Chapter 19: Earth

As soon as I smell eggs and toast, my mouth begins to water. Surely that’s the reason there’s drool on my pillow. Jesse almost always starts cooking breakfast before I'm up. When I stretch, I give thanks to whatever maker watches over us that my wrist has healed. Not even a faint bruise mars the perfection of the place where my hand meets my arm. Most days I mourn my lack of normal dreams. In fact, nearly every bad thing that has happened in my life, at least since my parents’ death, has been a direct result of my Terran dreams.

But today, it’s a blessing.

Although, I may be singing a different tune tomorrow. The Followers of Amun want to kill me, I’ve left my family to rejoin my birth father and brother whom I don’t really know, and I’ve introduced myself by challenging my bio dad’s first-in-command, who also happens to be my Terran soulmate?

Ugh.

Kahn has a hundred pounds on me at least, and he looked like he was born swinging a sword with his perfectly sculpted arms. I flop back and pull the covers over my head. If I met Kahn on Earth? Oh man, I wouldn’t fight that warm, suffuse golden glow. I’d run and leap into his arms. But of course, on Terra, I basically spit in his gorgeous face.

Although. If I’m honest with myself, John’s nearly as hot as Kahn, and I shut him down just as fast.

What’s wrong with me?

I slide out of bed and quickly dress in my typical workout clothing: one of Jesse’s hand-me-down t-shirts and cropped yoga pants.

Jesse's already dressed for his interview when I come out, even though it's several hours away. His blue button-down shirt has a small stain on the collar, and his khakis are a little too short, but they're the best clothes he’s got. I feel a pang of guilt. If I weren’t such a whack job, he'd probably have much nicer things. He wouldn't be hoping desperately for an adult job at the age of eighteen—he’d be enrolled in college courses somewhere, probably on scholarship.

I look around our apartment and try to see it as a stranger might: the patched beanbag chairs, the wooden spool table and cheap metal stools. Shoved into the far corner, Jesse's cinder block bed really is the misshaped cherry on a pathetic family room sundae. I recall how much pride swelled within me as we spray-painted and duct-taped the things that other people threw away. . .making our own safe space in an uncertain world. Even last night I was proud of how it looked.

But this morning, guilt overwhelms me. What kind of life have I doomed Jesse to endure?

“I'm sorry, J,” I say.

He puts a plate of eggs in front of me, and raises both eyebrows. “For what?”

I sigh. “We're in this terrible apartment, working as dishwashers and cutting grass instead of learning about math and science and English because—” I choke. “Because I’m a nut, I guess.”

He grins. “I’ve always loved nuts. Almonds, walnuts, and don’t even get me started on peanut butter, which, little-known fact. . .comes from peanuts.”

“That’s not a little-known fact. It’s a well-known fact.” I shake my head at his dumb joke.

“I can’t be expected to know what plebeians do and don’t know. I’m a high school drop out, remember?” He tilts his head, his lopsided smile returning.

Tears well in my eyes.

His face falls and his mocking tone evaporates. “Alora, we're here, building a home in the middle of a world that attacks and destroys and ruins, and I’m proud of us for it. We aren’t here because of anything you did.” He shakes his head. “We’re here because our aunt sucks. Because Killian was so twisted he attacked you. Because a sadistic caseworker, instead of protecting you, targeted us. The world dealt us such a miserable hand, it would have broken me if I’d been alone. I’m only who I am, a knower of well-known facts, a lover of peanut butter M&Ms, because of you.” He sits down. “None of our problems are your fault.”

“You have no idea how much I want to believe that.” I sink onto the other stool and lean one elbow against the makeshift table. “But if I hadn't told Aunt Trina about Terra, if I hadn’t insisted it was real, she would have kept us.” My voice cracks. “She wanted to keep you.”

He sits down next to me and puts his hand over mine. “I'm your brother, your better half if we're being brutally honest, and because of my good nature, I’ll never leave you.” He squeezes my hand and then releases me. “But seriously, I’ll say it one last time. Try to listen. None of that was your fault, and like it or not, you're stuck with me and this crappy little apartment.”

I nod and start to shovel eggs into my mouth.

“Your wrist looks fine, at least.”

“Good as new,” I say.

“So no one came after you? On Terra, I mean?”

I swallow a huge bite of toast. “Not exactly. You’ll never believe who I met.”

“Was it the Easter bunny? I've always wondered where he came from.”

“Hilarious. No.”

“Don't tell me.” He taps his lip and smiles. “Santa Claus? Jack Frost? Oh, oh, I know. Our parents. Terra’s really the underworld, and they told you how much they love and miss us both, but me a little more because I'm generally awesome.”

“Umm, no, no, and yes.” I huff. “And why would you go right to underworld? You think our parents were evil?”

