Heroine's Journey

by Sarah Kuhn

  “—to make that determination,” Nate finished, nodding at me.

  “But there is something . . .” I hesitated. There was a thought pricking around the outer edges of my consciousness, and I was trying to figure out a way to voice it without giving away the fact that I’d very possibly been granted power level-ups upon visiting the Otherworld. “All three of these people seem to have very recently gotten something they wanted out of life. In the case of Kathy and Bernard, it had to do with the person they likely imprisoned: Pretzel Guy’s stand went down and thanks to the disappearance of Edna, Bernard got promoted out of his basement purgatory. And as for Poet, she suddenly got really popular.”

  “So . . . what? The Otherworld granted them a wish, like some kind of messed up fairy godmother?” Lucy said.

  “No,” I said slowly. “I’m saying: maybe it was visiting the Otherworld that gave them a version of my power. Then they might be able to mind-mojo enough people to make their wish come true.”

  “But how did they get to the Otherworld in the first place?” Scott said.

  “Perhaps it has to do with the walls being especially thin in certain spots,” Lucy said. “Perhaps they tripped and fell right in. In any case, it sounds like we’ll need to cordon off and patrol the hospital too. Ugh, poor Rose. Her team is getting stretched thinner and thinner by the day.”

  “Did you guys find anything interesting in the stuff we brought back from Kathy’s booth at the Market?” Aveda asked, turning to Nate and Scott.

  Oh, right. So much had happened since this morning, I’d nearly forgotten all about the contents of the little blue cabinet: the hospital paperwork and the parchment with the strange symbols.

  “No,” Scott said, frowning. “All we can take from that is . . . I guess Kathy stole some of your mom’s hospital file, for some reason? There was nothing off or incriminating about the records she stole. It’s just the final paperwork.”

  “Maybe Bernard gave it to her,” Aveda said. “Since he appears to be all evil. Though that doesn’t really answer the question of why.”

  “I tried using my enhanced observational powers on the parchment with the runes, but it’s not telling me anything,” Nate said. “It does look like bits of the Otherworld language we’ve encountered before, but we’ve only encountered it occasionally, and no one has ever been able to decipher it. I’ve sent it to a few of my demonology colleagues to see if they can make heads or tails of it.”

  “Ugh,” Aveda said. “This is so frustrating. How do we defeat Kathy and Co.? And free these poor trapped people?”

  “And find Mom,” I murmured.

  “Every time we get close to one of our probable bad guys, they jump into the freakin’ Otherworld,” Aveda continued, thumping a fist on the table.

  Silence descended. The smell of grease from our uneaten burgers permeated the air. It felt like there was some kind of cloud over the whole table.

  “It appears no one is in imminent danger, correct?” Nate said. “All three of these locations are being heavily monitored. Perhaps the best course of action is to sleep on it?”

  I shook my head and started to get up from the table. “I need to go back to the hospital. I’ll go with Rose’s team. I was so close to Mom, I could feel it, and if I could just—”

  “No.”

  Evie, who had been silent throughout our whole discussion, playing with her fry corpse, stood up and faced me. She was still pale, and her eyes sparked with fury.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

  “I am not a child anymore, Evelyn,” I bristled. “I believe we’ve covered that in great detail. Therefore you can’t ground me.”

  “Bea . . .” She looked overwhelmed with frustration. “When we promoted you to superhero, you promised to listen to me and Aveda. To not just charge in whenever it might suit you. To follow our lead.”

  “Well, sometimes I don’t agree with your lead,” I shot back. “Why does it matter if whatever I’m doing accomplishes our end goal: to figure out what’s going on with this freaky Otherworld shit, and to free whoever’s trapped there and keep the bad guys from trapping more people?”

  “Because you could hurt yourself,” Evie spat out. “Or worse.”

  “Okay, so I messed up today,” I said. “I freely acknowledge that. I should’ve talked to you and Aveda more about leaping into the Otherworld—”

  “It’s not just today,” she interrupted. “You followed that weird voice at the Market and almost got trampled by a rogue carnival ride. You chased Poet down to the Wave Organ and leapt into the Otherworld there, too. You just can’t seem to help yourself, you always have to choose whatever the most dangerous option is—”

  “No, I’m choosing the option that will get us answers,” I retorted. “And ya know, the reason I was by myself at the Market is you and Aveda were way too busy doing more important things—so you left all the grunt work to me. You guys treat me like a total afterthought—”

  “No,” Evie said. “We treat you like a trainee. Which is what you are. And all of this stuff is just showing me why we were wrong to even do that—”

  “Don’t you want to find Mom?!” I blurted out.

  She shook her head. “What?”

  “Mom,” I said, my voice urgent. “This isn’t just another superhero mission. We have the chance here not just to save a bunch of Bay Areans from getting trapped in some super boring demon dimension—we could actually get our mother back.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said, shaking her head again. “That’s not even what we’re talking about—”

  “Yes, it is!” I exclaimed. My throat clogged, and I felt the tears pricking my eyeballs. “It is. I would do anything to get her back, Evie—anything. And now it’s possible she’s alive and we can get her out and you won’t even give me the chance to do that because you’re so set on . . . on . . .”

