“Maybe he will once you quit acting like an idiot,” Sofia said.
“At least I’m acting,” Paul replied.
Sofia pulled back to punch him for his troubles when the screeching sound of a car slamming on its brakes in front of the cemetery entrance made them look in that direction. Tick’s heart skipped a beat when he realized it was his mom. She was already out the door and past the stone archway, running at full speed.
“Mom!” Tick yelled. “What are you doing?”
“Atticus, don’t leave yet!” she said, looking ridiculous as her arms pumped back and forth. Tick realized that he’d never, not once, seen his mother run before.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice now that she’d almost reached them, only twenty feet away.
“I have to tell you something—I have to tell you before you go.” She slowed, then stopped, sucking in air. “It’s very important.”
Tick was so relieved she wasn’t going to prevent him from leaving, he failed to realize how odd it was that she’d raced here to tell him . . . what?
“You okay?” he asked. “What is it?”
Having regained her breath, she began talking. “I should’ve told you this years ago—at the least, I should’ve told you four months ago. I—”
But Tick didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Instead, in that instant, he and his friends were winked away to a very strange place.
Chapter
10
~
A Very Strange Place
Tick got his wish in one regard—the place was cold. Beyond that, he couldn’t find one positive thing about it.
They stood on a cracked stone road, small pools of stagnant water filling the gaps. The smoggy air reeked of things burnt—oil, rubber, tar. Metal structures lined the long street on both sides, towering over them, black and dirty. Tick first thought they were buildings of some kind, but that notion quickly evaporated. They were more like sculptures, the dark and twisted vision of some maniac artist.
“Man,” Paul whispered, “it’s like Gotham City.”
In some spots, wide, arching pieces rose fifty feet in the air, ending in a jagged, ripped edge as if some enormous monster had ripped the top off with its teeth. In other places, huge, towering cylinders—some taller than New York City skyscrapers—ascended to the sky until they disappeared into the menacing, storm-heavy clouds. Squat, deformed lumps sat in the nooks and crannies, like weathered statues of ancient Greek gods. Hideous carvings of animals, worse than the ugliest gargoyle Tick had ever seen balancing on the outer walls of a cathedral, lay strewn about like stray dogs, frozen in place by a rainstorm of molten metal. Random triangles and pentagons hung oddly from various structures, seeming to defy the laws of physics.
All of it, everything in sight, was made out of a dark gray metal that dully reflected the scant light filtering through the clouds above. And there was no variation—the bizarre structures and sculptures lay everywhere, in every direction, as far as Tick could see.
One word seemed to describe the place better than anything else: dreary.
“Where are we?” Sofia asked, slowly turning in a circle, just as Tick and Paul were.
Good question, Tick thought. He didn’t know if he was looking forward to any locals showing up to answer it.
“What kind of people would live here?” he asked, trying to shake the worry of his mom and her undelivered message.
“People who like to gouge their eyes out, obviously,” Paul said. “This has to be the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.”
“They ever heard of flowers?” Sofia said. “Maybe a splash of color here and there?”
“Do you think we’re in one of the Thirteen Realities?” Tick asked. “One we haven’t heard of yet?”
“Where else could we be?” Paul answered. “Does this look like something in Reality Prime to you?”
“I don’t know—maybe these are ruins or something.”
Paul coughed. “Uh . . . don’t think so, big guy. Pretty sure we would’ve heard about a place this weird.”
“What could’ve led to something like this?” Sofia asked, sliding her hand along the flat side of a large, boxy structure, big spheres bubbling out the side of it like pimples. “How could they be so different from us?”
Tick stepped toward one of the cylindrical towers, following Sofia’s lead and touching the black metal. It was as cold and hard as it looked.