Read Welcome to Bordertown for Free Online

Because I know
how
to find it. You would, too, if you’d been thinking about it every damn day for thirteen years. My parents never talked about Bordertown—the entire subject of Trish was pretty much off-limits—but that didn’t stop me from searching for every tiny scrap of information I could find: a newspaper mention of the elfin trade here, a radio reference to Border music there; the Bordertown websites that flicker on and off the Internet, semivisible, like ghosts; the Borderland Wikipedia page, which keeps writing and rewriting itself—sensible one moment, gibberish the next, the information constantly changing.
    I’m not smart like Trish. I never finished high school, and although I’ve read all of the books she left behind, I read them mostly to keep her spirit close—I’ve never been a dreamer like my sister. I fix things. Cars, appliances, electronics. I can make just about any damn thing run. I’m the kind of guy who needs to take things apart just to figure out how they work, and I tend to think most things in life can be fixed if you have time enough, and patience.
    I wanted to know how the Borderlands worked, this place that had swallowed my sister up … so, bit by bit, I gathered information. Bit by bit, I figured out a thing or two. That’s how I know about the semisecret website where
The Tough Guide to Bordertown
can be downloaded. That’s how I know to prepare my truck by knotting red ribbons on the door handles and scattering the floor with leaves of oak and ash. That’s how I know to burn cedar and sage, fill my pockets with salt, stick a feather behind my ear. Now thatthe moon is up, I must start the journey before the owl cries twice. (You think I’m making this up? I’m not. It’s a kind of science, just not the kind we’re used to.) Once I get out on the interstate, I’ll head north (or south, it doesn’t matter) and crank up the radio and just keep driving. Eventually the truck will fail, and after that I’ll hitch a ride or walk that last stretch through the Nevernever.…
    An owl cries once. I open the truck and Rosco, our creaky old mutt, jumps in. I have to move fast before the owl calls again, and that fool of a dog will not be moved. I guess he’s coming along with me.
    So hold on tight, boy.
    We’re on our way.
    *   *   *
     
    It was all over Bordertown—a town flooded suddenly with “noobs,” as they called themselves. New kids with new toys, new stories, new music, new books, new hopes.
    “I thought
we
were supposed to be the new kids,” Anisette Wolfsdottir grumbled as she washed out her socks in the sink at Carterhaugh. Trish waited for her turn at the tap. The tap water was running pale green today, and everything they washed smelled faintly of cantaloupe.
    “I’ve only been here a month,” Anisette went on, scrubbing vigorously. “I’m not exactly old. And know what? I’ll be fifteen next Tuesday.”
    “No, you won’t,” said Thelma Louise. “You’ll be twenty-eight.”
    Anisette sat down hard.
    “We figured it out.”
    Anisette started crying in long gulping sobs, still clutching her wet socks as green water trickled down her legs.
    “Shut up, Thelma,” Trish said. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
    “Do the math,” Thelma Louise said. “Thirteen days ago here—about the time you moved in to Carterhaugh, Tara—it was thirteen years ago in the World. So fifteen plus thirteen equals …”
    “I’m still a
ki-i-i-d
,” Anisette wailed.
    Trish handed her a dirty T-shirt; there was no Kleenex here, and toilet paper was precious. But Anisette just wailed on. “Don’t listen to her,” Trish said. “It isn’t like that at all.” Anisette was beginning to take great whooping gasps. It was getting scary. “Listen to me!” Trish squeezed her hand, sock and all. She had to do something. “Anisette, listen. We’re right on the border of the land of Faerie, the land of Eternal Youth.…” Anisette’s hand gripped