  “Bea.” Evie pressed her lips into a thin line. Her face now had an almost grayish cast to it, making the dark circles under her eyes stand out even more. She looked more exhausted than I’d ever seen her. “I’m tired. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  “No.” Frustration was rising in my chest, demanding to be heard. “We’ll talk about it now. Stop trying to dismiss me. Stop trying to . . . to dictate everything. I know you’re used to everything being on your terms—”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “Even when Mom died,” I pressed on. “When she was dying. You wouldn’t let me be around her. You kept taking me out of the room. You made sure I wasn’t there when she died—and maybe that’s when it happened, that’s when Kathy sent her to the Otherworld. I could have saved her. If you’d just let me be there—”

  “I was protecting you,” Evie said.

  “You were depriving me,” I shot back. “Of those moments I could have had with her. It’s so fucking unfair. And I don’t even know why. I was the one who was wrecked when she died. You were so . . . calm. So cold. You didn’t even cry at the funeral—”

  “I didn’t cry at the funeral because I was used to suppressing every single emotion I had at that point,” Evie said, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “So I didn’t set everything on fucking fire. That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel anything. And after that . . . I couldn’t be sad, Bea. I didn’t have the time to be sad. I didn’t have the luxury of being sad. Because everything I had, every drop of energy and strength, went into taking care of you.” She stepped forward so we were nearly toe-to-toe. Her voice shook, and I could see the sheen of tears in her eyes. “You want to talk about unfair?” she spat out, her voice low and furious. “You got to be sad. I didn’t.”

  Tears were freely streaming down my cheeks now, but I was too angry to even begin to respond to her. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared.

  “I took care of you,” she said, her voice still shaky. “I some
how managed to keep both of us alive. And now, all you can do is shit all over that by willfully putting yourself in danger over and over again.”

  In an instant, all of the fight seemed to go out of her. Her shoulders slumped, and she took a step backward. Her eyes went to the floor and her face seemed to go even grayer.

  “I . . . I don’t feel well,” she said quietly. “I’m going to bed.”

  Nate wordlessly appeared at her side, wrapped her in his arms and led her away. As she shuffled out of the kitchen, I thought she’d glance back at me. A last look of disappointment or sisterly rage or sadness.

  But she didn’t look at me at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I THOUGHT ABOUT going back to the hospital. I couldn’t deny that I still wanted to, down to my very core. But something stopped me from making the actual move. So I went back to my room, flopped on my bed, and stared at the twinkle lights. Tonight, their spell somehow didn’t seem as potent.

  The look on Evie’s face—that mix of anger and hurt and disappointment—kept flashing through my brain. Much as I chafed at so many of her attempts to parent me, I just couldn’t bring myself to let her down even more than I already had. At least not tonight.

  You got to be sad. I didn’t.

  I’d thought that as I’d gotten older I’d developed a better understanding of the sacrifices she’d made to raise me. But apparently there was a lot I still hadn’t grasped. A memory bubbled up: me at thirteen, her at twenty-three. About a year after Dad left. She’d sold our childhood home and much of its contents, moved us into a tiny apartment, and was attempting to work her way through grad school. I was deep into my teenage loner phase and had worked my way from feeling searing pain 24/7 to that dull, dead inside feeling. A comfortable numbness.

  My numb state had felt at least sort of like an improvement. There was one night I got it in my head that I absolutely needed to make a peanut butter, jelly, banana, and chocolate chip sandwich. Both Evie and Dad thought this concoction was super gross, but it was another special thing Mom and I did together. When I was still in my “everything hurts all the time” phase, I wasn’t able to even think about that sandwich. Even imagining the flavor made me a little queasy. But that night, it had finally sounded delicious again, and I wanted to seize the moment. So I toddled into our miniscule apartment kitchen, opened the fridge, pulled out the peanut butter and stared at the jar for a full minute, an avalanche of emotions crashing through me.

  “Evie?” I called out, my voice quavering.

  “Yeah, Bea?” she said, appearing at the kitchen door.

  I waved the jar around. “This is creamy peanut butter. Where’s the chunky?”

  “Uh. The creamy’s what we usually get?” she said, her brows drawing together.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “Mom and I always got the chunky. That’s what we like—um, liked for our sandwich.”

  She gave me a weary, confused look. “Bea, you haven’t made that sandwich in . . . I mean, it’s been a long time. You don’t really eat peanut butter—”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, my voice twisting. Even then, I’d realized how irrational I sounded. But I really needed her to get it. “I totally do. I love peanut butter.”

  “—so I just got the kind I like,” she continued, as if explaining things to a small child. “We can get both kinds next time we go to the store.”

  I just kept shaking my head. “I need to make my sandwich now.”

  “Well, I can’t go to the store now,” Evie said, her patience wearing thin. “I have a paper to finish and I’m going to be up all night as it is.”

  “But . . . but . . .” My eyes filled with tears, and I could feel my face getting all red.

  “Bea.” Evie stepped forward and took the jar from me. “Really, what’s the problem? It’s just peanut butter.”

  That’s when I’d burst into tears.

