Page 95 of The Otherworld

Mom turns to give me a puzzled frown. “You really think he would?”

“I don’t know. He keeps talking about her, saying he wants to get her out of there. He thinks her father is some villain. Not to mention, I can tell he has a crush on her.”

“Jack has a crush on every girl.”

“Yeah, I know, but this is different. She’s different. She lives in another world, which might make her sheltered, but it also makes her pure and unpolluted. Special. Beautiful, yes. But she’s off-limits, and he can’t be with her. He needs to accept that. And move on.”

Mom’s gaze burns against the side of my face. I sense her seeing right through me, reading my mind.

“Can he accept it?” she asks softly. “Can he move on?”

I brake at a stop sign and look over at her.

She knows.

I know she knows.

So I drop the act.

“No,” I confess, my voice a cracked whisper. “I don’t think he can.”

A look of sympathy softens Mom’s eyes as it all clicks into place. I’m ashamed to watch the realization hit, so I turn my attention back to the road.

“I suspected you were hiding something,” Mom says. “I could see it in your eyes. I thought you might have talked about it with Jack, but he said you told him nothing happened between you and Orca.”

“I lied. And apparently, I’m a good enough con man to convince him.”

There’s a long pause, filled with the sound of rain on the truck roof.

“So… what did happen between you and Orca?”

I shake my head because I don’t know how to put the answer into one coherent sentence.

Everything, and nothing.

Chaos.

“I don’t know, Mom. I thought I was going to die, and then there she was, like a godsend. She saved my life, but it wasn’t just gratitude I felt. It’s unexplainable, something I’ve never experienced before. Yes, she’s sheltered, like Jack said… but there’s something so beautiful about that. She knows more about real life than most people in the world. She talks to orcas. Literally.” I smile at the recollection of her skipping over the rocks, singing whale songs. “She’s just so different from anyone I’ve ever met before. I know that sounds cliché, but—”

“It doesn’t sound cliché,” Mom says. “It sounds like you’re in love.”

My heart stumbles over itself, leaving me feeling weak and senseless for a moment. I shake my head, trying to get a grip.

“Did you tell her?”

I shrug one shoulder. “Sort of. Not in so many words, but… She got the point.”

“And how did she reply?”

A memory flashes back to me—the night I kissed her at the top of the lighthouse, ran my fingers through her silky hair, and felt the warmth of her hand on my chest.

“She said she felt the same way,” I admit. Before Mom has a chance to make a statement, I add, “But we can’t be together.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first, because I’m too old for her.”

Mom gives me a dubious look. “I’m five years older than your father.”

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