“This doesn’t look like North Carolina,” Tyler whispered.

  “What the hell?” Jake said.

  Ava was shaking her head fast.

  My thoughts were zooming around my head at a dizzying speed. I couldn’t hold on to one thing at a time. Every question and observation I had in that moment was stirred up and my brain turned to mush.

  “This-this-this,” Ava stuttered trying to explain just what ‘this’ was. Cara used to stutter; I thought. It helps if you form the idea before you talk.

  I felt kind of dreamy. I think I was smiling imagining how Cara used to stutter so bad she’d simply refuse to talk but now she almost stopped talking.

  Jake turned on Tyler. “Where’d you take us?”

  Tyler gawped like a fish. I’m allergic to fish, I thought wildly.

  And just like that, I stopped breathing. I sucked at air but none of it got to my lungs.

  I fell to my knees and clutched my throat as my vision began to go black around the edges.

  I barely registered the movement around me, but it seemed like Jake had swung at Tyler. Ava was screaming, and I felt myself dying.

  Honestly, it was an educational moment. I’d always wondered how it must feel in the seconds before you die. I knew it was unethical, but I’d always wanted to interview people in the moments before they bought it and ask them questions. “Hey, I know you’re in a bit of a tough spot, but I was curious as to how you’re feeling right about now?”

  I fell onto my side, my body convulsing slightly. A steady chill crept over me. Death’s fingers.

  The voices of Jake, Tyler, and Ava sounded quiet and far away. Almost like they were at the opposite end of a long tunnel.

  My heart started beating faster and faster in those last terrifying seconds. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  A sting across my face! Pressure on my shoulders!

  I inhaled!

  Then blinked slowly. Ava’s face was inches from mine. She was gripping my shoulders and had pulled me up from the ground slightly. Had she just slapped me?

  “Are you okay?” She asked.

  No, I thought. I almost just died actually. I’m the opposite of good actually. I feel like I just ran a marathon in a snowstorm actually.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Tyler was lying on the ground, breathing raggedly, and his shirt was hanging oddly on his shoulders. He was muttering, “It’s just a dream,” over and over, between pants.

  Jake was pacing with his hands clasped behind his head. “Where the fuck are we?” He glared around at us, demanding answers.

  Tyler squeezed his eyes shut but didn’t say anything.

  I kept one hand pressed to my chest, feeling my heart slowly return to normal, and turned my head slowly, taking in our surroundings. The field of grass stretched out around us, seemingly unending. It was an unnaturally vibrant green. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky above it. It reminded me of an old desktop background. What the hell happened?

  “We died,” Ava whispered from her position crouched next to me. Her eyes were wide as she looked around. “Oh my God. We died, and this is heaven.”

  I frowned. I’d never imagined heaven looking like this.

  Jake scowled. “This isn’t heaven Ava.” He was silent for a moment, then he whispered. “It’s Purgatory.”

  “What’s that?” Ava asked.

  Tyler slowly pushed himself onto his feet, but kept his eyes shut. “Purgatory isn’t real.”

  “How would you know?” Jake hissed.

  Tyler recoiled from him, and I wondered absently how bad the fight between them must’ve been. “I don’t,” he said lamely.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “It’s Purgatory,” Jake repeated. “We’re awaiting judgment from God.”

  I wasn’t Catholic, so I didn’t know too much about Purgatory. Maybe it was real, maybe it wasn’t. But from what I’d heard it was supposed to be all fiery and scary… Nothing like the place I saw now. The field was almost peaceful.

  “So, what,” Ava asked, standing. “We’re just going to wait until God comes down here and damns us to hell?”

  Jake nodded.

  I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them, not wanting to feel the unnatural grass under my hands any longer.

  Had we really died? I would’ve remembered that right?

  I thought about telling them there was no way we’d died without noticing. This couldn’t be Heaven or Purgatory or anything like that. But something held me back from speaking.

  For all of my high school career, I had been intent on not interacting with others. But now, sitting in this field, I felt the time for silent contemplation was over.

  “You guys,” my voice sounded scratchy and small. They turned to look at me with varying levels of shock. Had they forgotten I existed or something? “I don’t think this is Purgatory or Heaven or anything like that.”

