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make it sound any more hopeful.
    I got off my bike and pushed it behind some of the random shrubbery up there. Eli followed suit, while Reid took his bike across from us, on the other side of the bushes, like he wanted to be separate.
    I’d chosen this spot. We’d tried to get out in the water once, but it was summer and people were everywhere. Even at night, there were bonfire parties and midnight surfers. We’d all snuck out and come here at three in the morning a few weeks ago, but nothing had worked right. It was too hard to concentrate and work to stay afloat offshore. Plus, there were jellyfish everywhere, and once Eli got stung, he refused to go back in. So we were here, because it was as close as we could get to where we needed to be without being seen.
    “I’m just saying,” Reid explained. “This isn’t even where we came through.”
    “What, asshole, you got a boat we don’t know about?” Eli asked.
    Reid didn’t answer.
    “Then how the fuck can we do this in the middle of the ocean?”
    “I’m just saying—”
    “Shit that doesn’t matter. Let Ben do the thinking.” Eli punched Reid in the shoulder. It was meant to be light and friendly, but I’d been on the other side of Eli’s punches before and it didn’t feel good.
    I looked at Reid and tilted my head toward Eli, making my “he’s being stupid” face, trying to offer an apology. After all, Reid was right. When we opened the portal the very first time, we fell through and ended up here: Torrey Pines Beach, about a hundred yards offshore.
    “I don’t have a better idea,” I said.
    It wasn’t the heat making sweat run down my spine, and not just nerves making my hands shake. It was the way Eli rubbed his hands together, the smile on his lips when he said, “Let’s do this.” It was the pressure, the fact that I knew that in just minutes we would be home, dead, or without hope.
    Eli was tired of opening portals and not doing anything. He was tired of not making progress and tired of being stuck in this fake life. He wanted to open a portal and go through.
    I thought that was a risk we couldn’t afford to take. There were too many factors, too many things we didn’t understand. I didn’t want to end up somewhere worse, or dead. What if a portal opened five hundred feet off the ground? What if it opened up somewhere freezing or in the middle of a civil war? Going through a portal, we could literally end up anywhere . We had been lucky to end up here the first time. There are worse places, much worse.
    But Reid sided with Eli, and I had been overruled. We were going to open a portal, and one of us was going to go through to see what was on the other side. We were essentially experimenting with ourselves. Trial by fire.
    Despite the risk, a small part of me was eager to get it over with. We’d been stuck in the same repetitive rhythm for too long. I needed answers, and if this was the only way to get them . . .
    Since we were taking that risk, I wanted us to be as close as we could to where we’d come through. Maybe that would make a difference.
    Reid was shaking his head, though, and I knew nothing I said was going to matter. He was frustrated with me, with the rules and restrictions I put on us, and with how much faith Eli put in me. I didn’t blame him. He was stuck here because of me.
    I blew air into my hands. No need to prolong the inevitable.
    I looked around one last time. Highway 101 ran right against the coast. It was flat, almost even with sea level for about three miles where Torrey Pines State Reserve sat, but then it sloped uphill at a steep angle as the cliffs sprang up along the coastline. We were about a quarter mile from the base of the hill, two lanes from the cliffs, with marshland to our backs.
    If we had to live a fake life somewhere, this wasn’t the worst place. There were probably an infinite number of worse places to be, but it had been seven years since I’d seen my family, and this place wasn’t home.