Ryder’s therapist had told me I should be proud. Fight or flight, Iris, she’d said. Most people don’t know what they’ll do when faced with such a test. Now you know you will fight.
But what about now? I wasn’t fighting; I could barely breathe.
A loud echo reached across the stony field. Back at the center of filming, someone was yelling over a megaphone. “What are they saying?”
“They must’ve found him,” Eamon said.
We ran again, and I was stumbling by the time we reached Cate. She was kneeling in front of Ryder, holding his shoulders at the center of the crew member crowd. I nearly knocked her over, wanting to hug my brother, but I shook him instead. “Where were you?”
“I met a man. A real-life shepherd!” Ryder pointed across the field. My brother looked tired. Small. A fine-boned replica of my stunning mother, and I shook him again because I wanted to shake my parents. The people who had dropped this wild person into the center of my life.
Ryder was surprised by my anger, his brown eyes wide. “Iris, I’m okay. He gave me some tea and helped me come back. The tea was all black and gross, but I’m okay.”
“You know better, Ryder! Do you have any idea what that guy could’ve done to you?”
Ryder blinked. He didn’t know; he didn’t have my imagination. He hadn’t seen The Lovely Bones or learned how to look up registered sex offenders like I’d started doing compulsively two years ago. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he couldn’t think it was okay to go off with a stranger, let alone without telling anyone.
“Look.” I turned him in a circle so he could see the faces of the crew members. “They dropped their work to find you. You probably cost them thousands of dollars and ruined this shoot.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Cate tried, but I shot her a death look.
Ryder’s face was finally filling with the gravity of his actions, but it wasn’t enough.
“We’re going home. As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning if we can get a flight.”
His shock twisted into a scream that made people cover their ears. His tantrum came fast, and I couldn’t lift him anymore; he was too big. His legs went limp, and when several people tried to help, I warned them back, feeling feral. I had found Ryder safe, and yet I was still pounding all over with fear and anger.
We made it to the van, and I buckled him in the back, mad that my life was so tangled with his, that whatever he did avalanched on me. Loving him this much was downright infuriating. It always felt like a punishment for something I hadn’t done.
• • •
Eamon drove us back. The sky was black, and the road jarred the van with endless bumps. Ryder sniffed in the back, and I crossed my arms, imagining the phone call home.
“We have to come back,” I’d say. “Ryder won’t listen and he nearly got himself killed.”
“Why weren’t you watching him?” my dad would ask.
“It’s not my job,” I’d snap once and for all. “You two shouldn’t have had him if you didn’t want to raise him. You shouldn’t have had either of us.”
“Your mother and I feel that way too.”
I gasped. Even for a make-believe argument, that cut deep.
“You can’t leave,” Eamon murmured. “You’ll break his heart.”
“What about mine?”
“What about yours?” he asked. “What is it that Iris Thorne wants, then?”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the window. “To play my guitar in a place where no one can hear me. No responsibilities. No elves.”
“That’s escapism, Iris. That’s not real life.”
“Coming from a Thornian, that’s rich.”
He was driving slower and slower, like he didn’t want to get back too fast. “Iris, when I was a kid, I wanted to find a portal. Desperately. No more this world, time for a new one. I thought every cabinet was Narnia’s wardrobe or Alice’s rabbit hole. I even made my own subtle knife.” His eyes twinkled in the dark as he looked at me. “You probably don’t get that reference.”
I did. But I couldn’t tell him. That door was locked tight inside.
“What was wrong with your world?” I asked.
“A fair amount of disappointment. Loneliness. My da is a piece of work, and my sister moved out when I was still little. Mam worked long shifts.” He paused, and I wondered why he was telling me this. Was Eamon opening up because I’d told him about Felix Moss? This was new ground; no one outside of my family knew the truth. Not even my school friends.
Eamon cleared his throat. “Mam said I was reading the stories all wrong. It’s not about disappearing. It’s about experiencing a new world so you can understand the real one. That’s what Elementia is about. Sevyn leaves home to find her brother, and she finds her life instead.”
This was either too deep for me or I was too exhausted. “Okay, sure.”
“That man…Moss.” Eamon’s voice turned hard, his accent sharper than usual. “He must’ve had a psychotic break. Not all Thornians are like that. There are a lot of us who simply appreciate the story.”
“If you say the books saved your life, I’ll have to stop talking to you.”
“The story saved my life,” Ryder said, his voice scratchy from screaming.
I glanced back at my tiny brother in the huge back seat. “No, it didn’t. You didn’t need to be saved. You were fine and happy. The story’s terrible fans messed up your life.”
That’s right, my dad’s voice slipped in.
Ryder replied even louder. “Byers took Evyn because he was sick. He didn’t hurt him.”
Eamon smiled at Ryder via the rearview mirror. “And Byers saved Evyn in the end.”
“Byers?” I asked. Fantasy talk was so isolating. You either knew everything about the fictional world, or
