riven by maggie morris (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📖

“Mom, how come Arlitica doesn’t rise and set like our old sun did?” Alice asked her mother, twisting her ponytail in her hands.

“Alicia, my little girl, the Earth doesn’t turn anymore. That’s why the sun doesn’t rise and set,” Harriet smiled warmly at her daughter.

“Adam, did you get that?” Alice asked her twin.

“Give me a sec, I’m working on it,” Adam said, pushing his glasses up. The clipboard he was holding was crammed with papers, all holding information taken in his perfect handwriting.

“You guys are both so smart! I can’t wait to see the dimension that you are creating!” Harriet pulled her kids in for a hug.

“Well, Mom, the sun was our last asset that we needed. We even have it set up so that the time will pass quickly!”

“That’s great, guys! I love you both so much.” She kissed them on their heads and shooed them away. “I’ve got work to do, now.”

The kids ran off, leaving their mother behind them.

“Mommy’s so proud of us!” The nine-year-old girl smiled at her brother. “But when we actually succeed, she’ll be even more proud.”

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just enter this information and finish Sortryn,” Adam shrugged. Alice shot her brother a look, but followed him to the lab. Without saying a word, Adam plopped onto the chair in front of The Computer.

The Computer was a huge device that was five-thousand-times-more-helpful than the average computer. Consisting of three glass panels, it had over two hundred different buttons on the keyboard, five computer mice, and wireless connections to everything.

Adam flipped through a couple hundred sites within seconds, until coming to a stop on our program that they made to help upload info to their Dimension Creator.

After entering the coordinates of the sun, Adam set the moon and Earth to revolve around the sun. He set the correct heat, size, and other details. Finally, he saved it.

Alice’s jaw fell open as the D.C. started whirring and clicking. A holographic image of the sun appeared, and the image zoomed out until the earth and moon were shown spinning around the sun.

“It’s working!” Alice cried. She hugged her brother. “Time is going so quick. See how fast the Earth is moving? Each lap it makes around the sun is a year!”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam smirked. “We’re awesome, aren’t we?”

“Duh!” They watched before their eyes as their lifelong project was created. Suddenly, Alice had an idea.

“Adam, if my calculations are correct, we are about to be born. Let’s go meet }ourselves!”

“How do we do that? Make a portal?”

“Exactly!” Alice ran around the lab, grabbing spare parts. She twisted wire together, screwed in sheets of metal, and torched glass. Adam stood still, watching her while she worked.

Just minutes later, a circle the height of a person was glowing orange, and when Adam tried to look through it, the image was hazy.

“You actually did it?” He shrieked. “I thought you were joking.”

Alice smiled, the gap between her teeth flashing. “Am I ever joking? Follow me.” She stuck her hand through the circle and instantly it disappeared. She stepped the rest of the way in.

Adam watched in shock as his sister rippled, then disappeared. Quickly, he pushed up his glasses and jumped through.

He smacked face-first into a wall. “Ow!” He cried, rubbing his head.

“You were supposed to step through, not jump through. This is our house, but we need to stay out of sight. C’mon!”

She tested the door, which was unlocked, and walked in. Voices were coming from upstairs, and a steady wail.

“Why is there only one baby crying?” Adam asked.

“Probably because I’m always the mature one, even as a baby.”

“But this wasn’t what our house looked like!”

“How do you know what the house looked like when you were born? We probably moved before we were old enough to remember things.” Quietly, Alice motioned to her twin, and they tip-toed up the stairs.

They peeked around the edge of the doorway of which the voices were coming from. Standing there were a young couple holding a baby.

“What!?” Adam mouthed at his sister. “Those aren’t our parents!”

“I know,” Alice mouthed back. She motioned for him to follow her. The carefully walked back down the stairs and sat on the couch.

Keeping her voice low, Alice said, “I think what happened was we put in the starting components to create Earth, but we didn’t follow it up all the way until we were born. We just assumed everything would work out perfectly, exactly like it did in Inaecia. But instead, I was born to different parents, and you weren’t born at all!”

“I guess that makes sense,” Adam said following along.

“But if I have to exist without you, none of the things that happened to our family will happen. So, I’m going to remove myself from this dimension.”

“Like, kill yourself!”

“Sort of. I will need to clone the baby me, then pace that clone in this world. It may not make sense to you, but trust me, it’ll work.”

* * * * *

The next day a babysitter had come to watch baby Alice. The babysitter had put Alice down for a nap, then taken one herself.

After snatching a piece of hair of the baby, which resulted in lots of crying, Alice and Adam went through the portal to get back home. Their parent already had made a machine to clone people, so they put the hair in, and watched as an exact replica of the baby was formed.

