I pulled away. “Don’t try to make me feel better. I missed you, Mom. I did. More than anything. But as happy as I am to see you, I want to wake up and have this not be happening. I understand why I had to do it. I get it. Fine. But I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know. Not this.” Was that the truth? Had I really thought I could get out of sacrificing my own good for the good of the world? Did I think the One-Who-Is-Two thing was a joke?
I guess it was easier to play the hero. But now that it was real—now that I had to own up to an eternity of what and who I’d lost—suddenly it didn’t seem so easy.
My mom’s eyes welled up, worse than mine. “I’m so sorry, EW. If there was a way I could change things, I would.” She sounded as miserable as I felt.
“What if there is?”
“I can’t change everything.” My mom looked down at her bare feet on the step below her. “I can’t change anything.”
“I’m not ready for some stupid cloud, and I don’t want to get my wings when some stupid bell rings.” I threw the metal bowl. It went clattering down the stairs, rolling across the back lawn. “I want to be with Lena and I want to live and I want to go to the Cineplex and eat popcorn until I’m sick and drive too fast and get a ticket and be so in love with my girlfriend that I make a total fool out of myself every day for the rest of my life.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do,” I said, louder than I’d intended. “You had a life. You fell in love—twice. And you had a family. I’m seventeen. This can’t be the end for me. I can’t wake up tomorrow and know that I’m never going to see Lena again.”
My mother sighed, sliding her arm around me and pulling me close.
I said it again because I didn’t know what else to say. “I can’t.”
She rubbed my head like I was a sad, scared little kid. “Of course you can see her. That’s the easy part. I can’t guarantee you can talk to her, and she won’t be able to see you, but you can see her.”
I looked at her, stunned. “What are you talking about?”
“You exist. We exist here. Lena and Link and your father and Amma, they exist in Gatlin. It’s not that one plane of existence is more or less real. They’re just different planes. You’re here and Lena’s there. In her world, you’ll never be fully present. Not like you were. And in our world, she’ll never be like us. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see her.”
“How?” At that moment, it was the only thing I wanted to know.
“It’s simple. Just go.”
“What do you mean, go?” She was making it sound easy, but I had a feeling there was more to it.
“You imagine where you want to go, and then you just go.”
It didn’t seem possible, even though I knew my mom would never lie to me. “So if I just wish myself to Ravenwood, I’ll be there?”
“Well, not from our back porch. You have to leave Wate’s Landing before you can go anywhere. I think our homes have the Otherworld equivalent of a Binding on them. When you’re at home, you’re here with me and nowhere else.”
A shiver went down my spine as she said the words. “The Otherworld? Is that where we are? What it’s called?”
She nodded, wiping her cherry-stained hand on her jeans.
I knew I wasn’t anywhere I’d been before. I knew it wasn’t Gatlin, and I knew it wasn’t Heaven. Still, something about the word seemed farther away than anything I’d ever known. Farther even than death. Even though I could smell the dusty concrete of our back patio and the fresh cut grass stretching beyond it. I could feel the mosquitoes biting and the wind moving and the splinters of the old wooden steps at my back. All it felt like was loneliness. It was just us now. My mom, and me, and my backyard full of cherries. Some part of me had been waiting for this ever since her accident, and another part of me knew, maybe for the first time, it would never be enough.