  “Then what is it?” Jake snarled.

  I bit my lip. It was a good question. “I think-”

  “We’re in Purgatory. Case closed. End of discussion.”

  “Let her talk.” Ava glared at him. Surprisingly, Jake listened to her.

  I looked off to the side and tried to get my thoughts together. “I think I would’ve remembered dying.”

  “Who says you remember dying once you’re dead?” Jake countered. “Maybe it happened too fast for us to even notice.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. I silently hoped one of the others to come to my aid, but Tyler was looking off into the distance and Ava looked confused.

  “Well, what are we supposed to do?” Ava asked.

  Tyler turned his attention back to us. “We need to figure out how we got here and how we get back home."

  He seemed oddly calm about it all. Maybe Jake had been right to suspect him. Was it his fault we were here? Was he acting all calm because he already knew what was going on?

  “We probably can’t figure out how we get back home until we know how we got here,” He continued.

  I nodded slowly. What he was saying made sense.

  “Okay, okay,” Ava said. “So, all we have to do is figure out how we got here and then we can get home?”

  Tyler did a shrod. (A shrug nod.)

  Jake was standing silent with his arms crossed, glaring at each of us in turn.

  “As soon as we got to the range, I got this weird feeling,” Ava said. She was gesticulating with her hands, trying to grasp the feeling she’d had.

  “Like you were being watched,” I finished her thought quietly.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And then there was that notebook.”

  “Yeah, you idiots were holding that book and then a tornado came and killed us all. BOOM! Now we’re dead,” Jake said.

  I concealed my sigh.

  “Tornado?” Tyler looked from Jake to me.

  “When you guys were holding the book, the wind picked up a lot,” I explained. I didn’t know if it could be called a tornado, but I didn’t want to disagree with Jake any more than necessary.

  “Okay,” Ava said. “So, we walked to this creepy golf thingy-”

  “Golf range,” Tyler corrected.

  “Yeah whatever, golf range. And we find a journal in the ground. Then there’s a tornado? And then everything goes back to normal, and we walk back to Tyler’s place.”

  “Except we never get back,” Tyler said.

  I imagined what an absurd scene we painted in that scene. Four kids in the middle of an empty field that stretched on and on in every direction, except for right behind us where a single line of trees represented the unnatural end of the woods. It was almost comical in a way.

  How would I paint this? Jake’s red shirt would contrast big-time against the green grass. And even though Tyler was wearing a green hoodie, it was a slightly different color than the grass so it would look almost disgusting on a canvas. And then there was Ava. Honestly, Ava didn’t look like she belonged in the field at all. It was unexplainable but also irrefutable.

  Then there was me. Unlike the others, I didn’t think my appearance would clash with our surroundings at all. I mean, I was wearing a plain white tee shirt and some jeans. If I were to paint the scene, I’d be the only one of us to fit right in.

  “As soon as we touched the journal things got weird,” Ava said in a quieter voice, drawing me back to reality.

  “What did the journal say?” I asked. It had only just occurred to me that I didn’t have that bit of information.

  Tyler and Ava shared a bewildered look.

  “Um, I don’t know. I can’t remember,” Tyler said.

  “Me neither.”

  “But how?” I asked. They had been staring at it like half an hour ago. No way they could’ve forgotten what it said in that short a time.

  Jake furrowed his brow but didn’t say anything.

  “Then I think we answered one question,” Tyler said. “That old journal must’ve brought us here.”

  “What you think it teleported us here?” Ava asked.

  That sounded plenty logical to me. Another day another dollar teleportation.

  “We need to go back,” Tyler said.

  “No way!” Ava hissed.

  “The journal got us here, so it has to be able to get us out!”

  Jake finally spoke up. “Don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know if that’s how we got here or not. We could just be dead.”

  “We can’t just do nothing,” Tyler said, and I was surprised to hear real venom in his voice. “We need to go back to the range and find that journal.”

  Then he turned his back on the field and headed into the woods. Ava huffed and followed him. Jake and I remained standing in the field.

  He scowled at me. “After you.”

  I gazed past him and to the field for one last time before plunging into the woods.