"Far out," my mom said after a beat. "You look exactly like my abuela."

"Really?" I couldn't help but ask, imagining the great-grandmother in Mexico I had never gotten a chance to meet. I was torn between wanting to stare at my mother and not being able to look at her. It was too surreal, and a part of my brain that had become used to such things simply couldn't handle this level of absurdity.

And the strangest part of it all was that I was mad at her, not for how she would end up treating me so many years down the line, but in this exact moment—I was mad that she didn't immediately know who I was. It was a ridiculous thought, as this version of my mother would never even have me. But still, I wanted to believe that a mother's intuition would somehow at least make her feel warmly towards me. And yet no warmth seemed to radiate from those almond brown eyes.

After all this time, after the year and a half I'd spent in purgatory without my friends, after the horrifying way she'd dismissed me when I met her in that palatial hotel from which she reigned, I think this was the moment that hurt worst of all.

Did I even exist if I could be standing here, face to face with a woman whose DNA made of up half of my body, and she could think I was just some random girl who happened to look like her grandmother?

It was John who broke the awkward moment up by entering the room more fully. At seventeen, he already possessed some of the alpha male swagger that had made all the girls follow him, and I could sense it immediately. It was some sort of pheromone he was giving off. Adam had the same thing, I now realized, and I wondered if they had gotten along when Adam first went down and met Jenny. After all, a pack can only have one alpha.

"Who are they?" John asked Sage, eyeing Adam with the wariness I had anticipated.

"They're nice," Jenny said before Sage could speak, taking a step closer to me. "They came to Cherie's house and they're spending the day with us."

"Why?" John asked.

"Why do you think?"

"Hey, Jugs, you don't make the decisions here."

"Don't call her Jugs," Dave insisted, and it was the first time I'd ever heard him speak. He pushed John aside and walked up to put his arm around Jenny.

"You can be such an asshole," Jenny said, her eyes not wavering from John.

"Enough," my mother now insisted, and I was impressed with the way everyone, even John, seemed to obey her by shutting up. Sage had told me once that my mother was the real brains behind this operation; she had been the ones to put the signs on the portal doors, the one who had figured out how to make that pink goop that created portals in the first place.

The goop that Adam had stolen to get us here.

She walked up to me now. "What's your name?"

"Mara," I repeated the lie I had told Cherie back at the house, having decided when we first got here not to use my real name. I wasn't sure why, but maybe it was just because I didn't want any of these versions of my mother and her friends to have any other association with the name Marina. It was mine, not theirs. My real name was the only thing I could say I still owned.

"And who's he?" my mother continued, nodding slightly towards Adam but still looking at me.

"He's her history teacher," Jenny answered for me, but there was something in her tone once again that told me she was messing with me somehow; that Adam and I hadn't fooled her for a second.

"John," my mother finally said, turning to her boyfriend, "what do you think?"

"I think," John began, seeming bored with this whole conversation and ready to leave the atrium where we all still stood like tin soldiers, "that we should see if there's any beer in the fridge."

"Hell yeah," Dave agreed, following John towards the kitchen.

Adam eyed me with a cautious expression before falling in with the crowd. But before I could do the same, Jenny pulled me aside. "Just so you know," she whispered, "St. Joe's closed down eight years ago. You should come up with another story."

I swallowed hard before I could reply. "If you knew," I whispered back, "why are you trusting us?"

"Because your boyfriend's really hot."

"He's not my—"

"Shh," she stopped me with a finger to my lips. "This is the fun part."

*

The sun had begun to set behind those towering elm trees, casting the kitchen in abnormally long shadows and making the people who had been partaking in the beer seem even drunker than they were. That group involved everyone but Adam, who had refused politely with a sly smile on his face when offered a beer by an underage kid, and me, because I hated the taste of beer.

With the impending night, everyone seemed to be getting a second wind.

"It'll be dark soon," my mother said to John, and something in her tone informed me that they had been waiting for this part of the day; the beer and the hanging out at the pyramid house were just time-killers. But until what?

"Mmm," John replied, polishing off the last of his drink and dropping the bottle onto the table next to the two he'd already finished.

"You're going to have to pay for those beers, John," Jenny teased him.

But John just smiled a huge joker smile back. "I'll steal you the money, Jugs."

Jenny glared at him in response, but this time, Dave was too drunk to come to her defense.

"Why do you keep calling her that?" Adam asked. I knew him well enough by now to understand when he was about to pop. He'd been careful to keep his distance from Jenny all day, especially after Dave showed up. But one more inappropriate comment from John, and this was going to end the way Adam solved most of his problems: with a fight.

"'Cause she looks like a pin-up girl," John laughed.

"Stop it," Jenny whispered, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.

"It's a good thing," John insisted.

"We should go," my mother interjected, once again stopping this conversation dead. She had other things on her mind than retreading already tired ground. "Before it's too late."

"Agreed," said Dave, finally roused by something after being completely checked out while his girlfriend was being insulted.

Sage finished up her beer and dropped it down next to John's, letting out an enormous belch that temporarily distracted everyone into a pelt of laughter.

Ironically, it was George who stood up first. He'd been drinking too, but he didn't seem drunk. And he hadn't said a word all day, although I had noticed him watching Sage the same way I kept catching Adam looking at Jenny. "She's right. It's getting late."

The others moaned various forms of agreement, and slowly the party began rising from the kitchen chairs and cushions and making their way towards the powder room and the front atrium, eventually blobbing back together by the front door.

"Well come on, you two," Jenny said before leaving the kitchen, after noticing that Adam and I hadn't moved, not sure if we were invited.

"Not them," John insisted, lingering with a suspicious gaze towards Adam in the doorway.

"Come on, it'll be more fun that way," Jenny insisted.

Dave settled the matter by popping up next to John, his coat now in hand. "Jenny, let's go."

Adam motioned to me that we should follow, and not knowing what else to do, I stood and headed for the atrium.

"Here, you two can wear these," Jenny said once we got there, pulling two coats—fur for me and leather for Adam—from the front closet.

"Is this real?" I asked Jenny, weighing my disgust with wearing a dead animal against my desire to not freeze to death.

"It's already dead, honey," Jenny smiled, "you might as well wear it."

We piled into a couple of different cars once we were outside, Adam and I shoved into the back of Cherie's Honda next to George, with Jenny in the front and the others all in John's truck.

I took advantage of the blaring radio and the fact that George seemed lost in his own thoughts, staring out the window, to whisper in Adam's ear.

"Adam, they're onto us. We should lose them."

"Not yet. She likes you," he whispered back, nodding towards Jenny in the front. "Talk to her more, try to get her to open up."

"She doesn't like me, she likes you. That's why she's being nice. I know you miss her, but we don't have time for this."

"Miss her?" he said a bit louder, pulling away to look me in the eye. Glancing back at Jenny, who was talking about some homework assignment with Sage, his face hardened and his jaw muscles clenched. "I told you. I don't want anything to do with her."

I sat silently beside him for a moment, feeling the weight of his words like an anchor around my neck. The pain he was hiding was palpable, and I wanted desperately to tell him that I understood. But of course, he already knew that I did.

Giving in to an impulse that I didn't want to give too much thought to, I took hold of Adam's hand, and I was relieved when he squeezed mine back.

But a moment later, we both let go as the cars pulled up to their destination.

This was it, what Sage had told me about once. Their pre-portal ritual, the one that made their escapades into the other worlds feel more like a rite of passage instead of what they really were: a trespass.

There was nothing to do but get out of the car. We were at the old grounds.

****

LOVE reading your comments! They really help me shape the story!

XO- Rebecca