Everlost chapters 6-10 2nd Post

Allie and Nick are now on the road and learning fast about this strange new world. For example, even though they don't need to, the two kids want to rest and sleep. But finding a safe place to lie down where you won't sink into the ground was difficult. The only places where they can do so are places they call "dead spots", a place where someone in the living world had died. There, they could rest on the ground as long as they pleased. After three uneventful days of traveling, Nick and Allie got jumped by a gang. Their leader, Johnnie-O, claimed that Allie and Nick had crossed into his territory and he wanted payment. They searched Nick and Allie's pockets and they only thing that they came up with was Nick's piece of gum, which they took. However, they took an instant disliking to Allie and tried to push her into the gound, to sink her under the ground. However, just before they succeeded, Johnnie-O and his friends took off after hearing the scream of the McGill. However, it was really Lief who had fooled them into running away. Lief had left his forest to join them in their journey. He and Nick pulled Allie back out and together, they kept moving, keeping a lookout for Johnnie-O's gang. But they never saw them again. They kept moving on, and finally they reached New York. However, it was a sort of patchwork. For one thing, there were ice age glaciers around it and the two towers of the World Trade Center were still standing. They entered NYC and found a sort of community of Everlost kids, the one that Mary runs. She invited the three travalers to stay with them in their community and they accept, at least for a while. While they stay there, they learn a lot about Everlost, since Mary wrote so many books about it. Nick has become very attached to Mary (to the extream displeasure of Mary's companion Vari) and Lief to a Pac-Man arcade machine. However, Allie thinks that there's something wrong and she turns out to be right. While she's observing everything that is happening around the community, she realizes that the same exact thing happens every day. For example in the kick ball game out in the courtyard every day, the same team always loses seven to nine. Allie is afraid that she too will become part of the endless loop of life in Everlost if she doens't try to fight it. Nick and Lief have started to sink into this routine too, but Allie hatches a plan. Always in the mindframe of finding a way out of Everlost, she asks around and a kind named Skully who tells her that a kid who lives in a pickle factory a ways away can teach her what she wants to know. So, Allie grabs Lief and Nick and leaves the community to go find this kid. However, they don't know that Skully had sent them away because Vari, hating how Mary gave Nick attention, bribed him with food to send them away.

If I were a child who had been trapped in Everlost, I would have the exact same mindset as Allie. I would be questioning everything, especially the new weird laws of physics that cause the kids to do the exact same thing day after day. However, I may not have been so eager to leave Mary's community so fast. I would have wondered why Skully was willing to help me and find out what's up. Also, I would loath to leave a pac-man arcade machine that let you play free of charge. In the situation with Johnnie-O, I'd have run for it. Kids acting so hostile would do me no good, so I'd just bull through them and run for it. However, I can understand why Nick and Allie felt obliged to help each other out, and not run away individualy when they had the chance. They were a team. I'd have also been happy to have Lief come along: anyone with experience in this world would be very helpful. Finally, I wouldn't have gotten close to Mary the way Nick did. I would be very careful with how I interacted with other kids in Everlost. Overall, I would be very careful and calculating, using every opportunity to learn something.