“Fine.” Adam stands and snaps off the desk lamp. “I was only staying up to make sure you got home safe, son.”
The pillow hits me in the face.
“Hey! You asshole—”
“Shh!” Adam scolds me, micromanaging as always. “You’ll wake the whole house.”
“Then I’ll just fake that I’m sleeping, and they’ll blame you.”
“You’ve tried that before,” he says, yanking off his T-shirt and getting into bed. “It never works.”
I lie awake for a while after Adam falls asleep. His words keep looping through my mind.
You’re having fun with her, Jack. That’s it. Don’t fool yourself.
He’s wrong.
I’m not just having fun with Orca. I’m not just giving her a tour of my world out of gratitude. She’s not just one of my summer-break crushes. Not just another girl I take to see the fireworks.
She’s different.
She’s unlike any other girl I’ve ever met before.
She’s wild, restless, beautiful.
She’s only here for a little while longer.
And then she’ll be gone.
It wouldn’t be so hard to think about that if I were just having fun with her. But the thought of her leaving forever—
It makes me feel like I’m suffocating.
Time is running out.
Tomorrow means one less day.
I hate it when Adam reminds me that time is running out.
My life is slipping away.
Orca is slipping away.
When I close my eyes, I see a million snapshots in my mind—her braided hair under my fingers, her smile in the movie theater, the way she sniffed my jacket, her laughter over the music on the radio. The way I felt on the drive home, listening to that love song in a whole new light.
Orca has changed everything for me, and I want to be the one to change everything for her. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove how much she means to me.
42
Boats and Bikinis
ORCA
All the pleasures of the Otherworld do not come without the pang of guilt I feel in the pit of my stomach every time I think about Papa, all alone, at the lighthouse.
His is the face I see in my mind when I awaken on my third morning in the Otherworld. Those kind, gray eyes I know better than my own reflection. To think I’m so far away from him…
I tell myself I shouldn’t feel this way. Papa told me to leave. His parting words to me have burned like embers on my conscience since the moment I left with Jack. I chose to comb them under the brighter, stronger fire of new experiences. But still, they burn me, echoes of guilt in a lonely chasm, and I am lost somewhere inside it.