Page 116 of The Otherworld

“But it’s boring here.”

“Nonsense! It’s where you grew up. I want to know everything about it! It’s your world.”

Jack sighs. “Yeah, exactly. It’s all I’ve ever known. Just like you, stuck on your island. That’s why I can’t wait to get out.”

“Well, Seattle can’t be that much better.”

“I don’t want to go to Seattle,” Jack says with a dry laugh. “I want to go everywhere. I want to see the world.”

“The whole world?”

“The whole world.” He nods emphatically, eyes brightening at the idea. “I want to take a boat and sail across the Pacific Ocean, visit Tahiti and Bora Bora, and then I’ll get to Australia eventually—pet some kangaroos, learn how to surf. Then I’ll go to India and Nepal and maybe stop to see Mount Everest. Not to hike it, just to take pictures. But I’m definitely going to hike the Swiss Alps—”

“You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you?”

Jack laughs, shaking his head. “More of a dream than a plan.”

“Well, sometimes dreams come true. If you wait for them long enough.”

He leans forward with his elbows on the table, his eyes softening as he studies me. “I want to make your dreams come true, Orca.”

A twinge of bittersweet pain stirs in my heart. If only Adam had said those words to me last night. If only he understood the way Jack understands. If only I could make him want me as desperately as I want him.

I manage a smile and say, “Well, since we only have a week, I think Mount Everest is off the table.”

“Scratch Bora Bora, too, huh?”

I nod with a laugh. “I just want to see your world, Jack Stevenson.”

“All right,” he relents, tearing the list out of his notebook and folding it like a sacred document. “But I have to warn you, my world is nothing special.”

38

Can’t Help Falling in Love

JACK

I’m used to girls riding shotgun—girls who complain about the heat or the cold or the rain or their hair or the dirt on my car, all the while asking me where we’re going, what we’re doing, and expecting me to start every conversation. Girls I need to work hard to impress while making it look like I’m not working hard at all.

Orca, on the other hand, is the easiest girl to impress. I literally don’t have to do anything. We just drive around my little hometown, and she thinks it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s funny, but also kind of refreshing. It’s easy to be with her, because she’s not expecting anything from me. She’s spontaneous and happy, okay with everything. No restrictions on what she can eat or where she can walk in those shoes or any of the usual crap girls whine about.

I love that about her. She’s so real, so down to earth. She points to things out the window and laughs at all my jokes and plays with the car radio and can’t stop marveling at “how wondrous it is.” She’s not worried about time or work or school or politics or any of the dumb stuff that everyone is always hung up on. Orca says she’s visiting the Otherworld, but in a way I feel transported to another world, too—just by being with her.

“Is that a library?” she asks, pointing out the window to the sign planted on the side of the road. “I’ve always wanted to roam around a library and look at all the books.”

“That’s boring.”

“So far you’ve said that about everything.”

“Well, it’s true! This stuff might be all new to you, but it’s old hat to me. Oh, hey, this is where I went to school.” I tap on the directional and swerve into the empty parking lot.

Orca shifts forward in her seat to study the sprawling brick building—the sight of it apparently as odd to her as it is familiar to me. Those ugly windows I stared out of for the last four years, those concrete steps where I got in my first real fistfight, that corner of the parking lot where Adam always used to pick me up before I was old enough to drive.

“What do you do here?” Orca says, still frowning at the school with a clueless expression on her face.

“Uh, nothing anymore. I graduated this year, so I’m done. Thank God.”

“Graduated what?”

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