I follow his gaze to the closet, and it is disappearing before my very eyes, the walls crumbling, dissolving into nothing.
“Marcus, what’s happening?” I whisper, so afraid I can hardly move.
“I don’t know, but…you’re seeing this too, right?” Marcus asks.
The answer is obvious, but I ask it back. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. I’m instantly certain that this is more serious than spiked punch, because now a bright light is stinging my forehead.Sunlight.It’s so radiant, I have to hood my eyes with my hand to look up at the sky.
The sky. Which has replaced the ceiling in Jason’s room.
The sky that is the fading dusty orange of sunset, but with the almost-brightness of dawn.
“This is not okay,” I say, unable to think of better words, more eloquent phrasing.
I reach for the closest wall for something to lean against, but it’s gone instantly too, melts away into more nothing. I spin, looking around for Jason’s bed, but it’s gone. His dresser: gone. The huge TV he got for his birthday: disappeared. When it was just here seconds ago.
This is absolutely not okay.
I feel delirious, like I just spent hours staring at the sun and then stepped into a dark room, when the opposite is true. I was in a dimly lit room and I’m now under the sky. I start to feel lightheaded, all the blood gushing through my veins, pumping from my heart, faster, faster. I could run a marathon. I could—
I think I’m about to have a panic attack.
“Oh my God.”
Maybe I’m being punished for all the lies I’ve told the past few days.
It’s like the universe is doing an actual scenery change, remaking the background of everything around us until the carpet we were just lying on has turned to gravel.
“Are we dead?” My voice sounds high-pitched and vulnerable even to me.
Marcus doesn’t answer me, but his expression is wild, stunned. Under any other circumstances, it would be funny, seeing Marcus “doesn’t give a shit” Riddick look like he’s seen a ghost.
“Marcus?” I whisper.
“It’s okay,” he says instantly, as if feeling the urge to comfort me. Frankly, it is patronizing.
“Oh my God, we’re dead.”
“We’re not dead,” Marcus insists. “We’re, um…”
“Losing our minds?” I half shriek, because that’s not the least bit reassuring either. Maybe…maybe I’m high. I whirl on him. “Did you drug me?”
“Jesus, Cartwright, don’t even joke about that,” he says, and he seems legitimately disgusted.
“Then we’re dead,” I say, the only rational explanation I can see to all this. It’s devastating: the work I’ve put into having a good life, and I barely got to live it.
But Marcus shakes his head. “Think about it: a universe where we died and ended up in the same place?”
“Not possible,” I say quickly, just like he knew I would. I look around as if checking for signs that sayPurgatory This WayorProceed to Soul Patrol. Slowly, the spotty background starts to come back into focus, and instead of simply seeing all the things that are gone, I see the things that replace them.
The parking lot is half-full, bordered by trees with dull-looking leaves. Though the bite in the air makes me think of autumn, the flower beds are crowded with still-alive bluish-purple flowers, violets and daisies and poppies. In the distance you can see thehighway and the lake. It feels familiar, but it takes a second to figure out why. I look around until I start to recognize the path, the trees, the sign outside Dot’s Arcade. The lobster shack beside it. Okay, so maybe we’re really not dead. We wouldn’t still be in Maine if we were, right? And definitely not in Sterlingwood.
Maybe I’m hallucinating. I blink once, twice, hard, but nothing changes.
“Hey!” Marcus yells suddenly. He’s calling out to a group of middle-school-aged kids crossing the parking lot, walking toward Dot’s Arcade. He starts to hurry after them.
Suddenly this seems like a great idea—maybe someone knows something about what happened to us, why we’re here. I follow Marcus’s lead, only more politely. “Excuse me! Hi!”
