“To get a link between our world and his,” I answered without thinking.
“Oh-kay,” Zeke said. “You’re right. He risked helping us to get medicine for Joy just to get a way back to our world…which may be nonexistent.”
When he put it that way, it did sound like I was trying to deny the obvious. He risked his life to help us. He risked his life because he liked me—and I would have done the same for him in a heartbeat.
I scratched my right ear. A piercing seemed to be getting infected.
All the more reason to be going home, I thought.
I put my head against the window, gradually succumbing to the rhythm of the van.
Sleep.
A warm sleep.
Warm…
Screeeeech.
Sweeeerve.
BOOM!
The sound was so deafening, I couldn’t think, let alone hear.
Directly into my ear. Someone screaming.
“Kaida!”
I snapped open my eyes and Joy was hovering above me.
“Kaida, get out!”
My eyes flitted across the scene. Reds, oranges, yellows.
Warm colors.
“Oh, my God!” I cried. “It’s happening, it’s happening again!”
“Hold still!” Joy shouted over the crackling of flames.
“Why are you on top of me?” I choked.
“I’m trying to undo your seat belt!”
I looked down and saw that Joy’s hands were black, attempting to unbuckle me. Without thinking I had accidentally clicked the buckle back onto myself, heat so fierce, it had turned to an icy feeling on my hands.
“Zeke!” Joy coughed. “Are you there?”
I could barely see through the smoke. Our world, aflame.
I sprung out of my seat and tried to find a way out of the van, but it seemed to be hot everywhere, worse than the last crash. How had I slept through the crash that long?
“Joy, Kaida!” Zeke called back. “Where are you?”
I desperately groped around for a way out, trying to feel for cold air that would mean fresh air and an opening. I would not have hands after this, I was sure of it.
“I can’t get out!” Zeke screamed.
I couldn’t see anything, but I felt a blazing metal handle. I said a three-second prayer and pulled.
The handle came off.
Still trapped, I lunged forward and touched a glass surface in front of me. Without warning, it shattered. I could make out the darker colors, blues and blacks outside. I charged forward, the heat surrounding me swiftly dissolving into the chill of the night. I knew I had scratched myself, but I didn’t care. I ran like my feet were on fire—and they very well could have been. I couldn’t stop running. I just continued on and on.
“Kaida!” a hoarse voice yelled. “Kaida, stop, stop running!”
“Stop!” another voice followed.
But I couldn’t stop.
I heard footsteps quicken behind me and someone pulled me from behind, forcing me to stop.
“Kaida,” Zeke gasped and gasped. “It’s okay, you can stop.”
I breathed heavily.
At this moment I became aware that Zeke’s arms were wrapped around me in such a way that I could barely breathe. I looked down at my throbbing hand. It was black in some places from the smoke, but blistered red in other areas from the heat.
“I’m okay,” I choked. “Zeke, let go of me.”
“Right.” Zeke let go and the two of us broke into coughing fits.
“Joy,” I said in between coughs.
“She’s”—cough, cough—“coming.” Cough again. “I ran ahead to”—pant, pant—“stop you from running.”
I looked around. The car was ablaze, looking like a sacrificial altar. We were at least five hundred feet from the explosion. From the distant light, I could make out Joy limping toward us.
“Hey,” she said when she finally caught up to us.
Then, of course, she coughed. We hacked and wheezed like old men and women for about three minutes.
I finally said, “What about Mr. Addison?”
“I don’t know,” Joy told me.
“But we made it,” Zeke said.
I nodded. Our eyes zeroed in on the three-story bonfire that once was the van. It was unlikely that Mr. Addison had survived. But this time the vehicle was already on fire before we got out.
“It didn’t happen exactly like before,” I said, still coughing. It was a gargantuan effort just to speak. My throat was rubbed raw. “Mr. Addison could be on the other side.”
“Should we check?” Joy asked.
But then the sky opened up.
A downpour that within seconds turned torrential.
Last time we had cried when it had begun to rain. This time we nearly wept in ecstasy. It had never felt so good to have a serious case of déjà vu.
“There’s the cave,” Joy said breathlessly.
Outlined by the fire, Joy was pointing to a group of rocks that looked wonderfully familiar.
Zeke did a jig. “We’re going home, we’re going home!”
We began to laugh. Zeke attempted to do a pirouette and slipped on his own foot.
“Shit!” he cried, landing in the mud.
Joy extended her good arm to help him up, but she slipped too. Zeke tried to get up, but he kept slipping further away, taking Joy with him.
