Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

to bed,” Luca suddenly said, setting his bowl on the end table and pushing it away. He stood from the couch, gathered crumbs from his pajamas, then swept them into a pile on his hand and poured them into the bowl.
    “Goodnight,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “It’s not even 8:00!”
    Good, now I can call Brad, she thought.
    “Sometimes I like going to bed early,” he said just wanting to get out of the room before he heard her think something else.
    “Um … okay.” Sarah kept her eyes on Luca for another half minute or so, said, “Goodnight!” then picked up the remote and turned it from the Cartoon Network back to MTV.
    Luca went to his bedroom and paused at his door, half in and half out, knowing he was probably about to do something he’d crossed his heart not to do.
    Luca swallowed, then stepped through the door and shut it behind him. His dad would be mad, but he wouldn’t be too mad since Luca was doing the thing that was smart. Smart meant going to the place that would make him less lonely, while giving his dad more of the answers he was looking for.
    Luca still wasn’t sure how he crossed over to the world where everything was how it was supposed to be. He’d been able to do it a few times while awake, but that had been with Will standing by. To do it awake without Will around felt scary for some reason. Better to just go to sleep, where it would just happen on its own — that way Will couldn’t get mad.
    So Luca curled on his bed and counted backwards from 100 like he always did when he was trying to fall asleep.
    Luca hit 47, then started to think about stuff that didn’t make sense. The more he tried to make the stuff make sense, the less sense it made. He was spinning around and around, the circles swirling faster in his mind, like a merry-go-round of confusion until it finally spun Luca into a clarity where everything made sense.
    Luca felt himself coming to color somewhere between the black and white. When he opened his eyes, Luca saw himself standing in the middle of his bedroom, except it wasn’t his bedroom at all. This bedroom belonged to the other Luca. The one who was happy because he lived with his mommy and his daddy, and his sister Anna. The one who never had to see the car when it burned. The one who had new pictures taken in new places with his family still alive.
    Luca was sleeping in his bed on the other side of the room, the covers rising and falling along with his breath. On the other side of the door lay the faint echo of a fading memory — the sound of Luca’s father working in his office.
    Luca swallowed, filled with a sudden, desperate need to see his father. He took one last look at the other Luca, then left the room and walked down the hallway to his father’s office.
    Luca’s first dad was surprised to see his son open the door. “Oh my goodness, Luca,” he said, spinning his chair toward the door. “I thought you were asleep.”
    Luca said, “I was.”
    His dad laughed. “Okay,” he said, “so you’ve changed your pajamas.” Luca looked down at his Iron Man PJ’s, then back at his dad. His dad said, “So why did you fire Captain America ?”
    Luca said, “ Iron Man is better.”
    His father raised his eyebrows. “Since when? I didn’t even know you had Iron Man pajamas. Your life was all about Captain America last week.” He leaned in to Luca and whispered, “You know, you really should do a better job of keeping me updated on your super hero preferences. There are always birthdays and random trips to the Galleria, and I don’t want to be caught buying a present ill-informed.”
    “Okay Dad,” Luca said, not knowing what else to say. He felt almost guilty because the joke was for a him that wasn’t really him.
    Luca stared at his father, like he was the ghost that he kinda sorta was. Staring at his dad’s face was weird because Luca had forgotten exactly what his dad looked like. He had memories, lots of them, but there were little things that had faded in the past two years, like the cleft in his dad’s jaw, and a small faded scar over his dad’s left eye that Luca had almost forgotten about.
    “Are you okay?” his father stared back, left eyebrow raised. “Luca?”
    Luca hated nothing more than crying in front of his real dad, especially now that he wasn’t even really there. His bottom lip started to quiver, but he managed to tuck it in before his dad said, “You okay?”
    “I’m just feeling sad