Flipped

1.23

We took the long way home. There was some cloud cover overhead which gave a dreary spirit to everything. We walked from the huge expanse of grasslands around the hospital and into a residential street. It was garbage day, and someone had evidently gotten too excited - three smelly overflowing bins stood to the left of us and I had to hold my breath as we passed them.

"You missed a family breakdown," Taylor was telling me, aptly stepping further into the centre of the empty street and avoiding the stench I was sweltering under. "A couple decided the hospital was the right place to break up. She threw a coffee at him. He grabbed her phone and threw it into the fountain. It was a whole thing."

"Really," I said. "Figures." Then I relayed everything I knew, or guessed, while inside. "Well, I guess that means we won't even have to go back a second time," she said when I finished. "That was surprisingly easy."

"Yeah. Hopefully not a bad omen. I don't like that I'm discovering how everything works when I'm right in the middle of the danger."

"Exactly," Taylor nodded. "But at least things are getting a bit more clear. We're learning more and more about ... ourselves, I guess, right? Like riding a bike."

"Some bike."

We split past the school, making plans to have a meeting in a few hours. I cleaned myself up a bit. It was a pretty uneventful supper - I never thought I'd be happy my mom was so preoccupied with cases, but it let me leave without question - and then I walked over to Taylor's house.

"It's too easy," Mike said once Taylor and I relayed how the afternoon had gone. "What, you randomly end up in the exact right room? That's suspicious."

"Maybe," said Ana. "But we have the address now. It makes sense that they would be changing over patient records, right? And Chris picked a person who looked like they were in a hurry. That makes sense - having to pull people off their duties to do this new task would leave people a bit frazzled and rushed."

"Okay," I said, holding up my hands. "That's exactly what I should have been thinking. My thinking was more along the lines of 'Holy shit I'm invisible. When is this going to end? When I'm in this white hallway? What about this one?"

She laughed. "Still, I'm right. What was in his file?"

"I didn't find anything," I said, passing it to her.

"220 Posideon Bay. Can we check it out now?"

Sure. Why the hell not? I needed to do something. I needed to stop reacting to whatever was messing with us next.

"Let's do it."

My friends nodded and I stood up. We walked out the door and started towards Poseidon Bay.

It was a standard residential street. The sun was shining down on us and a dozen identical bungalows. One lawn that had been arranged into piles of leaves and left out. It was lucky there was no wind.

I started feeling dread in my chest.

"One hundred," Taylor pointed.

Why had I been able to get this address so easily? Thinking of the hospital reminded me of seeing my dad in the hospital bed. When I thought about it, the whole thing started to seem strange. How could someone figure out that it was me making them leap in front of a car? No one would think of that.

"One fifty," Taylor said.

I thought back over the past two weeks. It felt like it had been a year. Standing in the middle of the street. What was it exactly that the bearded man had told us? Something about seeing things. Instead of seeing what is around you first, you now see it second.

Second?

We were missing something. I knew it. But what?

"Two hundred."

"Chris," Mike said. I looked at him. I saw the horror. He felt it too. But we just kept walking, like it was inevitable. But it wasn't, was it?

And then, suddenly, there it was. A normal looking house.

"Woah," said Ava.

It started with the tiles on the roof. It took me a few seconds, but I noticed they were crooked. Just slightly. And the windows - they were utterly black. Was that normal? I squinted. Maybe there were black drapes inside - except the colour was perfect.

Then, suddenly, the whole house looked crooked - like sunk into the ground. With straight tiles.

"We're going in there?" I said.

Taylor gulped. "Yup. We are."