Excerpt

Franz wanted to turn and run away, but the dream held him mesmerized. He gazed down at Carrie-Ann and it felt like he was getting farther and farther away from her, his body growing taller and taller. Except he was focusing down and down like a telescope and details jumped out at him before he felt himself pulled forward and through.

Carrie-Ann’s eye, which had been glazed in death, morphed into its normal bright blue. Then the blue expanded to fill the whole of her eye socket and the blue rose up to surround him and there were shadowy images moving in the depths and his heart leapt when he thought he caught a glimpse of Nigel out of the corner of his eye, a Nigel in his civilian clothes with his red dressing gown and Sherlock pipe.

Franz turned toward where Nigel had gone and flowed forward. The blue swallowed him up and parted around him at the same time and he found himself standing on a beach staring out at the ocean. There was a nervous presence at his side, and when he turned to look he wasn’t surprised to see Blue Devil, her full face mask carved out of cobalt blue metal that flowed down and down until suddenly her uniform was all blue and black and metal armor. And the rest of the Teen Demis were arrayed behind her and they were all changed into metal too and they were looking at him, judging him.

“What do you want?” he demanded. Those weren’t the words he wanted to say, but they were the ones that came out. He felt as if he was reading a script, experiencing something that had already happened before.

“What we’ve always wanted. A home.” Blue Devil spoke, but it sounded like all of the Teen Demis in a chorus, in a song. “You’ve gone down the rabbit hole, but who’s to know where you will come up? Wonderland is not real.”

“I know that. I learned that dreams weren’t real when I was just a little kid.” He fisted his hair and pulled until his spine began to tingle. “I want to go home. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Blue Devil cocked her head with a rasping of stone. “Don’t you know? You are home. This is your home. This is who you are. You will live here and die here and no one will ever know your name. Do you know your name?”

“Of course I know my name!” He opened his mouth to shout it, but nothing came out. There was just a rushing emptiness where the name used to be. “How can I not know my name? What’s wrong with me?”

“Don’t leave me!” He stumbled after that half-hearted glimpse, the memory of home and love and safety.

The ground fell out from under his feet and he fell and fell with wind whipping by on both sides and it felt like he fell forever. When he struck the bottom, he limped away on a numb leg and when it became too much he fell down and began to crawl.

There was the faint tinkle of a merry tune floating to him on the breeze and he followed it down the path through the woods. It got darker and darker the further he went, and he started seeing snarling wolf faces and glowing eyes and the anxiety rose up so much in him that he didn’t even care about the slimy toadstools and wormy dirt and moss he dug his hands through as he crawled.

He kept to the winding beaten path. It was brown with packed dirt and pine needles, lined on both sides by gravel. It was only up close that he saw the wriggling of bugs, that he felt what was hidden just under the pine needles as his hands squelched under his weight. He could feel things moving against the back of his hands and he realized that he could stand up and walk so he did and he wondered why he’d been crawling at all. It seemed like such a strange thing to do.

And the shadows fled and the path lightened, sunlight peeking through breaks in the tree cover. There was birdsong and the chittering of small animals and the crackle of the pine needles under his feet.

He was exploring the woods while Nigel and his friends Evan, Warrick, and Caspian got the fire going. They’d been having a hard time when he left, and he’d told them the wood was too wet but they were adults and he was a kid so they didn’t listen. It felt like the perfect time for him to scout out the area and make sure there were no bears.

He figured if he saw a bear, he could poke it with a stick.

Only he’d forgotten which way camp was and the path wound around and crisscrossed in some places and his legs ached and he thought he’d been walking for hours.

He sniffled, realizing he was going to be alone forever. Then he heard someone yelling and it sounded like his name, only he couldn’t hear it very well so he started running toward where it had come from.

He ran and ran, and his legs began to burn so he kicked them off and he was flying over the ground faster and faster until the whole world was a single blur. And in that stillness between the moments he found Nigel at a round table standing and drinking his usual cup of tea.

Only it wasn’t Nigel. It was Lightspeed. And he was just a little boy in stupid red shorts and he didn’t know what to do.

“I’m not the one you’re looking for,” he said, tugging at his shirt to show what he meant.

Lightspeed looked down at him, and his mask hid his expression and made him seem disappointed. “No, you’re not.”

“Do you know my name?” he asked.

“It’s not your name anymore,” Lightspeed said. He shook his head sadly. “You’re no one. You’re nothing.” He waved his hand around. “None of this is even real.”

“I’m real!”

“Are you?” Lightspeed poked him in the chest and he stumbled back at the sudden assault but there was no stopping it. Lightspeed was too fast and he loomed and expanded to fill the whole room and every corner, not allowing any escape. “You’re nothing more than patchwork parts about to break down. You’re not even people.”

“A person.”

There was a static charge feeling that grew and grew until there was a buzzing in the air, then the harsh crackle burn snap of blue lightning whipping everywhere. Lightspeed was tattered into nothing, only it was the head of Nigel that disappeared last: eyes, nose, mouth.

“How can you forget your own name? Say it with me now: ‘The whizzing wizard of speed, the daringly dashing Lightspeed, and his sidekick, the explosive and exciting, K–‘” Lightspeed’s words were cut off as lightning flicked across his mouth, cutting it in half and flinging it away.

But it was too late.

“Kid Nitro!”

Franz blinked and he knew who he was and he was in his adult body though he was wearing his red sweatshirt and he wasn’t sure what that annoying sound was. He looked around the dusty plain and wondered what was going to happen next, except what was that sound? It burst through his head and…

Franz sat up on the couch with a gasp, the doorbell louder than he remembered.

“Hold on!” he called, before he thought that he might want to pretend he wasn’t home. Too late.

He rubbed a hand over his face and grabbed his sweatshirt off the floor. He picked off a few pieces of lint and put it on before shuffling to the door.