When something amazing happened, the first instinctual urge that enveloped Jack was to talk about it with all his friends. They had spent hours analyzing the latest superhero flick or mulling over the details of a well-pulled prank. Talking about it was often more fun than the event itself.

Never had the impulse to do just that burned so strongly in Jack as in the week before his interview to be an Alchemist’s assistant. It was like holding back an avalanche in his throat. Like swallowing a whole mountain to avoid destroying the villagers below.

Jack might not understand why his friends were so reluctant to make the journey, but he knew them well enough to know that letting go a thundering mess of excitement was the absolute worst way to convince them.

The best approach was gentle. Let them come to the mountain.

Jack visited Steve’s house three days in a row, ignoring the old beer cans and cigarette stubs that littered the front stoop. He even bit back his sarcasm when Steve’s dad ignored him entirely in favor of the TV.

Each day Jack made a big fuss out of Grace, Steve’s elderly Labrador-cross, and then just hung out as if he didn’t have anything more important to do. Steve was having a rare break from working on the fishing boat while his uncle was on vacation. So Jack let Steve decide what they did each day.

The house was small and dark, and swelteringly hot in the middle of summer. So Steve and Jack mostly swam and drank beer down at the beach with Zoe, her brothers, and a collection of miscellaneous friends and mates.

The brothers were all tall, dark, and handsome, and seemed to spend half their time teasing their little sister and her friends, and the other half making-out with their particular partner of the week.

Jack didn’t want to talk about the interview in front of Zoe, let alone the others, but it sat there between him and Steve. A big, ugly mountain that made it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. So the hours at the beach passed in a kind of blur for Jack. He spent the time suppressing a strange mixture of excitement and bitterness until he felt he might choke on it. Another world. Another chance.

Yet, he said not a word.

*

An email from the Alchemist had arrived a few hours after Mico disappeared back into nothing. How she could send him emails from another dimension was something Jack looked forward to finding out.

The message asked for appropriate GPS coordinates to position the portal Jack would step through for the interview. This portal would be too loud and too bright to escape notice in suburbia even if he could get his mother out of the house, so the coordinates needed to be for an isolated position.

The email also advised that, before the interview, there would be one last test. A practical exam. Jack would have to complete it in order to even be considered for the interview. The email was very vague about what the exam would entail, so Jack spent a long time pondering what it could possibly involve. His only hint was a list of suggestions on what he needed to bring with him on the journey.

It read like a summer camp list, with objects ranging from binoculars to bug spray, survival manuals to portable solar panels. Luckily most of it was stuff Jack had stuffed in various cupboards of his house, from camping with his friends. Anything else could easily be explained away as being required for his internship in South Africa.

There was also a special “Required” list of various sweet foodstuffs, ranging from gummy bears to candy bars to a specific brand of chocolate chips. Jack didn't think many summer camps asked the kids to bring such a specific list of snacks and suspected that the Alchemist simply had a sweet tooth.

So, Jack had no trouble filling a backpack for his pretend internship. The email included a list of items for family members to bring as well, and Jack forwarded that, along with his carefully chosen GPS coordinates, to his friends.

None of them replied.

Jack tried to find short spaces of time when he had Steve to himself, so they could talk, if Steve felt so inclined but, even as they hung out together on the beach, it felt like his friend was avoiding him.

There were only a few short moments when Jack managed to get Steve alone. Times when Zoe was at work and her brothers were distracted, moments at the beginning of the day, when Steve was grooming Grace, or at the end of the day when they were scrambling up the dunes and back to the beach parking lot.

On the third day, Jack finally snapped and let a bit of it out. He tried explaining, and then bargaining, and then coaxing. He even tried a little bit of begging.

In response, Steve said very little, and always turned his eyes away. He didn’t even say anything when Jack outright explained the coordinates he had chosen for the portal to appear. It was supposedly a place with meaning for them both, but even that didn’t seem to matter.

Eight years of friendship and none of it mattered.

Work notwithstanding, Zoe was always there, always smiling, and always asking Jack if he was feeling alright because he was being awfully quiet. She was always so nice. It just added to the bitterness inside Jack.

Steve dropped him off at home at the end of the third day just as the streetlamps began to shine. Jack hoped he could coax his friend inside for dinner, but Steve didn’t even bother to remove his helmet. He was getting ready to drive away when Jack grabbed his arm.

“I’m really going to miss you, Steve,” Jack didn’t have to fake the emotion in his voice. “I probably won’t see you again for a long time. If ever.”

Steve heaved a sigh and took off the helmet, his damp, blond hair plastered across his forehead.

