Down World

by Rebecca Phelps

  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, but I could recognize the irony in it. My plans hadn’t worked out so well up to then.

  “Nothing,” he said, turning away again.

  “I can’t just leave it like this.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He took a deep breath, massaging his temples. It seemed like something an older man would do, someone who was perpetually tired.

  “What will you do now?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I was going to go to Colorado without her, you know? But I don’t want to go if it’s like this.”

  “It won’t be,” I promised. “Go, drive to Colorado. I promise, by the time you get there, it will be back to normal.”

  He laughed then, the distant laugh I had first heard in his room all those months ago.

  “What?”

  “I’m remembering the last time you told me to go somewhere,” he teased me.

  “This will be different. This time I know.”

  He looked at me again and offered me a very sincere smile, and I wasn’t sure if he believed me or was simply humoring me. “I should have kissed you back when we were in the lake.”

  I could feel the blush taking over my cheeks.

  “Sorry,” he immediately offered. “That was probably creepy.”

  “No,” I said, too embarrassed to say anything else. A thought of Kieren flashed through my mind. “I need to get back.”

  “Can I drive you?”

  “No, I should take the bike,” I said, realizing that it would be best if the others never knew that Brady was back. It would just cause an ugly scene between him and Piper, and I didn’t want to put my brother through that.

  “Be careful,” he said, a seriousness settling over him.

  We both knew, I suppose, that this was a real good-bye. I couldn’t say the words, so I just nodded and got out of the car.

  I heard a song playing as he drove off, something I didn’t know the name of, but I felt like I had heard it before—a man begging over and over again to get what he wanted for the first time in his life.

  I watched him pull away, heading out towards the highway. The song faded, and then it was gone. And I imagined him driving to Colorado, all alone. My heart was breaking as he went, but I knew I had to shake it off. I had a lot of work to do.

  A bitter wind blew through our clothes as we approached the school that afternoon. It seemed like all the kids in town were gathering to head inside for the basketball game, a fact that didn’t surprise me, as there wasn’t much else to do since the military had taken over.

  The boys and I entered the auditorium together—Scott and Kieren sat by the exit doors, acting as lookouts to let us know when the coast was clear of guards and we could make our way down the hall. Meanwhile, I sat down nearby with Robbie, awaiting the signal. He kept a cap hung low on his head due to an unwavering paranoia that someone might recognize him from when he was a child. I didn’t think that was likely, but he didn’t want to take any chances. And Piper was waiting for us in the bathroom not far away, crouching in the farthest stall, since everyone here actually did know what she looked like and
would ask a million questions if they saw her.

  The game began and I half pretended to watch. We were all trying to act natural, although if anyone had actually noticed us, I’m sure they wouldn’t have been fooled. I glanced over to Kieren, who was eyeing the hallway through the glass windows in the double doors. Every now and then, Scott would elbow him to pretend to watch the game, and they would both start cheering a little too enthusiastically. I buried my head, trying not to call any extra attention to them.

  The guards paced the perimeter of the auditorium, taking no interest in the game. They were watching us. They weren’t dressed as guards—they were wearing the same plain shirts and khaki shorts that the Russians in the woods back in Portland had been wearing. Trying to blend in, I suppose. But they couldn’t have stood out more. They were here to corral us, to imprison us. And everybody knew it.

  It was close to halfway through the game when I glanced over to Kieren and saw him give me the signal—two fingers scraped over his forehead, followed by a slight pointing gesture down the hall. It meant that there were two guards, but they had just turned a corner.

  “I’m going,” I whispered to Robbie. He was supposed to wait one minute, then get up and meet us by the bathroom. If the guards had returned by then, he would simply go into the men’s room and wait until he heard them walk away.

  I walked past Kieren and Scott and made my way to the bathroom where Piper was waiting. As planned, she had her feet on the toilet in the last stall, crouching down low. Somehow, that girl managed to make hovering over a toilet look like a modeling shoot.

  “It’s time,” I told her, and she nodded and followed me.

  I peeked my head out of the door to see Kieren and Scott standing on opposite ends of the hallway, looking out for guards. Kieren turned and started walking towards me, his eyes motioning to me to head back inside.

  I closed the bathroom door, and Piper and I waited until we heard two sets of footsteps pass by. After a moment, the hall grew quite silent again. I knew the game was almost at the half, and lots of people would soon be filing out to use the bathrooms and hit the concession stand. We had to make our move before that happened, or there would be too many witnesses.

  Slowly, I opened the door and peeked out again. I looked to the right and saw nothing, then to the left, where Kieren was standing with Robbie and Scott, waiting for us. “They’re gone,” Kieren whispered. “It’s now or never.”

  Piper and I came out, and saw that Scott was holding the map they had prepared earlier. And in his hands, sure enough, was a large ring of keys. The plan was actually working.

  “It’s down the blue hall,” Scott said. “This way.”

  We all tried to find a balance between walking quickly and walking naturally. At first, we were trying to go slow—just a few kids heading to their lockers or something. But soon we all began to realize that if we got caught, there was no longer any reasonable explanation for what we were doing in the hallway. The adrenaline of the ruse began to course through our blood, the impending fear of being seen. And before we knew it, we were all practically running down the blue hall.

  At the end was the first door—one of those heavy metal doors that peppered the whole school and that we had all walked past hundreds of times without noticing. Kieren and Robbie faced out, practically blocking us with their bodies while Scott began trying keys.

