Down World (Book 1 of the Down World Series)

Chapter 2

It was a stupid crush, really. Brady Picelli. The kind of crush that you can't even think about in public because you'll start giggling and everyone will know. But I couldn't shake it. I found myself looking for him every day for the first few months of school, doing a double take when I saw someone with a similar haircut or jacket in a distant hallway. I saw him only twice, both times in school assemblies, but way on the other side of the bleachers. Brady was a senior, so his classes were all in the maroon wing, and mine were in the olive.

I looked for him anyway. Maybe I was just lonely.

I have to admit, I didn't make very many friends in those first few months. The kids who remembered me from elementary school and who knew about Robbie looked at me like I was cursed, if they noticed me at all. Usually people acted like the dead-brother bad luck might rub off on them if they made eye contact.

The others just resented me. Everybody in town knew that the kids from St. Joe's thought they were better than the kids from East Township. Which was true, of course. They really did think that.

Sometimes I'd see my old friends in the hallways and we'd half nod to each other. Holland Pfeffer, who had always been a little pushy, was now a cheerleader with a perma-scowl. She looked down whenever I passed her, and once in the cafeteria, I heard her telling a tall girl in purple glasses about my dead brother, and giggling into her palm.

By the time Christmas vacation came, I had basically given up. I spent the two-week break at home, reading Kurt Vonnegut novels alone in my room, while my father paced the hallway and occasionally asked if "things were cool." Yes, they were, I assured him through the closed door. Though I doubt I was very convincing.

In January I turned sixteen and my dad took me for my driving test. But I hadn't been practicing at all, and I failed the written exam.

"We'll try again next month," he suggested.

"It's fine, Dad."

Honestly, I didn't really want to drive. I had nowhere I needed to be.

And maybe that's why, when I finally did hear Brady's voice coming from the art room sometime in February, I had to stop in the hallway and listen. I had been looking for him for so long, I had started to wonder if I had imagined him. But if I had known what was going to happen next, maybe I would have just kept walking.

Brady sounded angry—that was the first thing I noticed. Or maybe just scared, an oxymoron that didn't coalesce with my idea of the cool guy I had met that first day. If I had to guess, I would have almost said he was pleading with someone. The other voice belonged to a girl—a raspy voice with more than a touch of sadness to it.

Walk, Marina, I told myself. Don't let him catch you standing here. He'll think you're a stalker.

But who was I kidding? I wasn't going anywhere, not until I had heard what they were saying. I wasn't eavesdropping, I told myself; just checking to make sure he was okay. I would do the same for any friend.

Only snippets of the conversation came to me. The girl saying, "They'll find me. They'll look for me." Brady then reassuring her, something like, "It's the only way." Or maybe it was, "It's the lonely way." Then a moment later, the girl: "What if they go back to DW?" And Brady: "Then it will be over. And you can come home."

The initials DW stuck out to me, because I had seen them before. They were carved into a desk in my social sciences class, deeply etched as though someone had done it with a pocketknife. I figured they were the initials of someone's ex-boyfriend or something. But then, in the cafeteria, at the edge of the stage, I noticed someone had written in black Sharpie, Going down, down, down, to DW. So apparently DW was a place.