The good thing was, when you puked often enough, you learned where in the toilet bowl to aim in order to minimize splatter.
The bad thing was, you automatically shut your eyes in the process. In Nolan's case, that meant switching between feeling his knees on cool tiles and acid in his throat to witnessing Amara and Maart in the alcove bed, leaving him with mental whiplash and voyeur guilt and-in short-terrible aim.
"Nolan?" Pat thumped a fist on the bathroom door. "You, uh, need anything?"
Nolan wiped his mouth with too-thin toilet paper. Then he yanked off some extra sheets, slammed his hand to the roll to keep it from spinning endlessly, and wiped the toilet seat, too. "Did Mom send you up?" He sounded pathetic. If it'd been Mom out there, he'd have cleared his throat and aimed for a laugh, but he didn't need to with Pat-
-Maart was kissing Amara, slick lips on her neck, the dip of her collarbone-
"-texted me to check on you." Nolan could almost hear Pat frown. "But if I can help…"
"Probably not." He crawled upright. His legs tingled with numbness from the knees down. He barely kept his balance as he leaned in to flush, then half stumbled, half hopped to the sink, using a single, sleeping foot and no crutches. They were still downstairs. Idiot. At least the bathroom was small. He ended up crash-landing on the sink with both elbows. Stuck between dry-heaving and panting, he stared at the mirror. He looked pale. Not pale-pale, like Mom, but paler than his normal, even brown, which made those bags under his eyes stand out even more.
Another surge of nausea hit. He pressed a fist to his sternum to quell it. The movement reminded him of before, in the Walgreens back room, and a phantom burn flared in his hands and faded straightaway. He ought to just shut his eyes until the nausea passed. If he had to deal with Amara's pain, shouldn't he be allowed the good parts, as well, no matter the guilt-
-Amara's hand ran down Maart's side, heat spreading across his skin and hers, and she hardly felt the wall patterns pressing into her back or-
-Pat shoved open the door. Probably a good thing. Whenever Nolan wanted to get sucked into Amara's world, it took forever to wake up.
"I heard you flush," Pat said by way of justification.
"I hate these pills." Nolan stuck his head under the tap. Cold water. For more reasons than just cleaning up. Puking and sex-two surefire ways of feeling awkward around your thirteen-year-old sister. Not that she looked thirteen. Pat took after Dad, tall and unapologetic and dark, and with Nolan bent over like this, they were almost the same height.
"Weren't you feeling better?" she said. "I thought you got used to those pills weeks ago." She fiddled with her gloves. Summer in Arizona, and she wore gloves. Leather ones, with cut-off fingers and metal spikes across the back. Nolan didn't know how she managed.
"I messed up the timing. Took two doses too close together." The taste of acid coated the back of his throat. He rinsed his mouth again.
"Are these pills better than the old ones, at least?"
"Which old ones? There's plenty to choose from." Nolan managed a laugh-a little-sister laugh, a big-brother laugh-but not much of one, and apparently he wasn't the only one feeling awkward, since Pat was still twisting the spikes on her gloves one by one. Pat didn't hesitate often. Then again, they didn't talk about his condition often, either. Nolan preferred it that way. She shouldn't have to worry about her screwed-up brother's supposed epilepsy.
That was the diagnosis: epilepsy. To be specific, a rare type of photosensitive epilepsy that triggered absence seizures on blinking. Seizures that came with hallucinations. The EEGs were works of art, the symptoms didn't add up, and the so-called seizures never responded to medication-but it explained everything, from the overstimulation to the flares of pain and the worthless attention span. It had also explained why a five-year-old Nolan would mention flashes of noise, people who didn't exist, visuals he couldn't explain. He claimed those had gone away years ago, but the pain was harder to hide.
The numbness from kneeling so long had now shifted into full-on pins and needles, assaulting his leg with every twitch of movement. Eyes open, he told himself. He was almost relieved when Pat pointed at the inside of his arm. "What's that?"
He glanced at the faded ballpoint scribbles that stretched across his flesh. Dit letters. He'd practiced writing them the other night at the same time Amara had, and he'd forgotten to scrub them off. The letters along his arm aligned in a firm grid. His ballpoint couldn't vary line thickness properly, so the lines weren't as neat as Cilla's or even Amara's meticulous attempts and ended up looking cheap, almost fake.
