10.3

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Chelsea

Chelsea felt Belfry trembling on her shoulder and reached up to stroke his head.

Poor thing. She couldn’t blame him at all; she was pretty sure she was trembling a bit too.

“Angelina,” she said. “Can you tell Belfry everything’s okay? I think he’s shaken up from falling into another reality.”

“Nicky’s freaked out too,” said Nancy.

The dog licked his lips and let out a nervous whine.

“That’s hardly surprising,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Animals are sensitive to all kinds of things humans can’t pick up on.”

Falcon signed something. Mahender, who’d been relaying everyone’s words to Falcon, attempted to translate.

“Sorry… the Stanley fab hand signals don’t translate well to English, so it’s hard to give a word for word,” he said. “He’s asking if we should be worried about what they’re picking up on.”

“Probably,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Like I said before, we’re in a completely alien–“

“What’s that in the sky?” interrupted Angelina.

“What have I said about interrupting…” Mrs. Sharma trailed off as she looked up at the sky.

A long, black line had appeared in the sky just above the wall of greenery surrounding the garden. A breeze began to rustle the leaves around them.

Nancy’s dog whined again.

“I don’t feel so good all of a sudden,” said Sam.

At first, Chelsea thought he meant he didn’t feel good because the strange line in the sky was making him nervous. Then she realized she was starting to feel nauseous and dizzy too.

“Well,” said Lachlan. “This is unsettling.”

The breeze grew in strength, whipping Chelsea’s hair into her eyes and obscuring her view. Her ears popped.

“It’s probably some kind of alien weather phenomenon,” said Mrs. Sharma. “I think we should start looking for shelter. There’s no way of knowing what kind of–“

Mrs. Sharma never got to finish her sentence, because the breeze picked up into a roaring wind. Chelsea’s hair flew upward into her face, some of it catching in her eyes, and under her nose. A metal taste hit her mouth, and she realized her hair was getting stuck under her nose because it was bleeding. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over her, so intense she fell into a small tree and had to hold onto the trunk for balance. Belfry’s claws dug into her shoulder as he tightened his grip.

Through the hair in her face, she could see the rest of the group wavering too, some of them grabbing onto nearby objects for balance. Angelina had fallen back into the plant she’d climbed out of, and Jen had splashed backward into the fountain and was picking herself back up again. Nancy, unable to grab anything for security without dropping her dog, started to fall backward, but Mahender caught her shoulders from behind and steadied her. Sam grabbed Lachlan’s shoulder for balance, sending both of them crashing to the ground.

It was hard to tell, but it looked like most of the group had nosebleeds too. Sam’s was the worst–bad enough that a few drops had escaped his chin and were rolling down his chest.

Lachlan was pointing at the sky, shouting something Chelsea couldn’t hear over the roaring wind.

When she looked up, it took a few seconds for her to control the hair that was whipping into her face enough to get a clear view.

The thin line had expanded into a wide gash, and it was growing by the second.

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10.2

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Jen

Jen leaned over the edge of the fountain, watching the argument. She probably should have gotten out of the fountain, but the water was just the right pleasantly cool temperature. Besides, she was already sopping wet, so there wasn’t really any point in getting out.

“Hey,” she said to Mrs. Sharma. “At least this place doesn’t seem so bad!”

Mrs. Sharma turned toward her.

“It doesn’t seem so bad, but we’re on a strange alien world. Who knows how dangerous it is here? Who knows whether some extraterrestrial predator is stalking us right now? Or whether the plant stuck in Angelina’s hairpin is poisonous to the touch?”

Angelina brushed wildly at her head until she dislodged the leaf that was stuck there.

Jen didn’t understand why Mrs. Sharma was so focused on what bad things might happen. If they had to get stuck on an alien world instead of going home, Angelina could have picked a worse world to accidentally take them to. At least they’d ended up somewhere with plenty of air, lots of pretty plants, and a very refreshing fountain. They could have ended up on one of those planets that rained glass or something.

