STUCK: IT'S ABOUT TO GET VERY WEIRD

I cry for a long time.

I just sit there and rub my fingers on the words written by Mom, and cry. She was here. She wasn't dead after all. She wrote these words right here. She touched this book. I squeeze the book and wish with everything I have that she was here now. All this time she was stuck in this other dimension, just like me, like Tom, like Sam. She must have somehow been sent to the wrong dimension, like us. She must have found Ben here when he was little, and helped him survive, raised him like her own child while she tried to get back. She must have told him to have the Potentium in his pocket so he would jump with her, but something went wrong, and Ben didn't have the wire with him and he got left behind. I think about how heartbroken she must have been...or must still be, losing her family, and then Ben, who must have been like a son to her. It makes me want to scream. Where did she go, and why wasn't a twin sent to us in her place? Ben just sits and watches me, looking sad but not saying anything.

I'm sitting there crying when Ben finally speaks. "I understand. She was my mom, too."

"What? Your mom?" I sob.

"My new mom," he says. "I don't remember having a mom before her, so she said she'd be my mom. That's why I get the gold wire each year. I have to find her."

I find myself unable to think. It's all too much. I'm just clutching the book, crying, when Ben grabs me by the shoulders and looks right in my eyes.

"The weather is here, it's here. Just once per year. We have to get the wire tomorrow, or it's another year, another long year."

"But how?" I sob. "I don't know how it works! I don't know what to do!"

"I try something new every year," Ben says quietly. "Every year something new. She was building a machine. It blasted apart when she left, but we have to try to rebuild it. We have to try."

"But I don't know what to build either, I just don't-"

Ben cuts me off "We'll figure it out, Sierra, figure it out, Sierra."

His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. Figure it out, Sierra. Just like Mom would say. And Dad would tell me to suck it up.

"Okay." I say, wiping my nose and rubbing the tears from my eyes. "Okay. We'll try."

"Hey hey Sierrrraaa!" Ben shouts and jumps up. "I'll tell you the plan, and we'll go tomorrow! First I have to show you the machine, I built it, built it wrong, but maybe you can figure it out, Sieraaaaaah!!"

We go outside and Ben takes me around the side of the old building, where he shows me the exploded remains of a sort of tower made of steel scraps and wires. The other half of the building is completely collapsed, and the steel tower looks like a miniature drilling rig, mounted on the pile of rubble. Beside it are the skeletons of lots of other little machines he tried to build. There are lots of wires coming from the various machines, and all of the wires are melted completely. "I remember she said the wire was the key, the key." Ben says, "But after the night she disappeared, there was no wire, just none." I look at his setup and try to follow the wires around. "Where do the wires go?" I ask.

"I run them to the fort, but it doesn't do anything, just nothing. Even when the lightning hits, nothing, just nothing...except it straightens my hair sometimes, that's a kick!"

I look at the setup and I'm sure that the electricity just grounds out in the cement. I understand electricity a little, from my dad. When I was in grade three, we built an electric machine for the talent show that made a pickle glow. I remember it only worked if I made sure that the whole thing made a complete loop, otherwise the power didn't flow. The electricity had to have a wire to go into the pickle, but it also had to have another wire to follow back out, or it just stopped.