A Million Whys For You

Chapter 9

After that close call with the two girls, Isabelle was even more alert. She looked around the corners at least twice before motioning for me to follow. Not only that, but often when hearing footsteps she would hiss and curse under her breath before ducking into the corner.

"Izzy." I said, after she checked around the corner for the tenth time. We've moved about twenty steps from where we last met Vivane. And it's been at least ten minutes. "We're wasting even more time this way, it's fine, we can just come up with some lie as to why we're here."

Izzy whipped her head around to look at me. "Summer, shhhh! We don't want to get caught again!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Izzy, at this point, Rosalind and Jace are probably done and off finding Liam already."

Izzy shook her head. "No, their job was to figure out which universe we're in after they melded with their counterparts, remember?"

"That's exactly what I meant. They probably already figured out whichever alternate universe we're in, and are now on to find Liam. Izzy, look behind you. It's been around twenty steps since we last saw Vivane and Lilac."

Then the footsteps came and Isabelle once again ducked down, clenching her teeth.

The teacher walked by not even noticing a single thing although I was standing in the same spot as before.

"See? They don't even notice us. Let's get started, please. The faster we find Liam..."

I could only hope that we had at least one week before his death, to learn about him. Hopefully, we had a full year, since it was probably going to take us another two hours just to meld with our counterparts.

Izzy stood up, brushed her cargo pants off, and nodded sagely at me. "You're right. Let's go."

And then she promptly continued sneaking around the corners.

After about twenty minutes of sneaking around corners, we finally made it to the gymnasium. It looked about the same, but when we snuck in and hid in the corners, I realized what was different about this universe.

The students were learning to kill.

It was a sudden realization. The teachers were yelling at them, telling them if they didn't learn, they wouldn't survive.

I was ready to vouch that we had managed to launch ourselves into the middle of a The Hunger Games universe.

Izzy seemed to notice that too, as she slowly pulled out a copy of the piece of paper Jace had, and crossed out universes like Normal Universe.

Tapping her shoulder, I whispered. "Are you sure this isn't some weird hybrid The Hunger Games universe?"

Shrugging, she whispered back. "It's probably just some weird universe that believes in that sort of crap."

And then a spear promptly impaled itself one hairsbreadth from her nose..

Slowly backing away, Isabelle motioned for me to hide, while the student who threw it went to go retrieve the spear. Isabelle quickly peeked out at the students, and I looked around frantically. There was nowhere to hide. As the student continued to advance towards us, Isabelle widened her eyes, motioning at the girl.

She was my counterpart.

Hurrying to get behind her to meld with her, I stepped in, and realized that I now had to retrieve the spear that I probably couldn't even lift up.

Then I spotted him. Liam Monroe was sparring with his sister, who we'd met on the way over here. He looked happy, better, his eyes were still sparkling.

I've never known him well, will never know him well, but at the same time, I felt happy, Happy that at least in some parallel universe, he was still happy, he was still here.

Then the fire alarm rang, and everyone went into chaos.