YesterWorld (Book 2 of the Down World Series)

Original Edition: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Last two chapters of Part 2! Love to hear your thoughts.

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"Well, come on then," John called to me when he saw me hanging back in the car. "This is what you came for, right?"

Adam had already gotten out, walking towards the center of the abandoned structures next to Sage and Jenny. I struggled to make out the outline of what the place had looked like when I'd been here last. The funhouse where Sage and John had been drinking their coffee was now just a shack with a bunch of cracked mirrors nailed to the surface, reflecting pops of color as we all gathered in front of it.

Nothing else was recognizable at all. Half the small buildings were missing parts of their roofs; inside a nearby shack, I could make out the corner of soiled mattress. Graffiti on the wall was full of sloppily written expletives naming some of the activities that had happened on that mattress.

My stomach turned looking at it, a feeling overwhelming me that, just by being here, I was somehow complicit in something sleazy and immoral.

The group of friends had gathered in a circle, right in the middle of the clearing that formed the center of these ramshackle buildings. They all took hands, and I looked to Adam for some clue as to how I was supposed to behave.

"If you're here, then be here," my mother suddenly demanded. "You came all this way..."

"Rain," Sage admonished her.

"What? Let's be honest, shall we?" She turned to me, her cold eyes bearing only the slightest resemblance to the ones I had once loved more than anything. When had she last been a real mother to me? When had I last seen love in those eyes?

You are my warrior.

"You came here to see what it's like, right?" she teased, her gaze unrelenting. "Everybody wants to know what it's like. So come have a taste."

"I told you," I protested weakly, "I'm just writing a paper."

John laughed to himself, and the girls all followed suit. Even George sighed, tired of all the pretense. "You think you're the first ones to try this?" John demanded. "Kids show up here all the time. They come in on the train or they hitchhike. They heard a rumor somewhere. Someone in their school had a story. Although I will say," he laughed, looking at Adam, "this is the first time I've ever heard the 'he's my teacher' line. You like 'em young, huh, dude?"

Adam clenched his jaw, and I could see the fire burning in his eyes. If John said one more thing, this whole experiment could explode before we learned anything useful.

"You're right," I blurted out, trying to diffuse the tension. "You caught us. Sorry. Didn't mean to lie. We were just curious. Weren't we, Adam?"

His mouth twitched with a passing burst of anger, but then he looked at me and I smiled, trying to get his eyes to soften. After a moment they did, and he nodded to me with a kind of apologetic shrug.

"We shouldn't have lied," Adam picked up where I left off, "she's not writing a paper. We came to learn what you know. We won't tell anyone."

"Damn right you won't," John countered.

"Can we get started?" Jenny asked no one in particular. "It's cold and I want to get there."

Sage cleared her throat, and everybody took hands. She waited a moment for Adam and I to catch up. I entered the circle and held George's hand on my left, Jenny's on my right.