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CAIN
INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL IS a bit like shitting your pants. You don't even realize that it happened until its too late, and when you do, it's just an embarrassment for everyone.
Picture this: one second you're standing in your normal woods in your normal town with your normal friends. The next second, you push yourself through a thin, flexible barrier (kind of like those beaded curtains potheads and psychics use for doors) and, suddenly, you find yourself in a completely different world. It was that quick and that sudden. Just thinking about it makes me sick with vertigo.
But it's not that it's noticeably a different world. It's practically the same place that I left. A little patch of woods in the White Mountains, the northern tip of Appalacia, just outside of Warwick, New Hampshire. There are snow-capped mountains the sizes of giants and thick woods just beginning to bud with spring. The rift, a couple feet away from me, is in the same place here as it was back home. But this isn't the Warwick I left behind. There's no dramatic changes, but everything's just off enough that I can tell something's wrong.
We'd entered the woods in the dark, but here the sky burns with daylight. The air's cool and heavy with the scent of pine needles and fresh water. On one side of me looms a gray steel fence as tall as an old sugar maple. On the other side of me, maybe fifty feet away, is a smaller fence of barbed wire.
I feel doubts beginning to eat away at my courageâwhat if my friends don't end up in the same place as me? What if Rachel isn't in this dimension, or, even worse, what if she's dead like everyone thinks she is? What if I never find her again? What if the rift closes up while we're in here, and we get ourselves stuck in this place for good?
"Daddy Trump, are you happy?" I ask the wall.
The rift suddenly ripples like lightning in water, and where there was nothing, now there's a boy. A very adorable, very confused boy: Atlas. It was that suddenânothing one second, something the next. I want to hug him, I'm so happy he made it here.
He tilts his head back like he's trying to soak up all of the sunlight he can, slowly spinning around to take this strange world in.
"Weird," I ask, "isn't it?"
"Is that Trump's wall?" he asks, nodding towards it with his chin.
"I don't think so. It's too cold here to be the Mexican border." I shrug. I mean, that was my first thought, too, but now that I'm thinking about it, it doesn't seem very likely. "Unless in this AU Trump is scared of Canada."
"Help!" Atlas bursts out laughing. "The Canadians are attacking! Stealing our jobs and fucking our wives! Replacing our deep-fryers with maple syrup!"
And then the rift ripples again. Meredith seems to dive head-first into existence and promptly slams her head into the ground. "Ow, fuck!" she yelps.
Atlas and I help her to her feet. She's gone a little cross-eyed, but other than that, she seems fine.
"'Sup, heteros?" Meredith greets us.
"Stop being such a heterophobe, Meredith, God!" I chide.
"I can't help it!" Meredith tilts her head, squinting up at the wall. "What the fuck? Is this some fucked-up universe where dogs keep humans as pets? I can't stand the taste of kibble!" The last part comes out as an irritating whine, like a little kid throwing a tantrum.
"We thought it was Trump's wall," I reply.
"But, like, the Canadian version," Atlas clarifies.
"Maybe the Canadians finally got sick of our bullshit," Meredith suggests. "I can't say I blame them."
And there it is. The ripple. Atlas and I both shut up, our eyes locked on it.
Not noticing what we do, Meredith continues daydreaming about Canada. "What do y'all think the Canadians' breaking point was? Maybe some higher-up confirmed that Trudeau's Fidel Castro's son and everyone went apeshit."
For a second, nothing happens. Then the ripple fades.
"Silas . . . " voices Atlas.
"What?" asks Meredith, spinning in a slow circle, her eyes full of light as if she expects him to pop out of thin air.
The rift ripples again. We wait for a second, and nothing happens.
"It's like he's trying to get through but something's stopping him," Atlas mumbles.
"What do you mean?" Meredith demands, her voice a little shrill. She's stopped spinning, her eyes going dark. Now, she just stands there with her arms crossed, looking at Atlas as if expecting him to have all the answers. "Oh, my God! Do you think it has something to do with how he reacted to the rift?"
"Maybe . . . " Atlas shrugs helplessly.
"Maybe it's because he's a virgin and only non-virgins can get through," Meredith suggests, laughing nervously.
"Meredith, you're literally the biggest virgin I know," I tell her.
"Oh, shut up!" Meredith makes a Regina George-esque face. "I'd say you're literally the biggest whore I know, but that's slutshaming and I don't believe in shaming others for their sex lives! Cain, you can be a whore if you want to! I'll still love you!"
