Chapter 1

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019; 3:11 PM

For the second time (being unaware of the first), Camilla spotted a remote in the gutter. Curious, she bent to examine it more closely, wondering if it was broken. As before, it looked something like the remote her uncle had for his expensive Mercedes S550 sedan. Normally, she’d never pick up an object from the gutter. Sure, as hell, she regretted ever touching this one.

The shock knocked Camilla flat on her back and senseless. After a moment, she coughed into her hand and groaned, raising one knee, and then the other to plant her feet flat on the ground. She coughed harshly again, feeling like she’d been struck by lightning, or been hit by a train. She ached everywhere, though not particularly in her right fingertips. She managed to focus on them from six inches away. They didn’t appear burned. Then she realized she was naked.

“What—?” she choked. Panic-stricken, she rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed half-erect. Her neighborhood was gone, replaced by a small clearing surrounded by bare trees. Ten feet away, a grass-covered, wooden slat trapdoor suddenly pushed up from the ground, revealing an opening roughly five-foot square. A girl’s voice arose from the hole.

“I can’t believe we all fit in here!” She laughed, and then gasped. “Watch where you put that hand, Kensington! If you want to keep it, I mean!”

The trapdoor raised perpendicular, balanced precariously for a moment, and then toppled backward, spilling clogs of earth into a pile. “Oh, crap!” the girl cried. “You idiot! Look what you made me do!”

In an alarming pickaninny voice, a boy answered: “I’se sorry, Miss Scawlett! Don’t be whuppin’ on me! I truly—”

“Shush!” The girl cut him off sharply. “Did you hear something outside?” An instant later, a girl with flaming red hair stood and looked directly at Camilla. Both sucked in breath as the girl’s eyes exploded wide at Camilla’s nudity. “No!” she exclaimed, shoving down the boy’s head as he tried to stand up.

“What’s wrong? Who’s out there? It isn’t ... Jesus, it isn’t—?”

“No!” the girl rasped. To Camilla, she said: “Are you all right?”

“Is who all right?” Kensington demanded. “Who’s out there? Why won’t you let me see?”

“Because she’s naked!” the girl hissed, as Camilla vehemently shook her head.

“Naked?”

Camilla had dropped back to a sitting position atop her calves, her knees pressed hard together, arms clamped over her bare chest. She looked wildly around, trying to understand where she was, what was going on, if she had been raped and then dumped in the clearing. Why in the hell were the girl and boy in a hole in the ground with a concealing lid? How did she get here?

The girl looked down. “Give me your coat, Gary.”

“My coat?”

“Yes, your coat! It’s cold, and she doesn’t have anything on.”

“Doesn’t have anything on?”

The girl rolled her eyes and huffed disgustedly. Removing her own jacket, which Camilla noted looked incongruously old-fashioned and worn, the girl made to toss it across, but then hesitated. “Gary, close your eyes,” she instructed.

“What? Why?”

“Because my coat is too short to cover her properly, and I’m gonna give her my shirt to wear. It’s longer, see?”

Camilla watched her yank the tails out from whatever pants she wore, again rolling her eyes, and start to undo the top button.

“No peeking! I mean it, Kensington—close your eyes!” She really was pretty, Camilla thought, embarrassing so, in Camilla’s present state. At least she seemed good-naturedly sweet, not snarky like Jessica would be under similar circumstances. Impossible circumstances.

“How did I get here?” Camilla blurted.

The girl blinked. “You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know!” she wailed.

She was freezing her ass off and naked in some effing horrible nightmare that couldn’t possibly be real. She thrust out her hand desperately for the shirt. Redhead (Maggie, she’d momentarily discover), yanked it back off her shoulders and tossed it far enough to snatch from the air. Camilla hurriedly struggled it on while protecting her chest as well as she could with one arm. Flustered, Maggie watched her button the shirt.

“Are you all right?” she asked again. She gave a disproving glance down as Gary evidently snuck a look up at her bra-clad torso. Even half-hidden behind the lip of the opening, her bra looked as worn and outdated as her coat, which she put on again after delivering an admonishing smack to Gary’s head. “I told you not to look!”

“I didn’t!” Gary protested too stridently.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she scolded, zipping her coat up again.

Liar, liar, pants on fire? Camilla thought dazedly.

“Where am I?” she complained, anxiously looking around.

“You don’t know?” Maggie repeated.

Camilla tried to keep panic-driven anger out of her voice. “Do you think I’d ask, if I knew, dammit?”

Maggie grudgingly moved aside to allow a tall, skinny, bespectacled boy with black hair to stand up beside her. “Holy cow!” he exclaimed, staring at Camilla bug-eyed. Maggie smacked him again.

“Stop that! Can’t you see she’s embarrassed!”

What Gary saw, Camilla knew, was a partially nude, awkwardly pretty, short-haired brunette with an unfortunate complexion and embarrassing braces. She shivered as Gary’s eyes gave her the compulsory up and down, settled on her bare thighs for a long, breathless moment, before returning to her face. At least he hadn’t stared at her lecherously, as might be the case with other boys. He licked his lips and coughed lightly into his hand.