I didn’t have time to form a plan. We were walking out the door, the others already in the hall before us, when I swung around and poked my fingers into the man’s eyes. I don’t know what made me think to do that. I must have seen it in a movie once, or in some online defense video.
He doubled over in pain, grabbing his eyes, and my mother whipped around to see what had happened. I shoved the man away from me and ran back into the room, slamming the door before the others could get back to me, and turning the bolt lock.
I was alone in the science lab, but I knew it was only a matter of moments before they got the door open. So I spun and ran into the tent and down the spiral staircase.
This was it. If this didn’t work, there was no plan B. I took one of the coins Kieren had handed me out of my pocket, walked up to the door to Yesterday, and slid it into the opening that I had thought was a peephole. At first, nothing happened, and I was crushed by the feeling that I had been wrong.
“Come on,” I whispered. It was practically a prayer, and I thought of the masses I used to attend at St. Joe’s. I never took Communion because we weren’t religious, but I would watch the row of kids who did go up to take the wafers. On their knees, their eyes closed, waiting and waiting for something close to God to come to them.
“Please,” I said. “Please work.”
And then the brick faded away, and only a bright light remained.
I took a deep breath, hearing the guards banging on the door above me. Reaching into my back pocket, I took out the photo from Mom’s album and held it in my hands, concentrating on the tan, happy people on that beach. And then I walked through the door.
CHAPTER 22
Once the yellow glow had subsided, the first thing I became aware of was sunlight. It surrounded me so completely, blanketing my whole body, that I thought at first I must have been trapped in some ongoing state of transition. The yellow light simply wouldn’t fade.
But then I blinked and I heard splashing.
Taking a step away, I saw that I had come out of the back of the boathouse—the one that George had converted into his cabin on the other side. I was facing the woods, the sun piercing through the leaves onto my face. The splashing and laughing grew louder, coming from the beach on the other side of the small building.
Turning around, I could still see the yellow outline of the Yesterday door scorched into the wall itself, like the faded image of a screen saver burned into a computer screen. But even as I stood and looked at it, the yellow began to fade even further, and the red outline of bricks began to appear in its place.
The door was sealing itself.
I instinctively thrust a hand forward to try to stop it, even though I knew that wasn’t possible. The faintest dark horizontal line in the upper-right corner of the brick indicated where the coin slot remained. My hand whipped to my pocket, feeling the flattened penny lodged there. I had one chance. A one-way ticket back.
At least one key fear was allayed as soon as I looked down at my body: I had been slightly afraid that I would be five years old again in this portal, but I seemed to be intact. Did that mean that my five-year-old self would be missing somewhere? If so, I needed to act quickly.
Peeking around George’s small cabin, I saw about a dozen people laughing and splashing in the water. It was like the picture I still held in my hand. The same sunny day, the same people. I spied the young couple I had assumed were Jenny and Dave, kissing on the sand. Jenny wore the same polka-dot bikini. She turned in my direction, and I froze, although she didn’t seem to notice me.
The other people on the beach were all sunbathing and swimming. I assumed they were guests of the hotel. It occurred to me that nobody here would recognize me—assuming they could see me at all, that is—and I could probably just blend in.
I sat down by the water, passing myself off as a guest.
After a minute, I heard a familiar voice shouting, “Look who finally showed up!” It was Sage, approaching the beach from the wooded trail. John, Jenny, and Dave all turned to face her.
I subtly looked up, my feet gently nuzzled by the lapping water of the lake.
Sage looked just as she had in the picture, which I carefully shielded from view—younger and prettier than when I had met her. She wore a large Indian tunic in a bright orange color that billowed in the lake breeze. The camera, which had probably taken the picture in my hand, dangled around her neck.
And following behind her on the trail, still in their travel clothes and carrying their suitcases, were my mother and her young son, little seven-year-old Robbie. Despite knowing better, I couldn’t help but look behind them for a little five-year-old Marina chasing after.
But I wasn’t there.
I knew this would happen, of course, but it still caused a pit of anger to form in my stomach. She had really left me behind.
Little Robbie looked so innocent in his blue jacket, with his little brown suitcase covered in dinosaur stickers. My mother wore the red sun hat I hadn’t seen in years, a large wooden bangle dangling from her wrist. In fact, she looked younger, too, and not just because she seemed so relaxed with her son by her side. I could only assume that she had been able to take over her younger self’s body somehow.
The fountain of youth. Another one of DW’s dangerous powers.
As I watched her with Robbie, I struggled to recall some of my own memories of being on this trip when I was a child. But they were gone. I could no longer even picture those flowing white curtains and the red bathroom that had echoed in my brain for so many years. The only images that remained were the ones recently formed when I had been here with Brady.
It had all been so important to me once. How could it just be gone?
I shook my frustration away. There were more important things to think about now, and my real question was still not answered: If Mom’s plan had been to stay here and raise Robbie in Portland, why did Robbie and I both remember her coming back?
