"I should have kissed you back...when we were in the lake."

            I blinked my eyes several times, clearing away the residual yellow light that always lingered a moment too long after entering Down World. I took a deep breath and got my bearings.

            I was in Brady's Pontiac, sitting in my driveway. My mother's photo album was resting in my lap. My fingers traced the scalloped edges of the thick paper stock that overflowed from the book, and I dared myself to do what I was dying to: look into Brady's eyes.

            He still looked tired, of course, just like he had at the gas station. But this was a different tired altogether. The eighteen-year-old boy in front of me was tired from a long drive and from frustration—he had just seen Piper holding Robbie's hand. But that kind of tired would pass.

The man he would become, the one I saw in the gas station the day before, just looked bored and defeated, like life had been wearing him down so long he no longer even tried to get back up.

            Looking at Brady now, all the memories came rushing back.

            Brady who'd given me half a jelly doughnut the first time I met him, powdered sugar still rimming his upper lip like a milk moustache.       

            Brady who'd held my hand the first time he had led me down into the boiler room.

            Brady whose idea of how to break into a building was simply to grab a rock and smash in the window.

            And Brady who'd gently kissed the top of my head when I was passing out in his lap after having an allergic reaction to the vaccine pellet in the underlake world.

            He was real and beautiful and in front of me again, staring deeply into my eyes and telling me that he should have kissed me back in the lake all those months ago, when he had kept his distance because he still believed that Piper was out there in the world somewhere, loving him back.

            I remembered this scene from the first time I had lived it. I had been embarrassed and stuttering, feeling guilty because Kieren was waiting for me at the house. That day, I had told Brady to drive to Colorado, knowing that if my plan worked, the world would mold itself to a new reality while he drove; that by the time he reached Boulder, Piper would have forgotten all about her fling with my brother Robbie, and she would be back in his arms.

            I had wanted to give him that as my last present to him, my farewell gift.

            But what had it gotten him?

            The Brady that I met at the gas station was miserable and alone, his heart broken by Piper. But in that reality, he didn't even know why. Would he have been happier if he'd known the truth?

            I knew that I would have been. If I'd been him.

            The first time I'd lived through this conversation in the car with Brady, I'd known what I really wanted to do. But I had been too young and insecure, too guilty to take something that didn't feel like it was mine to take. I was a kid, after all. Sixteen years old. My heart was breaking that day, the precarious plan to save my brother and close the portal to the underlake world hanging in the balance, and Brady's handsome face inches away and a million miles away all at once.

            But now I wasn't a kid anymore.

            It was time to admit something to myself: I didn't have to come back to this moment with Brady. Adam had just said "a moment about two hours before the event." I could have gone back to a moment at Kieren's house. I could have gone back to seeing the Mystics at the Old Grounds, where we had been just prior. But no, I had picked this moment.

            Sitting in the car with Brady, almost close enough to touch, that haunting song seeping out of his speakers, I knew that there were no accidents.

            And so this time around, I did what I hadn't had the courage to do that first day. "Brady," I whispered, covering his hand with my own, "come with me."

*

I felt like an archaeologist for the next couple hours, painstakingly recreating every detail of that day as I had lived it two years before. Other than having Brady with me, a fact which I figured should have had no effect on the outcome of my actions at the Portland hotel, I wanted to keep the day as consistent as possible.

            Yet my emotions were threatening to overcome me as Brady and I pulled up to Kieren's house in anticipation of heading for the high school. What if Piper caused a scene when he showed up, now that she was with Robbie? What if Kieren didn't like that Brady was with me, suspecting that perhaps we were more than friends? We weren't, of course, but would Kieren think we were?

            And the most pressing concern of all: What if Adam didn't live up to his part of the bargain and wasn't able to distract my mother from beating us to the science lab that held the passageway to the three doors?

            He had told me to trust him when we'd made this plan, but was I being a fool to do so? After all, he had known my mother when she was in high school, had clearly spent a lot of time there if he was in love with Jenny. What if he was in cahoots with her? What if this was all some grand plan she had cooked up, exacting her revenge on the fact that I had slipped through her fingers the first time?

            I wouldn't put it past my mother—or the evil version of my mother, anyway—to go to any length to stop me from destroying the lake portal to the dark reality where she and John were powerful and rich.

            But any concerns I had about what could go wrong with the plan were shelved when Brady and I reached Kieren's house. Because I was about to see Kieren and Robbie again, and for a blissful moment, nothing else mattered.

            I all but tripped walking from Brady's car to the side door into Kieren's rec room, my unsure feet too nervous to remember how to walk. And it wasn't until I had the sliding glass door shoved aside and walked in to see Robbie standing in the corner with Piper that I realized I had stopped breathing with excitement.

            Although I was dying to hug Kieren as well, I knew that my brother had to come first. I practically ran through the room and threw myself into Robbie's arms, almost knocking him over.

            He laughed with surprise, and it took him a moment to hug me back. "You all right?" he whispered down at me.

            "I'm fine," I choked, but my voice broke in the middle of the word.

            Robbie didn't ask any more questions, but just held me for a second while Piper looked on lovingly. I grasped onto Robbie's middle and I wasn't sure I would ever find the courage to let go again.

            "I missed you too," he said into my hair, and I wiped my wet face on his T-shirt, remembering a time when I'd skinned my knee falling off my bike as a kid and he had let me do the same thing.

            I finally pulled away, embarrassed by the show I was putting on, which must have seemed oddly dramatic to the people in the room.

            "Sorry," I smiled.

            "It's okay," Piper said, "you're making up for lost hugs."

            Kieren was standing by the door, watching me with a light in his eyes that I had missed so profoundly I almost started crying again.

            The moment was broken a second later, though, when Brady entered the room from the sliding door. His body had shrunken in on itself slightly, an awkwardness about his demeanor that told me he wasn't sure if he'd made the right choice in following me.

            I realized it was my job to make this all seem normal. "Everyone knows Brady, right?"

            Kieren, Robbie, and their friend Scott nodded in his direction, not terribly phased by his presence. But then we all turned to Piper, almost in slow motion, to see how she would react.

            She was flustered, something which I hadn't seen much from her since I discovered her living on the train with Robbie. She quickly shuffled away from my brother, like a child caught cribbing notes from the textbook under her desk. Gone was her confident smile, her easy charm. She bowed her head and looked up at Brady with huge eyes—eyes that expanded with a trembling emotion that I couldn't quite decipher. Was she excited to see him? Scared? Ashamed? Her lips curled in on themselves and she softly whispered his name.

            She ran across the room to meet him, but he sidestepped her and I saw his body turn into a wall, not permitting even the slightest warmth to emanate in her direction.

            The room had grown deadly silent. As we watched Brady and Piper's love for each other shrivel up and wilt before our eyes, the celebratory air of the room took on the unmistakable pallor of death and decay.

            She was going to break his heart eventually, I reminded myself. But this time, you were here to see it.

            "We need to go," Kieren said, breaking through the icy chill in the air. "It's time."

***

Keep reading for Chapter Ten! And please drop a comment or two to let me know what you think so far! XO- Rebecca