Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

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