Loor gave me a blank stare. Maybe her mind didn’t want to accept it. “Why do you say that?” she finally said, though much softer.
“Because if we hadn’t been there, Pelle would still be alive,” I answered. “He was safely on that platform, protected by his guards. There was no way that assassin would have gotten to him. But he came into the crowd to see us. We changed the equation. The turning point on Zadaa just got pushed the wrong way, and we helped push it.”
This is where I’m ending my journal, guys. I’m going to send it to you through my ring right now. Tomorrow Loor and I leave for the underground. Our goal is to get to Kidik and learn the truth that Bokka died trying to tell us. We have no choice. Saint Dane is waiting. This would be a dangerous trip under any circumstances, but now the clock is ticking. Pelle a Zinj is dead. That’s the tragedy I referred to at the beginning of this journal. With his murder, there’s no doubt that the Batu will attack the Rokador. The only question is, when?
Be well. Be safe. The next time I send you a journal, it will probably be from far below the surface of Zadaa.
And so we go.
END JOURNAL #21
SECOND EARTH
Courtney Chetwynde felt as if she were drowning.
If there was one word that could be used to describe Courtney, it would be “controlled.” Courtney was always in control because she had the tools to do it. She was smart and pretty and athletic and funny, and pretty much all the things that lesser human beings could only aspire to. Courtney had the whole package. Things always went her way because she madesurethey went her way. She was a force of nature. In school, with sports, with boys, even with her parents. Courtney had it all.
Until she lost it all.
It wasn’t as dramatic a change as what happened to Bobby Pendragon. She wasn’t plucked out of her perfect life, flumed across time and space and given the responsibility of saving all existence. What happened to Courtney was, in some ways, worse. Bobby left his normal life behind. Courtney stayed home and had her normal life turned inside out. And it had nothing to do with her relationship with Bobby, and becoming an acolyte with Mark Dimond. At least not at first.
Courtney defined herself as an athlete, but for some unexplainable reason, she was no longer competitive. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. One day she woke up to find she wasn’t as good as she had been her whole life. Or looking at it another way, everybody suddenly had gotten a lot better than she was. Failing at sports was like the first piece of yarn that works loose in a sweater. Once you start pulling on it, the whole sweater unravels.
Courtney’s life unraveled.
She became so obsessed with her failures on the field, she let it affect school. Her grades took a serious nosedive. That made her parents unhappy and caused all sorts of tension at home. All this turmoil and failure made the once happy and friendly Courtney not so much fun to be around. Her friends stopped calling. But that was okay with her. She wasn’t calling them, either. Courtney went from outgoing, to withdrawn. From friendly, to bitter. From being Courtney, to being a hazy shadow of Courtney.
Her only release was her relationship with Mark, and their responsibility of being the acolytes for Bobby Pendragon. In comparison to the troubles facing Bobby and Halla, her own problems seemed petty. Perspective was good. Bobby’s journals gave her that perspective. But as time went on, reading about Bobby’s adventures made her feel almost too small. Insignificant, even. She and Bobby had always been friendly rivals. More times than not, she would get the better of him. But now, Bobby was battling to save humanity, while Courtney was left to battle her own inner demons. And she was losing. Every time she turned around, her ego took another beating.
That’s why, when the opportunity presented itself to help Bobby, she jumped at it. Courtney would never admit it, but when she and Mark entered the flume to help save Eelong, she was also trying to save herself. She saw this as a chance to get back her self-confidence and prove to everyone that she hadn’t changed. Most of all she needed to prove it to herself.
When Courtney and Mark left Second Earth, they definitely rose to the occasion. If they hadn’t stepped in, Eelong would have been doomed. Worse, Bobby might have died. Their adventure on Eelong was everything Courtney hoped it would be. They were heroes. Her self-doubt disappeared. She had proven to herself that she was every bit the force of nature she had always been. Balance had been restored.
And then it all came crumbling down. Literally. Acolytes were not supposed to use the flumes. She knew that. Bobby knew that. Everybody knew that. But they used them anyway. The result? The flume on Eelong collapsed, killing a Traveler and stranding Gunny and Spader. The horrifying truth was that Saint Dane’s plan all along had been to get them to use the flumes. He didn’t care about Eelong. He cared about tearing the Travelers apart, and Courtney was quick to oblige. For a brief, glorious month, when she and Mark were on Eelong, Courtney felt as if she were back in control. She was wrong. Saint Dane was pulling her strings all along. Courtney went from feeling as if she were invincible, to being crushed by the guilt of her part in bringing about the death of a Traveler and hurting Bobby’s chances of defeating Saint Dane.
That’s why she felt as if she were drowning.
She went into a depression. She could barely get out of bed. Sleep was good. At least while asleep there was a chance of having a happy dream. Being awake felt more like a nightmare. Her parents took her to a therapist, but it didn’t do much good. She tried to explain to the doctor how she had such high expectations of herself, and it killed her to fall short. But saying it like that made it all seem so trivial. The problem was, Courtney couldn’t be fully honest with him. She couldn’t tell him about Bobby, and the flumes and Saint Dane and how her arrogance may have doomed all of humanity. But she wanted to, and then scream at the doctor: “Don’t you think you’d be a little depressed if you had to deal with that?” She didn’t, because she knew where that would lead. The therapist wouldn’t consider her depressed anymore. He’d move her into the “crazy” category. That’s why she mostly kept quiet during therapy. It was frustrating for both of them.
This went on for months. Tension at home was unbearable. Her parents tried to help, but they didn’t understand. Their efforts usually led to more arguments. Then they’d argue about having so many arguments. Like with the therapist, Courtney wasn’t able to fully explain what was going on to them. The sweater of Courtney’s life was almost completely unraveled.
It was during a particularly gruesome argument when, out of total frustration, her mother threw up her hands and said, “I can’t help you. I wish I knew somebody who could!” Her mother stormed out of Courtney’s bedroom, not realizing that those words had struck a chord. It was a small realization, but an important one. Courtney quickly flipped through her memory, wondering if there actually was somebody out there she felt could help. She came up with someone. The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure this was the only person who could help her get her life back together.
Courtneyneeded to help herself.
It was one of the greatest challenges she couldimagine. Itwasn’t about games or grades or even about saving Halla. It was about saving Courtney. Thinking this way actuallymade her smile. There was a rumbling. It was faint, but it was there. It was a far-off whisper that told her after all she had been through, after having her spirit crushed, after losing her entire sense of worth, there was a slight glimmer of hope. This rumbling made her realize that somewhere down deep, she wanted the challenge. She needed the challenge. Even in failure, she had never backed down from any test. Any hurdle. Any opponent. She was actually getting excited, and it felt good. It made her realize that the drive was still there. It was buried pretty deep, but it was there. It made her feel as If maybe there was a little bit of Courtney left, and she wanted to bring her back.