The conveyer belt turned on, and the baby squealed as she moved closer to Alice. Alice bent over and picked up herself.

“Wow, she’s...I’m...heavy!” She huffed.

“Now it’s back to Sortryn!” Adam said, ignoring his sister. He lifted the baby out of her arms and stepped into the portal.

Instantly, he was back in the other dimension, right next to the house. Almost immediately, before the older Alice even came through the baby Alice started shimmering. Adam knew that the original baby was probably shimmering, too.

A few seconds later, Alice came through, her right hand shiny blue.

“Sorry, I accidentally knocked over a beaker.” Without another word, she pulled out a different beaker from behind her back and poured it on the baby. The baby Alice disappeared.

And judging by the horrified shriek coming from the babysitter, who had woken up, so did the other Alice.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Alice grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him through the portal. Once they were safely in Inaecia, Alice said, “Quick! We must disassemble the portal, or they will see it in Sortryn.”

Wiping away a tear for her creation, she grabbed a hammer and brought it down on her portal. The shimmering in the circle faded. As the portal fell, Alice did, too.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked worriedly.

“Yes, just very tired. I’m going to bed.” She stood back up, dropping the hammer, and shuffled off to her bedroom.

A few hours later, Alice was awoken by noise.

“Honey, wake up! You’ve got to go!” Her mother was shaking Alice.

“What’s going on?” Alice asked sleepily.

“The air supply is shortening! You, your brother, and Grandpa are going to live in Sortryn so you’ll be safe.”

“What?!” Alice was awake now. “But I can’t! I’ll miss you and Daddy!”

“I knew this would happen,” Alice’s mother smiled sadly. “So I’m doing this.”

She poured half a cup of bubbling orange liquid on Alice’s face, and the other half on a picture.

As Alice’s eyes went blank, her mom’s hands loosened, and the picture fell out of her hand.

Laying on the ground, the faces of Alice’s family looked up at the sky.

“Alicia Hillman?” Mrs. Whitney, my homeroom instructor called.

“Here, and I go by Alice,” I replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask me to tell a little bit about myself. After all, it was high school. I might get lucky, for once.

“Everyone, we have a new student. Alice, would you mind telling everybody a bit about yourself, please?” I tried to refrain myself from palming my forehead. As I stood up, I felt the class’ eyes burning into my skin.

“Um...I’m Alice Hillman, and I come from a small town in Kentucky called Doe Valley. I lived on a farm there, so yeah,” I finished. I pushed a lock of my brown hair, which was in a ponytail, behind my ear and sat down. Well, I tried to sit down.

I was lowering myself to my seat, which was attached to my desk, when my Vera Bradley messenger bag caught on the back of my chair. I tried shaking it loose, but it was caught on an uneven section of the wooden stool. I yanked hard, and the bag finally came loose.

Suddenly, I was flying through the air. I heard screeches, and then my face banged against something solid. It got quiet, and I raised, my hand pressed against my eye. With my good eye, I could see that the neat arrangement of desks was disorderly, and my bag lay on the ground.

“Are you alright?” Mrs. Whitney asked.

“Yes,” I mumbled. My cheeks felt like they were on fire, I was blushing so furiously. I picked up my messenger back and continued to stand in the center of the classroom, the other student’s eyes boring into me.

“Why don’t you go to the restroom and clean up real quick, honey,” my teacher said sympathetically. I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. Grasping my messenger bag with a death grip, I stalked out of the room.

I didn’t blink until I was touching the swinging door to the girls’ restroom. I pushed my way through, and finally let the tears fall.

So much for making a good first impression, I scolded myself, my mascara running. Sitting down in one of the bathroom stalls, I held up my messenger bag, which I had brought with me. I began to sob even harder when I saw that it had a huge rip down the back.

The bag had cost me two years worth of savings, because I was an orphan. My mom had died while giving birth to me, and my dad was so distraught that he didn’t eat for weeks, which led to his death of starvation. Of the few people I have told my parents about, all of them have given me their regards. I don’t care too much about it, though, because I never knew them.

I stood up and walked to the mirrors. I gasped when I saw my reflection. My right eye was already swelling, a huge purple and black bruise. Luckily, I couldn’t feel anything-I was still numb from the humiliation.

I rinsed my face off with water from the sink, reapplied my mascara, and walked out, pretending nothing had ever happened. I was surprised to see a guy (who I was pretty sure was in my homeroom) standing there.

“Hey, um, you were taking a while, and Mrs. Whitney sent me to make sure you were okay. So...are you okay? That’s a pretty bad bruise,” he winced. He talked kind of quickly, and I got the feeling he was nervous. Obviously. I would be nervous, too, if I was standing next to the klutz of the century.

“Yeah, I’m great, um…”

“Bryce.