Page 128 of Victorious

Something wasn’t right. Something she couldn’t quite—

Just then, a pair of arms slung themselves around her shoulders, a sharp chin coming to rest against the top of her head. “Hi there, sleepyhead.”

That voice. Like silk and grit at the same time, a rasp like razors over velvet.

Syd turned around and there she was.

Serena.

The sight of her sister made Syd instantly dizzy. A sudden, overwhelming vertigo, shot through with surprise, and then relief. Which was silly, wasn’t it? Where else would Serena be? This was where they lived. No. Wait. Had lived? Before … but the thought was already escaping her.

“What’s wrong?” asked Serena, cocking her head. “You still half asleep?”

“Maybe,” she murmured, as Serena reached out to tuck a clump of hair behind Syd’s ear. But then her fingers brushed Syd’s cheek, and in a sudden, lurching beat, she remembered.

Remembered the motel, and the fight, Dol’s body slamming into Eli’s.

Remembered the rooftop, and the gun wedged against the door to buy her time.

Remembered her sister’s bones beneath her hands, the cold across her skin.

Syd gasped, sucking in a breath, as Serena’s hand dropped to her side. She turned and looked around the living room. An almost perfect replica of where they’d lived, once upon a time. Before the accident.

“Where are we?”

Serena shook her head. “What are you talking about, silly?” She spread her arms, as if reaching for the walls. “We’re home.”

“Right.…” said Syd. But they weren’t. They couldn’t be. So— “How did we get here?”

Serena’s mouth twitched, her smile tightening. A strange thing happened then. Her blue eyes seemed to flicker and darken half a shade. The room flickered, too, like an old movie, the image briefly losing focus before a bell dinged somewhere, and everything snapped back.

Serena’s eyes were pale again, her smile effortless.

“Oh!” she said, clapping her hands and turning toward the kitchen. “That will be the cake!”

What the fuck? thought Sydney, but what she said was “Cake?”

“For your birthday,” answered Serena as Syd trailed in her wake. “Don’t think I forgot.”

Syd was about to point out that it wasn’t her birthday, when her foot slammed into something, hard enough to hurt, and for an instant, as she stumbled, the pain shooting through her toes, the whole house disappeared, and she was somewhere else.

Moonlight glanced off warping metal, shone down through the rotting boards of a house that wasn’t hers. Through a gap in the clapboard walls, she could just make out the outline of a Ferris wheel, the lattice of a roller coaster.

And then, just as quickly as she saw it, all of it was gone, the house in Brighton Commons surging back around her, blotting out the rotting frame, the rickety stairs, the slouching walls of the abandoned ride. She was back in the house where she grew up.

A place she hadn’t been in years.

Sydney threw out a hand to steady herself. What the actual fuck? she thought as Serena pulled a fresh cake from the oven, and smiled, as if nothing was—or would ever be—wrong.

“See?” she said, beaming at her sister through the steam. “Can’t have a birthday without cake.”

XIINOW. THEN.THE BETHANY MALL

ELI watched as Noah flung the second squatter down onto the peeling lino tiles.

He landed hard beside the first, a girl with a greasy black ponytail. They lay there, breathless and bloody from the brief struggle, hands bound behind their backs, and tape over their mouths. Teenagers, by the looks of them. Runaways, or simply bored.

“Dammit,” muttered Noah, raking a hand over his head, while Eli leaned against a nearby post, digging blood from beneath his fingernails. Somewhere between breaching the mall and finding the two teens squatting in the food court, he had realized their mistake.