“Why don’t we just focus on the bright side?” said Jen. “We’re all alive, we’re all safe, and this place is way nicer than where we were before. We were already in a dangerous place. At least now we’re in a dangerous place full of pretty flowers!”

“She’s right,” said Sam. “We could have ended up somewhere like Venus where it rains sulfuric acid.”

She gave him a smile. Having his backup was a relief. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but things had felt weird around him since they’d run into each other in the Pit. It didn’t surprise her– they were all trapped in a strange reality, he’d lost his fingers, he’d developed some kind of superpowers–but having him back her up felt like reassurance that none of the weirdness had affected their relationship.

“Thanks, Sammy! See? We just have to–“

“Tut, tut, Samurai,” interrupted Lachlan. “Surface temperatures on Venus are about 475 degrees, and sulfuric acid evaporates at 300. I’d think a brilliant man of science such as yourself would know this.”

Well, he hadn’t exactly interrupted her. She didn’t think he’d even heard her. Somehow, that was worse.

“Actually, the surface temperature of Venus is closer to 900 degrees, which you would know if–“

“It’s 475 degrees Celsius, which is 887 degrees Fahrenheit,” Mrs. Sharma said, mercifully interrupting whatever weird nerdy banter was happening. “Enough about Venus. We’re obviously not on Venus, and if we were, we’d be instantly crushed to death by the pressure before we had time to worry about sulfuric acid. Let’s worry about where we actually are. And more importantly, how to get home.”

“Well, we know there have to be people here, right?” said Jen. “Someone had to have made this garden.”

“That depends on how loosely you define the word ‘people’,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Yes, someone made this garden. That doesn’t necessarily mean a human being made this garden. Other realities are home to all kinds of life forms. We could have fallen into a world full of Zogzheshes. Or any number of things.”

“Well, it looks like it was made to a human scale,” said Chelsea. “At the very least, they’re probably human-sized.”

She gestured toward a bench made from the same stone as the fountain, piled with silky-looking pillows that matched the colors of the tiles they were standing on.

“Even if they’re not human, we know they have to be… I don’t know the word for it in English.” Angelina pursed her lips. “Intelligent like a human. They’d have to be to build all this and make it pretty. Maybe we could get help from them.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘sapient’, and you’re right,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Getting help from whatever sapient lifeforms live here might be our only option.”

“Let’s hope they’re friendly,” said Sam.

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10.1

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Lachlan

The first thing Lachlan did when he felt his body reform into a solid shape was examine his hands to make sure they were still intact.

Yep, they were both still there. He flexed his fingers a few times, then looked at his feet. Feet and legs were less important because he didn’t need them to play guitar, but he still wanted to keep them if he could help it.

When he was satisfied that he still had all his limbs, he pushed himself into a seated position and turned his attention to his surroundings.

He sat on a smooth, large tile. It felt like stone, but it looked like glass that had been colored a deep, vivid red. Other tiles surrounded it in other vivid hues–greens, blues, purples, and turquoises–all kaleidoscoping away from a massive sandstone fountain. They were in a garden, but it wasn’t like any garden he’d ever seen in person or even in photographs. The colors were too bright, as though they were appearing on a screen where the saturation had been set too high, and none of the plants looked familiar.

Even the sky was too bright, an expanse of blue neon blaring above them. Despite the unnaturally bright sky, the air was warm, heavy, and humid in a way that felt like a summer evening.

A strange, earthy-sweet and slightly smoky smell hung in the air, maybe coming from one of the many intensely-hued flowers surrounding them.

He knew right away he wasn’t anywhere on earth.

Most of the rest of the group sat on the colorful tiles, but Mrs. Sharma and Nancy had ended up on the ground, Angelina had fallen into a large plant with long red and yellow leaves, and Jen was in the fountain, her hands resting on the side as she leaned over toward the rest of the group.

