sitting down on a nearby curb. “It’s all going to melt. It’s all going to melt.”

  “It won’t melt, Robbie. Look!” I all but shouted. I sat down next to him and started pointing out things we could see across the street. “Look, there’s the pharmacy. And the diner. Do you see it?”

  He looked up, but his expression didn’t change.

  “And the stoplight that’s always broken. Robbie, are you looking?”

  His eyes bulged out and glazed with tears, but I could tell he didn’t really believe me yet.

  Piper looked scared and frustrated. She kept taking deep breaths. “I want to go home,” she finally said.

  “Come here,” I insisted, pulling Robbie up and crossing the empty street, all but dragging him behind me. Piper ran to catch us.

  We made it to the pharmacy, and I searched the wall for the place where the sign had been, although someone had clearly tried to paint over it again since we’d left. Finally, though, I found it.

  “There!” I said, pointing to the wall. The letters were more faint than ever, but they were there. DANCE HALL GIRLS. The D in DANCE was very clear, and I gestured for Robbie to lean in even closer.

  It wasn’t like in DW, where the colors had been too bright, where everything was Technicolor. It was real and it was right. We were home.

  “Nothing is melting, Robbie,” I said, desperately trying to see that flash of recognition in his eyes, that comfort of belief. “It’s real. It’s all real.” I grabbed his hand and made him touch the brick wall.

  Finally he turned his head to his new girlfriend, and I realized that my word was not going to be enough.

  “Piper?” he asked her. She was crying, and she simply nodded her head. He threw himself into her arms, letting her hold him. And as she whispered into his ear something that I couldn’t hear, I touched the wall myself, letting its hard, scratchy surface tickle my fingertips.

  We were home. Thank God. We were home.

  That’s when we heard the first siren.

  It was a fire truck, and we all stood back to watch it go by. The man in the driver’s seat was wearing a strange uniform.

  The truck passed, leaving us all still standing on the deserted sidewalk. I knew that we were home, but I would feel more comfortable if some people were around—anyone dressed in normal clothing to seal the fact in my mind.

  “Where is everyone?” Piper asked, echoing my thoughts.

  I shook my head at first, muttering to myself. “It’s too early for the curfew.”

  “What curfew?” Robbie asked.

  I hesitated for a moment, not wanting to upset him when he was already so uneasy. But I also knew that there was no way to keep things from him at this point.

  “Some things have changed.”

  Piper, still holding Robbie’s hand, looked frustrated. “What things?”

  We all turned as our train tooted its last puff of resistance before chugging away from us, and it was too late to get back on now even if we wanted to.

  “Come on,” I told them. “I’ll show you.”

  It took about twenty minutes to walk to the high school, and nobody said much along the way. We were too busy looking around our town, letting the sunlight stream down through familiar leaves and imprint its warmth on our faces. Even the air smelled right, and for a moment I thought maybe I should just take Robbie home so we could both sleep in our own beds.

>   But then I remembered there would be nobody there to greet us.

  About half a block from the high school, I realized things had gotten worse, because that was when we finally started to see people. Lots of people. And they were all barefoot.

  The whole town, it seemed, was lined up in front of the school, which still took the form of the military building it had been when Kieren had shown it to me. The eerie familiarity of this scene was so chilling that for a moment I couldn’t walk any farther. Robbie and Piper, mouths agape with no context to understand what they were seeing, stopped next to me. People of all ages waited in long lines at various kiosks.

  It was exactly the same as the underwater world. I began to doubt that we were really home. Had I made a huge mistake? And had I trapped Robbie and Piper here with my error?

  “Marina?” I heard a familiar voice cry, and I spun to see Christy waiting in one of the lines, wearing the same plain jeans and T-shirt as everyone else, and also barefoot.

  Every muscle in my body relaxed a bit with relief. “Oh, thank God,” I said, throwing my arms around her. “Are you real?”

  “Of course I’m real,” she said, looking confused. “But I thought . . . they said you fell in front of the train. That Kieren . . .”

  “Where’s Kieren?”

  She didn’t say anything at first, and my heart sank. Did he do something crazy after I left?

  “They questioned him for hours,” Christy said, lowering her voice so others couldn’t hear. “They thought he pushed you too. Now he never leaves his house.”

  “M,” Robbie said, his voice oddly steady and deep, a tone that I hadn’t heard from him much. “What is she talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I insisted. “Nobody pushed me.”

  “You were with Kieren?” he asked, his throat choking out the name.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said. “You don’t understand, Robbie. It’s okay.”

  “Robbie?” Christy asked, and her eyes finally took in the two people standing next to me. She didn’t know what Robbie looked like, of course—only his name—so her reaction to seeing him was merely confusion. But when her eyes fell on Piper, the beautiful face that had haunted us from hundreds of flyers for months, and then took in the fact that Robbie and Piper were together, she seemed to do the math.

  She looked back to me, and very quietly whispered, “Marina? Is this your brother?”

  I nodded and looked around, following her lead to make sure no one was listening to us. “Christy, what is going on here?”

  She shrugged. “The president is visiting or something. So they need to make sure we’re all clean.”

  “Clean?”

  “Of the disease,” she answered, her eyes on the front of the line. “The MPs came around a week ago and told us we had to turn in our shoes. They said the disease starts on the toes, and they need to be able to see them.”

  “Christy,” I said, shaking my head to keep my thoughts clear, “when you say ‘the president,’ which one do you mean?”

  She looked at me like I was insane, and I might very well have been. “Koenig.” She laughed. “Who do you think I mean?”

  Dear God, I almost said out loud. The planes have merged.

