Down World by Rebecca Phelps (best new books to read .txt) 📕

me on the walk back, like a parent following a hysterical child who needed some time to cool down. There was something so condescendingly protective about it that I couldn’t help but hate him for it. I wanted to run away from this whole thing so badly, but for the first time in my life, I felt I no longer had the dream apartment to fantasize about. Realizing that all this time, my fantasy had been nothing but a fading memory of Sage’s place, something I must have seen once as a child, somehow corrupted it. It was like it had been stolen from me, along with my mother and my brother and the million other things I had lost since.

I hated Sage, her sweetly kind voice talking down to me like I was a wounded bird she’d found in the street. And now Brady was treating me the same way. I didn’t need Brady, I didn’t need Sage, and I hated that stupid hotel with its never-ending stench of burned coffee.

I was crying, of course. I was crying out of frustration as I walked. And I desperately didn’t want Brady to hear it and feel even sorrier for me.

Somewhere from that stupid safe distance behind me, I heard Brady call my name one more time. It was like hearing a gun go off. I ran with all my might the rest of the way, tripping several times on hidden rocks and branches, each time catching myself at the last minute before I fell. I didn’t stop running until I was back in the lobby of the hotel, running past Sage, who was knitting on an old musty chair and clearly waiting for us. I sprinted up the stairs and into the room where I had been sleeping before, and I slammed the door behind me.

I was coming out of the shower a bit later that night, after I had calmed down and my anger had been replaced by waves of embarrassment coming back to taunt me every few minutes.

To drown it out, I turned on the old TV, which I quickly discovered only got two channels, both of which were obscured by static and wavy lines. I turned it off and thought of emailing my dad, but the only internet around here seemed to be on Brady’s phone. This was completely hopeless.

I heard a knock on the door and I ignored it. It was a gentle knock, almost too polite. It was like even the knock was condescending to me.

“I’m sleeping,” I finally said, hoping that would be the end of it.

“I brought you a sandwich,” came Sage’s sweet and light voice. “Should I leave the tray?”

I sighed. There was really no excuse to be so rude to Sage. She had been trying to help us since we got here. She was letting us stay in these empty hotel rooms for free. And I was, I had to admit, completely starving.

I got up and opened the door as slightly as possible, mortified that Brady might be there. When I saw that he wasn’t, I quickly let her in and closed the door behind her.

Sage came and sat on the edge of my bed while I devoured the sandwich and the two little cookies that she had placed next to it.

“When I was your age,” she began, though I was only half listening to her as I chewed, “I had the biggest crush on John. Oh my God, I was in love with him.”

I looked at her, certain my cheeks were turning red. Great, so she knew. Did Brady tell her, or had she guessed?

“He thought of me as just a friend, of course. He only had eyes for one girl.”

“Yeah, who was that?” I asked, sounding snarkier than I had intended.

Sage smiled at me, a question appearing in her eyes. “Your mother, of course. You didn’t know?”

I gulped down a bit of sandwich and took a long drink of water. I shook my head. “Obviously, I don’t know anything about her. Do I?”

Sage nodded and bowed her head for a moment, almost as if to give me some space. “What do you want to know?”

“She brought me here, didn’t she? I’ve been here before.”

Sage nodded. “I think you were four. Your brother didn’t come—he stayed with your father. It was just a short visit.”

“Nothing is just anything with you people. Why did she really come?”

“You’re a quick one. I’m gonna have to watch out for you!”

“Tell me, then.”

“Okay,” she said, almost to herself. “Okay.”

She stood up and paced for a bit. “So twenty years ago, when we were your age, your mother and John discovered the first portals. The ones under the school. Your mother was the real genius of the operation. She experimented with every portal. She’s the one who realized that the three doors under the old science lab all had different properties. That one seemed to go to an alternate plane of the past, and another of the present, and the third of the future. And so she made the signs. She was obsessed with trying to control it. To figure out how to go to a specific time and place, not just end up somewhere random.”

“And?”

“She couldn’t figure it out. We tried stepping in the exact same place as the time before, concentrating on where we wanted to end up. Nothing worked, though. So it became part of the game. Which plane will we end up in this time? We all followed John and your mother because they were the popular couple, and we all wanted to be wherever they were. All of us. Jenny and Dave first. And then George. George probably would have followed me anywhere. I know that now.”

“Who’s George?”

“Oh, you met him. In the diner when I first saw you. Remember?”

I nodded, remembering the man in the white clothes who waited by the counter when Sage came over to our table. And I remembered the distant look in his