“Not that this isn’t immensely preferable,” said Lachlan, “but where the motherfuck are we?”

Mrs. Sharma climbed to her feet and wheeled on Angelina, arms crossed.

“Yes, where are we exactly?” she said.

Angelina rustled around in the leaves trying to pull herself to her feet, but only succeeding in pushing herself further back into the foliage.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what this place is–“

“Why am I not surprised?” said Mrs. Sharma.

“–but I can tell you what happened. I messed up–“

“That much is clear.”

Angelina thrashed around a bit, then finally emerged from the leaves and pulled herself to her feet. One of her hairpins had captured a long, bright red leaf that hung from the back of her head.

“I messed up when I figured out the opening that was going to happen. It opened in the wrong direction,” said Angelina. “I thought it was opening in the direction of home, but instead it took us here.”

“Are you going to tell us where ‘here’ is?” said Naomi.

“The place we were before was like… a middle place, right?” said Angelina.

“Stuff from our reality’s not supposed to fall into other ones, so it stops halfway through,” said Jen. “Sarah said it before.”

“Right!” said Angelina. “What I’m trying to say is that instead of falling back to our reality, we fell the rest of the way through.”

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9.5

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Naomi

“Come on, everyone!” said Angelina. “We have to clump really, really close together!”

The group was clustered together in an alley across the street from Mrs. Sharma’s house. It was easy for Angelina to tell them to clump closer together; she had the good fortune to be on the outside of the cluster. Naomi, on the other hand, was unlucky enough to find herself close to the center of the cluster, squeezed between Sam and Lachlan so closely she could smell the blood on them.

It was kind of gross, but more than that, it made her worry what kind of gross things everyone was noticing being this close to her. She didn’t have makeup on, and her hair was in a dire state. She’d woken up with a mess of tangles, and while Mrs. Sharma had plenty of spare hair brushes, brushing had only served to make the ends of her hair poof out in places. She was in front of Lachlan, with the back of her head in his face, and he had to have noticed her awful hair.

Of course it had to be Lachlan. If anyone there was going to make fun of her hair, it would be him.

No wonder Mrs. Sharma always wore her hair in a bun in this place.

“All comfy-cozy?” Lachlan asked her and Sam.

“Um, no,” said Naomi.

“Whatever the opposite of comfy-cozy is, I think we’re that,” said Sam.

“Well, you all need to get cozier!” said Angelina. “We have to be as close together as possible so no one loses an arm or a head or something!”

Oh. Maybe Angelina wasn’t so lucky to be on the outside. Naomi squeezed in a little closer to Sam and Lachlan.

“Exactly how likely is one of us to lose a head?” said Sam.

Naomi was close enough to him, she could feel him tense up as he asked the question.

“It’s not my area of expertise, but from what I understand, it’s highly unlikely,” said Mrs. Sharma.

“Why is it unlikely?” said Angelina.

“Are you questioning me?” said Mrs. Sharma.

“I mean, I’m questioning you, like I’m asking you a question,” said Angelina. “I wasn’t challenging you or anything if that’s what you mean. I just feel like we’d all feel better if we knew the specific reason why our heads aren’t going to fall off.”

“I’d definitely feel better,” said Sam.

Mrs. Sharma sighed.

“131 described the way we all came here as a ‘hole in reality’s floor’, correct?”

“Yep!” Jen piped up from the other side of Sam. “131 is Sarah, right?”

Naomi couldn’t see Jen, but she could feel what she assumed were Jen’s arms around Sam’s waist.

“Think about someone falling into a hole. If your body falls into the hole, and your arms remain outside, your arms aren’t going to fall off. You’ll either pull yourself out of the hole, or your arms will be dragged down too.”

“Oh, okay,” said Angelina.

“The problem would be when the hole closes before you fall all the way in. Then your body would fall through the hole, while your arms would be left outside. We’re working with a time constraint here, not a space constraint.”

Well, that didn’t make Naomi feel any better.