What had gone wrong with the plan?
I watched as my mother gave John a kiss on the cheek, sparking a flash of jealousy to pass over Sage’s eyes, which she tried, not too successfully, to hide. Once Sage had turned away, my mother nodded towards her suitcase, showing it to John. He got very excited then, practically licking his lips. But my mother kept eyeing Robbie.
John suddenly became very animated, teasing Robbie and throwing him up in the air. Robbie was clearly annoyed by it, as he was too old to be tossed around like a human Frisbee.
I could only make out bits and pieces of what they were saying, but I caught something about heading back to the hotel so the newcomers could settle in. I pretended to watch the water, waiting until I sensed they were gone.
When I turned around, they had all abandoned the beach. Only a few stragglers remained, catching the last afternoon rays before packing up their sun umbrellas and towels. The shadows were growing longer up and down the sand, so I slowly stood and made my way down the trail back to the hotel, blending into a small group of other guests. Nobody acknowledged me.
The hotel was very much like it had been when Brady and I first found it. Maybe a little cleaner, a little fresher somehow. There were a few people milling about in the lobby, sitting in old lounge chairs and sipping drinks. Talking on old-model cell phones.
I walked towards the stairs, like I was any other guest of the hotel, and nobody stopped me to ask if I had a room key, or even what room I was staying in.
Again, I wondered if anyone here could even see me, but my question was answered soon enough when a man bumped my arm by accident, on the stairs.
“Excuse me,” he said as he passed.
I nodded, staring at the floor. Okay, so I was definitely not invisible, just as Brady and I hadn’t been in the plane under the lake. That was good to know.
I reached the very top of the stairs and found that the door to Sage and John’s apa
rtment was slightly ajar. I could hear voices inside, and I tiptoed a bit closer to peek through the opening.
A strong scent of fresh paint and sawdust wafted to my nose. I could hear Sage’s voice: “And over here I’m going to do, like, an Indian sitting area, with throw pillows on the floor.”
“The bathroom is so bright,” said my mother. “How did you pick that color?”
“It just came to me,” Sage said, “like in a dream. Suddenly, I thought to myself: fire-engine red! And that was it.”
“I tried to talk her out of it,” I heard John say. “But you know how she is . . .”
“It’s perfect,” Sage countered. “Red is a powerful color.”
“Robbie, go in and change for dinner,” my mother said, and I heard Robbie’s little footsteps making their way to the bathroom, followed by the door closing.
After a moment of silence, John’s voice resumed, a bit closer to my mom this time, so he didn’t have to speak as loudly.
“I’m so glad you brought him,” he whispered, and I could only assume he meant Robbie.
“I told you I would,” my mother replied.
“I’ll put on a pot of tea,” Sage said, her voice distracted somehow, and a bit too loud. It struck me that she was making a big show of the homey atmosphere she was building with John, as if she were trying to prove something to my mother.
He whispered something that I didn’t quite catch. But the word beautiful stuck out to me. Was he hitting on my mother with Sage right there in the next room?
I heard her protesting slightly, her voice coy and almost girlish, but she was clearly flirting back. Then they walked a bit closer to the door. I panicked, having nowhere to go. And so I simply froze by the wall. If they came out, I’d have to bury my face and run for it before my mother saw me. Despite her younger body, she was the same woman who had left me all those months ago, the night she had called me her warrior.
But thankfully, it didn’t come to that. They were simply moving closer to the door so that Robbie and Sage couldn’t hear them.
“Did you really bring the key?” I heard John ask.
“Yes,” Mom answered. “I told you I would. But John, I’ve been thinking . . .”
“Chamomile or jasmine?” Sage called from her kitchen area.
“Um, jasmine, please,” my mother responded, and then she lowered her voice again. “We don’t have to go through with it,” she said. “There’s nothing down there for us now. And we don’t even know what kind of portal this would end up being. We’ve been lucky so far.”
“We’ll be lucky again,” he insisted. “I already told my investor that it would be ready tonight. He’s meeting us here in a few minutes.”
“What investor?” my mother asked.
“Some Russian kid. His dad’s worth billions in real estate or something. They want to put money into the hotel. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No,” my mother said, her voice faltering. “I mean, I don’t think so. I would have remembered.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t remember.”
“I told him he could go for a joyride or two through the portal. That’s all. Just for fun. These guys love their thrills, you know.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s no big deal. Just for fun.”
“Listen to me,” my mother commanded, a certain hardness in her voice finally making her seem real to me. It was a tone I had heard many times, whenever Robbie and I were bad, or refused to brush our teeth or eat our dinner. “I don’t want a portal near my son. Do you understand me? Otherwise our deal is off. I only brought the key so you could help me dispose of it. For good this time.”
“You’re being paranoid,” John insisted.
“Yes, I am.”
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to Robbie.”
“You can’t promise that.”
A tense silence fell over them, and for a moment I wondered if they had silently walked away. But then John spoke, a vulnerability in his voice I hadn’t heard before.
