Falling Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

27

Zola screamed and threw herself to the ground. She recognized the sound of gunfire from history VRs in school, when she’d seen depictions of war so she’d know how evil it had been.

But those were VRs! I knew it wasn’t real! I’m not wearing VR goggles now! I’m not wearing goggles at all! This! Is! Really! Happening!

In VRs, the fighting was always distant and remote. Abstract. Zola never saw any blood. But now when Zola lifted her head ever so slightly, she saw a man ahead of her suddenly clutch his chest and sink to the ground. His grimy white shirt turned red beneath his hands.

And then Puck was right beside Zola on the ground, hissing in her ear.

“Zola! This is all an act! For the tourists! It’s fake!”

Zola blinked.

“I mean, it’s good if you keep acting terrified, but you don’t have to be terrified for real,” Puck whispered. “There’s a whole pack of tourists over there, and when they turn to go, we can just follow them. . . .”

Zola looked around again. The bleeding man was squirming on the ground.

No, he’s convulsing, she thought.

Then she noticed that while the man had his head turned away from everyone else, he winked almost merrily at Puck and Zola. His “blood” made a trail in the dust, flowing toward a crowd of people who were still shrieking and recoiling. All of them wore goggles—Tourist goggles, Zola told herself.

“That’ll serve you right, for stealing my family’s wheat and barley seed!” a woman screamed at the man from one of the houses. “You know our crop failed last year, and my children ain’t had enough to eat ever since!”

“But my children are starving, too!” the bleeding man struggled to yell back. “And if I die, they’ll . . . they’ll . . .”

He stopped talking. His arms and legs stopped twitching.

But his head lolled back toward Puck and Zola again, and Zola saw him roll his eyes at them as if to say, “How could anyone believe this cheesy overacting?”

Still, Zola looked toward Puck. He was so skinny, his bony elbows sticking out from his ragged sleeves.

Could it be true that people here really don’t have enough food? Zola wondered.

A swarm of people in filthy, ragged clothes emerged from the tumbledown shacks. Like the bleeding man, they all wore battered-looking goggles. But their faces were all so dirty that it was hard to tell.

Zola saw a man in a blue blazer step to the front of the crowd of tourists. He was dressed exactly like the tour guides back in her own Futureville.

Wonder what he’s telling the tourists about what they just saw? she thought.

Then she remembered: she could find out. She slid out the tourist goggles she’d been hiding in her sleeve. Holding them off to the side, out of sight of the tourists, she turned them on.

“Don’t put those on yet!” Puck hissed at her. “Someone will see you, and everyone knows actual tourists aren’t allowed in this field! Wait until we can slide in with that group!”

“I just want to listen,” Zola muttered back.

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