  They weren’t quiet, tasteful tears. No, we’re talking full-body sobs, the kind of cry that reverberates through every part of you. I’d slumped to the floor, curling myself into a little ball, and sobbed. My state of comfortable numbness shattered on the spot, and I was back to drowning in hopeless pain.

  It wasn’t just peanut butter. It was the wrong peanut butter. It was peanut butter that took me farther away from Mom, from the sandwich that had been a special bond between us. And I’d needed to make that sandwich now. The idea that there was this small obstacle denying me from this one tenuous connection I still had with my mother broke me completely.

  I heard Evie let out a long sigh. She hadn’t said a word, just sat down on the floor next to me and stayed there until I stopped crying. At the time, she’d seemed dispassionate—like she was the weary parent, waiting out a child’s tantrum. But now I could see more clearly: I was breaking down so fully, so messily, there was no room for her to do the same.

  A soft knock on the door startled me out of my reverie. I couldn’t imagine who in this household wanted to talk to me at the moment.

  “Come in,” I called out.

  Nate entered the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “Bea,” he rumbled. “May I speak to you for a minute?”

  “Of course.”

  He crossed the room and sat down in the rocking chair next to my bed. It was a little small for his hulking frame, and I bit back a giggle as he shifted around, trying to find a comfortable sitting position. He finally settled for perching himself on the edge. I noticed he was holding a sparkly purple folder like the one he’d left for me a few days earlier.

  “Kai, my colleague in Maui, located another person who nearly drowned after walking into the ocean,” he said.

  “She saved a third person?” I said, incredulous.

  “Someone else saved this person,” he clarified. “But it was in the same general area of beach. She conducted an interview with this latest survivor and I was wondering if you could take a look at it, as you did with the previous interviews.”

  “Well, sure,” I said, sitting up straight and reaching out for the folder. He handed it to me. “But do you really want my expertise on . . . anything? Considering the astonishing lack of judgment I’ve apparently shown since getting my superheroing stripes.”

  “I do not think there’s much danger you can get into reading through a report,” Nate said. His mouth quirked into an amused half-smile. “Though if there’s a way, I’m sure you will find it.”

  “Was that a joke, bro-in-law?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “My attempt at one.” His brow furrowed. “Was it not good?”

  “It was pretty good, actually,” I said, laughing a little. “Though it might be kind of soon for that punchline since Evie and I just had that fight an hour ago.”

  “I see,” he said, smiling. He paused, studying me intently. “Bea,” he continued, his voice thoughtful. “Can I ask you something about your and Evie’s fight—ah, not the one tonight. The one from a few days ago, right before she agreed to you doing the superhero internship.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “That level of specificity is necessary considering that Evie and I have enough fights for a very long highlights reel. Yeah, you can ask me whatever you want.”

  “Evie mentioned the work you and I had done together—all the scientific research and related work,” he said. “And how you eventually drifted away from it.”

  “Ah, yes, when she was listing the various things I’ve picked up and dropped, proving that I have the attention span of a gnat,” I said.

  “That is . . . not exactly how I would put it,” Nate said. “But when you stopped having as much time for our work, I did wonder why. I didn’t ask at the time because you drew a boundary and requested that all of us respect it. But you were so good at the work, and you seemed genuinely absorbed by it. Did something about it stop interesting you?” He leaned forward, his face cre
asing with concern. “Did I make it boring?”

  “What? No!” I exclaimed. “That wasn’t it at all. I just . . .” I hesitated, my eyes rolling upward to study the twinkle lights. “I think I realized you didn’t really need me. I mean, I was a great assistant to you, I could definitely enhance the work you were doing and type up reports and stuff. But that’s all I’d ever be if I kept on that path. Like, a Nate add-on.”

  He frowned. “I never thought of you that way.”

  “No, I know,” I said quickly. “But I thought of myself that way. And I was kind of tired of being everyone’s little sister. I wanted to find something that was just mine. I wanted to become who I was supposed to be. I wanted to—”

  To fill the hole inside myself I can never seem to fill. To find that missing piece.

  I swallowed hard and skipped over that part. “Anyway,” I continued. “I thought that was being a superhero. I mean, it helped Evie and Aveda with their various identity crises. But maybe I was wrong about that, too, since I seem to be fucking up at every turn.”

  “Beatrice.” Nate leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. “I am not a great expert on the human psyche. It took me years to express my feelings to Evie, and even then, we had some growing pains.” He smiled at the memories. “But if I may make an observation: I believe that you are already who you are supposed to be. And that person is quite incredible.”

  Unexpected tears sprang to my eyes. “I mean, nah,” I said softly, trying to brush it off.

  “If you pursue what calls to you at a deep, visceral level, what inspires passion in you—well, you will make that incredible, too. And the rest, whatever you feel is missing, will come.”

  “That’s a nice thought, Nate,” I managed, blinking back tears. “But I don’t know how I can be all incredible when I can’t seem to go more than an hour without disappointing my own sister.”

  “When we love someone that much, our other feelings about them tend to be equally strong.” He reached over and squeezed my hand. “That’s how it is with you and Evie. And I know that, too, will work out.”