Page 32 of The Otherworld

“And come inside!”

I shake my head. Like hell I’m going inside.

“Jack—”

“Yeah? What, Dad? You done lecturing me yet?”

“This is not a lecture. This is a conversation, which I was hoping would be man to man, but now I can see that’s not possible since you’re still a boy—”

Rage grips me like an iron fist around my chest. “You think you know what I’m going through, Dad? You think you know what it feels like? Well, you don’t. You’ve never had a brother.” My voice cracks, choking me up. “I know Adam isn’t dead. He. Isn’t. Dead. I—I have, like, extra… extrasensory perception about it, okay? I know because I feel it, and I would feel it if he was dead. I would know, okay? I just—I would just know!” My words smash together like a train wreck, and now Dad is looking at me like I’m out of my mind.

Another rumble of thunder, louder this time. I feel it in the ground, and then Mom’s at the screen door again, yelling my name.

“Jack!… Jack!”

I spin around. “What do you want?”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that—”

“Stop lecturing me!”

“Stop back-talking—”

“JOHN.” Mom puts her foot down. “This isn’t helping. Come inside, both of you. There’s lightning out there.”

“Just a sec,” I grumble, throwing the ax down. “Gotta put the stupid windows up.” I shoot Dad a glare as I turn away. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him pull the tarp over the rest of the wood and return to the house.

Rain starts pelting down in hard, angry tears as I open my car door and turn the key halfway, putting up the windows.

You’re allowed to grieve.

I’m so sorry about your brother.

You’re on your own, Superman.

The screen door slams behind me when I walk inside. Mom and Dad are right there in the kitchen—her at the table, grieving, him shooting daggers at me like slamming the door is a felony. I start to leave the room, but Mom’s voice stops me.

“Jackie.”

A tired voice. Like a bus ran it over, then reversed and ran it over again.

I stop at the edge of the hallway but don’t turn around. “What?”

“Look at your mother when she’s talking to you.”

Leave me alone, Dad.

I turn to look at them. “What?”

Mom smooths her hands over the table, and Dad’s rubbing his forehead, and that’s when I realize—

Some kind of conversation happened while I was putting my stupid windows up.

“What?” I say for the third time.

Finally, Mom answers. “We all have intuition, sweetheart. We all have feelings about things… that we can just sense.” She looks at me, shaking her head, tears welling up. “But this isn’t one of those things, Jack. We have no proof—nothing that even indicates he could have survived.”

“That’s not true,” I blurt, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I didn’t want to do this, but I can see that I have to. I’m grasping at straws, and this is my only chance to make them see. “Someone found his stuff. His backpack and his phone—they washed up on a beach, and this girl found them, and I’ve been talking to her, and she’s been searching for him.”

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