Jack studied his friend’s face, trying to work out what he was thinking. Steve looked miserable.

Was this ploy working? For a moment, Jack wondered if he should just tell Steve the real reason he had to get this job. There was no way Steve would refuse him then. It was the ultimate guilt trip.

Jack couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

“Please don’t go, Jack. What if you get into trouble?”

“Well, then I guess I’ll have to look after myself.”

Jack knew his words would wound his friend... but he was wounded, too. Why did Steve have to get a girlfriend? Why did he have to care about her so much? If he understood how much Jack really needed him...

Steve grabbed Jack up in a hug, almost knocking over his bike in the process, and then drove off without another word.

It was only after the noise of the motorcycle had died away that Jack realized Daiki was in his bedroom window, staring at him from across the street.

They looked at each other for a long moment before Jack turned away and shuffled home.

*

It was no use trying to see Zac in person. Jack hadn’t been welcome in his friend’s family home for a long time. He tried emailing and texting and even calling, but Zac never picked up, and only sent very curt replies, most of them revolving around the word “No.”

So both Steve and Zac had made it very clear that they weren’t coming.

Which left only Daiki, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Jack had always considered Daiki a longshot even if he had his other friends by his side. Daiki was too attached to his scholarship, to his plan of being a famous artist one day. There would be no convincing him now.

So, with a week to go, Jack did something he almost never did. He gave up. None of his friends were going to the other world with him. They had abandoned him, just like he’d always suspected they might, in the darkest corner of his mind. He was on his own.

He spent the next few days shoring up his story about the internship (which was happening way too quickly for his mother’s comfort), making up a fake itinerary and even buying a real bus ticket to the international airport in Auckland so that he could pretend to go there for his fake flight. He scheduled the imaginary flight right in the middle of an important truck run, so his mother wouldn’t be able to go with him to the big city to see him off.

His mother protested, saying she would get out of the job, but her boss was a jerk and Jack knew she couldn't afford to lose the pay. She had been single-handedly supporting her own mother for years now, in private care. Jack’s grandmother had to take precedence over everything, and they both knew that kind of care didn’t come cheap.

The day before he was supposed to get on the bus to go to his fake flight, Jack and his mother went to see his grandmother in the hospice. The corridor reeked of disinfectant and lavender, the walls were pale, sickly pink, and Jack had to bite down on a familiar prickle of discomfort. He hated visiting her here.

His grandmother had once been one of his favorite people in the world. She had left her life in Wellington, moving to their Podunk town to be closer to her daughter and to help out occasionally with babysitting when Jack was young.

After his father left, she had lived in their house for days at a time while her daughter was away, trying to make ends meet. Eventually, it just made sense for her to move in.

Jack’s first memory of his grandmother was of her standing at the front door, come to babysit with a rush of garlic-scented air, a stack of old science fiction magazines, and two boxes of pizza for them to share. She was even shorter than Jack, had long, curly, dyed red hair, and sported chunky necklaces and paint-stained jeans. Jack had adored her.

Later that same day, she had become his first conspirator. He would never forget the fear that rushed through him when he broke his mother’s lamp, and how his grandmother had somehow made it all OK.

His mother had never noticed that the lamp had changed color, but Jack was reminded of his tiny, sweetly cunning grandmother whenever he saw it.

Once she had properly moved in, his grandmother made his lunch every morning (with real homemade cookies, not the crunchy store-bought ones his friends had) and picked him up from school on her scooter every afternoon.

She treated homework as a necessary evil, something to get out of the way so they could get to the interesting part of the day, together. She never pinched his cheeks or asked what he had done in school that day. She saw Jack, perhaps better than anyone else in the world ever did.

Jack couldn’t say when it happened exactly. The change came gradually. So gradually no one in the house could admit to it for a long time.

One day his mother came home and found Jack with his face smeared in concealer. Unfortunately, while his grandmother had taught him many unconventional skills, makeup wasn’t among them.

He knew she didn’t mean to give him a black eye. It was just like the broken lamp. An accident that had to be hidden from his mother for her own good.

However, by that point, he had been looking after his grandmother far more often than she looked after him, and he was tired.

Sometimes Jack wondered if he had really tried hard enough to hide it. Sometimes he wondered if she blamed him for what happened next.

Less than a year later, his grandmother was in the care facility. Her hair dye grew out, the painted jeans were stored in a box in their garage, and her scooter had been sold long ago.

Now, she always smelled of lavender.

His grandmother had changed rooms in the care facility several times over the years, but they had all been identical, right down to the generic, framed flower print on the wall.

