#Chapter 296 - Celebration

The telling takes a while, but luckily the bowl of ice cream is big. I finish summarizing what happened to Jackson – what it felt like to fall out of this world, how I landed flat on my back in the other, what it looked like – that desolate space with the three looming moons – and the woman I saw by the trees. How the darkness in me rejoiced to be there. When there’s a single bite of ice cream left, I sigh and hold out the bowl to Jackson, who takes it and scoops the last sweet spoonful into his mouth, clearly thinking over everything I said. I wait patiently, folded up in my towel, sitting primly on the closed toilet. “And you think you…really went there?” he asks, looking at me seriously as he lets the bowl and the spoon hang at his side in his hand. “Not that you just went like…in your mind?” “I think I was really there,” I say, nodding to him. “Not only did it knock the wind out of me when I…landed, or whatever. But they searched the whole plateau for me – they had my binoc