Page 113 of Sweet Nightmare

“Careful!” Simon pulls me to the right, steering me around something on the ground.

No, not just something.

The tapestry. The fucking tapestry.

Only now the warning about time is gone. In its place is nothing but a bunch of squiggly, fuzzy lines in every color imaginable.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

HAIL, HAIL, THE

GANG’S ALL HERE

It looks like the technical difficulties fuzz on old-fashioned TV screens that you see in TV shows and movies.

I stare at it for a few seconds, trying to decide if I want to pick it up or just leave it here to get blown away by the hurricane. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help blaming it for its half-assed messages. Telling us to beware isn’t the same as giving us any kind of warnings about the horrors that were coming. Especially because I can still see Eva’s face as she read the warning that didn’t help save her.

And yet Jude wanted it enough to fight with me about it. And someone cared about it enough to lock that damn shed up tight—Jude or one of the Jean-Jerks, I don’t know.

“What’s wrong?” Simon shouts, following my gaze to the wet, muddy tapestry.

And fuck it. Just fuck it.

I crouch down and roll the damn thing up. Despite the rain that’s drenched it for the last hour, it’s still light and easy to maneuver as I stand back up and hold it out to Simon.

“Can you get this to Jude?”

“To Jude?” His eyes go wide with realization. “This is what you two were fighting over earlier.”

It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. Because it all seems so foolish now.

All the arguments.

All the secrets.

All the wasted time when the tapestry got one thing right—we are so completely out of time.

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Simon tells me, his face more serious than I’ve ever seen it.

“You guys, come on!” Caspian yells as a full-blown lightning storm fills the sky. “We have to go now!”

Seconds later, hail starts falling onto anything and everything. It’s not big hail, thankfully, just dime size, but it still hurts like hell when it slams into us.

Caspian takes off running, with Simon and me right behind him. But the hail just makes things more complicated for me as I try to avoid…everyone.

I dodge a man in a bathing suit carrying a kayak—a kayak—only to end up running straight through a future Calder Academy student on a bicycle. Pain assaults me, electric shocks racing through my body from head to toe.

I stagger a little but manage to keep going as I fight through the agony.

“Clementine?” Simon calls, looking both confused and concerned as the hail continues to pummel us.

Up ahead, Caspian screams as he brushes up against a giant strolling along the center mall with a fishing pole the size of a large tree branch slung over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Poor Simon looks completely bewildered now as my cousin stumbles to a stop.

“What is that?” Caspian wildly flails his arms.

“Do you feel something?” I ask.

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