Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis Page B

away.
    â€œCan I keep trying while doing laundry?” Nolan wanted to smile, but it rarely worked when Dad paid him such close attention. He had this way of scrutinizing people, level and unflinching, that made Nolan’s smiles feel transparent.
    â€œJust know your mother will struggle with it.”
    Nolan averted his eyes. He’d meant to help. Not add to guilt Mom shouldn’t feel, anyway.
    â€œI should finish up some work. There was a system crash at the hospital that set us back a few days …” Dad waved it off. “But I have five minutes.” He looked over the bed—the collection of Nolan’s stump socks dotting the sheets, the crookedly folded tops. He reverted to Spanish. “You, uh, want a lesson in folding?”

    By the time Nolan finished folding and hanging the newly washed clothes, the buzz he’d felt over affecting Amara’s world had transformed into a full-on headache and the early stir of nausea. As he headed to his room, Pat called something to him.
    Nolan hopped back. Her door was ajar. He could just catch a glimpse of Pat’s reflection in the crescent-shaped mirror Grandma Pérez had given her on her eighth birthday, when she’d spent every waking moment reading about astronomy. She gave the mirror a wounded look, which included her eyebrows going comically high and her lower lip jutting out. “I can’t stop you,” she declared. “But, oh, it’s
dangerous
!”
    Apparently she hadn’t been calling to him, after all. Nolan shifted, allowing him to see more of her face. She wasn’t holding a phone to either ear. Her eyebrows shot up again. “It’s
dangerous
!”she repeated. Her eyes caught his in the mirror. She squeaked. In a single step, she yanked her door open. “Nole? Are you spying on me?”
    â€œYour door was open.”
    She plucked at her T-shirt’s neckline. “The AC’s acting up.”
    â€œWere you practicing for that school play?” He vaguely recalled it coming up at dinner.
    â€œWhat? No.” She shifted her weight and scoffed. Pat’s scoffs had as wide a range as Nolan’s smiles. At the bottom rung was
Seriously?
followed by
I’m really too cool for this but, whatever, I’ll play along.
Somewhere at the top sat
This is the most important thing in the world, but OMG I’ll die if anyone knows
. This scoff had seemed closest to that last one. He should talk to her about it, but his head hurt. He craved sleep. It’d make his parents happy—proper sleep meant less chance of seizures—and it’d let him keep track of Amara. She was following Jorn around the harbor now, keeping her head low and waiting for another blackout.
    He’d controlled her. The memory made a smile twitch at his lips, headache or no, but he curbed it. Watching Amara was the last thing he should do. The last thing he should want to do.
    He couldn’t get sucked back in. He’d ended up in a coma twice before.
    â€œWhat’s your role?” he made himself say.
    She sighed. “I’m this nurse solving a mystery. There’s singing. And I have to be vulnerable.”
    The disgust in her voice almost made him laugh. “Do you need help rehearsing? Or feedback?”
    He couldn’t help Mom without her feeling guilty, but maybe he
could
help Pat. Using Pat this way might not be fair, but the more he had going on in this world, the less he’d think about Amara’s.
    Pat looked confused. “Um. Are you sure you can?”
    â€œI’m feeling pretty good on these pills,” he lied.
    â€œIf you say so, but … I need someone objective. You lie. You lie to make people feel better.”
    Nolan considered lying about that, too, but it wouldn’t be much use. “I’ll be honest. I swear.”
    Pat laughed. “All right. Nolan with opinions. This, I gotta see.”

hey’d arrived on Teschel the night before.