Disclaimer: We do not own Gone or any of the copyrighted stuff.
A/N: Reneey: Wee so we're writing a Gone fanfic! –squeals-
Lyn: -snicker- Says she who hasn't even read the books.
Reneey: Shut up, I'll read books whenever I feel like it…
Lyn: Yeah… Or never.
Reneey: I'll read! … Eventually… Later on…
Lyn: Yeah, whatever. How about for now we write?
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Chapter 1 --
"So aren't you glad I kidnapped you with your mom's permission for the summer?" Lyn asked with a grin as she flopped onto her very purple bed.
Reneey rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and I can feel your family's love for me too." She sighed and laid down next to her friend. "What's so great about that book anyway? You've been reading it non-stop."
"Oh, that's right, I need to make you read it!" Lyn said triumphantly, shoving the book into Reneey's hands. "Gone by Michael Grant. Awesome book, trust me!"
Reneey made a face. "Ew, reading… and no pictures…"
"Hey, do I not usually recommend awesome books?" Lyn asked, sounding offended.
"Well, you did recommend me to read Maximum Ride… Eh… Can you read it to me…?"
"Do I look like Betty White or Elijah Wood or something?" Lyn asked, rolling her eyes. "Read it yourself or –"
Then all of a sudden, Lyn fell through her bed. Or maybe it wasn't through her bed because there wasn't a bed anywhere anymore. She was on her belly on what looked like a street. A street she didn't recognize. She blinked at Reneey, who was still beside her. Weird though; Lyn didn't remember her friend's hair looking like that a second ago.
"… Uh… am I hallucinating?"
Reneey blinked and tilted her head. "Uh… where are we…?"
"I have absolutely no idea," Lyn said, blinking and looking left and right. There was no one in sight. There was, however, a sudden blaring of a car alarm from somewhere to her right. A couple more started up right after that. "We probably don't wanna get blamed for whatever's causing that, though."
"Yeah…" Reneey got up, then blinked. "Dude! You're shorter!"
Lyn blinked as she stood up, too. "Did you have a random growth spurt or something? I mean, you're still incredibly short but your head actually comes to my shoulder now!"
Reneey snarled. "I am not incredibly short! I'm average goddamn it!"
"Five foot is not average!"
"Well then you're… were… whatever a fucking giant!"
"Five eight is not giant!" Lyn snapped. "Anyway, far more important: where the heck are we and have I shrunk or have you grown?"
"I dunno, I think you just shrunk."
"Well, you can't know that," Lyn said, rolling her eyes. Then she noticed something. "Wha? Where'd my side bangs go?"
"And mine are shorter," Reneey said, blinking. "And my hair's longer, too…"
Lyn then began examining the rest of her body. "Dude, where's the scar on my wrist from Fat Kitty biting me?"
"Or those cuts on my ankle or leg! It's like… gone," Reneey said as she lifted up the leg of her jeans only to see smooth skin.
"But that's a scar!" Lyn objected, staring at the blank spot on her wrist. Well, not exactly blank; there were still round cigarette burn scars. But she tried to pretend she didn't see those. "How can a scar just disappear?!" And why are the ones from my dad still here? she lamented mentally.
Reneey blinked. "The cuts on my foot are all gone, even the ones from three days ago… I dunno… um… we're in some campaign that advertises really good make-up concealer that covers all scars and cuts…?"
"Right, which is why I can't feel it either but other scars are still there," Lyn said with a touch of sarcasm. Then she paused, the wheels turning in her head. "Older scars… and I'm shorter…"
"Err… so… I dunno… What do we do, Lyn? You're the older one!"
Lyn shrugged. "Look for people. Figure out what's going on."
"… What people? It's like a freaking dead town!"
"Well, it's too new to be a ghost town, so we'll just look until we find someone," Lyn reasoned. "I mean, car alarms? Somebody must be…" She trailed off, a thought jumping into her head – a scene from a book she had just been reading. But she shook it off quickly; that was ridiculous. Things like that didn't happen in real life.
Then there was a tremendous crashing sound as something came flying through a window nearby. Lyn reflexively pulled Reneey toward the ground, covering both their faces in protection from flying glass. When it was still again, Lyn stood up to her full height (though, granted, that seemed to be a few inches shorter than it had been) and thundered, "What the heck was that all about?!"
Reneey shrieked when she was pulled to the ground. "MY MAKE-UP!" She then quickly got up, took out her eyeliner and compact, and started to fix her make-up. "Okay, seriously, what the hell just happened…?"
A couple of kids peeked out of the broken window then abruptly jumped out and ran off down the street in the other direction. "Vandals," Lyn muttered before taking a few steps after them and yelling again, "Watch where you're freaking throwing stuff! You're gonna kill somebody!"
Reneey groaned. "The eyeshadow on my eyes is gone and I have no more. Let's go find some store or something." She grabbed Lyn's hand and started to pull her.
"Watch where you're walking! School must be letting out or something," Lyn said as suddenly they found themselves among several groups of two or three kids running off in different directions. "Should little kids like that really be running around by themselves?"
A dark-haired boy wearing a beret and sunglasses that hid his eyes suddenly turned his head in their direction and rushed over. Lyn's right eyebrow raised. It wasn't possible. It wasn't.
"So you don't know what's going on?!" the boy asked urgently. "So there are still adults outside school?!"
Reneey blinked. "What do you mean? There's no adults in the school…?"
"Then there are still adults?! Sam, Astrid, come here! They don't know!"
A shorter boy with somewhat lighter brown hair and blue eyes came over as well as a blond girl who had a sort of superior look. But she was afraid, Lyn could tell; they all were.
"I never said we saw any adults," Lyn said quickly. "We just – came into town. We hadn't seen anybody until some kid almost hit us with a brick thrown out the window there."
Reneey sighed. "Whatever! Is there a mall here or not?!"
"Uh, no," the blue-eyed boy, Sam, said. "It's kind of a really small town."
"Maybe just got a whole lot smaller," the other boy said darkly.
"… So… What is there…?"
"The grocery place, Ralph's," Astrid suggested. "Other than that, it's just the hardware store and the McDonald's…"
"… Is there something like… out of town…?"
"It's an hour's drive to San Luis," Sam said but the other boy interrupted, "Why are we talking about this?! We have to go!"
"Quinn, man, calm down," Sam said but Quinn shoved him in the arm hard.
"Fine then, brah! Stay here! I'm checking my house!"
Sam sighed and shot an apologetic glance and Astrid said quickly, "Sorry but we have a bit of a cataclysm instigating itself right now…"
"Trust me, Reneey thinks no makeup is a cataclysm," Lyn said with a sigh. "Do you think we could come with you? We don't really know where we're going…"
Reneey rolled her eyes. "Yes, it is! And I don't wanna be made fun of!" She hmphed.
"Look, we're going," Quinn insisted, grabbing Sam's arm and starting to walk. Astrid followed, and Lyn grabbed Reneey and dragged her along too. One last glance over her shoulder showed the words 'Perdido Beach School' and Lyn swallowed hard. There was no denying it; somehow, she and Reneey had been caught up in the middle of Gone.