Chapter 5: Where You Think You’re Going, Amy?
Cecily was staring at August like he was crazy. “It’s Carly Rae Jeppson,” he repeated, straining his ears to hear the start of the second verse.
She shook her arm out of his grasp. “August, there is no way in hell Carly Rae Jeppson is here right now!”
August made a face at his sister. “I didn’t mean Carly Rae herself is here, dumbass!” Cecily’s swearing lessons were finally sticking. “I mean someone is singing a Carly Rae Jeppson song!”
“You gave me nothing at all, but still you’re in my way…” the mysterious female voice continued, this time clear enough for Cecily to hear it too.
Cecily grabbed August’s arm. “It’s Call Me Maybe!” she gasped, shaking him as if he hadn’t heard it first. “Someone in this world knows Call Me Maybe!”
“And what is more quintessentially Earthly than 2000s pop music?” August said, starting to pull Cecily toward the voice. “Either she’s been to Earth or she knows someone who has!”
The two of them ran off the path toward the singing. The further from the path they got, the more misshapen the trees seemed, and the more different colors their bark and leaves took on. August’s heart was racing and he felt oddly like he was going to cry. He had felt so much confusion and fear since arriving in this world, he hadn’t really given himself time for homesickness, but hearing this tiny slice of Earth made him realize how much he missed the little things: music, restaurants, peanut butter.
Call Me Maybe drew them onward like a siren song until August and Cecily burst into a grassy clearing where they found a large wooden building with no windows. A woman was pulling a small wagon covered with a tarp toward the large front door, singing as she walked. When she heard August and Cecily rush through the bushes, she stopped singing just before the start of the last chorus and looked up at them.
“Who are you?” she asked bluntly. She was short, Asian, and looked to be in her mid-30s, and in her ponytail, orange t-shirt, and jeans she looked so blessedly normal that August wanted to cry again.
“You were singing Call Me Maybe,” Cecily announced. “How do you know that song?”
The woman’s mouth dropped open and she let go of the wagon, slowly approaching the twins. “How do you know that song?” she asked softly, taking in the sight of their ordinary clothing and lack of supernatural features. She reached out and tentatively touched August’s arm as if to make sure he was real. Then she burst into tears and embraced them both.
“Woah, are… are you okay?” August asked worriedly. The woman continued to sob as she squeezed them, and August and Cecily exchanged a confused look and hesitantly hugged her back.
After 30 seconds or so, the stranger pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, I just… You’re from Earth, right?”
“Yes!” August exclaimed. “You’re the first other person we’ve met from there, and we’ve been here for over two months! Do you know if there’s anyone else?”
The woman shook her head. “There’s no one else,” she said, her voice a bit hoarse from crying. “I haven’t found another person from Earth in the six years I’ve been here.”
“Six years?” Cecily practically shouted. “Shit, you’ve been here for six years?” She looked at August with growing panic. “I can’t spend six years here, August. I can’t be stuck here that long!”
The woman put a comforting hand on Cecily’s arm, standing up a bit straighter. “Just breathe, kid. We’re in this together now.” She wiped her eyes and looked around them, then back at the house behind her. “I think we have a lot to talk about, so would you like to come inside? My name is Amy, by the way.”
Amy’s house was very dark from the lack of windows, but she quickly started a fire in the hearth and lit an oil lamp on a table in her kitchen. The whole situation created a very mysterious and frankly creepy vibe, but August wasn’t worried about his and Cecily’s chances. Amy was shorter and thinner than either of them and reminded August of a friendly aunt–not that he had any aunts to compare her to.
“Sorry it’s a bit stuffy in here,” Amy apologized as she pulled a third chair to the table and they all sat down. “I didn’t have any glass when I was building this place, so I didn’t bother with windows.”
“You built this?” August asked in surprise, looking around the sturdy structure. The house seemed to be about the same size as August and Cecily’s, but the floor plan was a bit odd: the front door opened directly to the combined kitchen and living room, then there was a closed door that would presumably lead to the rest of the house.
Amy nodded. “Yes, it took me a few months, but I was able to get some help toward the end.” She propped her head up in her hands and looked at the twins across the table. “So, tell me about yourselves!”
“Well, we’re August and Cecily Weaver,” August began, feeling like he was introducing himself on the first day of class. “We’re both 20 years old and are from Norwalk, Connecticut. We’re still not sure how we ended up here, it was a really strange event…”
“What about you?” Cecily cut him off and shifted focus to Amy. “What’s your story?” August grimaced slightly at her abruptness, but when Cecily wanted information she wasn’t very patient about waiting for it.
Amy got up and retrieved a sheet of paper from under her couch cushion. “I wrote this in case I went crazy from being here too long and forgot who I was,” she explained with a smile that definitely clashed with the alarming thing she had just said. She noticed August’s expression and quickly added, “I haven’t forgotten who I am, I just thought it would be fun to use as a visual aid!” She held up the paper so the twins could see it as she read aloud: “Amy Kim, age 31–I guess it’s 37 now, I should update that. I’m a mechanical engineer from Hillsboro, Oregon. I got zapped here on October 23rd, 2013–”
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“Wait,” Cecily interrupted again, “2013? I thought you said you’d been here six years.”
“I have,” Amy said with furrowed eyebrows. “I’ve been very thorough about keeping track of the days.”
“Well, it’s 2023 now, so if you left in 2013, it’s actually been ten years!” Cecily and Amy stared each other down for a few seconds, then Amy sat back in her chair with a heavy exhale.
“I didn’t even think about time moving differently here,” she said, slightly stunned. “I’ve really missed ten years?”
