trying to keep up.
“Stop! Whit, please! You don’t know it’s her! It could be a trap!”
I
And then I hear Celia again. But not from too far away. It feels as if she’s all around me somehow.
“You don’t want to
I can’t stand it-
Her voice is so loud that it’s as if she’s broadcasting right into my head. It’s unbearable… but also the most beautiful, incredible kind of pain. Torture I’d beg for. Does that make any sense?
“I
“Look
It’s Wisty’s voice, to my left. And when I raise my head, I see what she sees.
There is my girlfriend-on-screen.
Chapter 11
“DID YOU FORGET about us, Whit? Did you forget about me?” Celia looks sad, making this even more painful for me. “I guess I can’t blame you for moving on.”
“What are you talking about, Celia? I never forget you. Everybody knows that. I never stop thinking about you, trying to find you. People think I’m crazy!”
“Maybe you haven’t totally forgotten me, Whit. But I’m talking about
“Celia, you’ll always be you. The Shadowland can’t destroy you. Not for me. Where are you? The
“You don’t get it, Whit.” Celia breaks into my words and smiles wistfully. “I’ve got to give you credit, baby. You really are the most sensitive football hero who ever walked the face of this world. But you’re like a lot of guys in other ways, Whit. You’re such a boy. You see and care about and protect only what’s right in front of you.”
“No.” I shake my head in disbelief at her words. “That’s not true. You know it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is,” Celia says, her eyes boring into mine. “Case in point. Where’s your sister?”
I whirl around in a three-sixty. Wisty is…
“What the…?” I start tearing around the square, looking down alleyways frantically.
“You have to start thinking bigger, Whit.” It’s torture-Celia’s voice is coursing through me like a living force, and all I want to do is capture it, surrender to it. But my sister…
“I know you’re scared,” she goes on, strangely unmoved by Wisty’s disappearance. “You just lost someone you cared about, and you don’t know how to deal with it. Think about that, Whit. It’s the key.”
“Whit-
“
Celia’s thick, wavy black hair starts streaming out, tickling her lips. Almost as if it’s responding to the wind in the plaza. The plastic bag blows into my face. I tear it away in frustration.
“Whit, are you listening to me? Do I need to get any louder?”
My head will explode if she does. “I can hear you, trust me. You’re just not making sense at the moment.”
“You and Wisty need to turn yourselves in, to save your parents-and the rest of us. It’s the only way. I think Wisty understands that… right, Wisty?”
Celia turns her head, and there-behind her,
“It’s okay, Whit,” Wisty says. “Everything is okay now. I understand our role.”
Celia looks back at me, and her long hair starts
“I have to go now, Whit. Turn yourselves in. Save us. You can do this, Whit.”
Then the screen fuzzes out, and I’m falling into blackness that seems to have no end.
Chapter 12
NOW THAT WAS MAYBE the strangest thing that has happened to us so far. Another mystery inside a mystery inside a mystery.
I remember almost nothing. At least, nothing after I told Whit to look up at the screen-and Celia. Now I’m flat on my face in the middle of the town plaza, and my head is pounding.
I turn to find Whit in a similar state, only he’s holding his head with both hands and sobbing. There’s not much that’s worse than seeing your older brother cry. Except maybe seeing your parents that way.
I scramble over to him and hold him as he tells me what happened. It’s a pretty incoherent jumble, but one thing is clear: Celia said we had to turn ourselves in.
“We’re not turning ourselves in,” I tell him dismissively. “It’s a video trick. The N.O. is getting desperate.”
“It’s BS!” he says indignantly, suddenly straightening. “I know it now. That wasn’t Celia talking. It couldn’t have been. We’re going to destroy this regime, and we can’t do it if we’re prisoners. Or dead.”
I pull myself up. “Wow,” I say, brushing the dust off. “Got knocked back by charging testosterone, there.”
Whit manages to laugh at my lame joke, then surprises me with a fake bull charge, shoulder to gut.
“Yeah! We’re gonna take ’em down!” he yells.
“Yee-ha!” a bunch of little voices shout.
We turn and see the most ragamuffiny band of ragamuffins poking their heads out of the doorway of a