Rainbow and I went to the store while Red stayed with Neven. We didn’t need anyone boggling at a set of triplets. I rubbed my arms as we walked by the side of the road, eager for the heat the truck stop would provide. I kept sneaking sideways glances at Rainbow.
Once or twice, I swore she sneaked glances right back at me.
“So,” she said, “this is weird.”
I snort-laughed. “Just a bit.”
“You really never knew?”
“Which part?”
“Neven. Chosen One. You being special.”
Special? Another laugh. “I knew the rift was connected to me; hard not to. But not this. Nothing like this.” I hesitated. “I don’t think I really believe it yet.”
“Me neither.” Rainbow laughed, too. Hers sounded more comfortable than mine, more natural. She even walked differently. There was a confidence in her stride that wasn’t just from her clunky, tough boots. It stood out all the more in comparison to Red.
It probably stood out in comparison to me, too, if anyone saw us walking together. I tried to straighten my back and lengthen my strides, but felt silly more than anything else.
How could Rainbow be me? I couldn’t even work up the courage to cut my hair to my shoulders.
The doors slid open on our approach, and a jingle sounded. It startled me before I made the connection: motion sensors. Right. Those were a thing.
The clerk peered over his Nintendo Switch, nodded, and went back to gaming before I could nod back.
“It smells different,” I said, squinting at the overhead lights.
“What do you mean?”
“Inside. I thought it’d smell like gasoline, like outside, but I guess that doesn’t make sense.”
Refrigerated sandwiches in one corner caught my eye. The thought of walking up to the display, selecting any food I wanted, and placing it on the counter was captivating. The clerk wouldn’t even know. He’d think it was something I did all the time.
“You’ve never been inside a truck stop.” Rainbow stared at me.
“There aren’t any in my radius.” I trailed the aisles, touching a box of chocolates and a stuffed bear holding a Get Well Soon! card. “No stores at all. Well, the mini-golf course sells key chains in the sign-up office.”
“Christ.”
“Girl meets world.” I smiled crookedly. “Sorry. We should be hurrying. Let’s look for clothes.”
“You’d mentioned you couldn’t go beyond a mile, but—”
“Mile and a half,” I said, wincing at how the correction flopped out. That extra half mile meant West Asherton High and Franny’s Food, though. It meant an awful lot.
Rainbow was still staring. “I just hadn’t really thought about it yet.”
“Let’s look for . . .” My words faltered as I caught sight of a TV screen above the clerk. The news was playing on mute.
BIZARRE EVENTS IN PHILADELPHIA, the bottom of the screen read. It showed shaky footage of what had to be the rift, shot from at least two blocks away.
Hazel Four arriving in Philadelphia meant the rift had reached the city. Apparently, it hadn’t left yet.
The TV cut to a reporter interviewing bystanders near a massive green suspension bridge—the Walt Whitman Bridge, it had to be—with a crescent-shaped chunk of road missing. The edges were so clean the asphalt looked as though it had been excised by a scalpel. Below, the Delaware churned with debris.
This was the rift’s doing. My rift’s doing. Goose bumps crept across my skin. As much damage as the rift could do on an isolated West Ash farm, it’d be nothing compared to now, leaping around a city of more than a million inhabitants.
“Found something,” Rainbow called from deeper in the store. She held up an armful of hoodies from a discount bin. “I’ll handle checkout, yeah?”
Her lack of faith seemed justified; I’d probably just mess it up if I tried to pay. I was a newly sixteen-year-old girl who, until today, had never set foot outside a tiny circle of the world. I’d never been inside a store. I didn’t even own a wallet. What would I use a wallet for? At most, I slipped a dollar into the school vending machines or borrowed a credit card when Carolyn and I went to Franny’s or to the mini-golf course.
The Powers That Be had made a mistake about me.
There was no one in the world less suitable for saving it than I was.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Even with our new eight-dollar hoodies (I ♥ NJ—none of us knew how they’d ended up in a Pennsylvania truck stop), the flight into the city was freezing. We huddled close for warmth, me at the front, partly shielded by Neven’s thick neck.
Philadelphia stretched out before us, a million tiny white-red-orange lights at the horizon. I ought to have kept my eyes closed to stop me from getting dizzy or frightened, but fascination won out. Below us, the tree-lined suburbs and fields around West Asherton made room for street grids and parking lots. The trees were black dots, the roads coiling snakes. I thought I’d recognize sights from the internet and TV—a statue maybe, an unusual building—but nothing looked familiar.
In some parts of the city, I could barely make out the people; in other parts, the streets were so brightly lit that it might as well have been daytime.
The flight passed like that: cold, distant, quiet. A news chopper tried to approach once, but Neven beat her wings faster, and it hadn’t kept up.
Finally, Neven lowered.
She’d said she could sense the rift’s state and direction, but couldn’t pin down specifics.
She didn’t need to. The chaos would lead the way.
Residential streets below us were being cordoned off. People turned their cars around, honking all the way. Pedestrians were let out past the police tape, many with phones to their ears or holding backpacks and children; other pedestrians edged closer to the cordoned-off zone, weaving through the people trying to escape. Cameras flashed. People pointed at the pavement beyond a line of police tape, where it looked as though something had crashed onto the sidewalk. It’d left a two-foot crater and fractured tiles all around.
Several vans were parked past the tape. Half looked like police vans, while the others were unmarked, black, and identical to those scattered on my lawn. MGA.
Between the chaos and the darkness, people didn’t spot Neven right away. Only when we got close did a few faces turn up. One officer saw us, gaped, and fumbled with his radio so badly he dropped it.
We flew past the blockade and toward another street being cordoned off a few blocks down. I couldn’t stop staring into the crowds below.
The world from high up looked like the streets you saw in movies—an establishing shot from above, some background noise. After that, you zoomed in on the main character and everything else faded.
Flying as low as we did now, close enough to make out individual faces, it turned out the background noise didn’t fade. It just got louder.
Before, the busiest place I’d experienced was the schoolyard. Even when kids were yelling, though, the world outside the school grounds was silent. Here, the din was constant. People calling questions at police, cars honking pointlessly, a roar from a bus two blocks away, distant music that sounded like Beyoncé.
And so many people. Dozens. Most of them adults. They wore heavy coats, shapeless hoodies, carried nondescript bags. Some barged toward the barricades, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening, while others were being escorted out by police and had to shove their way to freedom.