I would respond to her, but, all of a sudden, a shaking hand reaches through the rift like it's trying to grab hold of something to pull it through. The hand's black, but not just because the person it belongs to is dark-skinnedâbecause it's covered in so much dark blood it looks more like a heart than a hand.
"Oh, my God!" Meredith exclaims, and, like the true ride-or-die that she is, she grabs hold of it and pulls with everything she has, not even caring that it's covered in blood. "Silas!"
The hand reacts, wrapping itself around her wrist and digging its nails into her skin. She tugs for a second, not making any progress, and then, all of a sudden, the ripples fade again.
But this time Silas tumbles into existence.
He sinks to his knees, coughing up blood. His face is covered in the stuff, and so is both of his arms. His clothes are ripped to shreds. He looks like he got in a fight with a vampire/costume designer and lost.
Meredith kneels in front of him, tilting his chin up to force him to look at her. He coughs again, and blood splatters against her face. Disgusted, she wipes it away with her shirtsleeve. "Silas, buddy, are you all right?"
"Don'tâtrustâtheâgloryâhole," he gasps between gags, looking as haunted as I've ever seen him. He pries Meredith's fingers off his chin.
Those would be some damn good last words, but he doesn't die. He just stays there for a while, hunched over on the ground like he's drunk, ripping the grass out of the dirt in fistfuls. Meredith stays in front of him, looking both worried and disgusted. And once Silas has coughed it out of his system, he stands on his own, no assistance needed, and calmly wipes the blood off his face.
"What happened?" Meredith asks, rising with him.
"Some stuff," he ominously answers. "I got stuck between two dimensions, the usual. So what is this place?"
"We don't know." Atlas shrugs, uncomfortable. He doesn't like not knowing things. He doesn't know my middle name, and it drives him crazy. But the jokes on him! I don't have one. I know his, though. It's Ronaldo.
"Okay," Silas says. "Which way are we gonna go?"
"Huh?" asks Atlas.
Silas elaborates: "Should we walk along the bigger fence and try to find a way out, or should we climb the smaller one?"
"Definitely the smaller one," Atlas mumbles. "I wouldn't bother making a fence that big if I was just going to leave the gate wide open."
"Hell yes!" Meredith exclaims. "I love climbing shit. I think I was a mountain goat in a past life."
"You fucking furry," I reply.
"I think you were a dick in your past life," Meredith decides. "Oh, wait! That's your current one!"
"And that's why I love myself so much!"
"Oh, go choke on yourself."
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SINCE VERIZON DOESN'T HAVE AN INTERDIMENSIONAL PLAN, I don't have any cell reception in this free-wifi-less hellscape. Maybe I should switch to Sprint. So, alas, while the four of us walk in search of some signs of civilization, there's nothing to do other than play Minecraft PE. The only reason I still have it is because my phone won't let me delete it. For real! Every time I try, it either crashes my phone or shows up again the next day, ready to be played. It must be some virus I got when I found that Minecraft porn site a while ago and binge-watched every video on it.
That stays between us. Capisce?
We scale the fence, and it takes us two hours to find anything. That's two hours of Minecraft Steve getting himself off with a diamond pickaxe, and two hours of my life I'll never get back. And the thing that we find is hardly worth my time, either. A house and a barn that look like they were built in the 1800's. The barn is small and gray, the house two-stories and painted a God-awful shade of yellow.
By the time we reach it, the sun isn't burning quite so hotly in the sky. The world's started to fade to twilight.
"I think we should stay here," Atlas muses, looking up at the house. "I mean, this is the first actual structure we've found. Who knows how long it'll take us to find another one? We should take the chance while we have it."
"It doesn't look like anyone's home," I add. "Y'all feel like breakin' in?"
"Oh, goodness," voices Silas.
"Hell yes!" says Meredith.
"But only to get cleaned up and find something to eat," Atlas, the voice of reason, decides. "We can sleep in the barn."
I nod. "Like the jackasses we are."
We head up to the house, and Silas lags several feet behind the rest of us, mumbling about how he doesn't think this is a good idea. Before we go in, just to be safe, I ring the doorbell and Meredith knocks. There's no answer. We push the door open and creep inside.
Not a single light is turned on. The house feels like it's been empty for daysâor maybe even years. In the entryway hangs a framed crayon drawing on a crumpled sheet of paper: a smiley four-person family drawn by a childish hand. Meredith finds a light-switch by the stairwell, illuminating the warm wooden floors. Atlas flits off to investigate the rest of the house. Our voices echo, the house is so big and so silent and so empty. I feel like I have to whisper, like I have to pay my respects to the dead.
