EverWorld (Book 3 of the Down World Series)

Chapter Six

What would I invent if I could invent anything?

That was the prompt question. Professor Sanchez had urged us to think about the society around us for clues. To brainstorm ideas both personal and universal.

What's missing in your life?

What would make it whole?

Before I knew it, I sprang up out of bed, feeling an itch work its way up my spine. I started rifling through the old jewelry box at the back corner of my chest of drawers, letting long-forgotten earrings and random childhood keepsakes fall through my fingers. I didn't wear jewelry much anymore as the MIT aesthetic was determinately geek-chic. Anything more dressy than a sweatshirt would provoke at least one inquiry of "Are you going somewhere fancy after?"

I had gotten a helix piercing through the upper cartilage of my left ear at the beginning of last semester during a wild and somewhat misguided night out with Piper. Now I just left in the dangling chain that connected it to my earlobe all the time. I never bothered with anything else.

Yet standing in my room, I couldn't help but run my fingers over the three raised scars of my inner left wrist, desperately seeking something to cover them. A bracelet, a bandage, anything. I had become more aware of how often I touched them lately—when I felt nervous, or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work at school, or just lonely. My fingers would gravitate to them like a heliotrope to the sun.

They were Adam's scars. And Sage's, I guess. And everybody else's in the world that Adam and I had destroyed the year before. Somewhere out there, a version of Sage remained, though maybe not the same one I had last seen in the diner beneath the lake.

I reached for her diamond ring, buried as it was beneath a year's supply of God knows what, and slid it onto my right ring finger. It still fit perfectly, like it had the first time Adam had shoved it on there.

Someday, I promised myself yet again, I would get this ring back to Sage. Someday I would see her again, even if it was an altered version of her.

Would I see him too?

"Where are you, Adam?" I asked the room. The silence echoed back to taunt me.

And then the room filled with a ringing.

My phone vibrated so forcefully on the bed that it nearly wormed its way off. I froze momentarily; no one ever called me. My feet shuffled slowly and then quickly so I could grab it.

Unknown number.

I took a deep breath—ridiculous, really; it was certainly a robocall—and clicked "accept."

A silence lingered on the other end of the line. "Hello?" I asked nervously, my voice quavering.

More silence was my only response.

"Hello?" I tried again.

And now I could just barely make it out: breathing. Someone was there.

"Please say something," I asked pitifully. And then again, this time almost begging, "Please."

Another moment lingered before a voice finally relieved the tension.

"It's me," he said.

I knew the voice immediately, and though it wasn't Adam, it was someone who still made my lungs deflate a little too completely. I found myself half sitting, half collapsing on the bed, trying to catch my breath.

"Brady?" I asked tentatively.

"Yeah," he said.

I wanted to cry, even though I didn't know why he was calling yet. I had spent months trying to get Brady to talk to me, to ask him to forgive me for cheating on him with Adam. He had never responded. I finally realized it wasn't up to me to change his mind. It was his right never to speak to me again. I had to accept that that might be the end result.