Nolan didn't want to linger on them, though. Pat should be more important than some distant girl he'd never meet, no matter how much that distant girl slathered herself across his eyelids and pushed between this thought and that. "Nothing. Doodles."
"Huh. Didn't you draw those in your journals, too?"
Nolan froze. He tried not to sound upset: "You-read my journals?"
"How could I? I can't open your cabinet." Pat shrugged. "I walked past once while you were writing. I don't want to read about your sexcapades, anyway."
Pat had that fake casual air, as though she said the word every day and it wasn't just something she'd read online and thought was funny, but Nolan didn't call her on it. If she'd read his notebooks, she'd be asking different questions entirely. Who's Amara? And Who's Cilla? And How come you're not more heavily medicated, Nolan?
"OK," he said, still leaning against the sink, the counter pressing a straight line into his elbows. He cleared his throat. "OK. Sorry."
"Anyway, Mom said she'd be home by five, so we'll eat early. We're having leftovers."
"I thought we finished those yesterday."
"That was Grandma Pérez's carnitas. We're having the Thai now."
From three days ago? Nolan swallowed the words. The rule was that you didn't toss out food until it turned suspicious colors. "Sounds good," he replied, and managed a halfway genuine smile.
"Patli, do you really need those gloves during dinner?" Mom said wearily.
"Yeah?" Pat shoveled more rice into her mouth. "If I only wore them at school, it wouldn't be authentic. And I take them off during rehearsals for the play. Sometimes. My drama teacher said we need volunteers, by the way."
Nolan rolled a piece of corn around the rim of his plate. As long as he played with it, he didn't have to consider the horrifying notion of actually eating it. His stomach rebelled at the thought. The spicy smell from Mom's beef was bad enough already-
-Amara rushed to clean up after lunch, scrubbing the plates, the cups. Next to her, Maart's legs stuck out from the nearest alcove as he made Cilla's bed. Amara was doing fine, Nolan thought, Nolan hoped-
-throughout Mom and Pat's conversation, Dad's wide grin stretched even wider. All Pat's weird choices in fashion and music and friends just seemed to amuse him. When his eyes fell on Nolan, all he said was, "Don't forget to mention that nausea to Dr. Campbell tomorrow."
"Do you feel up to swimming yet?" Mom asked. "I'm working tonight. I'm leaving in twenty minutes, if you need a ride."
Nolan had almost forgotten: Sunday was his standard swimming day. He'd missed going that afternoon, but the pool closed late. He smiled a Mom-smile. "I'm much better"-such a lie-"but I think I'll skip today." Swimming would take his mind off things, but after what he'd found out about Mom, he had other plans. "I appreciate the offer, though."
Pat gave a roll of her eyes and-
-downstairs, the nonstop raucousness of the inn's pub increased. Jorn was down there, which meant Cilla was, too. They never left her alone-
"-he's just being polite, Patli." Mom tucked some hair from Nolan's forehead behind his ear. He flinched at her hand entering his view unannounced. He was seventeen, and still she did this-she'd even check the gel in his hair before school, and some mornings she barged into his room to wake him up, and, before he knew it, she'd be rummaging through his closet and tossing slacks and a shirt onto his bed as if he was five years old. She wouldn't dare do that to Pat.
Mom probably felt she needed to take care of him. Nolan didn't know if it was his leg or his seizures or something else. He'd complained about it once, two years ago. Then he'd seen the look on her face. Ever since, he'd let her baby him. If she needed this, he refused to cause more hurt-
-a sharp noise-
-Nolan closed his eyes. Noise meant bad things. Jorn's temper. Cilla getting hurt-
-Amara and Maart went dead still, alert for further sounds. "I should check on Cilla," Amara signed. A second later, the pub crowd downstairs burst into cheers. Relief washed over her-
"-Nolan? Polite? I'm shocked." Pat laughed.
Nolan took a second to replay her words. His parents would be waiting-hoping-for a smart-ass big-brother response. Pat knew better. Her eyes only met his briefly before she gave her plate her full attention again.
