Page 24 of The Otherworld

Mortal Weaknesses

JACK

She’s so strange.

But at the same time, so cool.

Probably the strangest, coolest girl I’ve ever talked to.

I still haven’t told anyone about her; I’m afraid that Mom and Dad will think I’ve gone nuts. Afraid that I actually have gone nuts and I’m just hallucinating Orca and none of this is real.

But I’d rather live in a fantasy than accept that Adam is gone.

My parents’ acceptance has already choked the air out of our home. I can’t breathe when I’m there. I can’t look Mom or Dad in the face. I can’t talk to them about Adam. But I can’t talk about anything else, either. What the hell do you talk about when your only brother is missing, presumed dead? The weather?

I’ve spent the whole day at the port, cleaning up his hangar (which was already clean, go figure) and examining the damage to his Beaver. Sitting in the pilot’s seat and asking myself what could have happened before he crashed. Wondering how Orca’s search was going. If it hadn’t been so damn foggy today, I could have flown out there myself and helped look for him. When Orca finally called and told me that she’d found nothing, it felt like another punch in the gut.

But still, she believes he’s alive.

She believes, and she makes me realize that I still believe, too. I still feel it in my heart, like she said—a frequency only I can hear.

She’s right.

We can’t give up.

I won’t give up.

I’m sitting outside the hangar, my back against the wall, looking out at the twilight. Docked floatplanes rock gently on the low tide as fingers of fog wrap around them, night settling in. Orca, my lifeline, is still on the phone with me.

“Maybe it would help you to talk about him,” she says softly.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I… I just get angry.”

“Don’t think of him as gone,” Orca says. “Just tell me the good things. How old is he? I don’t think you said.”

I take a deep breath, tipping my head back against the wall. “Twenty-eight.”

“Oh wow. So he’s much older than you.”

“Yeah. He’s like… my second father, to be honest. Even when I was a little kid, he seemed like a grownup. He was always my best friend, though. Bossy older brother, of course. But he made me feel like a man by hanging out with me. He taught me everything. How to fish, how to shoot, how to drive… how to fly. Couldn’t teach me to clean up my side of the room, though.”

Orca hums a laugh. “Ah, so you’re messy?”

“I think I’m just human. Adam is… a god. But he puts up with my mortal weaknesses. With a little correction. I don’t mind. He’s right, most of the time. And I’d give my left arm to hear him scold me again.”

“Your left arm?”

“I’m left-handed. It’s an expression.”

“Ah. Otherworlders have a lot of expressions, don’t they?”

A surprised laugh stumbles out of me. “Uh, yeah, I guess we do.”

“So what are these ‘mortal weaknesses’?”

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