Getting Home

Part 34

You know that feeling right after the first drop on a rollercoaster?

Yeah.

Everything went quiet—faded away. Everything slowed down; it felt sooo long. The last thing I saw before closing my eyes was the rising cliff face out of the windshield of the Civic, slowly getting further and further away as it rose high above us.

The best way I can describe it is like going over a hill too fast in your car, when your stomach suddenly floats up, your whole body weightless.

Yeah... not really for me.

A strange thought zipped through my mind as we slowly glided through the air—that this was the closest I've ever come to truly flying.

Henry's words suddenly echoed in my head: "...you're my angel..."

The Civic slammed into the ground.

There was a loud crunch, an explosion of cracking plastic. My seatbelt locked hard. Good thing it did too—even as it was, my head still bounced into the roof, slamming my teeth together and almost taking my tongue off. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my arms didn't flail wildly—but my knees painfully slammed up underneath the steering wheel.

The Civic harmlessly spun around, coming to a stop facing the right way on the Path.

There was total, frozen silence for like... two seconds?—before Henry and I erupted into cheers, reaching over to hug each other and choke on our seatbelts.

Then we shakily got out of the car.

"We made it, Henry!" I threw my arms around his neck, yanking his head around. "I can't believe it worked! It actually worked!"

"I can't believe it," Henry said—but his voice sounded odd. He sounded happy, but in shocked wonder. There was something different about the way he looked. More...

Unreactive than usual.

More blank.

Well, he's been through a lot.

Yeah, maybe.

I slowly walked around the Civic, looking for any obvious damage. "Thank god the ground is as soft over here as it was over there," I said in wonder. Everything still looked in one piece, although the entire stance of the car was now...

Droopy.

It for sure sat lower than it used to, the bottoms of the wheels bulging out, making the Civic look like a dog about to splay out on all fours.

"I think some of the springy parts are broken," I said, Henry's earlier words suddenly echoing in my head and making me feel bad.

Sorry, little Civic, I thought.

"Will it still travel?" Henry asked.

"You tell me."

He was silent for a moment. Then nodded. "Yes."

"I was kidding, Henry."

He only looked at me with that new strange blank look.

This side of the Edge looked like more of the same—the Path continued straight on ahead of us, surrounded by more fields of that soft green velvet. I took once last look behind before getting back in the Civic; back up across the black chasm, to the cliff above where we had just came from.

Yikes.

You are SO lucky.

The car still drove—but the wheels severely wobbled now. The steering wheel lazily oscillated back and forth, but the Civic remained surprisingly straight on the Path. The ride was still soft, but the see-sawing motion of the whole car was pretty bad; it was like being on a boat, bobbing up and down in an undulating ocean.

Luckily I don't get sea-sick.

I still couldn't find a sun anywhere when I looked up—but the sky continued to deepen into that soft orange from the marble blue it had been earlier, although the light wasn't getting any darker.

Was there night time here? Did everything change color?

I had so many questions.

Dammit Henry, if only you could remember.

I looked over at him. He hadn't said much since the jump. He had spent all of the time staring quietly out the window, his face hidden from me.

"Henry?"

He didn't respond.

I reached out, gently tapping his shoulder and saying his name a little louder. "Henry?"

He jumped, more startled than I had ever seen. His head snapped around, eyes wide as the silver rings blazingly spun around his irises.

"Oh," he said, taking a deep sharp breath. "Sorry."

"You okay?"

"Yes." He blankly turned to gaze back out the window.

Sure.

The Path continued unrolling out in front of us. The Civic clunked along.

"So..." I trailed off, realizing that for the first time in my life I didn't know what to say to Henry.

"What are you thinking about?" I said finally.

"Thinking?" he said.

Why is it always like this?

"Yeah. You know, thinking. Like... talking to yourself in your head?"

He squinted at me. "How can you talk to myself inside of my own head?"

"Wait... what?" I was confused.

"Nothing." He sighed and looked back out the window.

Good talk.

But that wasn't fair. So I tried again. "Okay. Then what are you feeling?"

This time he looked at me, a flash of fear coming over his face.

"I was remembering how I felt before we jumped," he said. "How scared I was. It was the worst thing I've ever felt, Ava. It reminded me of..."

He fell silent.

"Of what, Henry?"

He looked at me, his face grimacing. "Your home."

"You mean Earth?"

"It's sick, Ava," he said, looking slowly to me. "Your home is sick—it's poisoned. It's... it's dying. Slowly... painfully... dying."

His face was so set and serious, yet a single tear rolled down his stern and set cheek, a striking and beautiful juxtaposition. The silver rings around his irises spun slowly in perfect sync.

"I could feel it, Ava. I—I can't go back there, no matter what. That's what I was remembering—when you told me we had to jump, it all flooded back to me... how it felt when I was back on your home. And how much I never want to go back. I'd rather be—"

He slowly turned to look back out the window.

This time, I was the one who remained silent.

"Ava, what's that?" Henry suddenly said, pointing straight ahead.

I snapped up out of my thoughts, my mouth dropping open as I saw what he was pointing at.

There was a tree on the side of the path.