The Rivers of Zadaa

SECOND EARTH

Courtney Chetwynde felt as if she were drowning.

If there was one word that could be used to describe Courtney, it would be “controlled.” Courtney was always in control because she had the tools to do it. She was smart and pretty and athletic and funny, and pretty much all the things that lesser human beings could only aspire to. Courtney had the whole package. Things always went her way because she madesurethey went her way. She was a force of nature. In school, with sports, with boys, even with her parents. Courtney had it all.

Until she lost it all.

It wasn’t as dramatic a change as what happened to Bobby Pendragon. She wasn’t plucked out of her perfect life, flumed across time and space and given the responsibility of saving all existence. What happened to Courtney was, in some ways, worse. Bobby left his normal life behind. Courtney stayed home and had her normal life turned inside out. And it had nothing to do with her relationship with Bobby, and becoming an acolyte with Mark Dimond. At least not at first.

Courtney defined herself as an athlete, but for some unexplainable reason, she was no longer competitive. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. One day she woke up to find she wasn’t as good as she had been her whole life. Or looking at it another way, everybody suddenly had gotten a lot better than she was. Failing at sports was like the first piece of yarn that works loose in a sweater. Once you start pulling on it, the whole sweater unravels.

Courtney’s life unraveled.

She became so obsessed with her failures on the field, she let it affect school. Her grades took a serious nosedive. That made her parents unhappy and caused all sorts of tension at home. All this turmoil and failure made the once happy and friendly Courtney not so much fun to be around. Her friends stopped calling. But that was okay with her. She wasn’t calling them, either. Courtney went from outgoing, to withdrawn. From friendly, to bitter. From being Courtney, to being a hazy shadow of Courtney.

Her only release was her relationship with Mark, and their responsibility of being the acolytes for Bobby Pendragon. In comparison to the troubles facing Bobby and Halla, her own problems seemed petty. Perspective was good. Bobby’s journals gave her that perspective. But as time went on, reading about Bobby’s adventures made her feel almost too small. Insignificant, even. She and Bobby had always been friendly rivals. More times than not, she would get the better of him. But now, Bobby was battling to save humanity, while Courtney was left to battle her own inner demons. And she was losing. Every time she turned around, her ego took another beating.

That’s why, when the opportunity presented itself to help Bobby, she jumped at it. Courtney would never admit it, but when she and Mark entered the flume to help save Eelong, she was also trying to save herself. She saw this as a chance to get back her self-confidence and prove to everyone that she hadn’t changed. Most of all she needed to prove it to herself.

When Courtney and Mark left Second Earth, they definitely rose to the occasion. If they hadn’t stepped in, Eelong would have been doomed. Worse, Bobby might have died. Their adventure on Eelong was everything Courtney hoped it would be. They were heroes. Her self-doubt disappeared. She had proven to herself that she was every bit the force of nature she had always been. Balance had been restored.

And then it all came crumbling down. Literally. Acolytes were not supposed to use the flumes. She knew that. Bobby knew that. Everybody knew that. But they used them anyway. The result? The flume on Eelong collapsed, killing a Traveler and stranding Gunny and Spader. The horrifying truth was that Saint Dane’s plan all along had been to get them to use the flumes. He didn’t care about Eelong. He cared about tearing the Travelers apart, and Courtney was quick to oblige. For a brief, glorious month, when she and Mark were on Eelong, Courtney felt as if she were back in control. She was wrong. Saint Dane was pulling her strings all along. Courtney went from feeling as if she were invincible, to being crushed by the guilt of her part in bringing about the death of a Traveler and hurting Bobby’s chances of defeating Saint Dane.

That’s why she felt as if she were drowning.

She went into a depression. She could barely get out of bed. Sleep was good. At least while asleep there was a chance of having a happy dream. Being awake felt more like a nightmare. Her parents took her to a therapist, but it didn’t do much good. She tried to explain to the doctor how she had such high expectations of herself, and it killed her to fall short. But saying it like that made it all seem so trivial. The problem was, Courtney couldn’t be fully honest with him. She couldn’t tell him about Bobby, and the flumes and Saint Dane and how her arrogance may have doomed all of humanity. But she wanted to, and then scream at the doctor: “Don’t you think you’d be a little depressed if you had to deal with that?” She didn’t, because she knew where that would lead. The therapist wouldn’t consider her depressed anymore. He’d move her into the “crazy” category. That’s why she mostly kept quiet during therapy. It was frustrating for both of them.

