Earthbound

Sammi’s hand emerges clutching a file folder with the symbol of the feather and the flame. She walks toward me, raising the folder like a white flag.

It feels strange, exchanging folders of documents in the forest, with brown leaves crunching under our feet, but what about this whole experience hasn’t been strange? I take the folder warily and try to keep my eyes on Sammi even as I open the cover.

It’s odd to see my face stare out from a picture I don’t remember being in. It has that sepia tinge that old photos take on, and I see myself in a wide-necked sweater and high-waisted jeans, lying on my stomach, reading a book. “When is this?” I ask, studying all the little facial details I’ve become so intimately acquainted with over the years.

It’s strange how foreign they look now.

“Eighteen years ago,” Sammi says, and I remember her cryptic statement a few minutes ago.

I wrinkle my brow. “I died young.”

“You did.”

My finger reaches out to touch another face in the picture—the sharp chin of teenage Samantha. Shorter hair, a little thinner, but definitely her. “That’s you.”

“Yes, that’s me as a teenager, and that’s you as Sonya. And despite everything,” she adds with a laugh, “you are so much easier to live with this time around.”

“‘Belligerent,’” I recite from the next page in the file, but there’s no humor in my voice. I’m not ready to think of any of this as amusing.

“That basically sums it up. You didn’t trust us, even after we were able to give you your memories back. And you wouldn’t tell us anything.”

I reach the bottom of the file, and everything inside me clenches up in denial. “It says here that I killed myself. If you Curatoria people are so helpful and trustworthy, why did I do that?”

Sammi is quiet for long time, twisting her wedding ring around and around. When she speaks, her voice is low and serious. “The bond between partners is so strong, it often becomes an Earthbound’s motivation for living. Right before we found you, we found your partner. His name was Darius then. But we weren’t the only ones who found him. Unfortunately, he left too much of a trail and the Reduciata located him … and …” She spreads her hands out in front of her. “You have to understand, Tavia. For an Earthbound, death isn’t the same as for the rest of us. It’s not the end; it’s more like a reset button. It wasn’t that you stopped wanting to live but that you wanted to be on the same timeline as Darius. Quinn. Whatever you want to call him. You didn’t want to be twenty-three years older than him when you found his new incarnation. You wanted to be at the same stage so the two of you might have a chance of a long life together.”

“So I killed myself?” I ask. The cold logic of the act doesn’t make it any less gruesome.

“It was hard on me too,” Sammi admitted. “Even though I understood what it meant. Since then I’ve dedicated much of my service as a Curatoriate to finding you and Darius and getting you together again. To right that wrong. It’s been my life’s work. So when I recognized your painting style last year from a few pieces we have by Rebecca, I was finally able to complete the first step in my mission.”

“Well, you can stop now. I don’t want to be with him.” I take Benson’s hand again, twine my fingers through his, and smile. “I want to be with Benson. We don’t need you and we certainly don’t need this guy—Darius, Quinn, whoever. We only need each other.”

Benson smiles back, but he looks nervous—edgy. His hand grips mine like he’s afraid I’ll bolt at any moment.

“Don’t you even want to see him?” Sammi asks.

“See who?”

“Your partner, Quinn Avery. Who he is today?” She holds out another file.

I try not to be affected. I have a boy who loves me; I certainly don’t need another one. But Sammi continues to hold it out, and finally I give up my show of nonchalance and grab it and read the label.

“‘Logan Sikes,’” I read.

I hold the file, count to three, open it.

And there he is.

An eight-by-ten of a guy—a teenager, just like me. Somewhere in the back of my head a new voice I vaguely recognize as Sonya cheers. It worked! And even as I push her away, I realize she’s right. We’re the same age. We could be together—have an entire lifetime.

Except.

I don’t want him.

Not me.

They do. They want him so badly I’m not sure my brain can handle the split decision without tearing apart.

Stalling, I reach my fingertips out to touch Quinn’s familiar face, made modern in this Logan guy. His hair is shorter, tousled and hanging almost to his green eyes instead of tied with a ribbon. Jeans and a T-shirt look so odd on him, and yet he seems very at home, glancing just over his shoulder.

I can deny my heart, cling to Benson, ignore Elizabeth’s warning, shut out Rebecca and Sonya’s voices.

But I can’t escape those eyes.

I know those eyes. I’ve loved those eyes. Looked into them while they loved me. Hundreds of times. Thousands. My breath feels sharp as I stare into his eyes and am hypnotized.

Desperately, I push my gaze to the date at the bottom of the picture. “This was taken yesterday?” I gasp, and Sammi nods, mistaking my dismay for delight.

“As he was walking to school. I saw him myself. In the flesh, not this vision of Quinn Avery that you’ve been seeing the last week. He’s real. It’s the reason I had to go to Phoenix so abruptly. That’s where he is.”

Phoenix. I almost went there. Meeting up with ghost Quinn nearly ripped apart my heart and soul; what would seeing the real Logan have done to me?

Sammi leans forward. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before that I thought I’d found him—I see now that I should have—but … Tavia, it almost destroyed me when you killed yourself while under my care. I was there when my father told you Darius was dead. You—you can’t even imagine the devastation I saw in your eyes. Maybe you can,” she said wryly. “Surely you remember that part.”

I hesitate. “I don’t, actually. I don’t remember a lot of things. Mostly just my life as Rebecca, but even that’s vague. I … I sense,” I decide on, not really sure how to better describe it, “that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen. That this whole remembering thing should be easier.” I let the unasked question hang in the air.

“You don’t remember anything about Sonya? At all?” Sammi asks.

“Just a … familiarity,” I admit. “A trickle of a voice in my head.”

“Do you remember—” But she cuts off. “Now’s not the time; we can discuss Sonya later. Liz did a ton of research after the plane crash, and she theorized that the damage your brain suffered would make things more difficult. The same way it was so hard for you to start drawing again.”

“It’s why we were worrying about damaging you further,” Elizabeth tacks on.

“Will it always hurt?” I ask in a weak voice, my whole body on edge at even the thought of the pain the necklace had invoked.

Sammi’s chin shoots up. “It—”

“The brains of Earthbounds don’t function quite the same as ours—not even the same as those of us who have Earthbound as kin,” Elizabeth interrupts. “It’s the reason you see things the rest of us can’t.” She pauses. “Like the glowing triangles.”

My eyes widen and I try to ask about that, but Elizabeth cuts me off.

“As far as we can tell, the synaptic pathways both connect and fire differently. What we aren’t certain of is how the damage to your brain will affect that. But no, it shouldn’t hurt.” She hesitates, understanding how bad it must have been even though I didn’t say so. “I don’t know if it will continue to be a painful process or not, but now that you’ve had your initial memory pull from one of your creations, the worst should be over. From here on out it will hopefully just be a matter of sifting