Free Riley Bloom Dreamland by Alyson Noël Page A

I’d visited back on the earth plane were equipped with the latest high-tech security systems (I knew this from all the time I spent hanging out on movie sets, spying on actors and stuff before I crossed the bridge and moved Here), in the Here & Now, there was no need for that kind of thing.

Everything worked on the honor system.
    For one thing, it’s not like you could actually steal anything when everything there was to be had could be easily manifested again.
    And for another, in case you hadn’t already guessed, the Here & Now really isn’t the kind of place where you find a lot of criminal activity.
    People Here mostly do the right thing.
    They want to learn and grow and improve.
    They want to glow brighter so they can move up as many levels as possible.
    Which is why it was so easy for me to sneak my way back inside.
    But which is also why I felt so terribly guilty about having done so successfully.
    Still, the guilty feeling didn’t last all that long. I had a dream jump to get to. I had no time for shame.
    I needed to keep moving. I needed to find a way to be thirteen. It couldn’t wait any longer—the need was too great.
    I headed toward the soundstage, figuring I’d reenact everything Balthazar had taught me. I’d go silent, go quiet, tune in to Ever’s energy pattern, her imprint, and take it from there.
    Maybe I wouldn’t have access to all the stunt people and makeup artists, and cos-tumers, and props, and all that—but there was also nothing wrong with keeping it simple.
    Short, sweet, and simple—it would get the job done.
    I’d spend a little time with my sister, get some good tips, then find my way out.
    Easy-peasy.
    I brightened at the idea. It felt good to have a plan. Or at least that’s what I thought up until it went black.
    And I mean black.
    Like, no lights, no glow, no nothing kind of black.
    Even though I hadn’t been in the Here & Now all that long, that was the first time I’d ever experienced something like that.
    I couldn’t remember it ever once getting dark. Everywhere you went there was light to be found. Always sort of radiating with a soft, goldeny, glistening glow. And though I could never spot the source, it was constant, luminous, making it seem as though the entire place was lit from within.
    Unless, of course, you wanted to manifest snow, or rain, or wind, or some other type of foul weather (believe it or not, some people actually missed that kind of thing)—but even then it was relegated to a small, selected area that was easy enough to avoid while it played itself out or the person grew bored of it, whichever came first. And in no time at all, everything returned to that soft, beautiful glow once again.
    But the kind of all-encompassing, opaque, inky dark I found myself in, well it was the sort of thing I hadn’t seen since our family camping trips back on the earth plane. And even then, we still had the moon. We still had the stars to shine down upon us.
    But in Dreamland there was nothing like that. And when I tried to manifest a flashlight, and then a whole armful of flashlights, it barely made a dent in the heavy canopy of black velvet sky.
    I should probably admit right now, that that was pretty much the moment when I started to have second thoughts. I’d never been a fan of the dark—especially the pitch-black kind of dark—the kind of dark that can’t be easily cured.
    I started to leave, was more than willing to cut my losses and vámanos myself right out of there. The night felt so threatening, so ominous, that the idea of lingering on a really long waiting list was starting to look pretty good.
    But just because I was willing to leave doesn’t mean I was able. When I lifted my own hand before me, held it before my eyes and wiggled my fingers, well, I couldn’t even see it. It was as though I’d lost all my digits.
    With no way of knowing whether or not I was headed in the right direction, I resorted to baby steps. Small, timid, baby steps. All the