“Like I said, it’s highly unlikely,” said Mrs. Sharma. “The only way I can see it being possible if the parts of us outside the opening create some kind of resistance. That would make dismemberment a very real possibility.”

Mrs. Sharma really needed to stop talking.

“Is it almost time?” said Angelina.

“You’re the one who figured out when this opening would occur. You should know whether it’s almost time.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Angelina. “I’m bad at keeping track of stuff like that.”

Naomi couldn’t see Mrs. Sharma’s face, but she could imagine her disdainful expression.

“If you were smart enough to figure out how to fall between realities, you’re smart enough to keep track of time. Your problem is that you’re lazy.”

“I am not! Are you going to answer my question or not?”

Naomi could picture Angelina’s expression even more clearly than Mrs. Sharma’s. She was definitely pouting.

“Since you didn’t keep track, I guess I have to,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Yes, it’s almost time. We have about 30 seconds.”

Naomi felt everyone squeeze in tighter.

“20. 19–“

Oh no!” Angelina interrupted. “Oh no, oh no!”

Angelina’s words sent panic buzzing into Naomi’s head.

“What do you mean ‘oh no’?!” said Naomi. “Don’t say ‘oh no’!”

She could hear the rest of the group voicing similar panic. Even the dog was barking from where he sat in Nancy’s arms.

“We have to stop!” said Angelina. “I made a mistake!”

“No!” came Mrs. Sharma’s authoritative shout. “Nobody move! It’s too dangerous! There’s no time! We only have five seconds!”

Naomi squeezed her eyes shut as the tearing sound filled her ears, but it didn’t make a difference. Sam and Lachlan fell away from her, ripped away by that unnatural green static that she could see without using her eyes. She felt the now familiar, but no less sickening sensation–the nightmarish shuddering as her body seemed to liquefy, pulled inward and down as though she’d lied down on top of a shower drain and then suddenly melted.

Then there was nothing.

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Back Someday – Interlude 26

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Falcon

Falcon sat on the curb, turning his head slightly to stare at the view from outside the house. Once, the place he was sitting might have provided a picturesque ocean view. Now, in the dark, the street seemed to slope down into a great abyss that swallowed up the pastel shops, houses, and cobblestones.

A few weeks after they’d found him, Melanie and Dominic had taken him outside the city to a park with steep cliffs that had seemed at odds with the rest of the landscape–because they’d been created by stone mining, he’d later learned. He’d still had trouble communicating with his new friends, but Mel had led him by the hand up a trail, then up toward a rocky ledge. He’d stopped walking and tugged on her arm upon seeing a ‘danger: cliff edge’ sign, and she’d tugged back and tossed him a reassuring smile over her shoulder. They’d dangled their legs off the edge and watched the sun set behind the city.

Below them, there’d been a lit pathway overlooking the river, and in the distance, there’d been the skyline, lit up and shimmering, its reflection glistening on the water. But somewhere in between, there’d been complete darkness. Melanie had put her hand up to block the view of the city, and Falcon hadn’t understood at the time–why would she want to block out something so beautiful? Months later, she’d told him. She liked to block out the city, and pretend the world ended at the pathway below them before dropping off into an endless void.

She’d been wrong. The drop down the cliffs into the river hadn’t looked anything like the edge of existence. It had just been the ordinary darkness of a river at night. Looking out into the complete oblivion in the distance, he now knew what the edge of existence really looked like.

A movement out of the corner of his eye startled him out of his thoughts. He turned to see Mahender sitting beside him, staring out at the darkness too.

How long had he been sitting there?

Mahender shot him an apologetic look, then turned back toward the darkness.

Their brothers slept now, huddling together on the cobblestone streets. They could sleep anywhere; they hadn’t been designed to care much about physical discomfort, or maybe they were just used to it after a lifetime of sleeping in glass pods.

