Otherbound

45

Nolan must’ve read the notebooks a hundred times.

He had a theory: It wasn’t just one traveler who’d possessed Jorn, but all of them. They rotated. Most of the time they reveled in their minister bodies, and one year in every half dozen or so they were on Cilla duty. That was why Jorn went years between drinking and punishments. That was why he’d tell Amara one thing, then another. That was why, two years ago, Nolan’s journals had been filled with Jorn calling Amara kid.

All these tiny pieces fit together so well and they helped Nolan not one bit, and they helped Jorn, the real Jorn, even less.

“What did Jorn say?” Nolan said. He stared at the notebook on the kitchen table in front of him. “Before I hit him, he tried to say something. ‘I’m sorry.’ Or ‘I’m scared.’ ‘I’m …’ I don’t know.”

Pat frowned at him from the living room couch. She slapped the space bar on the laptop to pause whatever movie she was watching. “I don’t either, Nole.”

“I should know, though.” Nolan paused. “I’m not dreaming about him or anything.” He’d gone from years of notebooks and empty smiles to killing an innocent man. Took a stone and bashed in his skull. He should have nightmares. He should turn away every time he saw a brick, or wallow in guilt, or something.

He’d spent a lifetime wondering who he was. It couldn’t be this. He wasn’t a killer.

“Isn’t that good? Not dreaming?” Pat sounded more awkward than anything.

She’d had nightmares after Nadi possessed her. So why hadn’t Nolan?

“I’m constantly sucking up to Mom and Dad for everything that’s happened, and at the same time I’m a murderer. How am I supposed to fit those things together?” He slammed his hand on the table, shoved aside the journal he’d meant to write in. It fell facedown to the floor. He didn’t know what to write, anyway. The story was over. He’d left them. He hadn’t gotten to say I’m sorry or I hope you have a nice life or I hope this makes up for everything. The journal ended before he’d walked Amara back to the palace.

Pat hissed for him to stay quiet, looking anxiously at the staircase. Mom was asleep upstairs.

“At least you admit you’re a suck-up,” Pat said once she was satisfied Mom wasn’t coming down.

She was trying to make him feel better, but he couldn’t fake his old laughs anymore. “Well, this time, sucking up isn’t working.”

His parents and Dr. Campbell had blamed his behavior—including going cold turkey on his pills—on side effects. It could’ve ended a lot worse, Dr. Campbell had said. Nolan’s parents still seemed shaken, though. They watched him so carefully, smiled so encouragingly, and tried so hard not to bring up the night of Pat’s play that it might’ve been funny under other circumstances.

“I’m sorry about the play,” he said for the tenth time, though it came automatically, and he hoped she didn’t notice. “I’ll help you rehearse next year. Every year.”

“What you did was more important. I get it.” Pat finally slapped the laptop shut and dropped it onto the couch cushions. She joined Nolan at the kitchen table. “Do you want to talk about it or whatever?” She tried to look genuine. Her eyebrows contorted weirdly. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m being nice.”

He’d gambled with Pat’s life. It’d worked out, but it’d been an incredible risk. Nolan had placed the life of a far-off girl in a far-off world over his sister’s. He’d felt Amara’s desperation as keenly as his own, and that didn’t make it right, but …

Part of him missed that. Feeling what Amara felt. Thinking what she thought. Fuck this life, he’d written once. Now it was the only one he had left.

“I don’t know who I am when I’m not trying to pretend everything’s OK,” he told Pat. There. Straight-up. Words that would’ve normally gone into a journal or been pushed into a far corner of his mind because he had no right to an identity crisis while Amara went through hell.

Was she still going through hell? He couldn’t check. She lived worlds beyond his reach.

“I figured … If I was going to be a blank slate, just bouncing off whatever happened to Amara, I might as well keep people around me happy. But I’m not bouncing off anything now. I’m stuck.” He jammed a finger at his head.

Right where he’d hit Jorn.

“You’re not a blank slate.” Pat dropped to the side of her chair, fishing underneath the table for the journal Nolan had dropped. She slapped it in front of him. “I mean, look at this journal. You’re way precise. And trying to keep Mom and Dad happy for so long couldn’t have been easy. It’s something good people do. Not blank slates.”

He couldn’t find the words to argue.

“And,” she said, on a roll now, “remember all your good ideas? You walked half an hour to my school in crazy heat, stayed up all night, you overdosed. You’re kind of an impulsive idi—um, you’re impulsive.”

He nodded. Swallowed. “I know.” He hesitated, and his next words came like sludge, slow and dark, and he couldn’t stop them once he’d started. “I killed Jorn without—I didn’t even think about alternatives. And now I don’t have nightmares.”

Then, in a small voice, he added, “I was so excited when I first got control. And look what I did with it. Look.”

And in a whisper: “I thought I was screwed up before.”

“No. Stop.” Pat shook her head wildly. “Stop. It’s only been a week and a half. You might still get nightmares later. But they’re no good. They suck, Nolan, they suck. Why would you want to feel terrible?”

She’d gone from joking to having tears in her voice.

“I want to care,” he said.

“You saved me.” She palmed her eyes, rubbed them. “You saved them. That’s caring.”

He looked at Pat and exhaled painful air from his chest. He tried a smile, a real one.

She pushed the notebook his way. “Maybe—maybe you should finish this.”

There’s nothing to write, Nolan wanted to argue.

He’d do it anyway.

And Cilla and Amara lived happily ever after, Nolan wrote.

He imagined them fighting, Amara shouting because she could, because she needed to know she could. He imagined her turning away when Cilla needed her, because if she didn’t, she’d still be that servant she thought she’d escaped. She wouldn’t be able to make sacrifices for Cilla without wondering if it was love or duty that made her do it. She couldn’t feel concern without remembering a million times she’d been concerned before, with Jorn looming over her and a curse rattling at the edges.

And when she helped anyway, when she couldn’t bear not to because one look at Cilla made her want to press her as close as she could, it would be Cilla’s turn to wonder the same things. Because how could she be sure?

They couldn’t be equals.

They could love, and Nolan hoped they did, because they had no one else now. But the intensity would fade, and the past would creep back in.

Maybe. He didn’t know.

He wrote: They manage despite everything. Amara asks Ruudde to help with Edo’s bar and Olym’s farm. She wonders about that boy sometimes who

No. He wrote: She misses Maart a lot & places stones on his grave.

And, the next week: She works in the palace alongside Lorres, helping servants where she can. Then she fights a revolution and she wins and servants are no more.

A month after: She finds her parents and they move to Eligon, and she never sees Cilla again. She finally relearns Elig.

And: She and Cilla track Cilla’s family on the Alinean Islands, and they travel the world.

And: Every morning on the beach, she practices her writing and watches for diggers.

And: She is, and stays, her own.

And: I’m going to watch TV with my parents and Pat. She was right: I have nightmares about Jorn now, and about Maart. I’m seeing a therapist. I can’t tell the truth but it still helps. I try to help Pat, too.

I’m going to apologize for being a dick to Sarah Schneider and ask her out again. Not just because I can, but because I want to. And I’ll find other things to want. I’ll listen to music. I could learn to draw, or study acting like Pat.

I don’t care about the movies yet, but I care about movie nights, and that’s a start.

Nolan put the journal with the others and locked the Dunelands away.