Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

We had to be careful, Scott had warned. Instead of a hall monitor asking to see a pass, if you got caught in the wrong hallway, the MPs simply took you away. Nobody really knew where they brought you, but it was somewhere you didn’t want to go.

I got to my house and pulled the bike around the back, entering the quiet, empty kitchen like it belonged to someone else. Nothing about it felt normal anymore. Not even a scent of my mother’s fragrance, or a stray wire or memory stick from my father’s constant fiddling with computers remained. The house was clean and empty, a musky smell having taken over the rooms. The smell of abandonment, of isolation. I felt my palms sweating, the anticipation of tonight’s plan making me shake.

Upstairs, on a shelf in my parents’ room, I found the album I was looking for. I quickly flipped through until I found my mother’s copies of those photos from the lake that George had kept in his closet. I hadn’t looked at them in years.

There was Sage, about a decade younger. She was pretty, but somehow never had a real glow of youth about her. And a couple I didn’t recognize was lounging by the lake with them, sipping something pink out of plastic cups. This must have been Jenny and Dave, I figured. They were clearly a couple. Jenny was a real beauty—blond hair and a tiny little polka-dot bikini. And Dave had the chiseled chin of an old movie star. I remembered what Sage had told me—that she’d had an affair with Dave when they were in DW. I could see the whole story. She had always been jealous of the prettier girls and their handsome young boyfriends. When she’d had the opportunity to be with Dave, and the prospect of no consequences to haunt them afterwards, of course she’d taken it.

Another photo was just of my mother, smiling with her hair pulled back, the little blue earrings from the night of her disappearance dangling from her earlobes.

And below that, in a place where I could have sworn there had been a picture of me and Mom together, there was now a picture of Mom and young Robbie.

So I was right.

I grabbed the photo of my mother with the earrings and put it in my back pocket. I felt a knot in my stomach and a dryness in my mouth. Could this plan really work? Would we make it to the school on time, and would Scott find the keys?

I was downstairs and about to go out the back door to grab the bike when I heard the revving on the driveway outside. At first, I thought I must have been hearing it wrong. It couldn’t have been from the driveway, but instead must have been on the street.

Then I heard it again. I slowly walked through the house and peeked out the front window. I recognized the car immediately, and my heart leaped. I never thought I would see it again, or its driver. I ran out the front door and got into the passenger side of Brady’s Pontiac, practically throwing myself at him.

His long arms wrapped tightly around me, and I could feel the tension seep from my muscles. He was alive. Thank God.

“You scared me so much,” I whispered. “When you didn’t come back—”

“I did come back,” he interrupted.

I pulled back to see his face. His eyes looked sad and tired, but he offered me a weak grin.

“When?”

“Just a couple days after I left you. I took the train all the way home and back to Portland again, like we planned. When I couldn’t find Piper anywhere, I snuck back to the lake and through the portal.”

“But that was months ago.”

He smiled and looked away.

“You’ve been here the whole time?” I asked softly.

His big brown eyes turned to the windshield, as if he was looking for answers in the clouds above our heads. “It gets worse here every day, doesn’t it?”

“Brady, I have to tell you something. I found Piper. She’s safe. But she’s . . .”

“I know.”

“You know?” I swallowed hard. “How?”

“I went to Kieren’s earlier to see if he’d heard anything. I saw her holding hands with that guy. And I saw you too. Did any of you even think to come tell me that she was alive?”

“I didn’t know you were back.”

But he just shook his head.

“Brady, look at me. I would have gone straight to your place if I’d known.”

He finally did turn to look at me, his marble eyes glassed over.

“I never should have told you to get on that train under the lake,” I said. “I’m sorry. You were too late. She was already . . . she was with him already.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s . . .” I hesitated for a moment. How could I explain this to him? “He’s my brother, Robbie. I saved him, Brady. I got him out. And she was with him. They were both trapped together in DW. And now they’re both out.”

He let all that information flood over him for a moment. “And she fell in love with him, of course. That’s what she does. Rescuing lost kittens.”

“Brady, don’t,” I said. I couldn’t stand to have him talking about Robbie that way. I didn’t want to think of my brother as being that vulnerable. But of course, part of the reason it hurt so much was because it was true. My brother was like a shell of himself since he’d returned. And without Piper, I shuddered to think what would become of him.

“I’m sorry,” he offered, shaking his head. “That was mean. I shouldn’t have said it.”

I sat back for a moment, not sure what to say.

“Do you know what’s happening here?” Brady asked. “Why it’s like this?”

“We’re going to fix it. We have a plan. We’re going tonight.”

He nodded. “The girl with a plan,” he said with a smile.

“What does that mean?” It hadn’t sounded cruel,