Falcon turned to look again at his brothers’ brother–the near stranger who’d saved his life. He wasn’t good at reading moods or facial expressions, but he had a hunch as to why Mahender wasn’t sleeping either.

Mahender had found a family in Falcon’s brothers, but he had a family at home too. Falcon’s brothers were his family, but the new family he’d found was waiting for him back home. He wasn’t ready to leave his brothers, but he knew he couldn’t stay.

Neither of them could, as hard as it was going to be to say goodbye.

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9.4

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Lachlan

“You know, analysis shows that cave bears were mainly herbivorous. They probably rarely attacked humans.”

Lachlan jumped, his head snapping around to see Mrs. Sharma standing in the doorway.

“Have you just been standing there, eavesdropping on our little heart-to-heart chat?” he said.

Self-conscious and caught off guard at the interruption, he drew his blanket up around his shoulders like a protective shroud.

“Only for a minute,” said Mrs. Sharma. “I came to tell everyone it was time to wake up. I didn’t intend to eavesdrop.”

Angelina looked similarly caught off guard, hugging her backpack against herself like a shield.

“Let me guess, you’re going to tell us we’re weak and we need to toughen up or something,” said Angelina.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” said Mrs. Sharma. “Why would I call you weak?”

She stepped over Lachlan, taking a seat in one of the stools.

“Like Sam said, it’s a human survival response,” she continued. “Before I came here, I would have said there was no scientific basis for a statement like that, but it’s certainly kept me alive in here, being alert at every moment, constantly scanning my surroundings. I know my own anecdotal evidence is no substitute for a formal study, but it just… feels so obvious.”

“Yeah,” said Lachlan.

“Before my abilities had fully manifested, one of the Sarah fabrications cornered us. She wasn’t fully mature, but she was too large to fight off, and she was vicious. She knocked out Mahender, and then…” Mrs. Sharma lifted her pants leg to reveal the bottom of a curved scar on her calf.

“How did you get away?” said Angelina.

“It was the dog that saved us,” said Mrs. Sharma. “It threw her across the room and gave me time to drag my idiot nephew somewhere we could hide.”

“With your leg like that?” said Angelina.

“In my time here, I’ve learned that adrenaline is an extremely effective painkiller,” said Mrs. Sharma. “With luck, we’ll get out of here today and none of you will have a chance to learn that firsthand.”

Lachlan almost pointed out that Sam had already learned that firsthand, but decided against it.

No one spoke for a minute. Mrs. Sharma braced her arm against the stool as though she was about to stand up and end the conversation, but then Sam spoke.

“Mrs. Sharma,” he said. “Did you ever see any sign of anyone else being trapped here? Other than you, Nancy, Mahender, and the fabrications?”

“Only twice.”

“What happened to them?” said Sam.

“They died. Both times, all I found was the aftermath.”

Sam’s voice was small when he replied, “Please don’t elaborate.”

“Why do you ask?” said Mrs. Sharma.

“I was thinking about what you said before,” he said, “about the hotspots, and the manmade bodies of water. It got me thinking about the first house I lived in, about how we moved right after my mom disappeared. My dad said it was haunted, that things kept disappearing, unexplained stuff kept happening. I thought it was just him being superstitious or coping with his grief or something, but… do you think…?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Sharma. “I don’t know.”

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9.3

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Lachlan

Lachlan jerked awake as something dropped onto his face, fear jolting through him at the feeling of the hard surface beneath him.

He’d woken up a few times in the night, each with the same split second of panic as he thought he’d woken up in the back of the van again.

He opened his eyes, picking up the small, spherical object that had fallen on him. When he realized it was a grape, his fear gave way to annoyance.

He looked up, and sure enough, Angelina was there on one of the barstools, suppressing a laugh. Sam sat beside her, preparing to drop another grape.

Seriously?

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” said Lachlan.

Angelina released the laugh she’d been suppressing and burst into hysterical giggles.

“Seeing how many grapes we can drop on you before you wake up,” said Sam. “The answer is nine, by the way.”

