Past Continuous by K. Ryer Breese

Author:K. Ryer Breese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

SIX

I get back home and my mom nearly faints seeing my face.

Adam comes in stumbling after me.

First thing Mom does is call Paige.

I crash for a few hours and when I wake up I hear a ruckus. I stretch, sore like I’ve been run over, and make my way into the kitchen where I find Adam and my mom sitting across from Paige. They’re all eating sugar cereal.

I go to the fridge and pull out a silver bowl with tinfoil on top.

Then I sit at the table and take the tinfoil off. The hit-you-in-the-face smell of the cheese is as immediate as a ballistic missile. Paige jumps up and dashes to the other side of the room, as far away as possible from the sickening cheese that’s crawling in the dish.

Clearing my throat, I tell them all how it will go down. I tell them how I’ll eat a spoonful of this stuff and chew it slowly and by doing that I’ll be able to move my mind outside my body. I say, “This right here is the first step in saving the world.”

“Seriously,” Paige says. “If you eat that, I’m going to puke.”

My mom, a slather of Vick’s VapoRub on her upper lip, says, “How do you even know this will work? I mean, it sounds awfully like a scam, Ade. Like a charlatan pulling your strings. I don’t like it at all.”

Adam is actually eating a cold slice of pizza he found in the fridge.

I told him I didn’t know how old it was. He said it didn’t matter.

With the cheese in front of me, I point to it and ask him, “Do you want some of this on your slice?”

He shrugs. Like he actually considered it.

I clear my throat, grab the fork next to me, and get ready to dig in when Paige interrupts. She stands up, makes the classic time-out hand gesture.

Paige says, “Okay. Okay. Let’s talk this through one more time before you take that bite.” And then she proceeds to recount, in her own verbiage, the story. Everything. How it got to here. How Adam is a duplicate, even though Paige says he looks nothing like me. The things Razor told me. And how eating this cheese will allow me to activate Tad’s ability.

When she’s done I nod and say, “Pretty much it.”

It’s amazing how well she knows me and how much she’ll take at face value.

Paige sits back down, says, “You’re still even more insane than ever before.”

“At least this doesn’t involve cracking my head open,” I say.

Paige shrugs. “Really,” she says, “this might be worse.”

I take a forkful and she stops me again. Adam looks all irritated.

“Wait!” Paige leans forward. “What are you going to be focusing on?”

“Vauxhall,” I say. “I just need to.”

“What about the other yous? You know, there are still like three out there.”

Adam perks up. “Three? I thought it was two. Who’s the third?”

I look to Paige and then my mom. They both have this pained expression. Both of them are wondering what to do next.

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