Chapter 41: Earth
I text Henry to let him know I'll be there on time. When Jesse and I sit down on the bus, he bumps me with his knee.
“I'm sorry.”
I shake my head. “You're trying to help because you love me.”
We ride the rest of the way in silence, but when we're a few miles away, I remember I have some M&Ms in my purse. I pull them out and hand them to Jesse. He grins widely at me. Jesse never misses an M&M, unless we're on the bus. The shaking and lurching around makes tossing candy in the air and catching it in your mouth extra tricky. He likes the challenge.
He tears the top off and starts tossing them in the air. The other people on the bus scowl at us whenever he misses and M&Ms hit the ground, but Jesse still gets most of them in his mouth.
When we reach La Centerra, we both climb off the bus. I walk with Jesse over to his office since I have ten minutes to spare. Just before he goes inside, I say, “I'm sorry, J.”
“For what?”
“Everything. Making your life suck. Ruining things over and over. I didn't mean to mess anything up for you. Not then and not now. Not ever.”
He puts his arm around me. “If I could pick any person in the entire world—” he pauses and smiles, “or even anyone I've heard about on Terra, I'd still pick you for a sister. Every single time, without hesitation. I'm sorry I put you through that today.”
“I’m glad you did, and I hope this sleep study is helpful. Maybe we'll finally get some answers,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure that we even need a sleep study.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end. “It can't explain your speedy healing, or the languages. The more I think about things, the more I realize that while I can’t understand what you were saying, the people you spoke to did respond to you—I’ve watched you go back and forth. I just lost sight for a little bit, probably because I'm so tired of running. But if you really saw Declan.” He sighs. “I don’t know what to think. He’s not a social worker, so if he’s following us around, maybe it has to do with the seatbelts.” Jesse steps a bit closer and drops his voice. “Maybe we should run. The things I’ve seen—and what you told me the detective said—being afraid of whatever or whoever hurt our parents and got the investigation shut down, that isn’t paranoia. That’s justifiable fear.”
I should tell him that I saw Declan in my dream, and that Terra's in the middle of a war. I should tell him yes, let's run, but. . .
I just convinced him that I'm not mentally deranged. If I tell him an Earth villain has turned up on Terra, well, it will seem like mighty convenient timing. I'm terrified that Declan will catch us and haul us back to Washington. I'm afraid Devlin will kill or capture me in Terra. Both of those things are near the top of my MOST HORRIBLE THINGS list.
But I'm more afraid of losing Jesse.
I can’t survive without him in either place. Things between us are getting strained, and I want to shore that up before I insist on leaving again. Maybe Jesse will see Declan, too. Then he'd believe me for sure.
For the first time in my entire life, I choose not to tell my brother about something I fear. I choose to let him live his life and not destroy it again. I choose to be brave and to trust his judgment.
“I know you love me, J, and I love you, too. We're a set. No Jesse without Alora, no Alora without Jesse.”
“Let's go see a few movies tonight after work,” he says.
We always sneak into a second movie after we pay for the first. It's not about the second movie. It’s about pretending, even for just an hour or two, that our life is normal. That the riskiest part of our existence is sneaking into a movie for which we haven’t paid. Once we got confused and ended up watching this movie about all these old women squabbling over a vase. It was one of my fondest memories—laughing at all the terrible dialogue and amateur acting. We’d have been upset that we paid for a movie that bad, if we’d paid for it.
“I’d like that.” I grin.
He hugs me and walks into the office building. I watch until I can't see him anymore. Only then do I head over to Perry's for the lunch shift. Tips are even better today, and I stay for late hits, so it's already almost four when I walk out the door. I decide to wait on the bench outside and meet Jesse here instead of heading home.
“If you aren't careful, they're going to start charging you rent for this bench,” John says.
I glance up and smile. He sits down next to me.
“You are really late for lunch today if you’re only now getting it. Like, your staff might file a claim for hostile working conditions.”
“Don't give your brother any ideas. He looks like a rabble-rouser, a natural leader of men, but remember. I took a chance on him when no one else would.”
“And he's late to work on the second day.” I scrunch up my nose. “Sorry, that was my fault.”
He angles his head. “Is everything okay?”
“I just haven't been sleeping well lately. Nightmares. I'm supposed to get a sleep study. Apparently their solution to me not sleeping well is to have me sleep in an unfamiliar place with a lot of wires and whatnot poking out of my body.”
He snorts. “Science. I swear, half the time their solution is worse than the problem.”
“And the other half of the time, they're guessing.”
“Exactly. Well, I hope you get some answers. What do you dream about? Your parents?”
I shake my head. “It's mostly the same dream over and over. I'm in another place, and I’m running from my past.” That seems vague enough, and plausible without giving too much away. Jesse would be proud.
“My mom had bad dreams,” John says.
“Did they stop? Or does she still have them?”
He slumps on the bench next to me. “I guess you could say they stopped. She had them for a long time, and finally my dad committed her. While she was receiving treatment, she died.”
A chill runs down my spine. That story sounds close enough to my own that it makes me uneasy. When I look at John, though, the raw emotion in his face eases my anxiety. I think about what Dr. Agour said. When someone in your family suffers, the loved ones don't know what to do. They suffer, too.
I reach over and take his hand in mine without thinking. Our fingers interlace, and since I barely know him, it should feel weird, but it doesn’t.
It just feels right.
And unlike Terra, I chose this. My feelings are entirely my own.
The buzzing from my phone jolts me out of my daze. “Did you come out here to do something?”
He straightens, but doesn't let go of my hand. “I did. I need to run to Best Buy for some supplies. Want to come with me?”
I pull out my phone and notice it's nearly five o'clock. ALMOST DONE. EAT AND THEN MOVIE?
“That actually sounds kind of nice.” Normal. I haven’t done much normal in my life. “But sadly, I can't today.”
John glances at Perry's. “Another hot date?” I may be imagining it, but he seems annoyed.
“Nah.” I stand up, letting go of his hand in the process. “J said he's nearly done for the day. We didn't get to celebrate his new job yet. We thought we'd go get dinner and catch a movie.”
“I take it that, as the boss, I'm not invited?”
He wants to come? Surprisingly, I'd like to have him there, but not tonight. Jesse and I have had a weird enough couple of days. We need some time alone to find our equilibrium. Also, we need to talk about what we should do. If I really am paranoid, we should stay. But if I'm not, if Terra’s real, and a man is impersonating a social worker to hunt us down, he might have murdered our parents. He could be after us right now, and not to haul us back to Washington.
John can't hear all the things we need to discuss. “Sorry, but this is invite only, party of two. Next time, for sure.”