Traveler (Traveler #1)(23)

“If you had a date on a Saturday night, you wouldn’t be home eating,” Danny snarks from the living room.

My mother rolls her eyes. “Danny, that’s enough.”

“Just giving some free advice.” He shrugs. “The girl needs a love life.”

“Danny!” Mom objects.

“Just sayin’,” he defends himself.

I look over at him sitting on the couch with a bowl of microwave popcorn balanced in his lap. I suppose some things are universal. He catches me staring and makes a face at Mom. I smile, unable to help myself.

“Jessa.”

I turn to look at her again. “Yeah?”

“Just … take a multivitamin or something. Humor me.”

“I will.”

She steps back out the door, and I look over at the clock in the kitchen. I assume time runs concurrently—and if so, I really should get back.

I take one last look at my “normal” brother. I want to ask him a million questions. I want to sit and talk to him for hours. I mean, if I’m me, he’s still him, right? He can tell me everything I really want to know.

Except it wouldn’t really be him. Not the way I know him.

I move up the stairs to my bedroom. This time I make it through the mirror much more quickly, leaving my could-have-been life to another me.

I back slowly away from the mirror, not entirely sure about what I just experienced. Then I glance down at myself.

“Why am I wearing this?” I say aloud, and my eyes go to the mirror again. She changed me into a pair of jeans I had stuffed in the bottom of my closet because they’re red. I went through a colored-jeans phase in ninth grade, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in them now.

She added a bright-yellow-and-green flannel, layered over a blue-flowered T-shirt that’s part of a sleepwear set. I look incredibly tacky. It only takes me a moment to get changed back into my T-shirt and sweatpants, and I wad up the other clothes, throwing them far back into my closet.

I can hear Danny downstairs, and he’s shouting at someone—possibly the TV, since my mom is at work. I have an overwhelming urge to see him, so I race down the stairs and there he is … having an imaginary sword fight with Finn.

“Hey,” I say.

They both stop to look at me. They’re each clutching a cardboard tube from the center of a roll of paper towels—my mom collects them for craft projects at the retirement home where she and Danny work.

“Took you long enough,” Finn says. “Weren’t you changing your clothes?”

“I—uh … when did you get here? And why are you sword fighting?” This day is getting more and more bizarre.

“Jessa! You came back!” Danny smiles at me. “I’m giving Finn lessons.”

“We were watching The Princess Bride,” Finn explains. He looks at me oddly. “And you let me in. Then you ran out of here to change your clothes.”

I’m still looking at Danny strangely, and I know it shows on my face. He’s my Danny, and I didn’t realize how glad I’d be to have him back, but … did he realize I had changed? I mean, not just my clothes?

“Jessa…?”

Finn realizes something is wrong. “Danny, we’ll do some more later, okay?” he promises. “I have to go help Jessa with her homework.”

I feel Finn’s hand on my arm as he leads me back up the stairs to my room.

“Okay,” he says, shutting the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

“I … traveled.”

He looks surprised. “By yourself?”

I nod. “And it was a lot like home, but my parents were still together.”

His eyes soften. “Sometimes it’s hard on the other side,” he says. “You can’t ever predict what it’s going to be like, unless you’ve been there before. Sometimes, not even then.”

“And Danny. He—he—” I stammer, trying to wrap my head around it. “He didn’t have autism. How is that possible?”

“Who knows?” Finn shrugs. “They’re not sure what causes autism, exactly, are they?”

“Not entirely, though they have found some genetic links.”

“So his genes combined in a different way—maybe because of external factors, like your mom was exposed to something during pregnancy, or maybe it was just timing as he moved from one stage of development to another. It could have been any or all of that,” Finn explains.

I sink down on my bed, still not sure how to process everything. As crazy as all that just was, I have a really weird feeling in my gut right now. Like there’s a giant fist around my stomach. I think about my parents sitting there, side by side, and tears burn at my eyes again. I force my thoughts away from Danny, because I know I really will start crying if I think about all of it together.

“You okay?” Finn asks sympathetically. “It sounds like that was a lot to face.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly. That is a serious understatement. “Does that happen sometimes? Experiencing a reality that you kind of don’t want to leave?”

He looks away from me.

“Yes, it happens. You’ll learn to get over it.”

I set my elbows on my knees and put my forehead in my hands. “I just want to write. That’s all. I want to be a writer.”