Oh, my God. Are they dead, the family in the cute little drawing?
"Silas," I order, "you need to shower and get all that blood off of you."
"Blood?" Silas asks. His hand brushes against his cheek, and his nails come away crusted with dried blood. He blankly peers at his fingertips. "Oh. Blood."
"Yeah."
"We should all try and get showered," Meredith points out. "Like Atlas said, we've gotta take a chance while we have it. And I don't want to have to travel around with a bunch of nasty guys."
Upon hearing his name, Atlas pounds down the stairwell. "What?"
Meredith repeats herself. "I said we should all try and shower while we're here."
"Ah. Yeah. There's two bathroomsâone upstairs and one on this level. Silas and Meredith, you two go first. Me and Cain will keep watch and find something to eat."
"Food," I agree, because I'm suddenly ravenous, but when am I not?
Meredith races upstairs, and Silas wanders off to find the first-floor bathroom.
"Kitchen's this way," Atlas says, leading me through the living room like he's lived here his whole life.
The kitchen has old, yellowed wallpaper and these ugly fake grapes hanging over the oven. There are huge floor-to-ceiling windows stretching along one wall, and a wooden table nestled up against them. Atlas pushes open a door to reveal a walk-in pantry. For a couple minutes, we rifle through the pantry, searching for canned foods and non-perishable snacks, like granola bars. In the kitchen cabinets, we find a bunch of water-bottles that we fill with ice cold tap water. Other than a handful of unhealthy snacks, we didn't exactly think to pack any food from home, oopsies.
(I was in a rush, okay? The only things I thought to bring were some clothes and my hair-styling products. Because even though I may not be straight, my priorities are.)
"Okay, we've gotta make an actual meal while we're here. What's something easy?" Atlas asks me.
"Because this is our last day to eat real food!" I reply, parodying him. Although I'm joking, my stomach's already twisting at the thought of a Nutrigrain bars and Chef Boyarde centric diet.
"Exactly!" Atlas doesn't realize I'm making fun of him. "So, Chef Cain, what are you gonna make?"
"Why do I have to make you something?"
"Your dad's literally a chef and I can't even make Ready Rice without fucking up."
"Your mom works for the Villa, too."
"Yeah, but she just handles all the money stuff. I don't think she even knows how to make pizza." He pauses. "So what's on the menu?"
"It's a sin to use pre-made pasta, but I saw noodles and marinara in the pantry."
"Are they dick noodles?"
It sounds like a combination of my two favorite things. I'm instantly on the defensive, upset that I've never heard of such a delicacy before. "What the hell's a dick noodle?"
"Exactly what they sound like. Noodles shaped like dicks."
"Why are they literally not in my mouth right now?"
"A different kind of dick can be, if you want."
"Shut up. I need to make my spaghetti."
I find a pot under the sink, fill it with "water, and put it on the stove to boil. Atlas sits on the counter and watches me with interest. On a whim, while I'm waiting for the water to boil, I check the fridge, andâbingo!
"What'd you find?" asks Atlas.
"Oh, fuck yes." I hungrily grab the seran-wrapped slab of ground beef. "Mama's gonna have meat sauce tonight."
"I'll literally break up with you if you ever say that again," Atlas threatens.
"That again!"
"You're intolerable. Eat my entire ass."
"Gladly." I grab a pan from the cabinet under the sink and dump the meat into it.
"That pan reminds me of myself," says Atlas.
"Elaborate."
"Hot and pan."
"Please don't fuck the pan," I beg. "I need its meat."
"Are you talking about me?" he asks.
Meredith appears in the doorway, dressed in pajamas and fuzzy socks, her hair wrapped in a towel. "Oh, my God. Have you guys been fucking?" she asks, naturally.
"Mer-Bear, dearest, no." I shake my head, stirring my meat. "I'm making spaghetti."
She hops up on the counter beside Atlas. "Yum."
"Either of you two know how to finish spaghetti?" I ask. "The shower is calling for me."
They shake their heads.
"You're both hopeless." I sigh. "So you just, like, stir the meat around until it's all brown and good and then turn the heat to low and mix the marinara into it. Put the noodles into the pot when the water starts boiling, and stir it around for a bit to keep it from sticking. Get them out after about ten minutes. Got it?"
