Page 133 of Victorious

They were so different, and yet, sometimes when Eli looked at Victor, he swore he saw his own reflection. A shard of mirror, buried in those sharp blue eyes.

I see the devil in you.

That was what his father used to say, as he dragged Eli down into the church.

For hours after, Eli would search his face for signs, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find it. In himself, or Victor. They were different, and they knew it, two wolves pretending to be sheep. But somehow, they had found each other.

Victor turned his head and studied Eli, too. After a beat, he smiled, a ghost of a grin, the slightest tilt in the corner of his mouth, and Eli thought, I miss this.

Which was silly, wasn’t it? How could you miss a thing that was right there?

But it’s not. Eli frowned, confused by his own thought. A chill crept over him, and with it, the thing he didn’t want to know. About where he was, and where he wasn’t.

Victor frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Eli swallowed, forced himself to say the words. “I don’t think this is real.”

Victor didn’t laugh at Eli. He simply held out the joint and asked, “Does it matter? If we’re here?”

Eli wanted to take it, and get high, and lie here in the dark with his best friend. He wanted to, but cold crept in through the open window. The air smelled like somewhere else. Like farmland, mixed with rust.

Slowly, Eli forced himself to sit up.

To stand.

His body fought the motion as much as his mind, legs leaden as he crossed the bedroom. As he made his way down the hall, past the kitchen, where Angie was pulling a burned lasagna from the oven, and Victor was no longer on the bed but leaning on the counter, shaking his head.

“The finest mind at Lockland,” he teased.

Eli kept heading for the door. He heard something. It was far away and faint, but it sounded like someone was saying his name. Victor and Angie began laughing in the kitchen. Eli wanted to turn back. To stay here. But he couldn’t. There was somewhere he was supposed to be. Something he was supposed to do.

As he neared the front door, the hall began to stretch, then shimmer, and shift, Angie’s apartment losing shape with every forward step, until the walls and floor dissolved to planes of white—like a blank canvas—and only the door remained.

The doorknob, when he grabbed it, was cold as ice against his palm. So cold it hurt, the pain causing the hall to ripple, like a dream disturbed.

Eli threw it open, and forced himself through and—

For an instant, it was like someone had taken a sharp knife to the world and cut it open. He was back in the amusement park, surrounded by the twisted metal scaffolding, the sagging carnival booths, the dark shapes of the abandoned rides. Noah was in his ear, demanding a report, but before Eli could answer, his boot hit the ground, and the tear was gone, the illusion snapping shut again.

Only this time, there was no Lockland. No Angie. No Victor.

This time, it was day, not night, sun glancing off fresh snow, and he was standing on the sidewalk in an expensive neighborhood, surrounded by long drives leading to large houses. When Eli looked down, he saw he was dressed in the black gear he’d been wearing in real life.

He reached back, relieved to feel the weight of Sydney’s gun holstered at his back. Heavy. Real.

And yet, he had no doubt he was standing in another dream.

At the same time, he knew, it wasn’t his.

The neighborhood to every side was full of houses, but almost all of them were soft, and flat, and slightly out of focus, like an old-school movie backdrop. Only one of them was perfectly clear, every detail sharp and clean. Ice glittered on the eaves. The front door was a freshly painted green. The pathway from the street looked newly shoveled, as if in invitation.

Eli drew the gun as he started up the path.

XVNOW. THEN.BRIGHTON COMMONS?

SYDNEY watched Serena ice the cake as she tried to figure out what the hell was going on. The birthday. The house. Her sister.

The whole thing was like a memory, only it wasn’t, because this part had never happened. On her twelfth birthday—the day they almost died—Serena hadn’t baked a cake. She’d packed a picnic for them to carry out onto the frozen lake.