Page 34 of Seasonal Fears

“Someone has to take the floor,” says Harry dubiously.

“Or you and Elsa could stop pretending you’d rather not be sharing a bed and give up waiting for me to be asleep before you get out of your sleeping bag.”

Harry frowns at her. “Her name’s Mel, and we’re being considerate. You’re like twelve.”

“Technically thirteen. I chose to stop aging when I hit my ascendancy, which most of us do, and I won’t get any older until I let go of the choice.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“I dunno.” Jack stretches languidly, arms above her head. “What’s the statute of limitations on parental reclamation? If a missing twelve-year-old shows up ten years later, and they’re still twelve, will the state try to give them back to their folks, or will they just look confused and say ‘Well, guess she’s a freak of nature and might as well be emancipated’?”

Harry blinks. “I genuinely have no idea.”

The water turns on, the sound echoing through the cheap motel room. Harry’s expression of confusion becomes a frown.

“This place needs a lot of work.”

“Yeah, but it’s cheap, and as long as you can provide photo ID and pay for your room, they’ll let you sleep here. Can’t say the same about the kind of place you’re used to. If we don’t want your parents to find us…”

And they don’t want his parents to find them, want it less than almost anything (except the still-looming threat of Melanie’s father, which seems like a much more immediate and concrete danger; the thought of fearing Melanie’s sister hasn’t occurred to any of them, not even Jack, who’s fully aware the girl survived). They stopped at each ATM they passed on the way out of Portland, regardless of what bank they belonged to, Harry pulling out every penny he could manage before his folks realized what was going on and stopped his cards. They haven’t turned his credit card off yet; he’s hoping that, combined with the way Mel’s father yelled at them, and the fact that Mel is also missing, will mean they assume, correctly, that they’ve run away and not been abducted. His parents won’t be thrilled by the idea that he’s run away with his high school girlfriend—his mother will probably make the face that means she’s silently judging his life choices, and finding them universally wanting—but they’ll understand the reasons, especially if Dr. Cosgrove threatened to keep them from seeing each other anymore.

They know how much Melanie means to him, how much of his own teenage experience has been shaped and formed by her illness, by trying to keep her with him as long as possible. His father will probably think this is romantic, that Mel is finally, officially dying and she and Harry have run off together to make sure they can spend her last moments with each other, probably against some beautiful beach backdrop or the like. He’ll fight any attempt to freeze Harry’s cards, but he won’t check in on him directly. If he did that, if he knew for sure where the missing teens were, he’d feel obligated to alert the authorities. This way, if he stays ignorant, he doesn’t have to tell anyone what he doesn’t know.

That’s how Harry’s father has always operated, so the fact that Harry’s credit card still works isn’t that much of a surprise. What’s more surprising is that he’s only received one text from his mother, shortly after midnight on the night they disappeared, consisting of only two words:

“Keep going.”

Does she know what he’s done? What he is now, what Melanie is, what they’ve apparently always been? Why they were pulled together so magnetically as children, unable to resist the pull of one another’s presence? Even during the time when he should have been running away from her, shrieking about girls and cooties, he had chosen sitting quietly with Mel over almost everything else in the world. If she’d been less willing to sit by the field and cheer while he played football with the rest of the neighborhood, he might never have found his way to football, because he would have been too willing to stay by Melanie. Does she know?

Or does she just think they’re one of those rare but naturally occurring relationships, the ones that sometimes form between children who meet at the exact right moment in their lives, the ones country singers write songs about and romance writers build careers on? He always thought that was the case. He thought he loved her because she was Mel, not because she was some metaphysical vessel for the winter, while he was the same for the summer.

According to Jack, he’s always been at least a little right: she says seasonal avatars in potential always feel strongly about one another, they can’t help it, but most are hostile on their first meeting. “Ever met somebody and wanted nothing more than to punch their stupid asshole face in, even when they haven’t done anything wrong?” she asked, last night as they were settling into the first of what he’s sure will be a string of nowhere motels. “Like, immediate and absolutely loathing, theatrical-level dislike.”

Harry was quiet for a few minutes before haltingly admitting it had happened a few times. Jack, looking smug, settled back against the dresser she was using to prop herself up, and smirked.

“Those were probably other potential incarnate seasons,” she said. “Maybe yours, maybe hers, doesn’t really matter. You hate them instinctively, because you already know it’s going to come down to one of you. One head, one crown.”

“But I don’t hate Mel,” he objected. “I get mad sometimes, when she doesn’t want to do something I really, really want to do, or when she wants me to do something I don’t want to do, or when she has to go to the hospital and we were supposed to be doing something together, but I never hate her.”

“Nope. You wouldn’t. She’s your parallel.”

Harry didn’t like that when Jack said it, and he doesn’t like it now. Mel always takes at least fifteen minutes in the shower, usually longer when she thinks she can get away with it and the hot water doesn’t run out. This place is exactly as nice as he’d expect from a motel that only costs eighty dollars a night and isn’t close enough to the highway to get a lot of tourist trade, which makes the hot water anybody’s guess. Maybe it’ll last five minutes, maybe it’ll last all night. Either way, it’s worth the risk.

“What you were saying before,” he says. Jack gives him the politely interested look of a teacher trying to deal with a particularly slow pupil, one they’re sure could grasp the material just fine if only they’d take a moment to really think about what they’re being told. “About Melanie being my parallel.”

“Ah, yeah,” says Jack. “Everyone competes for their crown alone, in the end. You could win and she could lose, or vice versa. But you’ll be stronger if you go in with your opposite number already linked, and that’s what you and Melanie have done. Together, you form a solid base from which to make a play for both seasons. It’s like lacing your fingers.” She holds up her hands and twines her fingers to illustrate her point. “I can hit a lot harder this way.”

“But you can only hit once,” says Harry.

“So it’s not a perfect metaphor. What metaphor is?” Jack shrugs, then groans and lets her head flop backward, against the bed. “I’m not supposed to be explaining all this. I’ve only been ascendant for a year. That’s barely enough time to sample the seasons, much less understand them! If I ever see your attendant again, I’m going to kick her teeth in, I swear to God I am.”

“My attendant being this corn Jenny lady you keep saying will show up any time now?”

“Yes,” says Jack, nodding vigorously. “Every potential incarnate has an ascendant attendant, and I bet you can’t say that five times fast. So there should have been a Corn Jenny already attached to you when the coronation began.” The way she says the name is subtly different; he can hear the capital letter on the “C,” the change from noun to proper name. He’s not sure he can replicate it, but he can hear it, and that’s a start. “She should have shown up to explain everything I’m trying to explain to both of you, and that way your questions would always have taken priority, and she would have known how to approach things from the summer side. I can’t. I’ll always speak from a world where winter reigns supreme, because that’s what I know.”

“Are all corn—sorry, Corn—Jennies female?”

“No, just both the ones I’ve met,” says Jack, with a lazy wave of her hand. “It’s sloppy of me to give the impression that boys or girls have anything to do with any of this. They’re always people, though, since that’s what it means to be an anthropomorphic manifestation of a natural force. Not much point to it if you’re not going to actually, you know, anthropomorphize.”