Meredith rolls her eyes. "If women were made to cook, Cain, then why did God make us so badass? Atlas can handle it."
I dart off to the second-floor bathroom. I usually take really long showers, but I try to hurry, since the water smells like rotten eggs and I don't trust Atlas and Meredith with my spaghetti. I throw on some clean clothes and run downstairs after I'm done.
When I get there, Atlas has been replaced with Silas. The noodles are in the pot and Silas is pouring the sauce into the pan. Meredith's standing beside him, egging him on.
"How much longer do they have?" I ask, in reference to the noodles.
Meredith bursts out laughing.
"About three minutes," Silas replies.
"Perfect!" I shoo them both away from the stove before they can hurt themselves (or, even worse, hurt my pasta). "Get out of the way, my children. Mama Cain will finish prepping our feast."
By the time Atlas appears, fresh-faced and pajama-clad, dinner's ready. I tell my friends to help themselves while I root through the fridge in search of some parmesan.
"I forgot the cloth I use to clean my glasses," Atlas complains as he carries his plate over to the kitchen table. "I have all this glasses-cleaning liquid and nothing to wipe it off with."
"Oh, boohoo," Meredith replies.
"Also," he adds, sitting down, "I don't think the owner of this house is coming back anytime soon. There's a glass of milk in one of the bedrooms with mold growing in it. Do you guys just want to stay in here tonight? I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"
"I'm down to sleep in a stranger's bed." I fill my own plate and top it full of enough parmesan to drown a man.
"Babe, that's cheese, not cocaine," Atlas reminds me.
I drop my plate beside his and sit down. "It's Shavuot, I have an excuse! God wants me to consume as much cheese as my body can possibly hold!"
Atlas's eyes go fuzzy. He stares down at his pasta as if he's staring down God herself.
"Attie?" I ask, shaking his arm. "What's wrong?"
"We shouldn't have come," he says.
"Why not?" asks Meredith, swirling her pasta around.
"We don't know where the fuck we are. We don't even have a plan. Nobody even knows we're here. And how are we even going to find Rachel and Avani? For all we know, they could be in a different world entirely." He shakes his head. "If we make it back to our dimension alive, my ass is gonna be grounded until I'm thirty-seven."
"We'll come up with a plan of attack in the morning," Silas decides. "Okay? We'll find them, and we'll make it back home safely. I know it."
"Totally." Meredith nods in agreement. "Cain, stop being such a fucking parmesan hog and hand her over."
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I WAKE UP in an empty house.
I push myself out of my bed, and my bare feet dig into the sun-soaked wooden floor. It creaks under my weight, a house settling under old bones. The air's suffocating me with the weight of something that should be, but isn't: the steam coming off of Bianca's coffee, the scent of chocolate-chip waffles, the sound of sizzling bacon. I can't even hear Rachel snoring in the room below mineâbut I guess I've been missing that for a while now.
This could just be some random Dreamscape. I could be vividly hallucinating or on drugs. Maybe I never actually left my dimensionâmaybe all of that was a dream.
But I know that this place is real, that this is my home that I left behind. Empty and abandoned, now, but my home. Not some cheap imitation of it.
Something is wrong and everything is wrong.
My pajamas don't quite reach my ankles. I notice this, mainly, because I only ever wear pajamas when I'm cold or if I have company. The shirt that I'm wearing is horribly baggy and a hideous shade of Pepsi blue, which disgusts me. I can pull off any color but blue. It really drowns me out, you know? I'm too pale to pull it off, too dark-haired and too dark-eyed. It makes me look like a bruise.
Downstairs, a lock clicks. The front door's pushed open. Cerberus barks.
Something isn't right. Something's horribly not right. I'm wearing hideous pajamas that don't fit me. Bianca and my dad are gone and so is Rachel but that's nothing new. Someone's coming into my house, someone that doesn't belong here. I didn't fall asleep in my own bed. I didn't even fall asleep in this dimension.
Quietly, ever so quietly, I rifle through the top drawer of my dresserâbut dammit. I took my handgun with me. I'll have to find something else to useâooh, maybe an umbrella? It's got a pointy end. I can always shove it up whoever it is's ass, turn 'em into a shish-kabob. Delish. I brandish it like I'm holding a sword and not a Hannah Montana umbrella and begin the trek downstairs, careful to avoid all the weak spots in our stairs.
I'm about three-fourths of the way down the second flight of stairs when I hear a voice: Atlas's mom, Eva. But why is she here? And where is my dad?
