Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
For the entire forty-minute walk, Lia allowed her imagination to run wild.
The brine of Norenth’s salted air lingered in her mouth when she rounded the corner to her street.
Blinking hard, it was like she had torn her focus from a television screen too fast, ghosts of images overlapping.
Flying ships and oceanic clouds over suburbia.
Imagination over reality.
Maybe she should be more concerned about sleep than her papa. Maybe then she’d stop seeing things. But the allure of her fictional world and what it allowed her was hard to ignore.
It was a quick work of muscle memory to get settled once home: dumping her backpack, pulling out the needed ingredients from the pantry and fridge. Each sound echoed through the house, its walls still bare. Too empty. She needed something to fill the silence until Marcus came home.
Advanced trigonometry homework could wait another hour. No one was here to see.
Lia’s shoulders relaxed a fraction, and she pulled out her journal.
While water boiled for dinner, she bulleted notes about her sea captain’s motives until the front door banged open.
She dropped her pen with a start, whirling around to see Marcus nearly putting a hole in the wall before slamming the door shut.
Marcus didn’t notice she was a fictional world away. Red-faced, he stormed like a twelve-year-old tornado across the kitchen to the staircase, tennis shoes pounding earthquakes to the foundation. A second slam shuddered through the house.
That was not the hello Lia was expecting. Nor the near heart attack. Norenth had to wait.
Turning off the stove, she made for his bedroom.
Marcus was face down on his bed, picking at a loose string that threatened to unravel the quilt. Granted, the old thing was in a sorry state. Clearly Marcus was, too. Upending one’s life did that to a person. No matter how much they had claimed not to mind.
“I hate it here,” he grumbled.
“Keep that tone and your voice will crack.” Lia leaned in his doorway, but her teasing missed its mark. He didn’t roll his eyes or snap back. The smirk disappeared from Lia’s lips. She pushed off the frame to sit beside him. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just different.”
There was something in his flat tone. What didn’t he want to tell her? The again, what preteen wanted to open up his older sister? Regardless, Lia needed to try again. Humor was one of many coping mechanisms that helped him out of these funks.
“Higher altitude, for one,” Lia said. “Ohio was pretty flat. Lots of corn.”
“Maybe that’s why everyone here acts like they’ve got something shoved up their—”
“Not another word!” Drowning him out, she lobbed a pillow at his head. “This city has already ruined your mouth!”
Marcus ducked before surging back, flicking russet curls from his eyes. “These guys are jerks! Are they any better in high school?”
“I wouldn’t know. You’re supposedly the social butterfly.”
Despite my best efforts. But what high school senior wants to hang with the weird girl who prefers friends on paper?
The intrusive thought sent a shudder down Lia’s frame, an impulse to pick at the fragile skin around her stubbed nails.
She focused on Marcus, fisting her hands into the pillow like she had evidence to hide.
Which she did.
“Clip my wings, I’m done with people,” he sighed. “Can I get a story?”
Lia relaxed, his petulant demeanor vanished—thanks, raging hormones?
—but the request threw her. The merciless weasel had requested so many stories since the move.
A creature of comfort, that one. Well, namely a creature.
Though, thankfully, he had at least discovered deodorant.
The air happily lacked the perfume of moldy laundry.
Not that they had been there long enough to accumulate it.
Lia shook herself from her brother’s emotional whiplash and her own mental tangent. “Aren’t you getting old for those? Besides, I have dinner to work on.” She cringed. It sounded more like Mom than she’d intended.
It doesn’t always have to be on you, little lion.
Well, no one else was here. Shaking off her papa’s words, she looked around the room. “What about your books?”
“In boxes.”
“How does this even allow you to relax?” Lia crinkled her nose at a precarious tower of cardboard.
Marcus picked at the quilt again. “It’s just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Dad calls.”
Those two words were stones sinking inside Lia’s chest. Marcus was still holding out—after all she’d done to make this as smooth as possible for him? For their mom?
“He’s never visited,” she said, forcing her tone to stay even.
“So? We haven’t lived here since they split. Maybe he’s been busy on a business trip. Can’t get Mom’s calls.”
Did she dare tell him that those calls went straight to voicemail each time she’d eavesdropped? No, that would only devastate him. And she wasn’t about to make the poor kid feel worse. Not when she could help it.
