YesterWorld (Book 2 of the Down World Series)

Original Edition: Chapter Eight

I was already doubting my decision by the time I reached the school at midnight, my fingers numb and my hair windblown from the ten-minute bike ride. I shook my hands out and exhaled warm air onto them before reaching for the handle of the emergency door to the gym, which Adam had left unlocked for me.

I had learned the secrets of the school well in my three years there—where the security cameras were hidden, which ones actually worked, which hallways were chained shut after the school closed for the night, and which ones were still accessible.

It took me only a few minutes to weave through the halls to the boiler room, illuminating my way with the flashlight app on my phone. It didn't scare me to be alone in the school anymore, but there was another feeling creeping into my bones that night that I hadn't experienced in a long time.

Anticipation.

I was hooked on the fact that I finally had something to look forward to, something that excited me and got my blood pumping. Something that made me feel powerful. And now all of those emotions were gurgling to the surface, and I had to admit that I liked them. I like them a lot.

I had been a good girl all my life, partially the result of the quasi-Catholic upbringing that had generally skipped the church part and settled instead for the part about constant guilt. I'd felt guilty all my life, I now realized. Guilty when Robbie and I had snuck out that night to take that photo in the pyramid house; guilty when I'd lied to my father about going to summer camp so I could visit the Mystics in Oregon; and even guilty when Robbie had been killed, because somehow I'd felt like it should have been me.

I spent so many years afraid, so many years ashamed. And for what? What did it get me? Loneliness. Anger. In the past eighteen months, I'd been floating through life like a shadow, the refrain constantly reprimanding in my head: Don't speak. Don't tell anyone how you feel. Don't tell them what you want. Don't let them see that you're absolutely breaking inside.

I wouldn't break anymore. I was no longer made of glass.

I reached the science lab and steadied my breath as I twisted down that spiral staircase and my eyes adjusted to the dim light enough to make out Adam, standing by the door to Yesterday, waiting for me.

"Did you bring it?" he asked.

"Yes."

I took off my backpack and grabbed the object Adam had told me to bring: my mother's old photo album, the one with pictures of her and her friends Jenny, Dave, John, Sage, and George by the beach behind the Portland hotel. The pictures were from about twelve years prior, the day I had returned to in order to prevent the dark portal under the lake from being built.

Adam grabbed it from my hands and frantically flipped through it until his hand came to rest on a particular photo. It was of Jenny, the beautiful young woman he had apparently fallen in love with in DW. She was about twenty-six in the photo, very petite with flouncy blonde hair, and wearing that polka-dot bikini which I'm sure she knew she looked great in.

His eyes got a little misty. He sniffed slightly and his fingers grazed her picture softly, as though he could somehow touch her if he were only gentle enough.

"This is a little older than she looked the last time I saw her. I've been..." he cleared his throat and removed his fingers.

"What?"

"I've been trying to find the exact moment she went in. So I could follow her. I guess it must've been sometime after this day on this beach with your mother."