  Just then, a large screen above the parking lot beeped a couple of times, then burst to life. On it, a woman appeared, standing in front of an exotic jungle, a smile plastered on her face. She began to speak. It took me a moment to realize why she seemed so odd: she wasn’t real. Something about the eyes gave it away. She was computer generated. She talked about cleanliness, about protecting our fellow citizens.

  “Let’s show President Koenig our best selves, shall we? To make a better future, we all must do our part . . . today.”

  I felt a tiny explosion inside my gut. The world seemed to be spinning out of control. I was so sure using Kieren’s penny would work, that the train would take us back home. But somehow it had taken us to this hybrid dimension instead.

  Why did the worlds cross? And when?

  “C-Christy,” I stuttered. “When did you last see me?”

  She looked at me, confused.

  “When did we last talk? I mean, you and me?”

  She thought about it for a second, shuffling up in the line a bit. “Well, you texted me from Portland. But I don’t think I’ve seen you since the graduation ceremony . . . so, four months ago.”

  The words sank slowly into my mind. So this was the real Christy. But four months ago? Is that how long I was on that train?

  I didn’t have much time to figure it out, because I now saw what we were in line for—a nurse in a traditional 1950s outfit was dispensing shots into people’s arms.

  I pushed my brother and Piper back a bit. “Come on,” I whispered to Christy. “Don’t do this, come with us.”

  “I can’t,” she said, turning back. “I’ve already got my number. If I sneak out of line, they’ll know.” In her hand, she was holding a small yellow card with a number printed on it.

  “I’m cold,” Piper said, starting to shuffle her feet. “Can we go home? I want to go home.”

  “We’re going,” I assured her.

  I leaned in to Christy to say one more thing. “Can you text Kieren and tell him I’m okay? That he should meet me at the pyramid house tonight.”

  “No,” Robbie interjected. “Not him.”

  “We need him, Robbie. Trust me.” I turned back to Christy.

  “I’ll tell him,” Christy whispered. “But he won’t be able to get out after curfew.”

  “Please,” I begged again. “Tell him to find a way.”

  Christy nodded reluctantly. We had reached the front of the line, and I knew we should walk away. But I needed to ask. “Hey, you haven’t seen that guy Brady around, have you?”

  “No,” she said, distracted, as it was almost her turn. When she saw the worry in my face, however, she offered a weak smile. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I never saw him before except at school. And he graduated, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  As Christy offered her number card to the nurse, Robbie and Piper and I snuck away. We walked in unison, silently praying not to get stopped, out of the parking lot and down the street, as far away from that hellish place as our feet could take us.

  “Now what do we do?” Robbie asked me.

  I smiled at my brother. “Now we see Dad.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The detention center looked more like a power station than a prison. Piper waited in the lobby, awkwardly trying to make a bed out of the molded plastic chairs. We had offered to take her to her house, but upon remembering that she would find it as empty as ours, she was reluctant to leave our side.

  My hand felt clammy as I reached for Robbie’s, but his was cold. I couldn’t read his expression. Only a slowness in his gait, a halting in his breath, revealed the tension he felt. We were being ushered into a small beige-colored room, devoid of any furnishings save two chairs facing a table, with a third on the other side.

  Robbie and I stood together, too nervous to sit, while the guard who had escorted us in retreated to a corner and stood at attention, his eyes distant. I noticed he was wearing the same uniform as the guards at the high school. I swallowed hard, trying to keep the well of emotions from overflowing.

  Finally the door opened, and my father walked through. He was wearing dark pants and a dark blue shirt, which were not his own. His hands were free, but I realized he was a prisoner here. He walked slowly, like someone who had been broken down somehow. But when he looked up and saw Robbie, his eyes all but exploded out of his head.

  And then something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I thought Dad would scream or flail, or maybe even deny that it was really Robbie standing in front of him. After all, he’d had no preparation for this moment.

  But Dad didn’t do
any of those things. Instead he turned white, and then red, and finally, with eyes rimmed with tears, he simply mumbled to himself in the faintest voice, “She was right.”

  “Dad?” Robbie asked. Or maybe it was more of a begging. A begging to be believed, accepted, and loved still.

  “She was right,” Dad repeated, more to himself than to us. “I should have believed her.”

  Then Dad ran to Robbie and held him. The guard in the corner shuffled a bit; there wasn’t supposed to be any contact. But even he seemed to sense that he should let them be.

  The tears fell hot and heavy down my cheeks, burning their way past my chin and falling freely until they landed with tiny thuds on my shoes. I wiped my face and felt the wetness coat my fingers.

  Robbie was taller than Dad now, but he fell into him like a baby nonetheless. When they separated, a smile cracked over Robbie’s face that lightened the room and seemed to surround us, temporarily at least, with warmth.

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  “Are you okay?” Dad finally asked. “Are you whole? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay, Dad,” Robbie said, keeping his voice steady and his head straight.

  “You’re so tall. You look . . .” Dad’s voice cracked, but he pulled it back together. “You look like your mother.”

  I stood next to Robbie, placing a gentle hand on his back. Dad leaned in and embraced me as well. “I knew you’d find a way back to me, kiddo. I just never believed you’d really find your brother.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you, Dad,” I whispered in his ear, but he only shook his head and smiled.

  The guard cleared his throat, and we all shuffled to the chairs.

  “They’re not going to keep me here much longer,” Dad said. “They’re transferring me. There will be a trial, but I don’t think . . . I don’t think I’m going to win. They think I did something to your mother.”

  “Dad, we’re going to fix this,” I promised him. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll put everything back the way it was.”