Down World, Rebecca Phelps [book recommendations based on other books .TXT] 📗

“Wait, stop,” I demanded, pulling my hand away from Kieren. “Just everybody stop right now.”

I took a moment to gather my thoughts as everyone reluctantly quieted down.

“Will somebody please tell me what you’re talking about?”

“I will,” Brady said. “Your boyfriend wants to go into DW, find Robbie, and take him out—”

“What are you talking about? You know you can’t take anyone out,” I began, flinching momentarily at the word boyfriend. “Piper’s parents . . .”

“Take him out through the train portal,” Brady said, completing his earlier sentence.

“I’m telling you, it’ll work,” Kieren said.

“You’ll both be hit by the train!” Brady insisted.

“He’s right,” another boy chimed in.

“Okay, enough!” I cut in. “What the hell is the train portal?”

Kieren and Brady exchanged a look. “Sit down, M,” Kieren began. “I have to tell you something.”

We sat around in a circle. I made a point of not sitting near Kieren or Brady. I wanted to be by myself.

“The night that it happened . . . the night Robbie died . . . ,” Kieren began, finding his voice as he talked.

I took a deep breath. So now we were going to talk about Robbie. Okay.

“We were down at the train station. We were just messing around on our boards.”

I instinctively put my hand over my heart as he talked. Oh God, this was it. I was going to hear the story of how my brother died. The story that I had been sheltered from for almost four years. This was the moment I had been waiting for, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to hear it.

“We had worked our way down the track a bit, popping wheelies over the rails. It’s stupid. I know it is,” he added, as though hearing the protests in my mind. “We were kids.”

“Go on,” I said, steeling myself for what was to come.

“The train came,” he said, his voice growing softer, but still continuing.

The hot tears burned my cheeks, but I was ready to hear this.

Kieren’s voice broke, and he started to cry, something I didn’t know he could do. “I thought he would jump.”

One of his friends put his hand on Kieren’s back, but Kieren didn’t seem to notice.

“At the last minute, when the train came, there was this flash. This flash of light. You know the light I mean, you all do. The yellow light. And right before the train . . . hit him, I swear I saw it.”

“Saw what?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“Robbie . . . disappeared.”

I gasped, and thought I might collapse. I put my fingers on my temples and tried to breathe. Was it possible?

I felt an arm around me and realized Brady had come over to sit beside me. But I felt like I was floating away. Did Robbie go through a portal that night?

“They never found the body . . . ,” Kieren continued.

“They said it was . . . that there was nothing left,” I told him, repeating the story I had been told for years. Robbie’s burial was ceremonial. The casket was empty. I was told it was because there was nothing left to bury.

“I didn’t understand what had happened until I got to the high school the next year. And I heard about DW. The first time I went down to the Today door, and saw that flash of light, I realized what had happened to Robbie that day on the train tracks.”

I nodded, still thinking of my brother’s empty shoes, found by the tracks that night.

“Robbie went through a portal,” Kieren continued. “There’s some sort of portal on the train track. I’ve tried to go through it a million times, but it’s not there. I think maybe it’s only there when the train comes. And I think Robbie is stuck inside it . . .”

“Stop,” I demanded. “When you say ‘Robbie is stuck inside it,’ do you mean . . . you mean DW Robbie?”

“No, M. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I mean real Robbie. Real Robbie is in DW. He’s not dead. He was never dead. And if I just get into that train portal and pull him back out . . .”

“You’ll be hit by the train,” I answered, repeating what Brady had said. “If you pull him out when the train is coming . . . Brady’s right, it won’t work.”

“But what if it could?” Kieren asked. “What if there was a way?”

“Piper’s parents threw off the balance of energy,” I muttered, repeating what Brady had told me. “Because people from one side can’t stay on the other.”

“Because Piper’s parents were never supposed to be here in the first place!” Kieren shouted. “But Robbie is.”

“Why did he do it?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Robbie wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t reckless. Why would he be on the track when the train was coming? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Kieren didn’t say anything at first. He just hung his head. I could see the tears falling off his face onto his shoes, and he clearly didn’t want his friends to notice. But we were all staring at him. There was no hiding it.

I thought about Kieren, about the way we had been when we were kids. I looked around me at the beautiful old pyramid house, the one he had dared us to spend a night in. He was always daring us to do things. Everything was a joke then.

“I didn’t push him,” Kieren said to his shoes. “I swear I didn’t.”

“I know that,” I told him, voicing what I had always known, despite what my mother had believed. Kieren would never have pushed Robbie in front of a train. But then something occurred to me, and I knew it to be true as soon as I thought of it. “But you dared him, didn’t you?”

Kieren continued looking down.

“You dared him to go onto the tracks. Was it a game? Were you playing chicken?” I was getting angry.

Kieren was crying hard. “I thought he