“Of course not. It’s right . . .” My mother examined the counter. “Um, it should be right there. Look behind the flour.”
I looked behind the flour, and behind the sugar. Soon I was furiously pushing aside everything on the counter, but it wasn’t there.
“Did you find it?”
I clutched my backpack to my chest. And there it was—tick tick tick. The only egg timer in this kitchen was the one I had brought from school.
“Found it,” I stated flatly, inhaling a sharp gulp of air. “Excuse me. I’ll go do my homework.”
I ran upstairs as fast as my legs could carry me and sat on my bed. Okay, don’t panic, I thought. There has to be an explanation.
And then it hit me.
Kieren.
Kieren knew. Of course he did. It was Kieren in the darkroom. And something that hadn’t made any sense at the time seemed to come to light. Kieren had told Brady to leave, and Brady had. Brady’s just a soldier in this thing. It was Kieren who pulled the strings. It was Kieren who was in charge.
The idea of Kieren as a master manipulator made perfect sense to me. He’d manipulated Robbie, hadn’t he? He’d taken Robbie to the train station that night.
That horrible little boy. That’s what my mother had called him.
What if she was right? Kieren had made Robbie disappear, and now Piper McMahon. Maybe Kieren was a monster after all.
No, stop, I told myself. Don’t think that. I walked over to my chest of drawers, took out my old childhood diary, and removed the flattened penny from the sewn-in pocket in the back, where it had lain all these years. I stroked it between my fingers, feeling its sharp edges.
This will protect you, Kieren had said to me. He was my protector, not my enemy.
One thing was clear: whatever was going on, whatever was happening under the high school, and whatever it was that had made Piper McMahon get on that train, Kieren must have known all about it.
I put the penny into my pocket, and I immediately felt better. Like those kids at my old Catholic middle school who carried St. Anthony around with them and were convinced they would never lose anything as a result, I resolved to always keep the penny with me, to feel that much closer to the safety it was meant to provide.
And then I knew what I had to do.
The wind swirled my hair into my face, strands getting trapped in my mouth, as I stood at the dilapidated train station the following afternoon. I watched the track, overgrown with weeds, winding its way towards the endless nothing that lay past the borders of this town.
I watched one lone dying flower poking out through the cracks in the sidewalk, swaying in the wind, and I reviewed my list of questions: How does DW work? Is it real? Why was Robbie in my kitchen? And what about the egg timer? And Piper?
I suddenly knew that even if Kieren got the note I’d left in his locker—which was a big if, since I didn’t even know if he was at school today—and even if he came to meet me here like I’d asked, he wouldn’t simply tell me the answers to these questions. A girl had disappeared because of these questions. Kieren had threatened Brady over them. I needed a better plan.
I fought away the chill as I stood there, and started pacing back and forth down the station platform to keep my blood flowing. To a stranger, it must have looked like I was waiting for a train. And for a brief moment, I wished that I were.
“M.”
I whipped around with a gasp.
Kieren looked so different these days, it always took me a moment to recognize him. He really had gotten so tall. And his nose was somehow different—longer. Stronger, I guess. His lips were the same, though: tight and raised a bit on the right side, as though his mouth were asking a question. We both turned to watch the train tracks. Habit, I guess. We knew no train was coming.
“The pavement’s all cracked,” I said, not knowing where to begin.
“Yeah.”
I sniffled then, and realized my nose was running. I wiped it on my sleeve.
“You’re cold. Let’s go in,” Kieren said.
“It’s locked.”
“Oh. Right.”
We stared at the tracks. This was it—it was time to ask him. But now that I had him here, there were a million questions I realized I wanted answered more than the ones about DW. I started to feel light-headed. Being here with Kieren, it was like we had been transported into the past. It was like I could reach into a hole and pull out my memories. Hold them one more time. When I swallowed, I could taste M&M’s.
This was a mistake.
“I know you have questions, M.” I was glad he was talking, so I didn’t have to. “I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“You know about DW—I mean, Down World?”
“Yes.”
“And you know that Robbie is alive down there?
His chin set into a locked position as he wrestled with a thought. “How do you know that?” he finally asked. “What did you do, M?”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to get Brady in trouble, but I was tired of lying. I needed to know the truth, and I needed it now.
“Brady took me to the boiler room.”
“I’ll kill him . . .”
“Robbie was there, Kieren. Robbie was in my kitchen.”
“Look, M, here’s the thing with DW. You have to understand that it’s not real. It’s just, like, a movie or something. A movie with a different ending than the one we’re in.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“It means the boy you saw isn’t really Robbie. Or at least, not the one we knew. He’s another version of him. One that doesn’t