I tiptoe down the last few steps and peek around the wall, clutching my umbrella to my chest. Nick and Lili are sitting on our couch, their suitcases on the floor, looking as awkward as if they were in a stranger's home. Eva sits beside them, Cerberus in her lap. In front of them lay a bag of his food, some of his favorite toys, his dog bed. He rolls over onto his back, his stomach exposed, his tongue sticking out of his mouth while he makes this odd snorting noise. I just stand there and watch while she rubs his belly and coos at him. I feel like I'm intruding on something private.
"Did your family leave you?" she asks him, her baby-voice almost identical to my dad's. "Did they? Did they, huh? Oh, you poor little baby. How could they leave such a sweet little boy all by himself?"
I tilt my head. His family didn't leave him. Dad's still here. Bianca's still here. Nick and Lili are literally sitting right there. I might think I'm the center of the universe, but it's not the end of the world if I disappear.
Lili coughs into the crook of her arm. "Um, thanks for letting us stay with you tonight." She pauses awkwardly. "Can you get us to the airport by seven tomorrow? Our flight leaves at nine."
What? They're leaving? Already?
"Mhm." Eva smiles sweetly. "I don't mind one bit."
For once in his life, Nick actually says something: "You said things like this happen often?"
Eva nods. "Your uncle's trying his hardest, but Cain's not the most obedient child."
"Do you have any idea where they went?" Lili questions.
"This town has its secrets." Eva says ominously, like she's in fucking Riverdale. "Stay away from this place if you know what's good for you."
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THAT MORNING, Meredith brings terrible news.
There'd been enough rooms for each of us to get our own, but the master bed was big enough to fit all four of us, and no one had wanted to be alone in such a big, empty, alien place. I'd woken up around three to Meredith's foot in my mouth.
(To clarify: her foot isn't the terrible news.)
Meredith pounds into the bedroom, waking the rest of us up. I drowsily sit up. Silas, startled, flings himself out of the bed, screaming.
"Guys," she says urgently. "I started my period, and I don't have any fucking tampons. I looked everywhere around this shithole, and there's not so much as a pad. I had to wrap my underwear in a washcloth. Oh, also, you're all sleeping in a pool of my blood."
(To clarify: her period isn't the terrible news.)
Less chaotically, Atlas and I roll ourselves out of the bed and join Silas on the floor. Sure enough, when I look back up at it, there's a giant stain in the middle of the white sheets, rose-colored and putrid-scented.
"So that's our task of the day," Atlas mumbles, fumbling for his glasses. He finds them on the bedside table and slides them on. "Finding you some tampons."
"Also we kind of need to get out of here because there's a truck pulling into the driveway," Meredith adds, quickly.
(To clarify: the truck is the terrible news.)
"Shit!" I exclaim.
"Why didn't you tell us that first?" Atlas demands. "That's kind of, you know, time sensitive information!"
Meredith just shrugs and looks down at her toes. Half of her hair's brushed out. The other half looks like she slept on a bed of balloons. "In the moment, the whole blood thing seemed more important!"
The front door swings open.
"How long has it been?" Atlas asks Meredith, panicking.
"Since what?" she shrilly replies.
"Since you saw the truck!"
"Like, ten minutes! I saw it, but I had to pee. So I was gonna do that real fast and tell you guys, but then this whole catastrophe happened, and . . . "
"Meredith!" Atlas scolds.
"Atlas!" she retorts in an imitation of his voice.
"Godfuckingdamnit," says a voice, filtered up from the lower level. "What are you damn kids doing in my house?"
"Shit!" Atlas whisper-shrieks. "Hide!"
"But I don't want to go back into the closet," I whine.
"Shut the fuck up!" he insists.
Atlas goes directly against my wishes and throws open the closet anyways. It's about average-sized and so overflowing, the four of us can barely fit inside of it. That is, we can't all fit in it. When Meredith tries to shut the door, it doesn't budge, leaving us completely exposed.
I hear footsteps pounding up the stairs.
"This closet ain't big enough for the four of us," whispers Meredith, but I can hear her voice crescendoing into panic. "Someone needs to come out."
"I'm gay," I say, not too eager to offer myself up like that. I'm too pretty to die. "Does that help?"
She looks at me. "No, you dumbass. I meant it literally. And I will."
"Damn kids always sneaking into my house to have weed and smoke sex!" the same voice screams. "I have a gun, you ass-smarts!"
