Page 146 of The Otherworld

“That’s understandable.”

I wish I could say something better. Something that would comfort her without sounding like I’m downplaying the whole thing. But I’ve never been good with bedside manners.

“You know what I think you need, Orca?”

She looks up at me, so tired and sad. “What?”

“A distraction.”

“What sort of distraction?”

“I don’t know… Something that would make you smile. Make you laugh.”

Orca shuts her eyes. “Nothing could make me laugh right now.”

“Is that a challenge?”

I reach over to tickle the bottoms of her bare feet. Her eyes pop open, and a startled little gasp catches in her throat. “Stop! I’m ticklish.”

“You are? I didn’t know that…”

“No. No, Jack, don’t you dare—!”

I dive on top of her, tickling her stomach and making her dissolve into a fit of giggles. She flails around on the bed, laughing and begging me to stop between gasps of air. But I don’t stop. I love making her laugh and forget her troubles, even for a few minutes.

That’s when Mom swings open the door to the guest room and says, “What’s going on in here?”

I roll off Orca, jumping to my feet. “Uh, nothing.”

“Well, it looks like something to me.” Mom glances from me to Orca, who is still sprawled on the bed, blushing and out of breath. “Better leave this door open, Jackie.”

“That’s okay, Mom. We were just leaving.” I take Orca’s hand and pull her to her feet.

“Where are we going?” Orca asks, following me to the front door and slipping her shoes back on.

I give her a wink over my shoulder. “We’re going to do the last thing on our list.”

Okay, so it’s not exactly true. The last activity on our Otherworld list is “video games”—but I don’t want to stick around the house with Mom’s hawk eyes and Adam’s accusations following me around. Not to mention that damn address sitting on Orca’s nightstand.

I want her to forget about it all—to have a good time and enjoy the world like she always dreamed of doing. Adam might think he’s doing her a favor by digging up her past and dragging her all over the islands looking for relatives who are better off dead. Maybe he thinks it makes him some kind of savior. Whatever.

I’m the one who knows how to make Orca laugh, even when she’s down in the dumps. I’m the one who understands what she really needs.

We drive downtown to the arcade because it’s the closest thing we have to video games around here. And this way, I can keep her out—away from Adam—for as long as I want.

“All right, this is definitely the most Otherworldly thing I have seen so far,” Orca says as soon as we walk into the arcade. The whole place is low-lit by strobing neon lights from all the different games, synthwave music pulsing from the overhead speakers.

I escort Orca over to the ticket line, explaining the whole system of playing to win prizes. I buy her way more tickets than I can afford (because that’s just who I am), and then we weave through the arcade, hand in hand, stopping whenever something catches Orca’s eye and she drags me to a stop. The whole time she’s asking, “What does this one do?” and, “What about this one?” and, “Teach me how to play this.”

That’s how we spend the afternoon—me leaning over her shoulder, showing her how to win (and cheat) at my favorite arcade games. At first, she insists she’s no good at any of it, but soon she’s laughing and button-mashing and cheering over her victories. Whenever she starts to lose, I dive in and rescue her from certain death—congratulating her when the machine spits out another reel of tickets.

“No, that was you,” she argues, objecting to an unfair win.

“All right, fine,” I admit, swooping up the tickets. “But I’ll give them to you. For a kiss.”

She pops up on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek. I tear one ticket off the roll and hand it to her.

“Wait, but…”

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