Escaping the house was easier than I thought it would be. Mrs. Walters – Jane – was oddly deflated after our girl time together upstairs and Mr. Walters was too busy chewing some crackers to say anything. He watched, perched uncomfortably on his rose patterned arm chair, photo album forgotten in his lap as I hurried to the door.

"Thank you for the visit, sorry I have to go. Goodbye," I yelled from the porch. Not waiting to hear a reply, I dashed across the drive to the street. I would go faster if I could steal a bike from their garage, but I didn't want to have to return it later.

I hit the street taking long strides and great gulps of air to clear my head of everything that was wrong with their house. Mrs. Walters could sense Levi in his room, but she refused to think he was dead. What did that mean?

That she had one more screw loose than me, apparently.

The note in Levi's diary could have been written five years ago. It didn't prove anything. What if he's not dead? What if he's alive and he needs help? I had to stop walking so fast, my breath couldn't keep up.

Slowing, I wrapped my arms around my middle in an effort to get my thoughts and emotions under control. I couldn't allow myself to hope for the impossible. I couldn't lose myself and my mind in make-believe movie scenarios.

Sean and Levi had been kidnapped and they had either been killed at some point during the last five years or they were prisoners somewhere, and in the real world they couldn't communicate with me in either case. The note had been written five years ago and it was not a message from Levi promising to meet me at Cuppa Joe's today.

I stumbled forward, pushing my legs to move faster. I caught my second wind and fell into a steady gait. I would be there in less than ten minutes, which put me at about 6:30.

There was no meeting time on the note, I fretted. Then I told myself I was being stupid. There was no time on it because when he wrote it five years ago he didn't know what time he wanted to meet me, and then he forgot to give it to me. End of story.

End of story.

My heart rebelled at that thought. This can't be the end of his story. He would come home one day, and I would know who had done this to him and Sean. They would come back. Not ever talking to them again or seeing them, not ever knowing what had happened was unbearable.

No wonder Mr. and Mrs. Walters were crazy. They sat together every evening in that quiet house asking themselves what kind of evil person would take their children from them and probably do unspeakable horrors to the people they loved most in the world. They lied to themselves that one day everything would be fine and dandy. They told themselves that they were still parents and they told me I was part of their family.

I felt nausea clutch my stomach at the thought of something happening to my mom. If I lost my mom, I would lose all the family I knew. My dad had skipped town and hadn't paid child support for years and my mom's parents were in Ecuador. I could barely speak any Spanish and they were too poor to help me.

Could Mrs. Walters do something to my mom? Would she? People who had lost their grip on reality were capable of anything and everything. There were no barriers, no stops and certainly no regrets.

I broke into a half jog as adrenaline flooded my muscles. No, she wouldn't. She wanted to take care of me since she had no one else. It was in her nature to take more care of people than they needed.

An old conversation I had had with Levi came to mind. I had invited him once to spend the night so we could marathon watch the original Star Wars movies. His parents had agreed right up to the last minute when they changed their minds and decided he was too young to sleep over at a friend's house. We had met instead at Cuppa Joe's for root beer floats. Sitting on the curb at the back of the parking lot, he had announced he would run away soon.

"You'll tell me before you go, right?" I had asked.

"Think you're gonna stop me if I tell you?"

"No, but I can't let you go alone," I had answered. And I had meant it. If he had run away, he would have told me, and I would have gone with him. Then I could have talked him into going home after a day or two because I could never leave my mom alone, either.

I slowed to a walk again when the parking lot and retro colored sign of Cuppa Joe's appeared by the road. Old oaks leaned over the diner and asphalt, dropping leaves and twigs all over the ground. There were several cars and trucks as well as a herd of motorcycles sitting in the lot. On today of all days, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Levi's bicycle.

The air was growing thicker. Not more humid, which I was familiar with, but heavier and harder to breathe. I kept my feet going, one step at a time, closer and closer. I told myself that the note didn't mean anything, it wasn't even in his handwriting. He wouldn't be here. He couldn't be here. Tiny cracks appeared in the sidewalk, racing ahead of me to make the concrete crumble with age. I saw a dead mouse, and my skin prickled in warning.

