Actually, if we left now, Jack would die. I knew it.
The silence was heavy in the air. I took a couple of deep breaths and then walked slowly over to Cole. The veins in his neck protruded. I couldn’t let him change his mind about being here. I definitely didn’t trust him, but right now he was the only person who could help me. It was a bad position to be in. But I took his injured hand in mine and brought it close to my face to get a good look at it. The lines around his eyes softened, making him look more like a wounded animal. Scared almost. Not because the cut was deep, but because I had taken his hand, I thought. He was vulnerable to my touch. I could see it.
Back on the Surface, he’d worked so hard to conceal it. Yes, he’d told me he wanted me to be with him, but those were just words. Right now I could see an involuntary physical reaction. The muscles on his arms tensed because of my nearness. His cheeks flushed because I was close.
I pulled the sleeve of my shirt forward and wiped away the blood on his knuckles. Then I looked into his eyes. “It’ll be okay.” I didn’t mean his hand, and I thought he understood. Cole’s face tightened.
“I can do this,” I said. “When I first got here, I had no projection. There has to be a way for me to control it. Find some middle ground between nothing and the broken dam.”
Cole sniffed and took his hand back. He nodded and frowned in a determined way.
Then he and Max walked in slow circles around me, and for the first time I noticed how the scenery they walked through rippled as they went, as if it were an oil painting that hadn’t dried.
I guess they were soaking up some of the energy of the projection as they circled around me, but I could tell there was no way they could position themselves to hide me completely. The scenery in their wake simply recovered as they went.
Cole came to a stop in front of me. “Okay, Nik.” He grabbed my hands in his. “Close your eyes. Focus. Bring it in. Imagine a tether, pointing from you to Jack. Like a compass needle.”
“Okay.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the imagery: the rock walls, Skull Arch, the blue sky. And then I sucked in. And held my breath.
I heard Max snort and then a sound like Cole punching Max in the arm.
“Did it work?” I asked. Nobody answered. I opened my eyes, and the only thing that had changed in the projection was that the path was narrower. The entire thing looked … skinnier. But as I stood there, breathing regularly, it popped wider and back into position.
I could see why Max was trying not to laugh.
“It’s all right,” Cole said, and I was struck with how patient he was being. Cole on the Surface would have made some wiseass remark, but now he was determined to get me through this. Maybe it was because we weren’t working against each other this time. “Okay, Nik. Try it again, only make it smaller. Not skinnier.”
I closed my eyes and pictured everything again, then tried to imagine it growing smaller. But the more I tried, the more it felt as if I were pressing inward on an unbreakable balloon, one that refused to pop.
With my eyes closed and my teeth gritted, I asked, “Is it working?”
“Keep trying, Nik.”
I mentally pressed and pressed on the balloon that was my projection, but nothing happened. I focused even harder, squeezing the image inside my head. I could feel a cold sweat break out on my forehead.
“That’s enough, Nik.”
“But I think I’m doing it!”
“No you’re not. But you’re sweating through your clothes.”
I opened my eyes. He was right.
“Okay, let’s try a different approach,” Cole said. “I think this all happened because you were letting every single feeling you’ve ever had about Jack out at the same time. Maybe if we focus on one specific memory.” He glanced around at all of the pictures of Jack that were plastered over the rocks. He gestured toward a nearby boulder, the face of which was covered with a moving picture: two hands, one small and delicate, one large and boyish. The hands would start out palm to palm, measuring against each other. Then they would clasp together. And then the little movie snippet would start over again.
“This hand thing shows up a lot,” Cole said. “Why don’t you focus on it? Sit down, close your eyes, and tell me about the memory behind it.”
The memory behind it. The night I wondered if Jack would ever see me as anything other than a little sister. The night another boy got in our way.
“Okay.”
FRESHMAN YEAR
The Surface. My house.
“How are you going to answer the Boze?” Jack asked.
We were sitting on my front porch after an evening jog took Jack right by my house. He had stopped midrun to find out if I’d been asked to Junior Prom. He’d heard a rumor.
I rolled my eyes. “I have no idea. My dad is still getting used to the fact that a boy known simply as Bozeman asked his only daughter to her first dance.” I shrugged. “I think my mom is helping him warm up to the idea.”
Jack gave me a playful shove with his shoulder. “Maybe he’s worried because of the age difference.”
I smiled, but Jack had a point. I was pretty sure I’d be one of the few freshmen there.
“It’s not so much that he’s older,” I said. “It would help if the Boze weren’t so dang big.”
“He’s the perfect size when I’m on the line.” Jack was quarterback, and Bozeman was often the only thing standing between him and a sack.
“I know, but have you seen his hands?” I said. I held my hand flat out in the air. Compared to other girls my age I was average height, but my hands were small. My mom always cursed this fact when she was trying to teach me to play the piano.
Jack held his hand out and put it palm to palm against mine. My fingers almost ended before his even began.
He laughed and bent his fingers over mine.
“Exactly!” I said. “And Bozeman’s hands are bigger than yours. Can you imagine them holding mine?” I shook my head, and Jack went quiet. I was suddenly very aware that he was still holding my hand.
When I looked up at him, he was frowning. I thought maybe it was because he was trying to figure out a way to let go of my hand, so I pulled mine away.
“Anyway …,” I said. “You want to help me answer the Boze?”
Finally, an easy smile.
At the store, we wandered the candy aisles, brainstorming ridiculous ways to say yes.