“Here, grab my hand!” I screamed as I extended my hand toward them.
I think one of them tried to take it, but they both fell backward.
“Damn it!” Zeke said.
“No!” Joy shrieked.
“Wha—” I yelled.
“NO!”
“NOOOOOO!”
The blazing van, once our only source of light, was sizzling into smoke and blackness because of the rain. Everything around me became dark and slick.
“Guys?” I shouted desperately. I could barely see anything at this point. “Guys!”
I felt around.
No one was responding. I looked and looked and groped and groped, but I was utterly alone.
“No,” I said to myself, “NO!”
What if they had fallen into the wrong portal? What if the correct portal to our world was still in the cave? What if they were in some other alternate universe: one where food or people didn’t exist?
Or what if they had just fallen down a pit and died?
My face fell into my hands and I wept bitterly, getting drenched in the flood of water cascading from the sky. Out of exhaustion, I sat down and let the rain wash over me.
To steady my balance, I placed my hands on the ground, down into the mud, letting the ooze squeeze through my fingers, feeling the coolness of the slime quiet my burning hands.
Without a thought to pain, I pounded the ground.
Pounded it.
Pounded it and pounded it and pounded it until the ground opened up. I could feel the edge of a deep hole.
Knowing that it was up to me, that I was an inch away from falling into that abyss.
I traced the opening of the pit with my fingers, stuck my hand in, and felt nothing. No rain falling down, no walls, no barriers. Just something that was nothing.
Emptiness.
A space.
A void.
I dried my tears although it was a stupid thing to do. I was completely sodden from head to toe.
“Well,” I said aloud, dangling my legs over the pit’s opening. “Here’s hoping for a world without math homework.”
And with that, I slid my body forward with anticipation and dread.
My body plunging down.
Traveling to somewhere.
Flying through space and through the unknown.
22
“…yes…a few second-degree burns, some gashes and cuts, and a minor concussion. They all escaped exceptionally well.”
“So she’ll be fine?”
“Given enough time, I’d say yes.” A female voice. “Her hands are going to be bandaged for a
while to protect them against infection. There may be a little scarring and blistering from the burns, but it’s not her face, Mrs. Hutchenson. I assure all of you that—”
“Don’t assure her of anything! The school assured us our children would be safe, and they’ve ended up in the ICU of some remote hospital in Timbuktu!”
“El Corazon, Mr. Anderson. And we’re taking very good care—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”
My eyelids slowly lifted. I wanted to ask, “Where’s El Corazon?” but what came out was, “Eh eh Coz?”
“Kaida!” I heard Jace shout. “Mom, she’s up!”
“Oh, dear Lord!” she exclaimed. My vision blurred and refocused, and I could see my mother. Another woman was glaring at a woman in pink scrubs.
“Oh, Kaida, sweetheart, can you hear me?” my mother pleaded, catching my weary eye.
“I told you she would wake up once the anesthesia wore off,” the woman in pink scrubs preached.
“Great, lady. Can you give us a little privacy, please,” a commanding man in black slacks ordered the pink-scrubs lady.
“Kaida,” my mother said. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
I looked around.
ICU.
Someone had said ICU.
Intensive Care Unit.
Hospital?
“Thank God,” I croaked aloud.
The room filled with muted laughter. “Thank God is right, dear.” A soft-looking woman in sweatpants gave out a nervous chuckle. Atop her head was a messy gray bun.
“Zekenjoy?” I tried to ask. “Wheh ah Zekenjoy?”
My mother laughed out loud. “They’re on either side of you.”
Slowly my brain began to awaken from a very deep sleep.
The upside was that I could see.
The downside was my hands felt like they were on fire.
I realized I was in a very small room with a lot of people. Besides my parents, there were Jace; Mr. Warwick, the principal of my school; my math teacher, Mrs. Quentin; and another adult couple—the commanding man in slacks and his distraught wife. (I assumed it was his wife. She was definitely distraught.) Not to mention the woman with the messy gray bun and the pink-scrubs woman whom I figured to be a nurse.
“…and another van, driven by Mrs. Quentin here, passed them and saw the fire.”
Mr. Warwick was talking to the nurse.
“Mr. Addison,” I said.
It came out “Mesah Addis…”
“Mr. Addison?” My mother’s eyes became wet. “He’s undergoing surgery for second-and third-degree burns.”
I felt tears in my own eyes. Some of them were from sadness, but others were from happiness.
He made it.
