The Rivers of Zadaa

by D. J. MacHale

  This went on for months. Tension at home was unbearable. Her parents tried to help, but they didn’t understand. Their efforts usually led to more arguments. Then they’d argue about having so many arguments. Like with the therapist, Courtney wasn’t able to fully explain what was going on to them. The sweater of Courtney’s life was almost completely unraveled.

  It was during a particularly gruesome argument when, out of total frustration, her mother threw up her hands and said, “I can’t help you. I wish I knew somebody who could!” Her mother stormed out of Courtney’s bedroom, not realizing that those words had struck a chord. It was a small realization, but an important one. Courtney quickly flipped through her memory, wondering if there actually was somebody out there she felt could help. She came up with someone. The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure this was the only person who could help her get her life back together.

  Courtney needed to help herself.

  It was one of the greatest challenges she could imagine. It wasn’t about games or grades or even about saving Halla. It was about saving Courtney. Thinking this way actually made her smile. There was a rumbling. It was faint, but it was there. It was a far-off whisper that told her after all she had been through, after having her spirit crushed, after losing her entire sense of worth, there was a slight glimmer of hope. This rumbling made her realize that somewhere down deep, she wanted the challenge. She needed the challenge. Even in failure, she had never backed down from any test. Any hurdle. Any opponent. She was actually getting excited, and it felt good. It made her realize that the drive was still there. It was buried pretty deep, but it was there. It made her feel as if maybe there was a little bit of Courtney left, and she wanted to bring her back.

  It was that realization that led her to be riding in the backseat of her parents’ car, driving along a winding country road through the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. She was going to summer school. Sleepaway school. Courtney felt that if she were going to reclaim her own spirit, she was going to have to do it away from all things that were familiar. It meant getting away from home, her parents, Stony Brook and her friends, and most painfully, Mark Dimond. She no longer felt worthy of being an acolyte. Walking away from that was the toughest decision she had to make. She was worried to death about what was happening with Bobby and the Travelers. But she felt certain that if she wanted to get her head back on straight, she had to start from scratch to find out who she was. Six weeks of summer school where nobody knew her seemed like a pretty good way to start.

  “Look out!” Mr. Chetwynde screamed. He turned the wheel hard, careening off the road to avoid a near collision with an oncoming car that had drifted into their lane.

  Mrs. Chetwynde screamed. Courtney whipped around to get a look at the car. It was an old-fashioned, jet-black sedan with shiny chrome bumpers that probably rolled out of the showroom in 1950. Mr. Chetwynde kept control of the car and got them back on the road. The only damage was to their nerves.

  “What is wrong with that guy?” Mrs. Chetwynde said, her eyes wide. “He’s a menace!”

  “Must be an old geezer,” Courtney said. “That car is ancient. It doesn’t even have plates.”

  “Somebody should yank his license!” Mr. Chetwynde said, his heart racing.

  “Yeah, Dad,” Courtney said. “Let’s go get him. Citizen’s arrest.”

  Mr. Chetwynde turned around to give Courtney a look…and laughed. Courtney laughed too. So did Mrs. Chetwynde. It felt good. There hadn’t been a whole lot of laughing with the Chetwyndes lately.

  A few minutes later they arrived at the Stansfield Academy. Courtney’s home for the next six weeks. It was a private school, K-12, that had been around since the dark ages. It looked it too. The buildings were brick and covered with leafy vines. There was a grassy campus with huge shade trees that Courtney could envision herself lying under to read and do homework. Kids were everywhere. Some were arriving with suitcases. Others were playing catch with various footballs, baseballs, and Frisbees. Courtney thought it was a pretty place, in a boring New England kind of way. That was okay. She wasn’t there for excitement.

  The Chetwyndes’ picked the place out of a catalog. During the school year it was the last kind of place Courtney would be caught dead in. It was an elite private school where the boys wore boring blue blazers and the girls wore…boring blue blazers. But things were much more relaxed during summer session. There were kids from all walks of life, not just the snooty types. After walking across the campus, Courtney’s first impression was that they had picked the right place.

  “Heads up!” A soccer ball game flying by, nearly hitting Mr. Chetwynde. Courtney caught it without thinking. A guy came jogging up to get it.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No problem,” Courtney said, tossing him the ball. Courtney sized him up quickly. Cute, athletic, polite, cute. He was nearly six feet tall, with short, wavy blond hair and dazzling gray eyes.

  “That was a good catch,” the guy said. “You play?”

  Courtney had to think about that answer. Did she play? She could probably dribble rings around this pretty boy. Then again, maybe she couldn’t. She didn’t want to have to find out.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not much for sports.”

  Courtney’s parents both gave her a quick look, but chose not to comment.

  The guy backed away, saying, “You don’t know what you’re missing. Play with us sometime.”

  He turned and jogged back to his group of friends who were playing in the pickup game. Courtney watched him go, checking out his muscular legs. A second later she felt the stares of her parents. She looked at them to see they were holding back smiles.

  “What?” she said. “I’m not here to play soccer.”

  “Neither is he,” Mr. Chetwynde said with a chuckle.

