“Any suggestions?” Courtney asked.
“Yeah,” Bobby answered. “Lie.”
The three joined in one last hug, then Mark and Courtney backed into the flume. “Write soon,” Mark said. “You know it,” Bobby answered.
“See ya, Bobby,” Courtney said, then she and Mark turned to face the tunnel to infinity. “Ready?” Mark asked.
“There’s no place like home,” Courtney replied.
“Second Earth!” Mark called out. And things were never the same. The flume began to collapse.
The light appeared in the distance, along with the usual musical notes, but the stone structure of the flume was crumbling.
“Wh-What happened?” Mark shouted.
The stone flume writhed and shuddered. The sound was deafening. Giant chunks of rock fell from overhead. The whole tunnel shifted. Mark was knocked off his feet. The light grew brighter. Bobby ran in and helped Mark to his feet. All around them, the rock lining of the flume came tumbling down.
“Run in!” Bobby shouted over the roar. “Meet the light!”
He gave them both a shove, sending them running into the flume. A crack appeared between Bobby’s feet, opening up a deep chasm beneath. The flume was breaking apart. Bobby dove to his right, hitting the floor of the tunnel with his shoulder. Above him, another rock broke loose and fell. Bobby rolled out of the way, and right to the edge of the crack that was now a chasm. He glanced back into the flume to see that Mark and Courtney were nothing more than silhouettes running into the light. Above him, rocks continued to break loose and rain down, crashing all around him. He crawled away from the edge of the chasm in a desperate attempt to get out of the flume, when the floor beneath him crumbled.
An instant later Mark and Courtney were gone.
SECOND EARTH
The light from the flumeblasted into the root cellar of the abandoned Sherwood house, along with the jumble of musical notes. A second later Mark and Courtney came running out of the tunnel, safe. They turned around quickly to examine the flume.
“It’s still in one piece!” Mark announced.
The light and music quickly receded, leaving the tunnel dark and quiet. Courtney felt the stone at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Solid,” she proclaimed. “Mark, what happened?”
“I–Idon’t know! It was like an earthquake.”
“What should we do?” Courtney said, frantic. “Should we go back?”
“No!” Mark yelled. “We b-barely got out of there. Why would we go back?”
“But what about Bobby and the others?”
Mark didn’t have an answer. “Let’s just… relax. And think. We can’t go back. All we can do is wait. That’s what Bobby said, right?”
“But Bobby didn’t know the flume was going to collapse!”
“I know, I know! But, what can we do?”
Courtney deflated. “Nothing. This is going to be torture.”
The two changed out of the Cloral swimskins they had been wearing, back into the Second Earth clothes they brought to the flume so long ago. Courtney didn’t even make fun of Mark for wearing the bright yellow sweatshirt with the “Cool Dude” logo. They left the basement not even worrying if they’d run into a quig-dog. When they stepped outside the abandoned mansion, they discovered that it was nighttime in Stony Brook. They were able to scale the wall surrounding the mansion and get back to the quiet, suburban street without being seen. As soon as they hit the ground, their thoughts turned from what had happened on Eelong, to what was about to happen on Second Earth. By their estimation they had left for Cloral over a month before. Neither could begin to imagine how frantic their families were.
“Now what?” Courtney asked, as they walked. “You realize we’re about to catch hell.”
“I know,” Mark said. “I’ve got a plan. We’ve got to be together on this or it’ll never work.”
“I’m listening.”
“Let’s tell everybody we ran away together, you know, to go on an adventure.”
“Well, we did.”
“I’m not saying we tell the truth! Give me a break. I’m saying we tell everybody we got sick of having to be the good kids all the time and school was too intense and we were being pressured by peers into doing stuff we didn’t want to do and, I don’t know, all those things they say on TV talk shows make kids go crazy. We’ll say we needed a break before we did something really stupid, so we ran away to go to, I don’t know, to California. To surf!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Courtney said. “Why? Kids run away all the time.”
“I know, but nobody will believe you and I did it together.” Mark stopped walking and gave Courtney a sour look. “I’m kidding,” she said. “It’s a good idea, but it’ll get us in huge trouble.”
“Maybe. Or maybe our parents will feel sorry for us because we’re troubled youths.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Whatever. We’re in huge trouble no matter what we do. At least this way we might have a chance of sliding by without having to talk about flumes and territories and Travelers-“
“And get locked up,” Courtney said, finishing the thought.
“Exactly.”
“It’s a plan.”
They decided to go to Courtney’s house first, since it was closer and Courtney was already having big arguments with her parents. They figured her parents would buy it quicker than Mark’s, since Mark had never done anything remotely spontaneous in his life. At least as far as his parents knew. On the way to her house, they fabricated an incredible story of how they put enough money together to take the bus to California, then spent a few weeks on a beach just north of Mexico trying to learn how to surf and pretend like they weren’t who they were. They worked in every detail they could think of-the towns they went through, the food they ate, the people they met. Everything. It didn’t take long for them to feel confident enough with the bare bones of a story to run it by Courtney’s parents. Finally they made the long walk up the path to Courtney’s house.
“Let’s ring the bell,” Courtney said. “I don’t want to barge in and give them a heart attack.”
“Good luck,” Mark whispered.
She rang the bell. A few seconds later Courtney’s door opened. Mr. Chetwynde stood there, staring at them, as if he couldn’t believe he was actually seeing them. Mark and Courtney weren’t sure how to begin, so they didn’t say anything. They had already figured that it was better to react than to offer any info. They stood that way for a good thirty seconds, when Courtney’s father finally spoke.
“What happened?” was all he asked.
“It’s a long story, Dad,” Courtney said, trying to sound tired and remorseful.
“Very long,” Mark added.
“Was the library closed?” Mr. Chetywnde asked.
Mark and Courtney didn’t know how to answer that one. They had figured out answers for most every question that could have been thrown at them, but not that one.
“Excuse me?” Courtney asked tentatively.
“The library,” Mr. Chetwynde said. “Weren’t you guys going to the library?”
“You mean, like a month ago?” Courtney asked.
“I mean a half hour ago when you left the house,” Mr. Chetwynde said; confused.
Mark asked, “Courtney left here half an hour ago? Was I with her?”
Mr. Chetwynde frowned at Mark. “Unless you’ve got an identical twin. Am I missing something?”
Courtney said, “Well, yeah! We’ve been-“
