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He picked himself up and got his bearings, already hearing the echoes of commotion up on the road. Cars were screeching to a halt, people were yelling.
He hurried off in the direction of the sounds, climbing the steep granite slope that led up to the road. This wasn’t the first accident on this treacherous strip of highway; there were many—a few every year. Long ago a car had even left the road, flown like a bird, and landed smack on the forest floor. Nobody came with it, though. Oh, sure there had been people in the car when it had crashed, but they got where they were going even before the boy came to inspect the wreck.
This new wreck was bad. Very bad. Very messy. Ambulances. Fire trucks. Tow trucks. It was dark by the time all the trucks were gone. Soon there was nothing but broken glass and bits of metal where the accident had been. He frowned. The people got where they were going.
Resigned, and a little bit mad, the boy climbed back down to his forest.
Who cared anyway? So what if no one else came? This was his place. He would go back to his games, and he’d play them tomorrow and the next day and the next, until the road itself was gone.
It was as he reached the bottom of the cliff that he saw them: two kids who had been thrown from the crashing cars, over the edge of the cliff. Now they lay at the base of the cliff, in the dirt of the forest. At first he thought the ambulances might not have known they were here—but no; ambulances always know these things. As he got closer, he could see that neither their clothes, nor their faces bore any sign of the accident. No rips, no scratches. This was a very good sign! The two seemed to be about fourteen years old—a few years older than he was—and they lay a few feet apart from one another, both curled up like babies. One was a girl with pretty blond hair, the other a boy who kind of looked Chinese, except for his nose, and his light reddish-brown hair. Their chests rose and fell with a memory of breathing. The boy smiled as he watched them, and made his own chest rise and fall in the same way.
As the wind passed through the trees of the forest, not rustling them in the least, he waited patiently for his playmates to awake.
Allie knew she was not in her bed even before she opened her eyes. Had she fallen onto the floor in the middle of the night again? She was such a thrasher when she slept. Half the time she woke up with the sheets tugged off the mattress and wrapped around her like a python.
Her eyes opened to clear sunlight streaming through the trees, which was not unusual except for the fact that there was no window for the light to shine through. There was no bedroom either; only the trees.
She closed her eyes again, and tried to reboot. Human brains, she knew, could be like computers, especially in the time that hung between sleep and wakefulness.
Sometimes you said strange things, did even stranger things, and once in a while you couldn’t figure out exactly how you got where you got.
She wasn’t bothered by this. Not yet. She simply concentrated, searching her memory for a rational explanation. Had they gone camping? Was that it? In a moment the memory of falling asleep beneath the stars with her family would come exploding back into her mind. She was sure of it.
Exploding.
Something about that word made her uneasy.
She opened her eyes again, sitting up this time. There were no sleeping bags, no campsite, and Allie felt strange, like someone had filled her head with helium.
There was someone else a few feet away, sleeping on the ground, knees to chest.
A boy with a bit of an Asian look about him. He seemed both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, as if they had once met, but only in passing.
Then an icy wave of memory flowed over her.
Flying through a tunnel. He was there. He had bumped her, the clumsy oaf!
“Hello!” said a voice behind her, making her jump. She turned sharply and saw another, younger boy sitting cross-legged on the ground. Behind him was a granite cliff that extended high out of sight.
This boy’s hair was unkempt, and his clothes were weird — sort of too heavy, too tight, and buttoned way too high. He also had more freckles than she had ever seen on a human being.
“It’s about time you woke up,” he said.
“Who are you?” Allie asked.
Instead of answering, he pointed to the other kid, who was starting to stir.
“Your friend is waking up, too.”
“He’s not my friend.”
The other kid sat up, blinking in the light. He had brown stuff on his face.
Dried blood! thought Allie. No. Chocolate. She could smell it.
“This is freaky,” the chocolate boy said. “Where am I?”
Allie stood up and took a good look around. This wasn’t just a grove of trees, it was an entire forest. “I was in the car, with my dad,” Allie said aloud, forcing the scrap of memory to her lips, hoping that would help to drag the rest of it all the way back.”