  “Oh, please,” Courtney said playfully, and kept walking.

  The Chetwyndes spent the next few hours getting Courtney settled. They picked up her registration materials and class schedule. They got a tour of the dining hall, the swimming pool, the game room, the student lounge, the buildings where her classes would be, and finally, her dorm. Courtney caught a huge break and didn’t have to share her dorm room with anybody. It’s not that she didn’t want to meet anybody, but after having spent the better part of the last few months in bed with the covers over her head, Courtney was grateful that she could return to being social on her own terms. So far it was all good.

  After spending several hours at Stansfield, any doubt that Courtney had about this being a good idea had vaporized. She was happy to be there. Her mom helped her unpack while her dad brought up the small refrigerator they had rented for the term. Finally, after taking care of all there was to take care of, it was time for her parents to leave. There was an awkward moment, for all sorts of reasons. Courtney had never been away from home for that long before—at least as far as her parents knew. They didn’t know about her journey to Eelong. Beyond that, their relationship had been pretty rocky over the past year. It made saying good-bye difficult.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Mrs. Chetwynde said. “I mean, not that I don’t want you home, but I think it’s better that you’re here instead of…Oh, this is coming out all wrong.”

  Courtney broke the tension by giving her mother a hug. “I know what you mean, Mom,” she said. “This is a good thing. But I miss you already.”

  “Really?” Mr. Chetwynde asked, surprised.

  “Well, no, but I’m pretty sure I will real soon,” Courtney said.

  The three had another laugh over that. Courtney hugged her dad.

  “You know how much we love you,” he said. “And we’ll always be there for you.”

  “I know, Dad,” Courtney said. “I love you too.”

  “Call us,” Mrs. Chetwynde said. “We’ll send you a care package. And maybe you can come home some weekend.”

  “Mom, it’s only six weeks. I’m not moving out.”

  “I know, hon
ey,” Mrs. Chetwynde gave Courtney another hug while brushing back tears. “I’m so proud of you for doing this.”

  “Thanks,” Courtney said. “Now go.”

  After one last round of hugs, the Chetwynde’s left and Courtney was alone. She looked around the room that was going to be her home for the next few weeks. The dorm was ancient. She wondered how many kids had said good-bye to their parents on this very spot. She suddenly missed her folks, for real. She went over to the window and caught a glimpse of them as they left the dorm and walked across the grass toward the car. She also caught a glimpse of something else.

  Parked along the roadway, not far from the dorm, was the black sedan that had nearly run them off the road. There was no mistaking it. Courtney looked to see if her dad had seen it. She wouldn’t put it past him to actually go over there and make a citizen’s arrest. Or at least tell the guy off. But her parents kept walking.

  The mystery of who owned the ancient car that nearly ran them off the road would remain a mystery.

  For a while.

  SECOND EARTH

  (CONTINUED)

  Courtney’s summer at Stansfield started out to be exactly what she needed. Nobody knew her. Nobody expected anything from her. People didn’t whisper behind her back, “That used to be Courtney Chetwynde.” She had no reputation, good or bad. Nobody knew that she may have helped a demon in his quest to destroy all of humanity. She wasn’t about to tell anybody either. For Courtney it was like starting over fresh.

  She took three classes. Classic literature, algebra-trig, and drawing. She had discovered that she had a talent for sketching, so she figured it would be a fun thing to do. Certainly more fun than algebra-trig. Courtney found that she had no problem getting up and going to class. She looked forward to it. She ate her meals in the dining hall and started hanging with a group of girls from New York. They were giggly and more interested in checking out the boys than finding out about Courtney, which was fine by her. These girls pretty much had only two subjects they could talk about. Boys and themselves. If Courtney tried to change the subject to something she may have read in the newspaper, or learned in class, the girls would look at her blankly, take a beat, and jump right back in, talking about how cute a particular teacher was, or about how the humidity was destroying their hair. It was all so mindless and trivial to Courtney…she loved it.

  She spent hours sitting under the shady trees, reading. Or sweating over math problems. In the afternoons there was always a pickup soccer game going on. The guy who nearly beaned her dad played every day. Courtney thought he was pretty good, too. He was probably a high-school varsity player at home, she thought. She felt sure she could beat him one on one, but had to force that thought out of her head. She wasn’t there to compete.

  The other thought she had trouble forcing out of her head was that this guy was pretty cute. Thinking this way made her feel like she was cheating on Bobby. Though they were light-years apart, literally, she and Bobby were supposed to be together. If it weren’t for that silly little thing of his having to leave home to save Halla, they’d be together right now. But it had been nearly two years since she admitted her feelings to Bobby. Two years since he told her he liked her too. A lot had happened in that time. She wasn’t even sure if Bobby still felt the same way. Still, she thought it would be wrong to start a relationship with somebody new, without telling Bobby. So she tried not to look at this blond guy who played soccer everyday between 3:00 and 4:15. But that didn’t stop her from making sure she sat down under the big maple tree near the lawn where they played…every day between 3:00 and 4:15.