  I tried to breathe. I didn’t want to rush Scott, but I knew it was a matter of minutes before the guards would make their rounds this way. We were so quiet, I could hear the slightest scuff of someone’s shoe against the tile. I closed my lips so my breathing wouldn’t be audible.

  Kieren reached his hand back behind him, looking for mine. I took it, and I could feel the dampness in his palm. He was as nervous as the rest of us, though he was trying not to show it.

  Robbie saw our hands holding, and he turned away. He still hadn’t forgiven Kieren. Maybe once this dimension returned to normal they would have a chance to be friends again. I could only hope.

  “Wrong one,” I heard Scott mutter.

  “What?” I whispered, trying not to sound too stressed out. I didn’t want him to panic.

  “Hold on,” he said, trying another one.

  I swallowed down my nerves, and tried to keep a calm energy about me.

  I thought I heard something down the hallway then. Some sort of footsteps. It might have been the guards, or it might have been someone else. Scott was still working next to me, and I wanted to cry from the tension.

  The footsteps receded a bit, and I could make out muffled laughter from that direction. It wasn’t guards. Probably just some kids looking for a place to make out. I let out the faintest sigh, and then I heard the door click.

  “Got it,” Scott said, not making any effort to mask his own relief. We all went through the door and closed it very gently behind us.

  For a moment, I wondered if we had walked through a portal. Instead of the dark, long-abandoned hallway I had been expecting, it was a clean, brick-walled corridor with bright fluorescent lights hanging overhead. They made a very slight buzzing sound, like miniature bees hovering nearby, waiting to strike.

  I looked around for surveillance cameras, but thankfully didn’t see any. Even if there were some, there was nothing we could do about it now. We simply had to get to the science room before anybody noticed.

  “Walk quickly,” I instructed, and Kieren nodded.

  “She’s right. It’s this way.”

  We all began to walk, with Scott still holding the map out in front of him. “There should be another door on the right, with a stairwell.”

  We made it another twenty feet or so without seeing anything, until I began to be convinced we had entered the wrong door. But then I spotted it.

  “There,” I almost shouted, immediately covering my mouth. “Sorry.” I stepped back a bit to let Scott find the right key.

  Once again, Kieren turned to face out, watching. I looked at Robbie, whose eyes revealed not a hint of emotion.

  “Baby,” Piper whispered to him, and he looked at her. As always, her face was all he needed to wake up a bit, to become present once more. “I love you.”

  Robbie smiled. “I love you too.”

  The door opened, and before I knew it, we were making our way down a stairwell, deep into the bowels of the building. Soon we were connecting with another hallway, the doors to several empty offices popping up from time to time on either side. It took me a moment to realize we were in the hallway that led to the science lab with the portals. They had cleaned it up. And the offices had been bricked up before. Now they were clearly in use, even though for the moment nobody was in them.

  We finally got to the science lab at the end of the hall. My heart was racing so fast, I thought I might pass out. I could feel the desire to run down that little spiral staircase, open up the Yesterday door, and bolt through it before anything could go wrong. But I knew I had to be patient for a few minutes more.

  We tried the knob, and of course it was locked. “Just one more,” I whispered to Scott. “You’re doing great.”

  Scott didn’t seem to care about my compliments, however, and got to work without acknowledging me. Soon he got the door open and we all filed inside. The room was very dark, and I searched the wall for the light. But I couldn’t find the switch.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to. The lights turned on by themselves, a fact that shocked me so much I almost screamed.

  And that’s when we all froze. Because we weren’t alone in the room.

  Every time I saw my mother in this world—this dark and twisted world—it took me a moment to register what I was seeing. She was her, of course, but she wasn’t her at all. In a way, it was like seeing the evil twin of a television character you had grown to love. And it was surprising how quickly your love of that character could turn to sheer hatred of the twin.
Because the twin is the worst kind of imposter. The twin takes everything, even the face, even the voice, and corrupts it.

  Was it really possible that this twisted image of my mother was just a different version of her? The same woman, simply on a different path? A path without me. A path without my father. A path, apparently, that made her happier than we ever could.

  We had billions of universes, according to Sage. There were billions of me’s too. Somewhere. Somehow. Were they happy? Were they scared? Would they ever be free?

  “Keep them away from the tent,” my mother instructed. And I recognized the man she was talking to—it was her lover from the hotel, the Russian guard. He came and grabbed Kieren and started to put him in handcuffs.

  There were other guards there as well, three of them. They began to restrain Robbie and Piper. Scott simply stood nearby and watched.

  The woman with my mother’s face approached me. “I’m sorry. But I can’t let you go in.”

  “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you get here in time?”

  She smiled. “I saw you last night, outside the window of the pyramid house. I knew you would try.”

  I felt my shoulders droop in despair. We had been so close. And now it was all for nothing. We were too late. There was nothing we could do to stop her.

  “You have to understand,” she said, “things end up the way they’re meant to. We always think we can change them. That if we just did one thing differently, made another choice in a key moment . . . But nature finds a way.”

  “This isn’t nature,” I said, looking around me at the science lab. “This isn’t right. You’re not right. You have to let us go.”

  “Let’s head upstairs,” my mother said. “It’s almost curfew.”

  They began to walk back out the door, two of the guards prodding the others along, and my mother’s boyfriend coming to take my arm. I began to really panic. If I left this room, it was all over. They’d never let us sneak down here again. And we’d be trapped in this terrible reality forever.