Secrets in the Dark Read Online Free

in
this horrible place —?
    Fortunately, my unsettling
thoughts were interrupted by a sudden
flash of warmth and bright light. I tumbled into the dirt with the
huge fig tree at my back. I lay there, shaking and gasping,
completely disoriented.
    A strange gurgling sound
made me whip my head around to the right.
    What now!
    Olivia and Faith were on
the ground next to me. I was so relieved to see The Three still
together, it took a moment to recognize what I was seeing. Faith
was clutching her stomach, her face a pale green. As I watched, she made another soft sound and gulped
convulsively, one hand pressed to her mouth.
    I had to clear my throat
before I could ask, “You okay?”
    “ I…I think so.” The raspy
sound of her voice didn’t inspire much confidence.
    Olivia scrambled to her
feet. “Just don’t puke on me!”
    Faith got up shakily. “Oh
please! I haven’t done that since we were nine.”
    “ Try last
year!”
    I stood up too,
concentrating on brushing dirt off my pants. Trying to ignore the
two of them as they argued over the last time Faith had lost her
lunch. I jumped and bit my tongue when Olivia exclaimed, loudly,
“Oh, oh…shi—, I mean shoot!”
    Faith’s eyes flew wide
with shock, and I whirled to stare at Olivia in amazement. Olivia
never used swear words. As in not ever — her mom
was death on
swearing.
    I glanced around to see
what upset her. My breath gushed out like someone had punched me in
the stomach. For a moment, it felt like someone had.
    The cemetery was gone. Just...gone! The scent of brine, ever
present this close to the ocean, was gone as well. Instead, the air smelled sweet, like flowers. I glanced
up at the too bright sky. It was a sunlit
blue rather than the grey, stormy sky of moments before.
    “ Beam me up, Scotty!” I
blurted, and peered down at my feet. I did not want to see anything
else! Unfortunately, refusing to look didn’t help. It felt different
here, warm and dry. I should probably be
too hot in my sweatshirt, but I wasn’t. I felt cold. That had to be
the reason my teeth were chattering hard enough to
break.
    Faith must be cold too.
She was shaking so hard she stuttered,
“Wh…where are we? What is this…this place?” She stepped back, shaking her
head in disbelief, and bumped into Olivia. They both shrieked in
surprise, then threw their arms around each other.
    I glanced down where I’d
been absently rubbing my thigh. It was getting hot. Really hot. From inside the pocket where I kept my
cell.
    I pulled out my phone and
stared in confusion as the screen flipped from one app to another.
It stopped briefly on the main screen, but didn’t look right. I
didn’t have a chance to figure out why. I was way too busy moving
the phone to my other hand as it started
to burn my fingers.
    When I looked at the screen
again, the apps were changing so fast they were just a
blur.
    What’s up with my cell?
And where are we?
    Just then, my phone stopped
on the main screen and I tried to read our location. It should be
listed right under the time, which appeared to have frozen at 12:34
pm.
    I shook my head, not
believing my eyes. The location was blank. The space where ‘Santa
Ramona’ should be was empty. Like my phone didn’t know where we
were.
    The symbol for ‘no signal’
flashed at the top of the screen, which kept growing bright then
dim. While I stared in confusion, the time finally changed, but not
in a good way. It raced several minutes ahead, then spun back to
12:34, like it didn’t know what time it was either.
    How can it not know the
time?
    When it let out a sudden
blinding burst of color and piercing high-pitched whine, I almost
dropped it. I cringed and held it as far from me as possible. Then
it went silent and the screen went black. I pushed frantically at
the On button, but it was dead. Totally,
completely dead. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, it was
really-most-sincerely dead.
    Maybe Faith or Olivia’s
phone was still working. “Hey, check