Chapter Four

I had my doubts when Rena took a box of chalk from her desk drawer and started drawing on the floor where we had been standing, but of course I didn’t say anything. She drew what looked to me like a decorated circle and a lot of lines and arrows and maybe some writing in another language. I watched and reminded myself that I was in no position to wonder if someone else might be crazy.

“Cade,” Rena said. She had put her chalk back in the box and stood up now, dusting chalk dust from her hands. “Stand in the circle, please.”

I took a few steps forward, into the circle. Rena looked at Brianna, then back at me.

“This is what I can do for you,” Rena said. “I can give you the opportunity to prevent your friend from dying. I’ll send you to another place�"not the past, but like it. If you can stop your friend’s death, you can take him back with you. It will be as if he was never gone.”

It seemed so impossible, almost laughable, and at the same time so easy if I actually got to that place Rena was talking about. But one thing bothered me.

“In this…other world…parallel universe or whatever,” I said, “will the people there be the same? I mean, will Marcus there be the real Marcus?”

Rena smiled. “Everyone there will be completely real. Including you�"there won’t be a double of you there.”

I nodded, but I wanted to make sure. “So if I died there…?”

“You would really be dead,” said Rena. “There and here. Just like if you prevented your friend from dying, he would be alive there and here.”

I nodded. I wasn’t afraid of dying; and the way Rena described this, it seemed pretty straightforward and easy anyway. “All right. Let’s go.”

Rena looked at Brianna, who nodded and mixed a few things together in a vial. She gave me the vial, a red liquid, and told me to wait before drinking it. She and Rena gathered a few more things which they put in different places around their circle design. Most of the things looked like parts of different animals, and a few plants, but there were other items that I didn’t recognize at all.

Then they stood back; Rena nodded to Brianna; and Brianna said, “Drink it.”

 

For half a second after I drank what was in the vial, I was nowhere. I lost all sense of direction; the floor disappeared from beneath my feet and I lost any sense of gravity, too. I wasn’t  dizzy and my stomach didn’t flip, but I panicked for that half-second, until my feet landed on the ground again and I felt my new surroundings around me.

Blacktop beneath my feet, a cloudy nighttime sky. Trees lined the road I stood on, darker shadows against the already blackened sky. Streetlights shone on the blacktop down the road; it was wet from rain that had fallen earlier. About 60 feet away from me was a crosswalk, and someone was about to cross it.

This was Marcus’ road, where he was killed. That must be Marcus crossing the street now. Suddenly I heard the sound of car engines down the road, and my stomach jumped to my throat as I looked that way. Two cars sped toward us. They were racing.

“Marcus!” I shouted, and I started running to him. He didn’t hear me, and I saw that he wore his huge headphones. He was about one-fourth of the way across the road, and the cars weren’t that far away, considering their speed.

“Marcus!” I yelled again. He still didn’t look up. I was halfway to him. “Marcus!” He had to hear me. He had to. There was no way I could let him die, not again, not when I was here.

The cars were almost to him. It was hopeless.

“Marcus!” I screamed one last time. I was 20 feet away from him. He looked up at me just before a car hit him.

I screamed and fell to the ground, crying now. The car ran over him and veered off to the side of the road, driving on the strip of grass between the road and the trees for a while before spinning to a stop. The other car swerved around me and kept going. I looked at the bloody mess that was my friend and cried and swore again and again because the car hadn’t hit me too.

Why had they swerved around me? I swore and walked toward Marcus’ body. It really was him�"I knew it from the moment when he’d looked at me. But just before I reached him, I was gone.

I was nowhere, and then I was back in Rena’s room above the psychic shop. That fast.

Author's Note

I think it might have a few rough spots. Any comments/criticism/tips much appreciated. :)