"Meredithâno, I'll go!" Silas insists. "Stay in here. Please."
But there's no time to argue. It's now or never. The door into the bathroom across the hall creaks open as if the owner of the voice is checking for us in there.
Meredith darts out of the closet, softly closes the door behind her, and that's the last I see of her.
Silas, overwhelmed with panic, shoves me and Atlas into the closet door. It flies open, and the three of us tumble into the room.
"Goddamnit!" I yelp, because really. The closet is safe.
Meredith's standing in the middle of the room, her arms spread in a gesture for peace. Standing in the doorway is a sixty-something-year-old man with no hair other than a gray beard, aiming a gun at her chest.
"Please, this is all a misunderstanding," begs Meredith.
A shot rings out, the bullet missing Meredith entirely. Instead of finding home in her flesh, it ends up in the wall behind her. The kick of the gun had startled the man so badly he'd dropped it the moment after he fired.
There's a second where no one does anything. Silas is sobbing. Meredith and the man glare at each other, the panicked stare of prey meeting an incapacitated predator. And then both parties dive for the gun.
Meredith is quicker than he is, but he has less to lose. She's the first one to reach it, but he grabs hold of it and yanks with everything his sixty-something-year-old body has, shoving his foot into her gut to distract her. She yelps, letting go of the gun, and he slowly climbs to his feet, aiming it at her. Meredith's frozen, staring down the barrel of the gun. Now he knows what the kickback is. He won't drop it a second time.
Here's the thing: I'm dumb and I'm not about to watch one of my best friends die. I charge at the man, running into him with enough force to knock him off his feet. His head slams into the ground, but he doesn't drop the gun. Instead, he aims it at me!
Seriously? I decide to play hero, and this is how I'm treated? No golden laurel wreaths or ballads written about my heroism, but a loaded gun in my face? No wonder so many supervillains start out as superheroes. This is total bull.
I dig my thumbs into his eyes. He screams, finally, finally distracted enough to drop the gun. Meredith grabs it and springs back to her feet.
"Move, Cain!"
I jump up. The man, still screaming, covers his hands with his eyes. There's no blood; the wounds were cauterized.
The wounds were cauterized?
I look down. My hands are smoking. I cauterized his wounds.
Meredith fires the gun. The kickback knocks her back a step, but she doesn't drop the weapon like he did. It's obvious she's never shot before. The bullet flies wildly over the man's body, lodging itself in the wall two feet above his head and at least three feet to the side. He's still screaming.
Meredith fires again. This time, the bullet hits the carpet maybe half a foot from his stomach. She fires again, a series of rapid-fire shots, and one bullet finds home in the man's thigh.
His screams crescendo. His hands fly from his eyes and wrap around his bullet-wound, and, oh, my God, his eyes . . .
His eyes are burning, boiling, blackened, charred.
Meredith continues rapid-fire shooting. Another bullet hits the man's shoulder, another hits his pelvis, another, just below his ribs. His screams quiet. The gun's out of bullets. She keeps shooting.
Atlas wordlessly pries the gun from her hand.
Meredith's obviously a murder virgin. She sinks to the floor, her chest violently heaving, her eyes as wide as the sun.
"It was self defense," she mumbles, frantic. "It was self defense. It was self defense . . . "
Silas stares at her, horrified. His tears have dried on his skin.
I suddenly realize that most people don't take murder as lightly as I do.
Meredith's eyes sweep over me like a vulture picking over the lifeless body of a gazelle. "Is murder still illegal in this dimension?" she asks.
Meredith doesn't even know that I've killed before, and she still looks to me to comfort her in the moments after she's committed her first murder. I guess I'm just that kind of person.
"Meredith," I order, "don't touch the body."
"I know, I'm not stupid!" Her voice comes out a squeak. "I'm not going to prison, am I?"
"Not if I have anything to do with it, no," I assure her.
"If I go to prison in this dimension, will it still go on my permanent record?" she asks, looking on the verge of tears. As if her record's some spotless thing she constantly worries over. She was a part of the Nerf War Fiasco, for God's sake! Her record's as bad as mine!
"Probably not," I say.
"Our fingerprints are all over this place," Atlas points out. He looks almost as frightened as Meredith. "And his body."
"Oh, my God," Silas is saying over and over again. "Oh, my God."
"There's only one way to make sure this doesn't go south," I declare. "Destroy all evidence."
Meredith's lips tremble so hard, she can hardly speak. "How?"
"Burn this place to the ground."