Another incline of her head. “The role of Chosen One is a great honor.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I said. “I mean—I’m sorry. This is just a lot. You’re really not joking?”
“I did not arrive in a new dimension and spend years in a cell without stretching my wings, prodded at by infuriating humans, purely to play a practical joke on three traumatized teenagers.” She ruffled her wings. “I take my job seriously. Also, I’m not awful.”
Screw the wet grass. I plopped down a few feet from the others. My phone pushed painfully into my thigh. I’d chosen way-too-tight jeans to wear on my birthday. (To impress Marybeth, maybe.) I regretted that almost as much as I regretted losing my coat somewhere between Franny’s and here.
I plucked at the jeans, peeling the fabric from my legs for half seconds at a time. Chosen One. Powers That Be. Dragons. Destinies. It was at once absurd and not much of a stretch when I considered that an interdimensional rift had hovered a stone’s throw from my bedroom for the past sixteen years.
I’d long ago stopped caring what the answer was. As long as I got one.
“Are our own, um, dimensions OK?” Red asked. “There’s no rifts there?”
“None like this. The Powers opened small rifts in your worlds’ fabric to grab you, then neatly shut them. The way it’s supposed to happen. The situation in this world is an anomaly.”
“So jumping in the rift won’t get us back home?” Rainbow rubbed her arms. She didn’t have a coat, either.
“It’ll get you dead, most likely,” Neven informed her.
“How do we go home?”
“The Powers That Be will send you back once the mission is completed.”
“The mission,” I repeated. Saving the world. It had to be about the rift spinning out of control.
How were we supposed to fix that, though? I looked away, churning over the question. My phone was still pressing into my thigh. A blue notification light shone through my jeans. Odd. I only emailed or texted for the barest, dullest necessities. Knowing that the government scrutinized every word on my phone or computer screen was a serious deterrent to spending time online.
I wiggled the phone from my pocket. The email had arrived more than ten minutes ago: Mom.
Sit tight, we’re on our way xx
I scrolled down. The email was in response to a message that’d arrived right before it.
One sent from my own address.
Mom, I’m really sorry, I swear I’m not making this up, please believe me!! I don’t remember what happened, but we were watching the movie together and I’m suddenly no longer in the movie theater. I’m in Philadelphia. I MEAN IT. I SWEAR I DON’T KNOW HOW. Am near the Reading Terminal Market. I’m so sorry I don’t know what happened, I just showed up here and suddenly my phone can’t even get service, I had to find wifi. I don’t have any money, please come get me!!
“Whatever we’re doing,” I said, “I think we’ll have to pick up Hazel number four, first. And we’ll have competition.”
CHAPTER TEN
I left my cell phone in the grass. The MGA had given me that phone; I suspected they could track it even if I turned it off. I couldn’t let them take me back. Not if there was a chance that Neven was telling the truth.
“Let’s go.” Neven lowered herself so we could climb on.
I stepped forward, but hesitated. None of us were dressed for the cold. The trip to Philadelphia took an hour by car; however fast Neven flew, we’d be clumps of ice by the time we arrived. We needed coats.
My first thought was of raiding my closet, which wasn’t an option. My second thought was to order online, but that wouldn’t exactly be fast enough.
My third thought: What about the truck stop?
I’d never bought clothes in a brick-and-mortar store before. If TV was to be believed, though, truck stops sold just about anything. I knew Red was carrying a wallet. Would it be silly to take a detour for clothing? We were racing against the MGA. I didn’t want to suggest an impromptu shopping spree if it would make Neven or the others think I wasn’t taking the situation seriously.
“Does anyone have money?” Rainbow asked. “I’m freezing, and I’m the only one here with long sleeves. We might find cheap clothes at the truck stop.”
I raised my hand. “I don’t have money, but I vote yes.”
“What about Hazel Four?” Red asked, even as she reached for her purse. “We don’t want the MGA to get to her before we can, right?”
I watched her go through her wallet, both glad that Rainbow had been the one to ask my exact question and unsure why it unsettled me that she had. We were the same person, weren’t we? Our hair might be different, but she had the same name, same family. I even recognized her socks when her jeans rose and exposed a strip of fabric. I knew her voice as mine.
Maybe all three of us had the same thoughts about the truck stop, and Rainbow had been the only one to voice them. Maybe all three of us had wondered about reaching Hazel Four on time, and Red had been the only one to bring it up.
“Do we need to find her?” I said hesitantly. “Or should we focus on, um, the other thing?”
“Saving the world,” Neven said.
I nodded. “That.” The words felt too ridiculous to repeat.
“How do we even do that?” Red wondered.
“Closing that rift, I assume.” Rainbow looked to Neven for confirmation.
“How—?” I started.
“No,” Neven said.
I turned to her. “Wait. No?”
“No.”
“That, that mission you mentioned. It’s not the rift?”
“No.”
As far as apocalypses went, I’d figured a frenzied interdimensional portal the likeliest suspect. I didn’t question Neven’s abrupt response, though; I was still marveling at hearing answers so direct in the first place. Not “We’re working on it” or “Here’s an unsubstantiated theory.” Answers.
“The rift is the concern of the Powers That Be,” Neven went on. “You have your own task.”
“Which