This went on for months. Tension at home was unbearable. Her parents tried to help, but they didn’t understand. Their efforts usually led to more arguments. Then they’d argue about having so many arguments. Like with the therapist, Courtney wasn’t able to fully explain what was going on to them. The sweater of Courtney’s life was almost completely unraveled.

It was during a particularly gruesome argument when, out of total frustration, her mother threw up her hands and said, “I can’t help you. I wish I knew somebody who could!” Her mother stormed out of Courtney’s bedroom, not realizing that those words had struck a chord. It was a small realization, but an important one. Courtney quickly flipped through her memory, wondering if there actually was somebody out there she felt could help. She came up with someone. The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure this was the only person who could help her get her life back together.

Courtneyneeded to help herself.

It was one of the greatest challenges she couldimagine. Itwasn’t about games or grades or even about saving Halla. It was about saving Courtney. Thinking this way actuallymade her smile. There was a rumbling. It was faint, but it was there. It was a far-off whisper that told her after all she had been through, after having her spirit crushed, after losing her entire sense of worth, there was a slight glimmer of hope. This rumbling made her realize that somewhere down deep, she wanted the challenge. She needed the challenge. Even in failure, she had never backed down from any test. Any hurdle. Any opponent. She was actually getting excited, and it felt good. It made her realize that the drive was still there. It was buried pretty deep, but it was there. It made her feel as If maybe there was a little bit of Courtney left, and she wanted to bring her back.

It was that realization that led her to be riding in the backseat of her parents’ car, driving along a winding country road through the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. She was going to summer school. Sleepaway school. Courtney felt that if she were going to reclaim her own spirit, she was going to have to do it away from all things that were familiar. It meant getting away from home, her parents, Stony Brook and her friends, and most painfully, Mark Dimond. She no longer felt worthy of being an acolyte. Walking away from that was the toughest decision she had to make. She was worried to death about what was happening with Bobby and the Travelers. But she felt certain that if she wanted to get her head back on straight, she had to start from scratch to find out who she was. Six weeks of summer school where nobody knew her seemed like a pretty good way to start.

“Look out!” Mr. Chetwynde screamed. He turned the wheel hard, careening off the road to avoid a near collision with an oncoming car that had drifted into their lane.

Mrs. Chetwynde screamed. Courtney whipped around to get a look at the car. It was an old-fashioned, jet-black sedan with shiny chrome bumpers that probably rolled out of the showroom in 1950. Mr. Chetwynde kept control of the car and got them back on the road. The only damage was to their nerves.

“What is wrong with that guy?” Mrs. Chetwynde said, her eyes wide. “He’s a menace!”

“Must be an old geezer,” Courtney said. “That car is ancient. It doesn’t even have plates.”

“Somebody should yank his license!” Mr. Chetwynde said, his heart racing.

“Yeah, Dad,” Courtney said. “Let’s go get him. Citizen’s arrest.”

Mr. Chetwynde turned around to give Courtney a look…and laughed. Courtney laughed too. So did Mrs. Chetwynde. It felt good. There hadn’t been a whole lot of laughing with the Chetwyndes lately.

A few minutes later they arrived at the Stansfield Academy. Courtney’s home for the next six weeks. It was a private school, K-12, that had been around since the dark ages. It looked it too. The buildings were brick and covered with leafy vines. There was a grassy campus with huge shade trees that Courtney could envision herself lying under to read and do homework. Kids were everywhere. Some were arriving with suitcases. Others were playing catch with various footballs, baseballs, and Frisbees. Courtney thought it was a pretty place, in a boring New England kind of way. That was okay. She wasn’t there for excitement.

