Otherbound

19

Nolan wrote fast, with ugly scrawls that went beyond the lines of his notebook and pressed through the paper, with words that turned into jagged lines when he dropped his pen to flick through earlier entries.

This notebook only went back a few weeks. He crouched by his cabinet and pulled out one stack of notebooks after another until he reached the ones at the bottom, pressed flat by the weight of the others. Their paper had yellowed.

He’d started these shortly before turning six. Dr. Campbell had asked him to keep track of what he saw, intrigued by the idea of hallucinations that had continuity, a consistent cast of characters. Those first notebooks were a mix of his own childish handwriting—all slow, careful block letters—and Mom’s cursive. She’d helped him back then. He’d continued on his own.

He kept reading. Had he ever opened his eyes wide to wait out Amara’s injuries, returning only when she’d already healed? Lord knew he’d tried. He’d never escaped the pain. He’d always figured the same as Amara had: that her magic was erratic.

She didn’t have magic.

His fingers traced old letters. The notebooks described the Bedam palace and the royal family. How Amara had sneaked glimpses at the little prince and princesses as she worked. How she’d learned to eat and drink without her tongue. How she’d practiced her signs. How she’d missed her parents.

Once, her parents had watched her from the palace gates. “Don’t look,” the caretaker had told her. “It’ll just be more difficult.”

Amara had looked, anyway, letting Nolan see her parents for the first and only time. Their descriptions went on for a full page.

Amara tried sometimes but could no longer remember them. Neither could Nolan. Reading these descriptions, though—about her mother’s scarf wrapped sloppily around her shoulders, the way her father’s hair had gone gray—the images came back with such vividness, he wondered how he’d ever forgotten.

Her parents had looked sad. He hadn’t written that down. He remembered.

He leafed ahead to how Amara had discovered her healing, to the massacre, then to the next notebook, after Jorn had scooped her up and taken her away. He’d showed her the surviving princess, a tiny girl who was just starting to talk in sentences, and Amara had reached out because she’d never been this close …

Nolan snapped the notebook shut. Clouds of dust whirled out. He pored over the others and felt Amara’s cheek cut open from ear to lip and woke from the same nightmares of the knifewielder as she did, and he got to know Nicosce, this Alinean stable girl, barely a teenager, all over again. He was taught by her and loved by her and watched her die when the hired mages’ arrow hit the wrong person. Then Nicosce wasn’t Nicosce anymore, simply the servant before Maart, and a narrow Dit-and-Alinean boy with an unfamiliar palace mark took her place.

He became familiar, solid Maart later. Except now Maart wasn’t Maart anymore, either.

Nolan sat on his bedroom floor, notebooks piled all around, and stared at the pages in a haze. In that journal, that was when Amara and Maart had first kissed. In the next, they’d gone swimming in the Gray Sea. The water had been freezing and bugs had bitten their feet and they couldn’t sign right, and Cilla had watched longingly from the shore, making them awkward and resentful until they got out quicker than planned. That night they sneaked out again. The water was even colder. Jorn hit them when they returned.

Half the things Nolan read, he didn’t remember. He’d written it all down painstakingly, then let the details slip from his mind. Now, though, he needed to know.

In that one, they slept together for the first time.

In that one, Maart taught Amara how to cook. She taught him how to scour the rooms for anything that might hurt Cilla. They watched children skate on frozen city canals. And throughout the other journals, Maart grew more serious, and Amara grew more quiet, and they cracked further each day, and Nolan had sat in this tiny, safe room and watched every minute.

A knock. Nolan made a sound. The door swung open. “Are you really OK?” Dad asked without preamble.

“Sorry if I ruined the movie.” Nolan shut a recent journal, where he’d practiced Dit letters.

“No one expected the seizures to stop completely. If you’re disappointed, that’s all right. If you’re feeling guilty …” Dad’s bushy eyebrows knitted together. “You don’t owe us anything.”

“I didn’t have a seizure.” Nolan didn’t attempt a smile. He couldn’t. “Can I be alone?”

Dad looked at him for too long. Nolan wished he’d leave. Dad hadn’t known Maart, and Nolan didn’t know what else to say. He already felt bad for telling Dad to leave when he only wanted to help. They all just wanted to help, since they thought he was lonely or shy or insecure, but—it was none of that.

There wasn’t any him to feel insecure about.

“Get some rest,” Dad said.

Nolan only nodded.

“You OK?” Pat stood in his doorway, gloveless and in her PJs—an overlong shirt with a band he didn’t know plastered on the front.

“You should be asleep.” Pause. “Yes. Thanks. Mom and Dad already checked.” Nolan was sliding his notebooks back into his cabinet one by one. He’d dated them, so it was just a matter of deciphering his old, clunky handwriting to determine the order. “Twice.”

“Only twice?” Pat plopped onto his bed, watching his journals like she itched to get her hands on them.

She probably meant it as a joke, but he couldn’t deal with it. With her. Not now. “They shouldn’t worry so much.”

Pat mimicked the vulnerable look they’d been practicing for her play. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just having seizures every two seconds. Woe! Be still, my aching heart!” She paused to contain a grin. “But I’m fine. Really. Why are you so worried? I don’t understand! BRB, writing angsty poetry.”

Nolan slapped the cabinet shut and reached for the key.

“BRB, locking cabinet full of angsty poetry.” Pat grinned a second time. “You like their attention—admit it.”

“I don’t,” he said tightly.

Pat’s laughter finally faded.

They were silent for a moment, and Pat said, sounding awkward, “It’s just … you go swimming three times a week and they act like it’s the Olympics. I snatch up the lead in a play and Dad ruffles my hair. Mom’s too busy to volunteer, but she trips all over herself to help with your homework.”

“Do you think I like any of that?” Nolan rubbed his face. Could he do this? Forget about Maart, get sucked into his own drama? Live life. Fantasize about Sarah Schneider. Bicker with Pat now that she finally felt comfortable enough to waltz into his room and tease him. Amara’s grief didn’t have to be his, did it?

“It looks like you do.”

Even as screwed up as he was, he saw that this wasn’t about him. “Pat, they’re just letting you be independent. They don’t think you want the attention. Why don’t you tell them you do?”

“I didn’t say that.” She looked embarrassed. “That’d be pathetic. And needy. And pathetic. Whatever. It’s way late. Mom’ll kill you if you don’t sleep soon. I just wanted to ask—I had this idea—like, what if I played that ER scene completely flat? On purpose?”

“Sorry.” Nolan shook his head. “I … tonight’s not a good time.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You sure you’re OK?” She climbed to her feet.

“Absolutely.”

“So why not tonight?” When Nolan didn’t respond, she said, “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

He clamped his mouth shut. Anything he said would just hurt her.

When Pat stomped into the hallway, he took his current notebook—the only one he hadn’t locked away—and settled in at his desk. He’d be there a while.