Mr. Warwick kept talking. I wished he’d shut up, but then I realized that he sounded just as anxious as my parents. “Thank God the kids seem okay.”
“Thank God,” the nurse repeated.
The principal’s face loomed over mine. “Kaida, how are you feeling?”
“Quite chipper, I’m sure,” Jace retorted.
I smiled inwardly. It was wonderful to see my Jace even if he wasn’t the exact Jace I left. I wondered where Suzanne was and then realized that babies were not allowed in a hospital.
A hospital! What a wonderful word!
Mr. Warwick blinked. “If there’s anything we can do—”
“I think giving her a bit of peace and quiet would be number one on the agenda,” my father snapped.
“Who’re…other people?” my strained voice tried. I wanted to make sure who I was seeing.
“The people?” My mother asked. “Zeke’s parents, Joy’s mother, and Mrs. Quentin, your math teacher. She saw the accident and picked you up in the rain.” My mother’s voice broke. “Do you remember the accident?”
Did I ever.
“Bits…” I fibbed.
“Nargh,” I heard Joy sputter, waking up from her drugged-out state.
“Praise Mother Earth!” the lady with the bun said. I wondered for a second if she was a pagan.
I reached down to zip up my sweatshirt, feeling cold. Then I realized that my hands were bandaged and I was in a hospital gown.
“Where…clothes?” I asked.
“I think they threw them out, honey,” my father told me.
“No!” I cried. “No…my clothes.”
“We’ll buy you new ones,” Mom said.
“No…my sweat…!”
“Your clothes—or what’s left of them—are actually in a plastic bag in the closet down the hall,” the nurse said. “They’re full of ashes and mud.”
“My sweat…sweatshirt!”
“Do you want them, Kaida?” Jace asked me.
I nodded as vigorously as I could, although I knew there was no way it had survived the blaze.
The nurse left the room and came back bearing a large plastic bag. I reached to take it from her but realized once again that my hands were completely bandaged.
“What would you like from it?” My mother grabbed the bag from the nurse.
“My sweatshirt.”
“What?”
I thought I was talking clearly, but no one else did. “My sweatshirt,” I tried again. “The pockets.”
It was worth a shot.
Mom took out the sweater and turned each side of the center pocket inside out. A charred piece of paper drifted out as delicate as a fairy.
“The paper…” I mumbled. “Show me the paper.”
Dad bent down and picked up the paper, glancing at it.
“Don’t read it!” I hoarsely protested.
“Sorry!” My father held the piece of paper in front of my face. “Can you read it?”
I nodded.
Most of the note had been charred or burned away. But I could make out a few words and phrases, written in boyish handwriting.
Kaida, stationery, my mother’s, gifted with remarkable powers, prism, stay connected, don’t forget me.
Love,
Ozzy.
I felt myself grinning from ear to ear.
“Can I throw it out?” Dad asked.
I shook my head no!
“I’ll keep it for you, Kaida,” Jace told me.
I nodded.
My father’s eyes were brimming over with tears. “You’re incredibly lucky…and we’re lucky because you’re lucky!” He blinked, and wet tracks leaked across his cheeks. “Good Lord!” He walked away, covering his face in his hands.
“I’ll go see if he needs anything,” Jace said to my mother. He left the room.
“How long…” I asked my mother.
“What, honey?”
“How…long?” I said again.
“How long are you staying in the hospital?”
I nodded.
My mother kissed my forehead, dripping fat tears on my face. “As long as it takes for you to heal.”
About the Authors
FAYE KELLERMAN is the author of twenty-five novels, including nineteen New York Times bestselling mysteries that feature the husband-and-wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. This is her first novel for teens and her first time writing with Aliza Kellerman, her daughter. You can visit Faye online at www.fayekellerman.net.
ALIZA KELLERMAN has been writing for years, inspired by her family, which also includes her brother, novelist Jesse Kellerman, and her father, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman. A junior in high school, Aliza enjoys drawing, cartooning, singing, and playing her new kelly-green electric harp. PRISM is her first book.
Faye and Aliza live with Jonathan in Los Angeles, California.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Jacket art © 2009 by Joel Tippie
Jacket design by Sasha Illingworth
Copyright
Lyrics from “Enter Sandman” (copyright 1991) (written by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett) are reprinted with the permission of Cre
eping Death Music.
PRISM. Copyright © 2009 by Faye Kellerman and Aliza Kellerman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-191978-7
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About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
About the Authors
Prism Page 18