“The underworld is for anyone who dies. It’s not like heaven or hell.” The smile slides off Jesse’s face. “Wait, did you say yes to the last one?”

His brain amazes me. “Yep. Because last night, I met our dad, only it's not like, our real dad. And.” I cross my arms and make him wait for it. “I met you.”

“What??” Jesse braces his arms, palms down, against the spool table. “First you see the guy who died at Perry’s. Then you saw our dad?” He pauses. “Who somehow isn’t our dad. You’ll need to explain that.” He shakes his head. “And then way to bury the lead. I'm over there now?” He bites his lip. “In Terra? Finally??”

“I met our dad over there, but he looks nothing like our real dad here looked. It’s like he’s a totally different person. And even though I recall nothing about Earth when I’m there, I knew he felt wrong. Which is strange.”

“Whoa, if this is an underworld—people who you see over there die—then maybe I’m doomed now. Marked for death.”

I slug his arm. “I'm not dead, idiot, and our dad over there wasn't the same as our actual dad, so this guy’s probably not dead either. He called himself Duncan Sterling, the leader of the Isis forces, actually, and he's some kind of ripped, amazing old man who looked, like, way better than our real dad ever did.”

“Hey, then, what about me? Am I super buff? Can I throw an apple a few feet into the air and core, slice, and peel it with a sword before it hits the ground? Am I a ninja?” He stands up. “Tell me I’m a ninja!”

I snort. “Actually, you kind of are. You're like Jesse 2.0 on Terra.”

He whistles. “Awesome. And you're my sister over there too, right? Please tell me I didn't hit on you or something totally disgusting. Because if you didn't know we're related, and I'm like a Greek god and all, I'm just saying. That could get gross in a hurry.”

“Jesse! You're so twisted. Yes, you're my brother there, too. A little older than me—just like here.”

“Thank goodness. Hey, that’s a legitimate concern. Lots of girls have trouble knowing how to deal with all this.” He tries to smolder, which is laughable.

“You didn’t hit on me—you knew right away I was your sister.”

“Of course I did.” He pauses. “So I'm your older brother in both places, but dad's not really our dad? That's strange, right? You said from what you recall of your mom, or I guess, our mom, she wasn’t the same either. Don't you think it's strange that you've got the same sibling but not the same parents?”

“Honestly, it is odd, but that's like the tip of the iceberg to all the bizarre stuff going down right now.”

He shrugs. “True. Extreme sexism, telekinetics, and healing, a tiny planet that consists of two warring factions, with no guns or major tech. Oh, and women don’t get pregnant from having sex—a baby just starts growing in there. The dad finds out he’s a father by some glowing golden name in his head. Does that about sum it up?”

I gulp. “And the exordium.”

He sighs. “Soulmates, so drawn to one another that neither of them can ignore the feelings? You said most of the Terrans don’t even believe it’s real.”

“Except it is.”

Jesse lifts one eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I met you, and my Terran Dad… and I also sort of met my soulmate last night.”

“You didn’t.” His smile is so very lopsided that I can tell he’s suppressing a laugh in an attempt to be polite.

“Met him, and challenged him to a fight. With swords, I think.”

He laughs. “Now that sounds like you.”

“I know all of it sounds ridiculous. It’s hard to explain. I saw this guy there, my dad’s little assistant soldier, and I don’t know. He was glowing, Jesse.”

“How does your brain even come up with this stuff?” Jesse asks.

Come up with this stuff? I frown. “I don’t think I come up with any of it. Terra’s real, J. I’m not telling some kind of dream-based soap opera.”

“No, I mean, I know. I do believe that.” Jesse nods. “What I meant was, did he look more like Ryan Gosling or Liam Hemsworth?”

I roll my eyes. “A young Chris Hemsworth, maybe. Like Thor, pre-haircut. Or like a really young version of the guy who played Ragnar in Vikings, before he got all old and nasty.”

Jesse’s jaw drops. “Well, you are a lucky girl. I bet you squealed like a happy little piglet.”

“Actually, I challenged him, remember?”

“Like, ‘hey hot stuff, you can’t catch me, keener neener?’ But like, actually you were shimmying and batting your eyes?”

I snort. “No, more like, ‘choke on my sword, you stupid glowing jerk.’”

Jesse’s eyes widen. “Seriously? You didn’t just blow him off?”

I shrug. “What can I say? Even in Terra, I’m alternative.”

“I guess so.” Jesse dumps his uneaten eggs onto my plate. “Speaking of being a freak of nature, even with the buckets of food you consume, you’re looking too skinny again. You need to eat more.” He starts to clean up dishes. His voice is almost too soft to hear over the water of the sink. “I wonder sometimes whether Terra’s like a puzzle, and if we could just see all the pieces, the ones we have would click into place.”

“Maybe,” I say. “I wish it made more sense.”