“Is he really mine, Rain?”
Light years seemed to pass before my mother answered, and I could feel the walls of the hallway start to close in on me as the silence expanded and reverberated.
What did he mean, mine? That Robbie was . . . No. It couldn’t be that. Sage had told me that Mom had left John when she was nineteen. She moved back to town and met Dad. And Robbie was born the following year.
“I don’t know,” my mother finally returned. I clasped a hand over my mouth, knowing I couldn’t make a sound, even as the tears coated my cheeks.
“This was a mistake,” my mother continued. “I should have known better. You’ll never change. I need to get back to my daughter.”
“Rain, don’t. I still love y—”
“Stop it. Don’t touch me. Sage is coming back.”
“What can I do?” John asked, even more urgency in his voice. “What would make you stay?”
“Tea!” Sage shouted from the other room, and I could hear the bead curtain jangling as she approached.
My mother whispered intently, “If there’s no portal, I’ll stay. Otherwise Robbie and I are going home. I’ll find another way to protect him.”
As the footsteps headed away from the door, I stumbled backwards and staggered down half a flight of stairs before I couldn’t walk anymore. I plopped down onto a step, my head in my hands, trying to collect my thoughts in the quiet stairwell.
How could I not have known about Robbie? Did my father know? Or at least suspect? And is this why my mother brought Robbie but not me this time? Because John was willing to raise her son—their son—but not some daughter she’d had with another man? Maybe the whole reason Robbie had skipped this trip when I was five was because my mom didn’t want to be tempted to stay.
But did she mean what she said just now? Would she really stay if the portal was never built?
I remembered suddenly that Sage had said something else to me when Brady and I were here. The different dimensions were just different paths, formed when a decisive event caused life to veer into a new direction.
This trip had been my mother’s decisive event—the moment when she’d made a decision that would affect the rest of her life. I could see the two potential realities forming in front of my eyes. In the first, she and Robbie went back home to Dad and me, and her son was killed at fourteen. In the other, she stayed, abandoning Dad and me, and her son was saved.
It was that simple: Go and he dies. Stay and he lives.
I knew that if it was up to John, he would build the portal no matter what. He was too addicted to DW, to the power of it. And besides, there was some “investor” to consider now—a Russian investor. That could only mean one thing.
I wanted to be generous and consider that maybe John and my mother had never meant the world under the lake to be so corrupted. Maybe it was just supposed to be a clean slate. But then John let the Russian in—a “joyride,” he’d called it—and the man had clearly never left. Instead, he’d warped it into something sinister and twisted.
I wasn’t sure how my mother factored into that world. Maybe the version of her I’d met under the lake was a completely different person. Maybe my real mother had gone down at some point in the ten years between this beach visit and the present to try to stop her evil doppelgänger from becoming too powerful, and had accidentally stayed too long and been eaten up by her.
Swallowing down these thoughts, I took a deep breath and tried to focus. The truth was, I might never know what had gone wrong under the lake. But I did know this: I needed to stop it from ever happening, both to protect the world below from the Russian investor and to save my brother’s life.
I stood and started heading down the stairs, not sure what my plan was but knowing I had to make one, when I almost walked right into a man heading up to the apartment. He was youn
g and barrel-chested, smelling of expensive cologne, and wore a neatly pressed suit. It took me a moment to recognize him, but when I did, I felt my whole body shudder.
He was my mom’s Russian boyfriend from the world beneath the lake. Alexei. That was his name.
“Excuse me,” he said, the slightest bit of an accent apparent in his speech. He looked about twenty-five years old, and was very handsome, but in a cold and menacing way.
“S-sorry,” I stuttered.
“Are you a friend of John’s?” he asked, nodding to the stairs I had just descended. They only led to one place.
“No,” I answered, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I mean . . . I’m just lost. I was looking for my room.”
“Ah, what’s the number?”
“Four. Fourth floor. I had the wrong one.” I laughed, trying to sound casual. “I know where it is now. Excuse me.”
I edged past him, heading down another flight of stairs and trying to walk at a measured pace.
Once I got to the lobby, I sat down and pretended to read a newspaper someone had left on a coffee table. I was right about the Russian investor, it seemed. It was, in fact, Alexei. And if he was here, was I already too late to stop the portal from being built?
It was very late when the group from the upstairs apartment finally came down, dressed for dinner. My brother looked tired, and a glance at the clock over the reception desk told me it was after eight. But my mother pulled him along in a possessive way. John was deep in conversation with Alexei, but even from a distance, I could see Alexei’s eyes drifting over to my mother.
They all joined a stream of other guests headed to the dining room. None of them had the suitcase. At the last moment, Sage turned back, muttered something to the others like “just a moment,” and then strode over to the front desk. I watched from over my newspaper as she plopped her purse down on the counter, asking the front-desk girl for something or other.
The girl nodded, and Sage followed her into the office, leaving her purse behind.
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