Seeker (Riders #2)(55)

"What's your order?"

She smiles. "Red first, of course. Then blue. Then usually yellow."

She goes through it all. The entire hierarchy of how she eats the trail mix. I start to zone out at cashews. She's just so pretty, all sleepy-eyed. And smart and cool. Generous and funny. A little weird. And tough. It just keeps hitting me how she's this incredible combination of all these different qualities.

Like trail mix.

I make myself laugh.

She laughs at me. "What?"

I'm about to tell her. I think I even open my mouth to tell her, when I realize my head's pounding. Headaches are our warning.

"Gideon, what is it?"

The flames in our campfire leap higher-suddenly, like someone threw gasoline on them.

Daryn and I lunge backward.

The logs shift. Instead of the ashes rising up, the logs sink down. The fire's burning a hole-through the ground.

The earth beneath our feet begins to rumble and break apart. Crumbling and giving out.

And we're going with it.

Daryn yanks my arm. "Gideon, go!"

We backpedal together, feet churning, but the dirt falls away. We have no chance of escaping this.

We're going into this sinkhole.

"Gideon! Daryn!"

Jode and Marcus stand above, looking down from the edge of a cliff that becomes steeper by the instant. Embers and ashes fly past, stinging the skin on my face and arms. Avalanches of roots and dirt scratch and fling themselves into my eyes and nose.

Marcus whips the scythe around and extends the base down to me, but I've got ahold of Daryn with my good hand. I'm not letting go of her.

Then it's too late. They're a hundred feet above. A thousand. Gone. 

I can't see them anymore. Can't hear them yelling.

Darkness closes over us, but we keep falling. I wrap my arms around Daryn. Her body is rigid with fear. Seconds turn to minutes.

"When will it stop?" she yells, and starts coughing.

"I don't know."

I look down and there is no down. I don't see anything.

Falling is how my dad died. It's how I died, too.

A legitimate fear of mine. But now I know what's worse than falling to your death: falling indefinitely. Falling for the rest of your life.

Five minutes of this and I feel like I'm going insane. No power to move, to stop. Nothing but this gut-dropping descent. Then I see a shape shooting toward us from the darkness below.

As it speeds closer, I see that it's a sphere. Golden. Huge. We're going to smash into a planet. I see mountain ridges, then valleys. Then the ground speeding up.

"Hold on to me. Don't let go."

"I won't. I won't let go."

As we're about to hit, the same brutal thoughts shoot through my mind as last time, after my parachuting accident.

Wanting more of life. Wanting to do better at life.

I see grains of dirt, and then a jolt shoots through me.

Daryn and I rip apart, but there's no pain.

I'm blinded. I can't see anything. Can't feel anything. Then blurred images appear and begin to solidify around me.

Pressure builds across my chest, and I realize I'm sitting in a truck. Passenger seat. Seat belt on.

My dad's work truck.

Shit. Not this.

The air-conditioning in the truck is blasting, but I can still feel the outside heat of the summer day coming through the windows.

I'm wearing faded jeans and a sweaty T-shirt and in my hand is the cell phone I owned almost two years ago.

Daryn sits next to me in the driver's seat. The steering wheel in front of her is cracked and faded with use.

She looks lost. Confused.

There's no dirt on her, no ashes. No sign of the fall we just experienced on me, either. It's like it didn't happen.

We're parked in a residential neighborhood. The houses are small, tidy. Flower boxes under the windows. Newspapers on driveways. No people, though, like there were on that day. No birds or other cars, either.

I've seen this scene a hundred times. I've relived it each and every time. But not like this.

"Gideon," Daryn breathes, like someone will overhear us. "This is how your dad died."

"Yeah." We're parked in front of the yellow cottage where it happened. My eyes drift past the porch, past the two small bikes leaning against the wood rail, stopping at the spot on the brick walkway where Dad fell. He's not there.

I look up to the roof. Not there, either.

All I see is the warped shingle roof. Above it, clear blue sky.

"I saw this in a vision," Daryn says. "I saw this before I ever met you."

I always wondered if she had. As a Seeker, there were lots of things I thought she knew and kept to herself. But I don't know how to respond.

My body is still adjusting to not falling. I feel seasick-the falling equivalent. And I'm not sure if I'm dreaming or dead or if the Rift just upped its game significantly.

"We were here to bid on that roof," I hear myself say. "See the bend in the gutter above the window? He was standing right there when he had a stroke. I was in here texting my buddies when it happened."