Lachlan pushed himself into a seated position with his elbows. A few grapes rolled off him onto the floor.

“And why, exactly, are you doing this?”

“To satisfy my scientific curiosity,” said Sam, “and because it’s funny.”

Lachlan gave the two of them his best surly frown.

“Excuse me if I don’t see the humor in it,” he said.

Sam and Angelina must have picked up on something in his expression, because their amused expressions disappeared.

“Okay, okay.” Sam held up his hands. “We’ll stop.”

Angelina slid out of her stool, plunking herself onto the floor and leaning back on her hands.

“Why are you so mad about grapes?” she said.

The question could have been confrontational or accusatory, but Angelina’s tone and expression seemed genuinely curious.

Normally, Lachlan would have brushed off a question like that with a brusque retort–he wasn’t one to talk about how he was feeling, especially when he was annoyed–but there was something about the combination of being exhausted and lying on the floor that made him feel more open than usual.

Something about lying on a floor always made him feel a strange camaraderie with whoever was around him.

“I’m not mad, exactly. And it’s not about the grapes.”

“What’s it about, then?” said Angelina.

“The last time I woke up on a hard surface, I was paralyzed in the back of a murder van.”

“Huh?” said Angelina.

“It’s how I got here,” he said. “I was kidnapped by CPSI. I was drugged, and when I woke up, I was on the floor of a van so sus it probably had the words ‘free candy’ spray-painted on the side. When I woke up on the hard floor just now, I had a moment where I thought I was back in the van again.”

Sam climbed out of his stool to sit beside them on the floor.

“And I’m guessing us dropping grapes on you didn’t help,” he said.

“No,” said Lachlan.

“Sorry,” said Angelina. “I should have thought.”

“You didn’t know,” said Lachlan. “I mean, as a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t drop grapes on people, but you didn’t know.”

“No,” said Angelina. “I should have thought, because I know how you feel. It was really scary for me right before I came here too. This creature–one of the sisters–attacked me; it cornered me inside this big pipe and grabbed me, and there was nothing I could do. And now I’m just on full alert all the time. Every time I see something move on the edge of my eyes, or if I see a house that’s about the same size and shape she was, I get so scared for a second.”

“Yeah,” said Lachlan, because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

Angelina had described the feeling so accurately that he couldn’t think of anything else to add on.

“I think it might be the worst feeling in the world,” said Angelina. “When something really, really bad is happening, and you can’t do anything about it.”

“Yeah, probably,” said Lachlan. “Mortal danger, big whoop. But mortal danger where you’re powerless to fight or defend yourself?”

“Bad,” said Angelina.

“I wasn’t going to put it quite so succinctly, but yeah. Bad is an apt enough descriptor.”

“I know what you mean too,” said Sam. “Right after I met Lachlan, one of those Dave things grabbed me, and my life was just… completely out of my hands. Nothing else that’s happened to me has really been comparable to that. Not even getting my fingers eaten off, or watching Lachlan die, or anything. I’m an engineer. I like to think every problem has a solution. But having my life in danger and not seeing a way out was… yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Lachlan.

“Yeah,” echoed Angelina.

“I’ve been on full alert too, like you said,” said Sam. “It’s a natural human response to being in danger. It’s millions of years old.”

“If an early hominid got attacked by a cave bear, he’d spend the rest of his life avoiding anything cave-bear shaped,” added Lachlan.

“I wish cave bears were the only thing we had to deal with,” said Angelina.

“Yeah,” said Lachlan. “The Paleolithic era. Those were the good old days.”

“Yep,” said Sam. “The good old days.”

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9.2

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Angelina

Angelina stirred awake, hungry, disoriented, and sore from sleeping on the floor. She kind of had to use the bathroom, but she didn’t feel like dealing with the makeshift outhouse situation Mrs. Sharma had constructed behind the house. She’d used it once in the middle of the night, and it had been a little scary.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but almost everyone else was still sleeping. Only Sam was awake, sitting on a stool in the kitchen, playing with the little magnets he carried around.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Finally, someone else is up.”

