Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis Page A

given her, she’d need to learn more, put a stop to them before she got Cilla—and herself—killed.
    â€œI think the mages are too weak to follow,” Jorn said. “Let’s find Maart and go.”

olan had moved Amara’s body.
    He’d
run
.
    He buzzed with energy and felt it building into a headache at the back of his skull, but his pen practically flew across his notebook’s pages, and he couldn’t stop now. Amara’s magic was shifting. She’d gone from letting him witness her world from the backseat to offering him the wheel and gas pedal, and that meant—
    Nolan couldn’t begin to understand what that meant.
    Amara’s blackouts gave Nolan control.
    He didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until Dad stood right in front of him.
    â€œYou look better.” English. That didn’t bode well. Nolan and Pat always spoke English together, but their parents stuck to Spanish around the house, or simple Nahuatl between Dad and Pat as practice. Dad saved English for his rare Talks, capital
T
. “That explains the noise.”
    Oh: the washer was banging on the bathroom tiles and whining high. Nolan slapped his notebook shut, though he wasn’t worried about Dad peeking. As much as Pat took after Dad, she hadn’t inherited his respect for privacy. “Sorry—”
    â€”and Cilla was still leaning on Amara’s shoulder as they trailed after Jorn—
    â€”Dad shoved open the curtains to let the evening sun roll in. Slow, wide beams caught dust swirling around the room. “Don’t apologize,” he said. “Your mother told me you saw her at the Walgreens. You’re trying to help out?”
    Nolan wanted to listen, but his mind was stuck on the word he’d just written down.
Control
. The ink burned through the pages of the book, right into his hands and head.
    â€œI. Yeah. I wanted to …” He gestured at abandoned, knocked-over piles of laundry. Some of his euphoria ebbed away. He’d meant to refold the messier stacks now that Amara’s world was calmer, but how long had it taken him to get even this far? Some help he was.
    â€œI figured. It’s a good thing.” Dad pulled up an old chair that mainly served as a mannequin for his business jacket. “An odd thing for a teenage boy, but a good thing.”
    Nolan found it hard to care about what a teenage boy was supposed to do. He spent half his life as a girl. As Amara, he’d done laundry a hundred times.
    â€œI’m glad you’re showing initiative. But if I had to choose, I wish you’d take the initiative to do homework or sneak out for a date. Wouldn’t you like that better than laundry?” Dad eyed a pair of Pat’s skinny jeans.
    Nolan took care not to shut his eyes for too long, but he couldn’t tune out Amara entirely. By now, Jorn had locked onto Maart’s anchor. Nolan tried to ignore that, replaying Dad’s words instead.
Did
he want those things? They sounded nice in the abstract, but it seemed safer to care about what he could actually accomplish. Writing in his notebooks. Swimming.
    Laundry.
    â€œListen, when your mother gets home and sees this … she’ll feel touched. Then guilty.”
    â€œShe’s working two jobs,” Nolan protested. “I’m the one who feels guilty.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t, which is why she didn’t tell you. You need that medication, Nolan.”
    â€œI don’t! All it does is make me nauseous. I know Dr. Campbell said to give it a couple of months, but …” But no pills would ever work, was the truth. Every time, Nolan tried to refuse them.
    â€œWe won’t give up,” Dad said sharply. “As long as you keep trying, we’ll keep trying.”
    And every time, his parents insisted. Nolan would take the pills for a few months, deal with the side effects, and stop once people realized his seizures weren’t going