  Making things more difficult, she started seeing this guy around campus. They didn’t have any classes together, but he was often in the cafeteria around the same time she always ate. A couple of times they even made eye contact, but he never seemed to show any recognition that she was the one whose father he nearly beaned. He didn’t show any interest at all. She even saw him in the library at night. She would go there to study, just to be around people. One night she was walking through the stacks, looking for some obscure book on Jack London that she needed for research, when she saw the guy sitting at the end of the aisle, on the floor, immersed in a book. He wore these round, wire-rimmed glasses to read, which she thought were sweet. When playing soccer and joking with friends, he always seemed so perfectly put together and confident. Seeing that he wore glasses gave him a slight bit of imperfection that, if she were forced to admit it, made him even more appealing.

  In all, the first few weeks at Stansfield were proving to be exactly what Courtney needed. She was feeling human again. She proved to herself that she could function. She was beginning to heal.

  There was only one odd note about her time at Stansfield up till then. It was the car. The black car. This old auto always seemed to turn up at the strangest times. If not for the near-miss accident with her parents, this jalopy would never have been on her radar. But now she would see it parked outside the building where she had classes. It was often parked outside her dorm. She’d look out at night and see it sitting there, its chrome bumper gleaming under the streetlight. The shape of the bumper made Courtney feel as if this odd car were actually smiling. Creepy. Courtney rode her bike around campus and many times she would get the feeling that she was being followed and she would quickly glance over her shoulder. Usually nothing was there. But more than once she caught a fleeting glimpse of the car as it turned off the street behind her. She figured it must belong to one of the teachers and asked the girls she hung out with if they knew whose it was. None of them could even remember seeing the car, let alone knowing who it belonged to.

  One night she was leaving the library after hours of reading. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to hit the pillow. It was late. The campus was empty. She always walked the same route back to her dorm. There was a shortcut through a narrow alley that ran between the gym and the auditorium. It was barely wide enough for one car. As she had done many nights before, she turned into this corridor without thinking. She was nearly to the far side, when she was suddenly blinded by headlights. A car was parked on the far end, facing her, its engine revving. Courtney stopped. The hairs went up on the back of her neck. What was this guy doing? The answer came fast. The car’s engine roared, and it peeled forward into the alley, headed right for Courtney. She was trapped. The alley wasn’t wide enough to move to the side so the car could pass. If it kept coming, she’d get hit.

  It kept coming.

  Didn’t the driver see her? Courtney turned and ran. She hadn’t done anything remotely athletic for months, but old habits die hard. She dug in, pumped her arms, and used her long legs. In no time she was sprinting out of that alley, with the headlights burning her from behind. It was going to be close. She never turned around to see if the car was closing. Why bother? It would only slow her down. She reached the far end and cut sharply to her right, getting out of the mouth of the alley. A second later the car burst out and onto the road.

  Yes, it was the black sedan. The car bounced onto the main road, skidded into a turn, and gunned off into the night. Courtney ran out toward the street, trying to get a look at the driver.

  “What is wrong with you!” she screamed.

  The car didn’t stop. It spun around a corner and was gone. Courtney stood there, breathing hard. She was now convinced that the car didn’t belong to a teacher, but to a jerky student who thought it was funny to harass people.

  “Hey!” came a voice from behind her. Courtney turned to see the blond soccer guy jogging up from the alley. “Are you okay?”

  “Did you see that?” Courtney asked, still out of breath.

  “Yeah, he nearly ran you over,” the guy said. “We should report him to the campus police.”

  Courtney thought about that. She glanced back to where the car had disappeared, and said, “Nah, what good’ll that do?”

  “It might stop him from killing somebody,” the guy said.

  “Come on, it’s not like t
here’s a lot of cars like that around. They’ll get him.”

  “Forget it,” Courtney said. “It’ll just be my word against his.”

  “Well, no it won’t,” the guy said. “You’ve got a witness. Me.”

  Courtney wanted to talk to this guy, but not under those circumstances. She was too fired up and upset about the near accident. So she backed away from him, headed for her dorm.

  “Thanks, but it’s not worth it,” she said. “I’ll see you.”

  She turned and hurried off.

  “Whatever,” the guy called after her. “If you change your mind…”

  Courtney waved, and kept going. She wasn’t entirely sure why she bailed on the guy. He wanted to help her. He was being nice. It was the perfect opportunity to find out more about him. Still, she was too flustered by the near miss. She didn’t feel as if she were herself. As she walked back to the dorm and calmed down, she kicked herself for not talking more with him. She hoped she’d get another chance.

  She did. The next afternoon she went to her usual tree near the lawn where the soccer game was under way. She was about to sit down when she heard a familiar “Heads!”

  She turned and saw a soccer ball flying her way. Without thinking, she expertly trapped it with her body, got it under control with her knee, then kicked it back toward the field. All effortlessly.

  The kid with the blond wavy hair came running after the ball. He stopped short when he saw Courtney’s kick.

  “Whoa, I thought you didn’t play?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  “Oh?” Courtney said, teasing. “I didn’t think you remembered me.”

  The guy walked up to her and smiled. “Sure. Aren’t you the girl who was nearly roadkill?”

  “Nice,” Courtney said with mock sarcasm. “That’s a great way to be remembered.”