“I saw you,” she hissed, moving still closer to him until she was just an inch away. “I saw what you did.”
A denial rose in his throat, but it stuck there. He didn’t have a voice as a thick fog descended around him.
10.
In the game, in Red World, you had to be careful whom you trusted. Sometimes the people in the game were your friends, and sometimes they were running a hidden agenda, only revealed when they stabbed—or shot—you in the back. There could be only one winner. And eventually all alliances had to fall away. Jewel had gotten a kind of sixth sense about it after a while. And she was starting to think that maybe Amelia wasn’t as nice as she pretended to be, that she wasn’t exactly a friend.
The fog around them was growing thicker; it was soporific, making her breathing thick, her head foggy with fatigue. And somewhere she heard voices. Once she thought she heard her parents. But the longer and farther she and Amelia walked, the fainter those voices grew.
This place, whatever it was, sort of seemed like the game, a kind of hyperreality, or like the dreams she’d had when she was a kid, those twisting, epic journeys from which it was nearly impossible to wake.
Amelia was just ahead of her as they walked down a hallway that never ended. Sometimes, through the open doors, she saw eyes watching. In the game, she’d kick open the doors and point her gun inside, obliterate whatever lurked there. But she didn’t have any weapons here. Just her instincts.
“Amelia.”
The other girl stopped and turned to look at Jewel. Her eyes were galaxies again, a swirling, starry darkness that hypnotized if you stared too long.
“Where are you taking me?” Jewel managed to make her voice strong like her mom had taught her. No is not a question. Speak your truth loud.
The therapist she’d seen, the one who’d taught her how to control or force herself awake from her dreams, was a nice old man with an eternal sweater-vest and round glasses. He explained that since she had created the dream, she could control it.
You just have to be very strong with your dream self, with the dream. Very firm. It will feel hard to control, but you can do it. It was a small piece of information, maybe obvious to someone older. But it had helped her then.
“I’m leaving,” said Jewel, summoning her strength. “I want to go home now.”
“So do I,” Amelia said, a bit of an edge to her tone. “I want to go home too.”
Knowledge was power; that was something Jewel’s dad always told her.
“I met your sister,” said Jewel. “She’s still looking for you. She never gave up on you.”
Sometimes in the game, if you had something—bandages or an energy bar—that another player needed, you could turn an enemy into an ally.
“I think she’s here now,” Jewel said. It was true, even though she wasn’t sure how she knew that. “Looking for you.”
“My sister is dead,” said Amelia, tears streaming now.
“Who told you that?” Jewel asked, making her voice soft.
“The Dark Man,” the other girl whispered.
“You said everyone here was a liar,” Jewel reminded her. “He’s the biggest liar of all.”
Amelia looked around, frightened. “Don’t say that.”
“Your sister, Avery, she’s alive. And I can take you to her.”
Sometimes in Red World, you had to pretend to know the way even when you didn’t. Sometimes people followed you just because they weren’t sure which way to go themselves. The game. Her dreams. They were similar. Sometimes you had to take control, or it controlled you.
“The Dark Man said he liked me better when I was young,” said Amelia. “He said I’m used up now.”
Amelia glitched, and she was only bones and rotting flesh; then she was young and beautiful again. Jewel’s heart thumped, but she kept her voice calm. If you freaked out, in the game, in the dream—maybe even in life—you were dead.
“But you,” Amelia said. “You’re fressshh.” The word came out like a hiss, and Jewel felt the cold wash of fear.
She channeled her mom, always calm, always knowing the right thing. “That doesn’t sound like something a friend would say.”
There it was again. The faint sound of her name on the air.
It was her mom, she realized with a little lift of her heart; her mom was close by and calling her.
Jewel reached for Amelia’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
Amelia hesitated a second, then put her hand in Jewel’s, and it was so cold. But Jewel held on tight, and they started to run in the direction of her mother’s voice as the fog around them got thicker and thicker. There was a door, a big glass door at the end of the hallway, and outside the sun shone bright, and green trees waved. How had she not seen that before? She ran for it with all her strength.
But then Amelia’s hand slipped from hers, and Jewel stopped, turned around.
“No!” she screamed.
The Dark Man stood behind Amelia, wrapping her up in his arms and bringing his teeth to her neck. But the door was like a vacuum, a sucking vortex, pulling her away. And Amelia got smaller and smaller, her paleness sinking into the black.
“Amelia!” she called.
But then Jewel was falling and falling into nothing.
11.
Using his flashlight, Ian led Claire and Avery into the basement. When they got down the creaking old staircase, which felt as if it would surely collapse at any moment, it was as if they’d stepped back in time.
Since the last time Ian had been here, he’d grown up, gone off to college, started his ghost-hunting business, met the woman of his dreams, lost her to a heart condition they didn’t even know she had. And now he was back in a place where time had stood completely still. Same graffitied walls, same chalk drawing
