The journal I hold is one of many bound in leather, this one decorated with a large tree with intricate limbs stretching toward a brown leather sky. Roots curl downward from the trunk and wrap themselves around the silver clasp that binds the book closed. I flick it open with my thumb and turn to the first thick page. At first, it seems terribly underwhelming: a long list of names in different languages in an adolescent scrawl, their meanings scribbled at the sides. School notes, or glorified doodles. But the word Orman catches my eye and I gasp.

“Orman.” I breathe the word like it is precious, and I suppose to me it is.

“The very first time I wrote it,” he says, “I was probably about ten. Avery was begging for a story about the trees that grow around here—she swore they whispered her name—and Emily wanted ‘something pretty’ to play pretend. I was already dabbling in writing stupid short stories, so I thought I’d try and write something big to impress them.”

“I guess it worked.” I laugh.

There is only a tinge of sadness to his smile. “I guess it did.”

“You loved them a lot, didn’t you?” I ask.

“Of course. I do. They are my sisters.”

Neither of us acknowledges his choice of present tense. I bend my head back over the journal, trying to appear casual while flipping through the first inklings of what would someday become the phenomenon of Orman.

“Did you really know about the tree knights so early on?” I ask.

“I knew what they did, but they weren’t all female until later on, when I started to develop the world—building to fit an actual story structure rather than just a bunch of made-up games and plots we acted out. They were always meant to be guardians, though. That much I knew.”

When I finish skimming the first journal, I move on to the next, which proves to be completely unrelated to Orman and is rather the half-scribbled thoughts of a young boy with too many hormones.

“Please say you did not tell this Rebecca Wise girl that you thought her breasts were more beautiful than mountain peaks,” I say. “Please. I need to know this information before I can continue to live.”

Nolan has the decency to blush a shade of red that rivals my own.

“We never spoke,” he said. “Unless you count the time she handed me my pencil when I dropped it by her locker in the hallway.”

“According to page three, you do count it, because it’s written about here in great detail.”

“Oh, God,” Nolan says into his hands. “I take it back. You don’t have to read everything.”