Page 6 of The Other World

“It will be good practice for writing your doctorate,” she said, dumping another pile of books in front of me.

“If I live that long,” I muttered, half-hopefully. If I had the choice, being banished to the spirit realm seemed way less torturous.

“According to this, you will,” said Harper, waving a thin paperback around. “This says you’ll live forever and be some sort of messiah.”

“Muad’dib,” Nikolai muttered to Hannah and she giggled into his shoulder.

Harper rolled her eyes. “Nerds.”

I reached out to snatch the book from her but she held it away. Then she rolled her eyes and handed it to me.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I read the name on the cover. Ruby Spencer. With foreword by Daniel O’Connor. The title was “The Fated Child: the oncoming apocalypse and how to avert it”.

“That was not in your pile,” said Althea, plucking the book from my hand and setting it back on Harper’s pile. “Your pile is string theory.”

“Can’t my pile be… anything else?” I asked, opening “String Theory for Dummies”, and sinking my head down onto it. Maybe if I used it as a napping pillow, the contents would soak into my brain. It was the only way they’d get in there. I couldn’t even understand the Wikipedia article on string theory. I needed “String Theory for Dummies for Dummies”, and even then, I probably wouldn’t understand it. Honestly, the whole topic seemed more like Althea’s type of thing but she was looking into portals. Portals sounded way more fun.

“You’ll be happy you know this stuff when you’re stranded in a parallel world with no library or internet.”

I briefly paused in banging my head against the table. “No internet?”

She shrugged, turning a page in a massive leather-bound book. “It’s possible.”

Maybe I could back out. Surely if Vucari heard about the no internet planet, he wouldn’t expect me to go there. I mean, there’s harsh and then there’sharsh.

But then I thought about Sam. Sam didn’t even care much about the internet, but he did care about his friends. He was stranded in some other world all alone, and anything could be possible in that other world. He could be the only human. Well, humanoid. He might be surrounded by dinosaurs, or snakes, or really stinky cheese. He could be in danger. And he’d feel like he deserved it. If I knew Sam at all, I knew that he’d think it was a fitting punishment for everything he’d done. But it wasn’t. I had to save him.

I turned to the intro of the book and started reading.

I stayed there reading until everyone else had drifted off, to dinner or to bed, I wasn’t sure. I was too focused on memorizing everything I read. And once I applied myself, it was actually much easier than I expected, as if the knowledge behind the words became my knowledge, rather than me taking in the words and deciphering them myself. I didn’t know how but I knew somehow that it was a perk of my new transformation.

It was past midnight when I looked up and realized I was alone.

No, not alone. Someone was sitting in the far corner, in the comfiest armchair, reading. Tennyson.

“You didn’t have dinner,” he said, without looking up. “I brought you a sandwich.”

I glanced over to the table beside me, and sure enough, there was a plate set on a pile of books, with a ham, cheese and pineapple sandwich on sourdough rye, cut neatly into triangles on it. My favorite. He must’ve made it himself, because it wasn’t something the school ever had.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, suddenly realizing how hungry I was.

“I’ve done some research on what we might come to expect, during your spirit phase.” He still didn’t look up from his book but I knew it was just for the effect. “There isn’t a lot on it, obviously, but most sources agree that you’ll begin to neglectyour physical needs. It’s something we’ll need to be mindful of, so that your health doesn’t suffer.”

He was using “we”, I noticed. That seemed like a good sign.

I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d learned about my oncoming transition, since we’d all been talking about it that evening, but I hadn’t realized he was home. His attention wasn’t often on our stupid teen conversation lately, even when he was at the house.

I thought about what he’d said as I chewed on my sandwich. I was about to make some crack about how it wouldn’t really be me if I wasn’t hungry, when he spoke again.

“You need to speak with Ruby Spencer,” he said. “I don’t like it, but I can’t see any other option. I’ve got the helicopter pilot on alert. We can either go tonight or in the morning.”

We? I asked telepathically, as I was still eating my sandwich.

We, he repeated.

He looked so tired that I couldn’t bear keeping him awake for the time it would take to get back to the manor. And by the time I finished eating, I realized he was already asleep where he sat.

He was gone when I woke up the next morning but he was waiting for me by the fountain as soon as classes were over.

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