“Come on,” Matt urged. “It’ll be fun. It won’t stay warm forever.”

“We’ll see.”

“Which means no,” Matt sighed. “At some point you should consider rejoining the living.”

Jason was unsure how to respond. How could he explain what was really troubling him? His friends assumed that his reclusive behavior was due to his newfound infamy following the four months when he had dropped off the map. His disappearance had made the national news, as had his sudden reappearance after most had assumed he was dead. True, his absence had created some serious hassles. There had been dozens of interview requests. While some reporters were supportive, others had accused him of faking the incident, of deliberately hiding. Plus, the lost time had complicated his schooling. After counseling with his parents and teachers, Jason had spent much of the summer finishing packets of work that would enable him to advance to the next grade in the fall.

His real problem was not being able to tell anyone the truth. He had been to another world. He had made friends there, and enemies. He had risked his life and had accomplished great deeds. And he had returned home against his will, leaving behind tons of unfinished business. He had left a girl from Washington stranded there. And he knew a vital secret that would change how the heroes of that world tried to resist the emperor Maldor.

How could he explain any of this to Matt? To his parents? No matter what evidence he produced or details he supplied, nobody could possibly believe him. These burdens had to remain private. Although his experiences in Lyrian consumed his thoughts, if he tried to share what had really happened, he would wind up in a mental hospital!

Of all his friends, Matt had tried the hardest to be there for him. After returning from Lyrian, Jason had quit playing baseball. His prior goals as a pitcher had seemed insignificant compared to his new concerns. But he still loved the game, so he had volunteered during the summer as an umpire for a couple of the younger leagues. The volunteer gig carried little pressure and required much less time than actually playing and practicing. Matt had volunteered as well, just to hang out with him.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “I’m no fun anymore. I’ve warned you, my head is a mess. I wish I could explain.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said, grabbing his bike. “Who wouldn’t feel a little different after all you’ve been though? Nobody minds. Nobody who matters. If you could just relax, you’d see that not so much has changed. Who cares whether you pitch or not? Everyone wants you around again.”

“Thanks,” Jason said, stuffing his umpire gear into a sports bag. “I’ll try to come.”

Matt studied him. “We could go together. Want me to swing by?”

“Better not.”

Matt nodded knowingly. “How about some lunch? You hungry?”

“I’m good. Maybe I’ll see you tonight.”

Matt shrugged. “Have it your way. Catch you later.”

Matt pedaled away on his bike. Jason climbed onto his own bike and headed home. If he wasn’t careful, soon he’d have no friends left. Was he deliberately pushing everyone away? Having unfinished business in Lyrian did not guarantee he would find a way back there. Like it or not, he might need to start living an actual life in this world again. After all, school would resume in less than a month. A regular schedule would make it much tougher to behave like a hermit.

When Jason got home, he left his bike in the garage and looked out back for Shadow, his Labrador. He came up empty. Nobody was home. His parents had grown closer to the dog during Jason’s absence and had probably taken him for a walk.

Jason retreated to his room. He had spent a lot of time there lately. He went to his closet and got down a shoe box from the top shelf. From a drawer he collected a spiral notebook and a pen. Removing a pair of rubber bands, he opened the shoe box and took out a human hand. The severed wrist revealed a perfect cross section of bone, muscle, tendon, nerves, and blood vessels.

H-E-L-L-O. Jason traced the letters on the palm. He set the hand down and picked up his pen, ready to transcribe.

Not now, the hand spelled hastily in sign language.

Ferrin must be in some sort of trouble again. Jason had established contact with the displacer not long after returning from Iowa. He had taught Ferrin the sign language alphabet using a book from the public library. The tedious communication was his only link to Lyrian, and Jason had faithfully logged all of their conversations.

Jason felt grateful for the living hand. It represented his only tangible evidence of all that had happened. Without it, he wondered if he would eventually have come to believe his months in a parallel universe had been an elaborate delusion.

Back in June, soon after receiving word from their son, Jason’s parents had driven from Colorado to pick him up in Iowa. His father had good insurance, so not long after Jason related his story of a four-month blackout during which he had somehow traveled hundreds of miles to awaken wearing filthy homespun clothes in a cornfield, he was referred to a neurologist. Jason affirmed to the specialist that he recalled nothing after reporting for work the day he was tagged in the head by a baseball, resisting the temptation to fabricate a horrific tale of alien abductors, sterile lights, and invasive probes. When asked how he got to Iowa, Jason had theorized that he might be a narcoleptic sleepwalker.

After an MRI, the neurologist confirmed that if the blow had resulted in a concussion, as she assumed based on the symptoms Jason had described, it had left no lasting visible damage. Jason was diagnosed with some form of anterograde amnesia, which the neurologist explained as an inability to remember events subsequent to brain trauma.

Jason had a hunch that the neurologist didn’t wholly believe the story, but she never went so far as to call him a liar. His parents had been perplexed that given all the media attention Jason’s disappearance had received, nobody had noticed him wandering the country for months as an amnesiac. They had insisted that Jason see a therapist, who had blatantly tried to investigate whether Jason was telling the truth about his lost months, but all Jason confessed to was a dream involving many of the details from Lyrian. In the end, the scrutiny had finally subsided.

Jason had considered confessing everything to his parents and trying to use the severed hand as evidence. But he had finally decided that although the lively hand was an inexplicable oddity, it was far from concrete proof that he had journeyed to another world. The hand would only raise a more lingering batch of unanswerable questions.