“Hi,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

“Bad,” he said. “You?”

“Bad. Horrible. Terrible.”

She slid into the stool beside him, stepping carefully over a sleeping Lachlan and placing her backpack in her lap.

“Yeah,” he said.

Her stomach rumbled, and she remembered how hungry she was. She reached into her bag’s front pocket and pulled out some of the wine grapes from the Sentiero Angelica. She popped a handful into her mouth, trying not to gag at the bitter taste.

“Do I want to know what you’re eating?” said Sam.

“Some really disgusting grapes I found.” She reached in and pulled out another handful. “Want some?”

“Why would I want them if they’re disgusting?” said Sam.

She shrugged.

“Maybe you’re really hungry. I am. Why do you think I’m eating disgusting grapes?”

Sam put down his magnets and reached into a tote bag that was hanging off the back of his chair. He reached first with his right hand, then reconsidered, twisting around to reach in with his left hand and pulling out two bags of potato chips.

“I have something slightly better than disgusting grapes,” he said. “I present to you… stale chips.”

He dropped one of the bags in front of her, and she tore it open, stuffing a handful into her mouth. Sam hadn’t been kidding about the chips being stale, but they got the bitter grape taste out of her mouth and sated some of her hunger.

She picked up a few of the grapes she’d offered to Sam and dropped them one by one onto Lachlan. Most of them rolled off him, but a few of them came to rest on his chest. He still didn’t wake up.

Sam looked down at Lachlan with an amused smile, picking up another grape and dropping it onto him.

“Someone’s a heavy sleeper,” he said.

Angelina stifled a laugh.

She wiped the chip grease from her hands onto her nightgown, then unwrapped the scarf she’d borrowed from Chelsea from her head and checked her reflection in the well-polished countertop, looking at her hair, which was twisted along the side of her head and secured into two tiny buns in the back.

The counter wasn’t a perfect mirror, but from what she could tell, her hair hadn’t suffered too badly despite the lack of her usual hair products. Mrs. Sharma had a sizeable stash of hair stuff, but none of it was really intended for Angelina’s hair type. She’d tried to replicate her usual routine as best as she could, but she was nervous about what would happen if she let her hair down. She decided she’d be better off leaving it up.

She rolled the scarf into a ball and tossing it towards where Chelsea was sleeping. It unballed and fell straight down onto Lachlan’s face. He made a grumbling sound, but didn’t wake up.

“Dang it,” she said. “I wanted her to wake up and have the scarf just be there. And then she’d be like ‘oh, cool, my scarf!'”

Sam put down his magnets. got out of his chair and picked up the scarf.

“You were aiming for Chelsea, right?” He tied the scarf into a knot and tossed it. It landed an inch from Chelsea’s head. “Bullseye.”

“Nice throw,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I really didn’t think I was gonna make that throw. I don’t exactly have the best aim, especially with my left hand. At least, I didn’t used to. Not until… you know.”

“Yeah.”

“If you’re gonna throw something like a scarf or cloth, it helps to tie it in a knot, though. It reduces the surface area and makes it more aerodynamic.”

“That’s what I was trying to do when I rolled it up into a ball. It came undone though,” she said. “Should I write down your good aim?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, for the experiment.”

“I didn’t think we were still doing that,” said Sam, “since Mrs. Sharma explained everything.”

“She didn’t really explain everything, though,” said Angelina. “We know there’s something weird with our DNA, but we don’t know what exactly. Or why this is happening to us. Or why you and Mrs. Sharma have powers and me and Jen don’t really.”

“Hm. That’s a good point.” Sam picked up another grape, dropping it onto Lachlan. “I guess we’ll have to bring that up once our friend here is awake.”

Angelina dropped another grape.

“I wonder how many of these we can drop on him before that happens.”

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