Page 126 of The Otherworld

After five hundred hours of looking for a place to park, I find a tiny lot that only charges half a kidney to ditch your vehicle for six hours. I pay my dues, then grab Orca’s hand and start heading downtown. She is speechless, taking it all in—spinning in circles as she stares up at the skyscrapers reaching for the clouds. The look on her face is like the feeling I get thinking about all the unexplored places I want to travel to, and just seeing that smile makes me want to take her with me to those hundreds of Otherworlds.

Maybe I will. Who knows?

For now, it’s Seattle.

We get lost a few times, but there’s nothing wrong with getting lost as long as you don’t get mugged and you still remember where you parked. We avoid anything that looks touristy and instead wander around like truants without a cause—running across the streets when the sign says not to, cutting through markets that smell like everything good in one place, which reminds me that I’m starving.

We grab some fish and chips, and I watch Orca’s eyes widen as she experiences the phenomenon of fried food.

“Oh… my goodness.”

“Right?”

“Mm.”

She steals most of my fries, and I don’t even care. That’s how I know I am serious about this girl.

“That’s a strange one,” she says, pointing up at one of the towering buildings a few blocks away.

“Yeah, that’s the Space Needle. Wanna go up inside it?”

“Can we?”

“Hell yes.”

We hit it at a good time because there’s no line. Orca looks like she wants to read all the boring plaques, but I pull her into the elevator before she can get distracted.

“What is this we’re in?” she asks me, which makes the elevator operator squint at us.

I laugh awkwardly and pull Orca close, whispering into her ear, “It’s an elevator. It’ll take us up to the top.”

She raises an eyebrow. “No stairs?”

“No stairs.”

When the doors open, she looks shocked to find herself six hundred feet in the sky. I pull her out and lead her to the glass wall overlooking the city. Canyons of steel and glass yawn beneath us, rivers of cars and bikes and people flowing down the streets like ants, everyone hurrying to be somewhere else.

“Wow,” Orca breathes, her fingertips on the glass.

“What do you think? Better view than your lighthouse? Or… same?”

She tilts her head, considering the answer. “They’re both beautiful in different ways.”

“That makes sense. Like deserts and mountains. Have you ever seen pictures of Egypt? They’ve got these dunes—they’re like… as tall as that building down there. It’s called the ‘Great Sand Sea’ because there’s just nothing but sand for hundreds of miles. And then, mountains—god, there’s so many. Nepal. Peru. Brazil. They look like they could all be on different planets, but it’s crazy to think they’re not even that far away.”

Orca twirls around to face me. “Jack.”

“Yes?”

“You are here.” She pokes my chest with one finger.

“What?”

“Seattle. Washington. America.”

I laugh at myself. “Right. Sorry. I just… I get so…”

“Restless?”

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