“It’s possible,” Lia reassured, grin in place. Even when it bottomed out her stomach. “But we’re here for Papa. Mom needs to be close to him, and she needs us to be close to her. And I’ve got to be close to you.”
“But who helps you?”
She blinked hard. Dug her nails in harder. Plastered on her more convincing smile. “Papa’s helping me flesh out Norenth beyond his books. With my writing, I’m fine.”
Liar.
Marcus didn’t look entirely convinced either.
Unable to keep her face smooth and hold his gaze, she looked at the speckled stars emitting a soft glow across the ceiling.
How did her brother manage to put up those but not unpack the rest?
It was distracting. She hadn’t been in here a full five minutes and her hands were itching to do something, anything, that might get things perfectly ordered.
“Tell you what,” Lia bartered. “Let’s unpack a bit, then I’ll read from my journal.
” She couldn’t waste time thinking about people who didn’t matter.
And honestly, neither should Marcus. Maybe if she settled him in enough, he wouldn’t wish their father would appear.
Because that would be nothing short of a magic trick.
To that end, after dinner Lia helped fill Marcus’s dresser and closet with clothes. She even organized his astronomy textbooks. Plopping onto a vibrant orange bean bag, she opened her journal. “I wrote another plan to ruin some pirate schemes. Papa said this sea captain needed more pizazz.”
“He would know all about that,” Marcus sighed. “I wish I was like Kayce: a prince battling rogue captains, saving stolen animals and goods. Very Robin Hood. No wonder the fandoms love him.”
“If he knew, it’d only go to his head.” Lia looked at the clock. Mom had been gone for a twelve-hour shift at the hospital. It was now overtime. Unsurprising.
Forcing her jaw to unclench, Lia focused on the journal’s warm leather cover. An anchor of the softest velvet. Opening to the first page, her papa’s instructions were in his cramped script:
The chicken scratch prompted a genuine smile.
Papa had always encouraged her imaginings.
And though she was to help him in his old age, Lia felt grounded.
With him, she really didn’t have to try so hard to keep everyone happy.
Maybe she should be a little more honest with him.
He actually tried, his worry knotting her throat.
Maybe she really didn’t have to pick up the pieces alone.
Lia paged through her journal, half-full of snippets detailing the wayward prince. Writing about Kayce grounded her too, even when he was content to be wherever the skies took him.
Sensing Marcus’s eyes on her, she read aloud.
Here, she could give Marcus a glimpse of her secret self.
They were stories, after all, and at least on paper she didn’t risk anything.
Unbound, ironically, since there she was free to be bolder, braver.
What she wished she could be. Marcus may have wished to be Kayce, but all Lia ever wanted was to be the truest version of herself, unbeholden to anyone save the skies and seas.
Sometimes, she didn’t know who was fictional: Lia, devoted daughter and sister, or Aurelia, the Norenthian character she’d fashioned alongside Kayce.
Deep in reading, Lia and Marcus didn’t notice their mom’s return.
“You guys still awake?” Mom stood in the doorway, nursing scrubs wrinkled. Typical Seattle, with rain drops glistening in her copper hair. But she stood rigid, holding herself at the elbows. Lia frowned. It was more than tension from a long day.
But Marcus was already talking. “Lia was reading about smugglings. Turns out some captains are secretly pirates.”
“It’s not a secret, exactly,” Lia couldn’t help but correct. “Kayce knows.”
“But the court doesn’t! Not the king and queen, his brothers—”
“Guys!” Mom snapped. “Leave the fantasy alone. There are more important things to worry about.”
Lia clenched her fists under the journal.
Their mom wasn’t a storyteller. She avoided stories like a plague no disinfectant could stave off. It stung how she never asked about Norenth. But Mom worked so hard for them. Especially after their father left. Lia didn’t want to add more strain, even if it killed an intrinsic piece of her.
But this was different, Mom’s tone harsher than the sibling banter warranted. Even Marcus held himself so still, as if fearing his next breath could set her off.
“Sorry, Mom, we’re finished,” Lia said, shutting the journal. Her knuckles remained white around the binding. “Is everything okay?”
Mom’s thin smile pulled the fine lines cupping her mouth. Her lip tremored. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she started talking.
And with those words, Lia’s blood was an ocean, its roar deafening in her ears. It nearly drowned out their mom’s muffled words. Nearly.
A shift. And then an anchor breaking. Leaving Lia unmoored.
She wouldn’t have dared to write this plot twist.