The Chetwyndes’ picked the place out of a catalog. During the school year it was the last kind of place Courtney would be caught dead in. It was an elite private school where the boys wore boring blue blazers and the girls wore… boring blue blazers. But things were much more relaxed during summer session. There were kids from all walks of life, not just the snooty types. After walking across the campus, Courtney’s first impression was that they had picked the right place.

“Heads up!” A soccer ball game flying by, nearly hitting Mr. Chetwynde. Courtney caught it without thinking. A guy came jogging up to get it.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No problem,” Courtney said, tossing him the ball. Courtney sized him up quickly. Cute, athletic, polite, cute. He was nearly six feet tall, with short, wavy blond hair and dazzling gray eyes.

“That was a good catch,” the guy said. “You play?”

Courtney had to think about that answer. Did she play? She could probably dribble rings around this pretty boy. Then again, maybe she couldn’t. She didn’t want to have to find out.

“No,” she said. “I’m not much for sports.”

Courtney’s parents both gave her a quick look, but chose not to comment.

The guy backed away, saying, “You don’t know what you’re missing. Play with us sometime.”

He turned and jogged back to his group of friends who were playing in the pickup game. Courtney watched him go, checking out his muscular legs. A second later she felt the stares of her parents. She looked at them to see they were holding back smiles.

“What?” she said. “I’m not here to play soccer.”

“Neither is he,” Mr. Chetwynde said with a chuckle.

“Oh, please,” Courtney said playfully, and kept walking.

The Chetwyndes spent the next few hours getting Courtney settled. They picked up her registration materials and class schedule. They got a tour of the dining hall, the swimming pool, the game room, the student lounge, the buildings where her classes would be, and finally, her dorm. Courtney caught a huge break and didn’t have to share her dorm room with anybody. It’s not that she didn’t want to meet anybody, but after having spent the better part of the last few months in bed with the covers over her head, Courtney was grateful that she could return to being social on her own terms. So far it was all good.

After spending several hours at Stansfield, any doubt that Courtney had about this being a good idea had vaporized. She was happy to be there. Her mom helped her unpack while her dad brought up the small refrigerator they had rented for the term. Finally, after taking care of all there was to take care of, it was time for her parents to leave. There was an awkward moment, for all sorts of reasons. Courtney had never been away from home for that long before-at least as far as her parents knew. They didn’t know about her journey to Eelong. Beyond that, their relationship had been pretty rocky over the past year. It made saying good-bye difficult.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Mrs. Chetwynde said. “I mean, not that I don’t want you home, but I think it’s better that you’re here instead of…Oh, this is coming out all wrong.”

Courtney broke the tension by giving her mother a hug. “I know what you mean, Mom,” she said. “This is a good thing. But I miss you already.”

“Really?” Mr. Chetwynde asked, surprised.

“Well, no, but I’m pretty sure I will real soon,” Courtney said.

The three had another laugh over that. Courtney hugged her dad.

“You know how much we love you,” he said. “And we’ll always be there for you.”

“I know, Dad,” Courtney said. “I love you too.”

“Call us,” Mrs. Chetwynde said. “We’ll send you a care package. And maybe you can come home some weekend.”

“Mom, it’s only six weeks. I’m not moving out.”

“I know, honey,” Mrs. Chetwynde gave Courtney another hug while brushing back tears. “I’m so proud of you for doing this.”

“Thanks,” Courtney said. “Now go.”

After one last round of hugs, the Chetwynde’s left and Courtney was alone. She looked around the room that was going to be her home for the next few weeks. The dorm was ancient. She wondered how many kids had said good-bye to their parents on this very spot. She suddenly missed her folks, for real. She went over to the window and caught a glimpse of them as they left the dorm and walked across the grass toward the car. She also caught a glimpse of something else.

Parked along the roadway, not far from the dorm, was the black sedan that had nearly run them off the road. There was no mistaking it. Courtney looked to see if her dad had seen it. She wouldn’t put it past him to actually go over there and make a citizen’s arrest. Or at least tell the guy off. But her parents kept walking.^

The mystery of who owned the ancient car that nearly ran them off the road would remain a mystery.

For a while.