2 And Now for Something Completely Different

Chapter 2 AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Pep felt her body rising slowly off the ground. Some mysterious, invisible force was gently lifting her up, as if she were filled with helium. She gripped her brother's hand tightly, so tightly that she was crushing his fingers together. But he didn't even notice the pain. The twins had their eyes shut tightly, but the bluish glare from two powerful beams of light managed to penetrate their eyelids. The temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. But Coke and Pep didn't feel it. The wind whipped at their clothes. A humming sound was coming from above, and the air seemed to vibrate around them. There was an odor they had never experienced before.

Metallic, maybe. Impossible to describe. Powerful. It was too much stimulation at one time. They couldn't move. They couldn't get away. They didn't want to get away. It was frightening, of course. But also magical. Intriguing. "What's happening?" Pep whispered in wonder, fighting the temptation to open her eyes. She was afraid of being blinded by the light, or perhaps she was just afraid of seeing something she didn't want to see. "I don't know," Coke replied. "But it's amazing!" Curiosity had gotten the better of him, as it often did, and Coke forced his eyes open. He involuntarily opened his mouth too as he hovered fifteen feet off the ground. He let out a little gasp. This can't be happening, he thought. Months earlier, at the lunch table in school, he and his friends had had a heated discussion about which superpower they would choose if they could pick just one. One boy said he would

love to have super vision so he could see through walls, and clothes. Another said he would choose super strength so he could beat up anybody in the world. Coke knew which superpower he would choose—the power to fly. "We're flying," he marveled to his sister. "This is what it must feel like to be a bird." "Where does the power come from?" Pep asked. "Who cares?" he replied. "It's beautiful." She finally opened her eyes too, and her retinas were clobbered by blasts of light coming at her from every direction. Yet she and Coke seemed to be enclosed within a narrow cylinder of air, as if they were going up a glass elevator shaft with no elevator inside it. "ROY G BIV," Coke said, looking all around. "Who's that?" "Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet," Coke replied. "ROY G BIV. It's a mnemonic device people use to learn the colors of the rainbow, in order of decreasing

wavelengths." "Oh, yeah," Pep said, remembering her fifth- grade science class. "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. Rinse Out Your Granny's Boots in Vinegar. It's VIBGYOR backward. That's how I remember it." "Look at all the colors!" Coke said. "There are frequencies of light that I've never experienced before. Do you see 'em? Wonderful colors! They don't exist in our spectrum. They don't exist in our world." "I see 'em," Pep said, looking all around. "I see 'em." And then, suddenly, the lights went out. The twins were in total darkness. "Who turned out the lights?" Coke asked, knowing full well that his sister had no idea who turned out the lights. "I'm scared," Pep said, gripping her brother's hand even more tightly. "I have a bad feeling about this." The darkness—the blackness—was total.

There were no pinpricks of light scattered about. It felt like they must be indoors. They must have entered something. But there were no slits under a doorway where outside light could sneak through. Nothing. Their eyes were not going to adjust to the dark. There was nothing to adjust to. It was a power outage. A blackout. It was like all the light in the world had suddenly been switched off. "What's happening?" Pep asked, just to make sure her brother was still there. "Your guess is as good as mine." "Maybe we were blinded," Pep said, shivering. "Maybe those lights wiped out our retinas, like an eraser on a whiteboard. Maybe we'll be blind forever." And deaf? Coke wondered. The silence was overwhelming. The humming noises were gone. There was no wind, no rustling of leaves in the trees, no chirping of birds. The twins could hear only the sound of their breathing. Pep thought she could detect her own heartbeat. But that

was because it was beating very hard, and very fast. She began to sob softly. Coke put his arm around her. "Shhhh," he said. "We're gonna be okay." It was wishful thinking. Coke realized, an instant before his sister did, that he was no longer floating. His feet were on a surface now, and he could support his own weight. The floor must have come up from under them. He let go of Pep's hand and got down on his knees. "It's soft," he whispered. "I can push my thumb into it and it springs back. It's sort of rubbery. Spongy. Like a padded playground." "Let's get out of here," Pep whimpered. "I want to go back to the motel. Back to Mom and Dad." "We've got to find the edge," Coke said, feeling around on the ground. "It must end somewhere. Maybe there's a door." Pep had no choice but to get down on the