Reality Check

The Ghosts of Illinois

Hot Air Balloon (by Owl City)

"I'll be out of my mind, and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon. So let's spend the afternoon in a cold hot air balloon . . ."

___

There were lots of things you shouldn't do. Like holding an umbrella in a lightning storm, or touching a hot stove, or hitting a mad scientist with a baseball bat to keep said scientist from killing one of your favorite characters. The list goes on. And in that list, Owen was pretty sure it included that you shouldn't, above all, go to the villain for guidance. Ever.

But what were they doing? Going to the villain for guidance. As much as Owen wanted to argue more, he didn't exactly have any more points to give. Bethany was right — neither of them had the slightest clue of how to fix the worlds. Similar concepts had happened in books, where worlds were out of place and needed fixing. But the way to fix things had always been automatic. Simple. Usually because magic was involved, and with the wave of a wand everything was normal again. Here, he doubted there was anything that easy to fix the worlds.

So left with no better ideas, Owen agreed to Bethany's idea. Only because he knew that even if he didn't, she'd probably go behind his back and do it anyway. No matter how often he told her that that wasn't how friendship worked. Apparently, that's how their friendship worked. Annoying, but something he'd gotten used to. So even though this idea made him really uncomfortable, he wasn't about to let her talk to Nobody alone.

After hearing the news about Nobody, they'd left the police station, skirting around the street until it was out of sight. The same place where, no doubt, their moms would be pulling up any moment now. Only when they got there they'd discover that their kids weren't there, because they were trying to find the villain that'd tried to kill them. Definitely not the best thing for a mom to hear.

A cold chill sank into Owen's skin as they walked down the street, wearing less layers than they should be in the twenty-something degree weather. Sometime in the time they'd left the police station, Owen had found his phone buried in the pocket of his backpack. He'd forgotten all about it, thinking it'd been lost somewhere in the fictional world. A totally likely idea, given everything they'd gone through in the past few days.

It wasn't like his phone worked in the fictional world, though, so he hadn't even bothered using it. Now, it was useful for something. There was only one jail in town, a few miles away from the police station. And since Owen and Bethany had no idea where it was, using his GPS proved to be the next best idea. He liked to think of it as the location spell of the real world . . . except way more average and boring. But still, it was helpful for getting them where they needed to go.

"Okay!" Owen said, holding his phone out in front of him. "So here we . . . turn onto Oak road."

Bethany gave him a confused look. "Uh, which road?"

"What do you mean? We just follow the-" Owen looked up, and he saw what she meant. "Oh."

The road was otherwise fine, just a few sinkholes and scratches here or there. The more noticeable thing was the street sign, which had toppled over and crashed onto the sidewalk, looking bent out of shape. Down the block, some of the streetlights had fallen over or been completely destroyed, or both. While the GPS still told them the names of the roads, this might be harder when they couldn't tell what some of the streets were called.

Owen bent down to look at the fallen street sign. Even the letters appeared to be scratched out, barely readable. "Well . . . I think it says Oak on here."

Bethany shrugged. "I guess. I just hope the GPS is right, or else we might never get to jail."

Stepping over the fallen street sign, they turned the corner, speed-walking down the frigid street. Owen shivered, holding his arms tighter around him. He might've at least been wearing a jacket, but that still wasn't enough to block out the chill coming from the air. Definitely not enough. If he could do magic, he probably could snap his fingers and be wearing a coat right now. After all this was over, maybe Kiel could teach him to do cool stuff like that.