Rodent carcasses littered the ground. As I glanced around, a sort of double exposure settled on the diner. I could still see the regular building and parking lot, but there was an old, overgrown one visible at the same time. It was the air that made me remember the visions from that morning in the principal's office. All day long, I had been forgetting and then trying to remember the details of my hallucination. It came back to me in a rush – the soldiers, the mud, the campfire, and the worst part of drowning in the water until I woke up back at school. Well, the school part wasn't that bad.

Were these visions my craziness manifesting itself or some kind of connection to Levi? Why could I remember the soldiers so clearly now, but not before? I stepped on a tilted side of the concrete, but watched my foot go through it several inches until it reached the real-life one. The clean sidewalk and tidy diner were overshadowed, but still there.

Stepping around dead mice and bits of fluffy body parts out of principle, I kept going. If Levi had asked me to meet him at Cuppa Joe's, then I would go, dead animals and decrepit building or not.

I giggled. And skipped some. Maybe I was finally going to talk to Levi! I could tell him all about the rose bushes of happy thoughts I had planted in my secret garden for him.

My euphoria wore off by the time I reached the door. It was hanging by one hinge and deep cuts decorated the wood. I swallowed. If my mind was creating this, then nothing would hurt me. But in that case, I'd have serious problems.

If somehow, though, this vision was an alternate reality or glimpse at some other world, then I still had serious problems, but of a different sort. Maybe I'll keep this for myself a little longer, I thought.

I opened the door, which felt and moved like a door hanging on both hinges and walked in. It was quiet and still and in total ruins. Water stains and dust covered the floor. Broken parts of furniture and stuffing from the booths were strewn about the two and a half rows of tables. Cobwebs and vines hung in the corners. The prickling returned to my skin – at several tables scare-crow people were sitting in front of rotted food.

Red string had been used to give them lopsided grins and straw poked out of their canvas cloth skin. They had holes for eyes.

Every fiber of my body told me to run and escape. I patted the closed door behind me, but I stayed put.

meet me at cuppa joes

A rustling whispered from the back of the diner. I quickly slid a butter knife from a table and held it out while I crept towards the sounds.

"Please let me go home," whimpered a boy. He sniffled.

I knew that voice. I hurried for the back, looking for Levi. None of the tables were occupied in the last row, and I checked under them as I went down the aisle. He was hiding under the last one. I gasped and knelt down in front of him. He was still twelve. Crouched in a ball, he was rocking himself and didn't look at me. He was covered in filth and his tears made white streaks down his cheeks.

"Levi?" My heart broke for him.

"Let me go home, I promise I won't tell anyone," he whispered into his knees.

Bile rose up my throat and I choked on it. "I'm here. It's Brooklyn. Can you hear me?" I asked. I reached a trembling hand to touch his matted hair, but no matter how close I seemed, I was too far away to reach him. The double images came into focus: the diner I knew and the dirty, weed choked husk of the diner where a boy who could not be alive and only twelve years old begged to go home.

There were more rodent bodies at our feet. They had been chewed on or cut up.

"I know you're not real," he said, staring past my shoulder. "Go away."

"No, it's me. It's Brooklyn. Where—"

One of the straw-things across the room stood up. It started to hobble towards us.

"I don't want to go to room thirty-nine," Levi begged. "Please. Please, I want to go home."

The straw-man reached our row, leering at me with red stitches.

Real or not real, I had to get out of there. "Levi, can you hear me?" The terrified boy kept shaking and crying. It was hopeless. I twisted to stand and face the thing.

It was gone. I looked down. Levi was gone, too, a wadded napkin on the floor where he had been. But the diner was still in ruins. I noticed movement reflected in a few shards of the mirror near the restrooms, and whipped around ready to fight. It was only myself.

Dropping the knife, I grabbed table for support. I was a scare-crow thing. My eyes were gaping holes that straw was coming out of.

Iron hard hands locked around my biceps from behind and a man whispered, "Lambs for the slaughter make such easy pickings. Get out while you can." Then he pushed me away.

I raced for the door. Glancing back as I opened it, I saw the straw-man bending to look under the table.

I was a good fifty yards from the diner when I stopped running to catch my breath. Everything appeared normal. There was only one picture. Someone yelled my name. Kaylee was driving up, waving at me from the front of her car.

"Do you wanna go to Cuppa Joe's?" she asked, popping her gum.