It wasn't as if he didn't try. He laughed, which seemed to please Dad, but when he racked his brain for a response, nothing came.
This act used to be easier. He'd always been the good big brother and the ideal son, who might be aloof but at least didn't do drugs or smoke or hang with the wrong crowd. At least he didn't splurge on video games or stay out all night. At least he no longer had those hallucinations.
But lately, people wanted more than tailor-made smiles, and he didn't know what to give them.
Whenever Nolan read, he lost his spot on the page, every page. Music interrupted and paused but was low-key enough to be bearable, unlike TV, which had him zoning out within minutes.
Homework? Out of the damn question.
What Nolan could do was this: open his journals and report on every blink without thinking. The Dunelands took up five dozen notebooks and counting.
He wanted more than that. Something that was his.
Without the money for a running leg, sports were out, whether it was disabled sports two hours away in Mesa or regular sports here in tiny Farview, Arizona. He'd get too distracted, anyway, and anything involving running or jumping was too dangerous with the Dunelands catching him off guard at any moment. What'd happened ten years ago proved that: Cilla had tripped and skinned her palms. Blood welled up in tiny drops. The curse awoke, sending ripples through the earth; they had only seconds before it would strike.
By then, Amara had been with Jorn and Cilla for a year. She'd lost track of how often she'd had to cheat the curse, but she knew her script and everyone else's.
It didn't make her shake any less when Jorn grabbed his knife. He slashed open Cilla's skin further, then thrust Amara's hand into the cut and dragged her arm along it. Then, pushing her out of reach, he helped Cilla wrap up, shielding her palms from the air so her blood couldn't call louder than the fresh smears on Amara's skin.
The earth drew open. Roots wrapped around Amara's ankles. They dragged her down, slicing her legs through the thick fabric of her winterwear. When she stumbled to all fours, the next root coiled around her arms, up to her throat. One wormed its way between her lips. Pushed into an empty mouth, past the remains of a sliced-up tongue, and beyond.
All in all, it might've taken five minutes. When the roots drew enough of Amara's blood to block out the final whispers of Cilla's dried streaks, the curse backed off, leaving Amara to cough and choke and claw and heal.
She must've been seven. She was thinking: I don't want to heal anymore I don't I don't
Nolan was seven, too. Five minutes was more than enough for him to lurch off his bike on his way to school and fall to the street, groping to free himself from roots that weren't there. He barely saw the Jeep in time. Adrenaline flooded him. He crab-walked out of reach, but too slowly, leaving his left foot and a child-sized bicycle for the Jeep's tire to crush.
The good part was that Nolan passed out from the pain. The bad part was that Amara's world offered him just as much pain as his.
So he avoided sports. Even a regular fall with only half a leg was a pain in the neck.
Just as Nolan's family couldn't afford a running leg, they couldn't afford a swimming leg. What they could afford-or would make sacrifices for, anyway-was a season's membership to the nearest pool and an adjusted flipper. It wrapped around the stump of his shin, allowing him to push off and keep afloat.
So he swam under the lifeguard's watchful eye, reducing the world to kids' screams and the kick of his legs and chlorine in his nose. Swimming meant moving on autopilot, making it ten times easier to deal with the back-and-forth between worlds. It made his parents happy, too. They thought he had a hobby.
Right now, Nolan really wished he was swimming.
Instead, he'd gone upstairs after abandoning his meal, leaving Pat to her Nahuatl studies and Dad to sort through bills and write angry letters about banned books at Nolan's school. Nolan made a beeline for the bathroom, where dirty laundry was stacked knee-high in one corner despite the quick load Dad had run yesterday. Mom normally handled the laundry. Working two jobs probably explained the size of the pile.
How had Nolan not noticed? When had she started at the Walgreens anyway-and why?
Nolan suspected he knew. Dad's insurance from his hospital administrator job covered only part of the cost of the latest pills. Nolan had known they were in a bad situation, just not how bad.
Three jobs to pay for anti-seizure meds when he didn't even have seizures, and all Nolan did was fill up one notebook after another and go swimming three times a week. If Amara wouldn't leave him be long enough for him to help himself, he should at least help others.
"How difficult can a washing machine be, right?" The words came out angrily. He lowered himself to the ground and started sorting through the pile.
