Page 166 of The Otherworld

Adam falls silent as he completes the instrument check, and I keep my lips sealed, letting him concentrate. I don’t speak until a few minutes later when the plane is rumbling smoothly, propeller spinning as the engine warms up.

“I don’t know how I forgot your journal on the bed,” I say softly, pressing my eyes shut. “If only I’d been more careful.”

“You’re not to blame,” Adam insists, handing me a set of headphones. “I’m just sorry you had to see us fight.”

“Surely grown men can settle their differences without fists.”

Adam casts me a look. “I didn’t throw the first punch, Orca.”

“I know. I watched you; I saw you trying to make him stop. It just… broke my heart to see you two at each other’s throats like that.”

Adam nods, gently rubbing his swollen jaw. “It certainly wasn’t how I wanted Jack to find out.”

My heart aches as I watch Adam’s hands move over the instruments. Within moments, we are gliding across the water to the widest part of the harbor. After a brief communication through his headset, Adam reaches for the throttle and pushes the lever. The aircraft surges forward, sending up white spray around the floats as beams of bright morning sunlight flash between the spinning propeller blades. We lift gracefully into the sky, and I watch the Otherworld shrink smaller and smaller behind us.

Adam doesn’t say a word to me during the whole flight to my island; he just focuses on piloting, frowning intently at the skies ahead. I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to—not with my mind still reeling from the brutality I witnessed in the hangar.

Adam said it wasn’t my fault, but I know it was. When I go back to the beginning, all this conflict started with me. If I’d never gone to the Otherworld in the first place, Adam and Jack would still be best friends. Inseparable.

I remember the day I watched them embrace on the sunny hillside at the lighthouse—Jack in tears as he gripped fistfuls of his brother’s shirt. Those hands couldn’t hold Adam tightly enough back then. Now they are bloody and bruised from hitting him.

And it is all my fault.

A tear slips down my cheek as I gaze at the ocean waves shimmering far below us.

I think of the butterfly effect. How something small and seemingly insignificant can spark a sequence of events that lead to a massive disaster.

Chaos.

It is no theory—it’s real.

But I don’t know which of us is the butterfly.

Was it me when I left the lighthouse?

Or was it Jack when he came to take me to the Otherworld?

Or was it Adam when he first crashed his plane in our waters?

Or was it Papa when he decided to keep me on the island?

Or was it Mama when she left us?

Perhaps we are all butterflies, and the world is our hurricane.

Sooner than I expected, the island comes into view. It looks so small from this perspective—a pocket-sized forest floating on a sea of moving glass. Adam makes a wide turn, tipping the left wing down as we drop altitude. That’s when I see the lighthouse standing resolutely on the northernmost tip of our island.

Oh, Papa.

My heart gives a sharp pang of remorse as I remember the day I left and the cross words that passed between Papa and me. I wish I could go back and do it all differently.

We descend, coming to land atop the waves. A spray of whitewater whooshes up around the floats, and we begin to rock and sway on the moving tide. Adam expertly guides the plane to shore, shutting off the engine before we get too close. As we come to a complete stop abreast of the flat gray beach, I look up and see Papa emerge from the lighthouse.

“Perhaps now isn’t the right time to speak with my father,” I say, turning to lay my hand on Adam’s arm. “You should get home and put some ice on that bruise.”

Adam shakes his head. “You think just because I got hit a few times, I’d let that stop me?”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I whisper, cupping his face in my hand. “And I love you for it. But I think I should prepare Papa for this conversation. We might only have one chance to get it right. Just… give me a few days with him.”

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