Nausea: Sequel to Warcrossed

Sweet Home South Carolina

I stared at the flat, rectangular device in my hand. I'd owned it for three years, but it felt so foreign now that I wasn't so sure I even knew how to work it anymore. Everyone always asked me why I didn't get a new one when I had the money from Warcross.

I just told them I didn't need it, but really, I hadn't wanted to lose all the things it held inside.

I clicked the power button, and the lockscreen lit up.

5:04 AM.
A picture of me and my dogs lit up the background. I wondered how they were doing, but I was too scared to face anyone right now, even those back home in South Carolina or New York. Even my dogs. One was a beautiful catahoula cur named Scout, with a short grey coat with black splotches everywhere. One of her eyes was a stunning blue, and the other one amber. My other dog, Sport, was a border collie with kind, understanding brown eyes and a fluffy coat. I had them on either side, and we sat in the sunshine in my front yard, one arm around both of them.

I smiled a little, then thought of James. Scout had watched over him every day while he was sick, sometimes climbing up into bed with him even though we told her not to. Sport was always usually outside bugging our horses, or tucked under my arm. My older brother had gotten them for me to take hog hunting, but when I tried they wouldn't leave my feet. We'd gotten too close for them to run off in the woods without me.

And so we went home, to my brothers and sisters and parents.

I chose to stop thinking then. I didn't want to ever even see my parents' names anywhere. That was the reason I'd gone up the East Coast and straight to Albany, New York. And I had taken Scout and Sport with me. We'd driven the whole way in a beaten up Chevy truck that summer after I graduated high school. The next year after that I'd been drafted into professional Warcross playing, and I didn't need college. Home had become wherever my dogs and I went. And here I was, staring at a picture of them, too weak to even call and check up on them. I prayed they were alright, then put the phone into the last box I had to pack, wishing Hercules hadn't put it into that bag of rice.

There wasn't a home anymore. I was just lost, now. A stupid twenty-one year old kid, lost in Tokyo, not sure who or where to turn to, packing to go wherever he'd end up wandering.