Visits consisted of Jack sitting in the corner, pretending to play with his phone, while his mother attempted to hold his grandmother’s hand. She sometimes wept a little.

After a while she would go to find a nurse, to ask about any changes since their last visit.

There were never any changes for the better. Jack didn’t know why she bothered.

This visit, Jack waited patiently until his mother left the room, and then he took her seat. It was close to the bed, close enough to reach out and try to hold her elderly limbs still. His grandmother jerked and spasmed constantly, her muscles clenching over and over until it exhausted Jack just to watch.

He let her flail. He knew from experience that her bones were thin now, thin and covered with soft, tissue-paper skin. He didn’t want to hurt her.

“Grandma,” he said, leaning in as close as he dared (sometimes she would try to grab his hair) and speaking softly.

“Grandma, I have to go away for a little while.”

She kept moving, not speaking, and only staring into space. She didn’t speak much these days.

Jack pulled a tissue from a box on the table and dabbed at the spit running down her chin.

“Grandma… I love you. I’ll come back, I promise. I’m going on a real adventure, like the Time Traveler, or Captain Nemo. I’m going to see a new world.”

Her eyes drifted up and focused on him. They were still her eyes, light blue and speckled with green. The only things that remained of her.

“Greg.” She drooled the word, the name of Jack’s father. A man none of them had seen for years before he died.

Jack rubbed his forehead, his brows pressed together. He didn’t like to think that he looked like his dad.

“No, grandma, it’s me. Jack.”

Her voice was mangled and she never stopped swaying and jerking on the bed as she spoke.

“Don’t leave them, Greg. He’s a good boy.”

Her hand shot out and clapped around Jack’s wrist.

“Don’t leave. Don’t leave my Jean. Needs you. You’re such a cold bastard.”

She hissed the last word as Jack wrenched his hand away. He felt his heart pounding in his ears.

“I’m not leaving,” he snapped. “I’m going to take care of her. I mean, I am leaving… but I’ll be coming back.”

She was staring into space again, twitching like some cruel villain was electrocuting her over and over.

Jack’s eyes prickled. The lavender always affected his allergies.

His eyes burned all the way home.

*

Waiting at the bus station was hard. Jack’s mother couldn’t understand why his friends hadn’t come to see him off. She was indignant about it and even tried to insist on calling Steve.

Jack pretended that they had already said their goodbyes, and made up some bullshit story about Steve being too upset to come to the bus station. All the while, the avalanche of unsaid words threatened to choke him.

His mother also insisted on lugging his bag from the car and helping to load it into the bus hold. Her eyes were shiny as she told him to dress warmly (”In South Africa, mum?”) and be polite to everyone.

“I’m so sorry I can’t go to the airport with you.” Her light blue eyes, so much like her mother’s, were brimming now. “I should have turned down this run.”

“It’s fine, mum. Seriously.”

Jack patted her hand and hoped she would pull it together. He hated when she cried. She was going to make him cry if she didn’t quit it.

“I don’t mind, and it’s only for a year. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I knew you’d leave home sometime but…” Her voice cracked. “I guess I didn’t think it would be so soon…”

Jack rarely saw his tough, funny, trucker mother get so emotional. She looked like she was about to completely break down. He gently guided her onto a bench.

The bus driver was nearby, smoking a cigarette, in no rush to leave.

“I’m going to be just fine, mum. And they have internet where I’m going, so I’ll email you all the time.”

“And call.” She sniffed loudly and brushed back her sandy hair.

“Sure, I’ll call all the time,” Jack fibbed, not sure if that was even possible. “You’ll be sick of me.”

“I’m going to miss you so much!” She flung her arms around him. She was shorter than he was, but not by a lot. She was solid, and warm, and her hugs felt like home.

“Maybe I’ll be able to save up and come visit you. I’d love to see somewhere like South Africa.”

“You’re more than welcome to come.” Jack knew she wouldn’t. The care facility was expensive. Jean made a good living, but not enough for vacations all over the world. She couldn’t afford to take the time off, let alone pay for a plane ticket. Unless she won the Lotto, Jack would be free and clear for a year, as soon as he left for his “flight”.

The bus driver crushed out his cigarette.

“I’ve got to go mum. I’ll miss you. I love you.”

He climbed onto the bus. It was surprisingly difficult. Almost like he was climbing a mountain.

Waves of nausea washed over Jack as he sat in a seat near the front of the bus. His mother stayed at the station and kept her eyes fixed on his window.

She was still waving as they drove out of sight.