Jack pointed to the rack with the candy bars. “‘People would snicker if I didn’t say yes.’”
“Brilliant. Or how about, ‘My face would go red hot if I couldn’t go with you.’”
He grinned. “I’m not sure that conveys the solemnity of the occasion. At least, not as much as …” With a flare, he presented a box of Nerds. “‘Everyone is a nerd compared to you, Boze.’”
I giggled. “Or we could go for simple and straightforward. Something that needs no other words. The answer is all in the name.”
I pulled a Skor candy bar from behind my back. Jack registered the name, but he didn’t laugh like I thought he would. His cheeks went red, and he turned away.
His reaction surprised me, but I was pretty sure I knew why. Jack had always thought of me as a kid. Instead of looking at me, he held up a package of Red Vines and studied the list of ingredients as if it were a treasure map.
“I’m only six months younger than you, you know,” I said.
He shrugged, then put down the Red Vines and grabbed a Baby Ruth. “‘Even though I’m practically a baby, I’ll go with you,’” he said, not a trace of playfulness in his voice.
It was my turn to blush. He always joked about being so much older than me because he was twice my size and a grade ahead. It shouldn’t have bugged me.
But it did.
I threw the Skor bar at his head, a little harder than I’d meant to.
“Ow.”
“At least I don’t throw like a baby.” I took a step closer. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Jack Caputo.”
I spun around and stomped down the aisle, acting more like a little girl than I had in a long time.
Jack answered me softly. “I know, Becks. I know.”
We finally settled on a two-liter bottle of Coke with a note attached. “I’d pop to go to the dance with you.”
It made the least sense out of all of our ideas, but Jack said if the Boze didn’t get the picture, then he didn’t deserve to go to the dance with me. He drove us to Bozeman’s neighborhood; and as we turned onto his street, he flipped off his headlights, parking a few houses down from our target.
He reached toward me, and I froze until I realized he was going for the glove compartment. My cheeks went pink, and I was glad to be hidden in shadows.
He pulled out something dark and slammed the compartment door shut.
“Here.” He threw the dark thing in my lap. I held it up near the window to get a good look at it. It was a black knit ski mask.
“Isn’t that going a little overboard?”
I looked at him and choked on a laugh. Jack had pulled a nylon stocking over his head, and his facial features were smushed together and flattened out. He smiled, and the tightness of the stocking made him look deranged.
“I borrowed this from my mom.”
I struggled to compose myself. “It totally suits you.”
There was no way I’d look dorkier than him, so I pulled the ski mask down over my face and we got out of the car, Jack carrying the soda bottle.
We crept up to Bozeman’s porch, me a few steps behind Jack. He set down the bottle. The porch light went on, and we both froze. No one opened the door, and we realized it was on a motion sensor.
Jack looked at me and nodded as if to say Ready?
I nodded back.
He rang the doorbell, and we took off running as if our lives depended on it. Jack went to the passenger side and opened my door for me.
“Now’s not the time for chivalry!” I whisper-yelled.
He ran around the car, got in, turned the key, and floored the gas pedal down the street. It wasn’t until we were out of Bozeman’s neighborhood that he finally let up and turned on his headlights. When he did, I stared with dread at a piece of paper on the seat next to Jack. It was the note that was supposed to go with the soda.
“You forgot the note!” I said.
Jack looked down at it, but he didn’t look surprised. “Well, if the Boze can’t figure it out, he doesn’t deserve to go.”
“Figure it out? He’s going to open the door and find a bottle of Coke sitting there with no explanation!”
“If the Boze can’t use his imagination to figure out that you’re saying yes …”
I punched him in the arm, not too hard, and we both laughed.
The next morning at school, I slipped the note that was supposed to accompany the drink into Bozeman’s locker.
He figured it out.
FOURTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. The Ring of Earth.
How touching,” Max said.
“Shut up, it worked,” Cole said.
“It worked?” I said.
I opened my eyes. At my feet, hovering about an inch above the ground, was what looked like a long metal rod. The end nearest me was thicker; and it tapered off toward the end pointing away, making it look as if I were the center of a dial.
I took a step forward, and the needle moved with me. I stepped back again, and it resumed its original position. I stooped down next to it and held my finger out. “Is it real?”
Cole crouched down next to me. “You mean, is it tangible like the Fiery Furnace was? I hope not. It could do some real damage if you tripped on it or something.”
I raised my finger and swiped right through the tether as if it were a hologram.
“Good,” Cole said. He smiled wryly. “So, now we’ve learned our lesson. No more letting the dam free all at once, okay? In fact, keep focused. I’d prefer not to have the tether suddenly turn into another one of your childhood memories, like the Grand Canyon, or the cliffs of Dover or something.”
“I’ll stay focused,” I promised.
“As long as you do, it should be there.”
“Is it pointing to Jack?”
Cole stood back up, and Max held out the device that he had used earlier to figure out where we were. He and Cole exchanged glances, and then Cole said, “I think so. But there’s a problem.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
Cole sighed. “It’s not pointing into the void. It’s pointing into the dead center of the rings. It’s pointing straight to the High Court.”
Straight to the High Court?
“But you said the Tunnels were hidden in the void,” I said.
He frowned. “No, I said I hoped they were hidden in the void.” His voice sounded rough and tired.
Max held the small, circular object in his hand, and I saw the face of it, which looked like a minirendering of the layout of the Everneath. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to the edge of the outermost circle between two Commons. “Your tether is pointing this way.” He made a little line going toward the center.