Chapter 35: Earth

“Alora, please talk to me.”

I roll my eyes. “We can talk on the bus. We need to get moving. We can go to Louisiana, or maybe somewhere on the east coast. That's farther away. Actually, maybe we should go to Canada. Crossing state lines is clearly no problem. Crossing into another country might slow him down.”

Jesse stands up and takes my hand. “I thought I was helping you, I really did, but now I wonder. I might have been making things worse.”

I drop his hand and take a step backward. “What are you talking about?”

“The first time I figured maybe it's a coincidence that only you saw Declan. Maybe you're more observant than I am.”

I square my shoulders. “Say it, Jesse.”

“I think you might be schizophrenic. You might see things that aren't there. People, and other things.”

Our parents put us up for adoption, and I blocked it, I guess. Our adopted parents died, and I weathered it. My aunt betrayed me and foisted us off on the system. The system evaluated me and put me in a psych hospital. They shoved pills at me, pills I never took, but eventually, they released me. At least Jesse and I were in the same place again. But then, two of the boys at the group home accosted me. I cried, and I hid, and I was horrified, but I survived. When I told adults, they ignored me. Actually it’s worse than that.

They called me a liar.

But every step of the way, Jesse was there.

We held each other when Mom and Dad died. He told Aunt Trina that he had dreams of Terra too, so he could go with me to the group home. I knew that no matter what, Jesse would be there for me.

But not now.

Now he thinks this is all in my head. He thinks I made Declan up. He thinks Terra’s just a dream, that it’s not actually a place that exists.

He thinks I’ve ruined our lives.

Jesse gathers me up in his arms. “They have medication that can help. It can make things normal for you, Alora, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here for you. You have to believe that. I will help, and monitor, and support. Anything you need. You know I love you, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you have to trust me—at least talk to someone.”

I shake my head. “I saw him, Jesse. Plain as day.”

He pulls me tightly against him. “I know you did. I believe you.”

I switch to Mandarin. “How do you explain this?”

I change to Russian. “And this? Do you think I’m speaking in gibberish? You think I’m just babbling?”

I try Tagalog. “The people I meet, the people who speak these languages, they understand me.”

Jesse sighs. “I've thought about it. I know you think you’re speaking other languages, and it’s moderately convincing. I’ve seen that, but no one has ever said to me, ‘Wow, how does she speak this language?’”

“How could they?” I wail. “They don’t speak English—that’s the only time I step in to help in the first place.”

“Okay.” Jesse’s eyes are sad. More than anything else, that makes me desperate.

“My French teacher,” I say. “She thought I was copying the answers. She accused me of cheating, my vocabulary was so extensive. Remember?”

“She did report you for cheating.”

And he wonders whether that’s what actually happened. Maybe I didn’t really speak French. Maybe I copied the assignments. Maybe. . . maybe.

Am I nuts?

What if he’s right? What if I don’t even remember doing it? What if I blocked it, like our birth parents?

“We aren’t running,” I say. “Are we?”

He shakes his head.

“What if I say that I’ll leave without you?”

Jesse’s face crumples. “Would you?”

I can’t even imagine a life without Jesse, a world without him by my side. Electrons orbit the nucleus. The protons in the nucleus balance the electrons in their erratic path by their weight and charge.

He’s my nucleus.

And he thinks I need help.

“I think it's triggered when we start to make connections. You're afraid to be in one place, and I think that’s natural. But you know I'm here for you, and you know that I love you. You trust me. I'll have good insurance by Monday. Well, maybe not good, but insurance. I think once that kicks in, it’ll cover you seeing someone. We’ll get you help.”

I pull away and wrap my arms around my knees. “I ruined your life.”

He shakes his head, and looks at me with so much love I almost can't stand it. “You are my life. I just want you to get through this. No one is after us. It's just you and me, doing the best we can. And this job, it's a real blessing. We've got a shot here, Alora. Now, let’s unpack and do something normal. We can go see a movie. Celebrate my new job, and yours if you want to keep it. Do something that normal people do.”

Do something normal. I think about seeing Declan. Calling social services about our file and our parents. Was it all in my head?

I run over to Jesse's laptop, still open on the spool. I point at the screen. “Do you see this?”

He crosses the room and looks at the file. His features fall. “I do. What is it?”

“I called and got our social services file.”

He skims the pages. “Our social worker wasn’t Denise—it was Danica.” He taps on the keys and pulls up a website—then points at a photo—the name underneath it is Danica Rosenbaum. “I remember meeting her—that’s the woman I was thinking of.”

“Do you remember a Declan? A man? At all?”

Jesse shakes his head. “I met a man that one time, but I can't remember his name, and other than an impression that he was really large, I don’t recall much about him.”

I collapse onto a wobbly kitchen stool. “We were adopted, Jesse. I've got our birth certificate, and then a petition for adoption from when I was almost three years old.”

Jesse toggles from one screen to the next, his eyes fixated on the documents. I'm relieved they're all there. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't feel sick, but if Jesse thinks I am, then I don't know any more.

Jesse looks over the fake email address I set up, then back at me. “How did you get this?”

“It's a long story,” I say. “I called a lot of people today and told them a lot of things and they sent me some stuff. I was resourceful.”

He clicks away on the computer and turns toward me sharply. “Or sloppy, Alora. Haven't you heard of metadata?”

I shake my head. “I know what it is, but I didn't do anything with it, I swear. I just set up an email account and then—”

He slams his hand into the wall. “You don’t do anything with it—you have to deal with the reality of it. You didn't cover your tracks. They can trace all of this to us, to Houston, if they give it half an effort.”

“But you don’t think anyone is after us. You think it’s all in my head.” Panic grips me like a vise. “And you can fix it in any case, right?”

“Maybe, but that's not the point.” He swears.

“It is the point. If you're right, they aren't looking for us. If I'm right, we shouldn’t stay in Houston long anyway. Do you remember having any other parents? I don't. And we found that out here after I discovered it in Terra.”

“I know you want to run, but can you give me a few days?” Jesse asks. “Screw the insurance. I’ll make an appointment for tomorrow, and you can talk to someone. We can pay cash. We have that much in savings, at least. You don't have to tell them everything, but talk to them about your dreams. Tell them you keep seeing someone from your past, and you don't know whether it's real. Maybe there's a test for some part of this.”

I'm shaking, and I still want to bolt. It's not safe here.

But I can’t leave without Jesse. He’s all that matters in my life.

It's barely six-thirty, but it feels like one a.m. I’m wrung out. I walk into my room and curl up on my bed. I'm not even upset that Jesse thinks my brain may be broken. I'm not mad at him, and I don't feel betrayed, not really. In all those years of doctors shoving pills at me, it never occurred to me that something so mundane might fix me. But if it could? I could finally have the normal life I’ve always wanted.

The worst part would be the years I wasted—the pain I caused Jesse—for no reason at all. I’m mostly scared, because, as awful as it sounds. . .

I hope he's right.