Otherbound

25

Nolan reached for his pen on awakening, a habit honed over too many years. His fingers were numb with sleep, but he found the pen without trying. Shit. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d promised to warn Amara first. He’d just been so focused on taking over Cilla, trying, straining, and … And now it was close to noon already, and he’d forgotten to close the curtains, making his room sticky with heat. He’d have to plan better. Prevent himself from dozing off accidentally again.

He pushed himself up. His forehead practically stuck to his desk. He bet it’d left all sorts of marks on his skin.

He couldn’t find his journal as easily as his pen.

It’s not working, he wanted to write, but his pen tip floated in midair, scrawling the letters into nothing. He scanned his desk, then remembered Pat waking him up earlier. He’d knocked his journal off his desk. He rolled his chair back, but the floor was empty, too.

He remembered the notebook falling.

He remembered the damn notebook falling, but it wasn’t on the floor, and when he kneeled to check under his bed, it wasn’t there, either.

He burst into Pat’s room. He knew where she hid her own journal, behind the drawers under her desk, but his wasn’t there. He checked under her pillow. Her mattress. Where else? Closet?

Back in his room, he grabbed his cell. Dont read it, he texted her. Pat pls just dont. Im sorry I told you ill explain. A second text: Im writing a damn book Ok?

He waited for five full minutes. No response. The cell’s clock flashed a sixth minute, reminding him it was almost time for the lunch portion of his medication. He might as well take it now, before something else happened to suck him into the Dunelands and make him forget. He’d need to eat, too, but his appetite had gone missing with his journal.

After the last pill wedged itself down his throat, he paused, eying the carefully laid out evening dose on the corner of his desk. He’d only been able to control Amara after increasing his dosage. If he wanted to possess Cilla …

Nolan shouldn’t have taken control of Amara the way he had at the fireplace. He’d felt Amara’s loathing the second he retreated, and he knew he deserved every bit of it.

He’d just—he’d thought he’d found a way out.

Maybe he still had.

Nolan realized he’d made a mistake roughly around the time Pat came home. He’d cracked open a new journal to write in, snapped awake when he heard the front door unlock, and lurched off his chair. He’d meant to go downstairs to talk to her. He found himself stumbling against the desk, his stomach pounding left and right as if fighting to escape. His balance was shot. He groped his way along the wall. By the time he stepped into the bathroom, his arms gave in, and he slammed to the floor, hipbone landing against a cabinet. He muffled a cry.

He spent the next hour slumped by the toilet. He couldn’t breathe right. His vision twisted and dove and climbed. He emptied his stomach and then just felt it spasm and push out painful spikes of air. He couldn’t keep his thoughts straight, and he lay dazed, as if stuck in a dream.

Pat came up at one point. Knocked. Nolan managed to push out one word: “Nauseous.”

“Should I call Mom?” she asked quietly. Nolan made a sound. He hoped she took it as a no.

Taking control of Cilla still didn’t work. He should tell Amara that. He couldn’t. Captain Olym had stuck close ever since the kiss, eager to play host to Princess Cilla.

“Sure is nice you can take action now, Nolan,” he slurred in Spanish at one point. “Sure is nice. But maybe, just maybe, you should think first.” His head lolled the other way. It gave him an excellent view of the toilet plumbing. He drifted into a haze, then woke without being sure he’d ever fallen asleep at all.

Only near dinnertime did he dare push himself up. His head still pounded. His hands shook. His stomach had calmed, though, and he could breathe again, and he vaguely remembered Mom coming home after the worst had passed and checking on him once or twice.

If Mom had seen him earlier, she’d have called Dr. Campbell or even Poison Control or 911. She’d probably have been right to.

“Occasionally, I am kind of an idiot,” he murmured, in English again, and dragged himself up. A bruise pulsed on his elbow. With his foot, he nudged open the bathroom door, welcoming the fresh air. The sound of the vacuum cleaner and voices from the TV drifted upward—one of Pat’s Michelle Rodriguez movies—and he sat for a minute, calmer now, his head clearer though no less painful.

After a while, Pat’s hesitant voice came from downstairs: “Mom? Is he really OK?”

The vacuum cleaner went silent. “He’s still getting used to the increased dosage. The side effects should wear off soon.”

There was a minute of silence. “Who’s Amara? Nolan said that name in his … his sleep.”

“You should ask Nolan that.”

“He’s being a jerk about it.”

Mom chuckled, sounding tired. “It’s his dream. He’s allowed.”

“So it does mean something?” Pat pressed. “What about Cilla? Jorn? Maart?”

Nolan winced at the last name. Hearing anyone say it was wrong. The dead couldn’t rest if you kept calling on them. But hearing Pat say it, and all those other names, wasn’t just wrong but bizarre beyond anything. Even the weirdness of Amara thinking or signing Nolan’s name didn’t compete. Everything in that world had long since moved past “bizarre”; this world was real life, or at least his crappy imitation. It’d been years since he’d heard Amara’s name in his world except in his own whispers.

Pat didn’t get the pronunciation right. The r needed to roll deeper in her throat, the a’s needed to be more Spanish than English. Slowly, he climbed upright. He hopped to the sink for some water, steadying himself with a still-shaky hand.

“He said all that?” Mom said. “Chatty. I’ve never heard him talk in his sleep.”

“Strange.” Pat tried too hard to sound innocent. She hadn’t nailed that part of acting yet. Nolan did a better job. No one suspected window dressing.

“Ask him about it, not me, all right?”

Nolan heard Pat thump back into the couch pillows. “I think he’s having seizures again,” she said then. “This morning it took, like, five minutes to wake him up. He was super weird after.”

Mom sighed. “We’ll talk to him.”