“I wish it was twelve, it would be so much easier to keep track if it was a nice, even double,” August murmured, earning himself horrified glares from both women. “Sorry, that was insensitive, I just don’t like doing math,” he quickly apologized, holding up his hands in surrender.
“So, if we’ve been here two months, it’s actually been…” Cecily shrugged and immediately gave up on her mental calculation.
“3.3 months,” Amy finished, pulling a blank piece of paper from under the couch cushions and starting to write on it. “If time is moving slower here than on earth, are we also aging more slowly? Or are the rotations of this planet or whatever we’re on just slower than Earth but we’ll age at the same pace?” Amy tapped her pencil to her chin. “People don’t age differently on Mars, do they?”
“We haven’t really done much on Mars yet,” August explained apologetically, and Amy shook her head.
“Yeah, I figured we weren’t on track to get there in ten years. It’s just a thought experiment. I’m not sure what the implications of this time difference are for us, although I suppose it only really matters if we go back.”
“If we go back?” Cecily repeated. “What do you mean if? We’re definitely going back, we just have to come up with a way to do it!” She looked at Amy. “Right?”
Amy sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Cecily. I’ve been here a long time and I just found out I’ve been here even longer than I thought. Even if I did go back, I’ve probably been presumed dead, so all my stuff will be gone, my job will be gone, my boyfriend will have moved on. I won’t have anything to go back to.”
“But, your loved ones will still be happy to see you, won’t they?” August asked tentatively. “I mean, they’d want to know you’re alive.”
Amy shrugged. “Yes, I’m sure they would, but to be honest, there aren’t that many of them. There’s Jason, obviously, but like I said, having his girlfriend reappear after being missing for ten years may not be a welcome event. And I have some friends and a few cousins that I keep in touch with, and my grandma, but if it’s been ten years she may not even be around anymore.” Her face fell, then she cleared her throat and looked at August. “But, of course, you two are young and probably have a lot of people to get back to, so we should definitely prioritize getting you home!”
Actually… August thought, looking at Cecily. From the sound of it, Amy had no parents, siblings, or close friends other than her boyfriend, and August could see that Cecily was wondering the same thing he was. Was there a pattern in the kind of person that ended up here? You can’t draw conclusions with a sample size of three, he chided himself. Plus, a magical world that exclusively kidnapped people without parents would be pretty cliché.
There was a thump on the roof and Amy’s face brightened. “Ah, my friend is here! Let me introduce you guys!”
August and Cecily followed Amy outside, where she turned to look at the roof of her house. “Bright! Is that you?” A head poked out over the edge of the roof to look down at them and Amy grinned. “Come on down, I have some people I want you to meet!”
August watched the person on the roof stand, then unfurl two enormous wings and fly down to land right in front of them. “Bright, this is August and Cecily. August and Cecily, this is Bright,” Amy introduced them. Of all the fascinating people August had met in this world so far, Bright was certainly the most interesting to look at. The Weavers had very dark skin compared to most people they’d met, but Bright’s skin was as pitch black as a new limosine, contrasting sharply with his pure white hair, which fell shaggy around his ears. He was a bit taller than August and Cecily, with electric blue eyes and two dark, feathered wings stretching out from his back.
“It’s nice to meet you,” August managed to say through his surprise.
Bright whispered something and August took a step closer. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“I said you look very soft and weak,” Bright whispered.
Amy swatted his arm. “Bright, be nice! You don’t want to make a bad first impression.”
“Why not?” Bright whispered. “I don’t want them to like me.”
“Well, you’ve succeeded immediately,” Cecily told him, crossing her arms. “Do you always whisper like that?”
Bright glared at her and Amy bit her lip uncomfortably. “Okay, that didn’t go as I’d hoped. Bright has been very helpful to me the last few years, and he’s actually great once you get to know him! And Bright, the Weavers are from where I’m from, so I want you to be kind to them. I’m going to help them get home.”
Bright’s face didn’t change as he whispered, “Good. Then I won’t have to look at them anymore.”
“You just met us!” Cecily yelled, throwing her arms up in the air. “Amy, why did you introduce us to this asshole? He is by far the most obnoxious person we’ve met here, and that’s counting our neighbor that keeps teleporting into our house!”
Amy looked at her sharply. “Who’s your neighbor?”
“A little girl named Glow. She and her father live a few minutes away from us,” Cecily answered, and August watched Amy’s eyes widen.
“Oh, we have even more to talk about than I realized!” she said. “Let’s get back inside. Bright, would you like to join us?”
Please say no, August silently willed, and Bright glared at him as if he knew August’s thoughts–which, in this world, was a real possibility.
“No, I need some time away from these two to remember why life is worth living,” Bright whispered, gesturing at August and Cecily.
“Are these insults pre-rehearsed?” August demanded. “It really feels like you’ve been waiting all day to use that one.” He could have sworn he saw the tiniest flicker of a smile on Bright’s face as the winged jerk leapt into the air and took flight, circling the house once like a vulture before flying away.
“Sorry about him,” Amy said, although it looked like she was holding in a giggle as she led them back inside the house. Instead of sitting back down at the kitchen table, she opened the door to the rest of the house, revealing a single large room full of tables and tools. There were scraps of metal piled in the corner, and in the center was a larger table with what looked like a partially finished machine.
August narrowed his eyes at the contraption. “Is that… a Roomba?”
Amy smiled and nodded, absently picking up a wrench and tightening a bolt. “Now,” she said, turning toward them with a smile on her face and a wrench in her hand. “Let’s talk about your neighbors.”