“Ever? Are you there?”
I tilt my head and try to triangulate the sound. It seems to be coming from the far corner of the living room, amidst the darkest shadows of the cabin.
“Elle?”
Again, no response.
“Elle, hold on, I’m coming.”
“Ever, I’m not feeling well. I’m scared.”
“It’s okay, I’m here,” I answer. But the words tug at me, remind me of something. They wash over me like ice water.
I pause. The cabin is quiet except for the pounding of the crutch against the outside of the door, and Finn and Maddy’s muffled shouting.
“I don’t want to be alone, Ever.”
I realize I’ve heard these words before.
“Ever?” The panic I heard the first time around is the exact same. Pitch perfect. My brain supplies a bit of the rest of the message: They said there’s a storm coming in, and I just…I’m scared, Ever. At least come home before dark, okay?
Elle’s voice has to be a recording. Specifically, a recording of the phone call we had only yesterday. And maybe it would be a relief that my baby sister isn’t here, but it also means someone was there. Someone was close to her, close enough to pick up her voice. Close enough to have access to her.
I never truly believed in the idea of haunted houses—they make a great story, but I’m way too skeptical for that. Haunted houses don’t leave notes. Someone got to my sister. Someone got to my house.
And whoever it was, they presumably still can.
I hate everything about this. I charge through the living room toward the sound, and I don’t care if I bump into furniture. What’s a few bruises now, anyway? I have to get to that recording.
“Ever? Are you there?”
“Ever, I’m not feeling well. I’m scared.”
“I don’t want to be alone, Ever.”
“Ever?”
It takes me too long to find it. It comes from a music box sitting on a window frame. Not one of the ones I put there, but one remarkably similar. It’s open. It’s one of the ones that usually has a princess or a ballerina turning pirouettes, but here it’s a carved cuckoo bird. Inside, there are endless notes and fragments of paper. And Elle’s voice, looping. It’s cut and pasted, but all of this was part of our phone call yesterday.
Who was there with her? Did she know she was being watched?
“Ever, I’m not feeling well. I’m scared.”
“I don’t want to be alone, Ever.”
She wasn’t alone, and that’s the part that messes me up endlessly.
I slam the button and try to stop the recording, but instead, it morphs, slowing down and speeding up Elle’s voice, drawing out her voice and compressing it. Ever? Eeeeeeeeever? Ever? Ever?
I take the music box, try to smother the microphone, and I throw it against the wall. Hard enough to shatter. I smash the pieces with the heel of my foot, until silence descends on the cabin once more.
And all that’s left is a handful of notes in the same handwriting as the other two. Hardly visible, but I’m morbidly curious enough to carry them into the moonlight.
Worthless, worthless, worthless.
Every one of us has a breaking point.
This is mine.
Twenty-One
Maddy
I see the door close—just out of reach—every time I close my eyes. And every time I open them, I see Finn slam at the window next to it in desperation. I don’t know how he keeps his balance like this. I can’t imagine how much these movements are hurting him. But I also don’t think he cares.
He looks at me once and the harsh lines and the intense combination of anger and utter despair cut through me. He’s all angles and edges. And while I could interpret, it feels like I’m grasping at straws.
I keep doing this. I keep missing beats, and that seems to be the story of my life. Wrong moment, wrong time. Seconds, heartbeats, it makes all the difference, and I keep failing, again and again and again.
If I’d paid attention while driving, maybe I could’ve swerved to avoid the car who hit me.
If I’d paid attention when Carter went back in, I could’ve saved him.
If I’d paid attention when Ever let go of the door, I could’ve caught it.
If I’d been a bit more aware of the world around me, if I could understand the world around me, if I hadn’t been such a failure, if your brain just processed things the normal way, Maddy, if, if, if, if, if.
Perhaps I simply shouldn’t be here. Perhaps I should be the one inside. Either way, the air that felt refreshing just moments ago feels freezing now, and I’d like to disappear off the face of the earth, if I can.
Finn keeps slamming the crutch against the window. But like the door, it’s locked and reinforced.
“It’s some kind of safety glass,” I remind him. “I’m not sure we can break through.”
Finn turns and snarls at me. “I know that. You don’t have to keep reminding me. Make yourself useful instead, because if we can’t get Ever out, I don’t know what I’ll do.” I don’t know if he intended to say those last few words, because he’s already resumed trying to break the glass.
I don’t know what I can do, though. The other crutch is still inside. Ever is nowhere to be seen. What do I do? I have a bread knife and a box of matches, neither of which would do me any good. What are the other options? Pound at the windows with my hands? I’d break more easily than the glass.
Finn does too.
The rubber tip of his crutch skids off the window, and every time it does, he loses balance.
He breaks, one part at the time. First his hand slips from the crutch. Then his knee buckles. His shoulders dip. His breath is labored.
He pushes himself up again and again. There are small hairline fractures in the glass, and they seem to be enough to give him hope, but they don’t grow beyond that. They don’t widen.
It’s just Finn. The glass. And the crutch that looks increasingly battered.
The second time his knee buckles, he drops and stays down. His shoulders are shaking.
Finn doesn’t cry. I’ve never seen him cry. It’s simply not a thing that happens. But right now, right there, he does. Quietly. He has his head down and turned away from me. He keeps himself as still as humanly possible.
But I can see the dark spots of his tears hitting the wooden planks.
There are still traces of blood too.
I stand awkwardly on the darkened porch, my hands outstretched, not knowing what comes next. I don’t know what’s expected from me, and it feels like my brain is constantly short-circuiting, like the door itself.
I failed him. I failed Carter. I failed them all.
I failed myself.
I want to know what I should do. I want to be able to do what people with normal brains expect of me. I want to cry. I want not to be frozen in terror.
I back away a step. Then another.
Then, before the rational part of my brain catches up to me and tells me what a foolish idea this is, I step off the porch and make my way toward the trees. Away from the spot where we found Liva’s blood. Away from the room that holds Carter’s body. Away from the cabin that tried to swallow us whole. Away from Finn, who turns and pushes himself to his feet when he realizes what I’m doing, furiously wiping at his eyes.
“Maddy! Stop!” His voice is hoarse, and I won’t pretend not to hear it, but I can’t listen.
Inside the grove, it’ll be darker again. The world will disappear in shades of black and shadows, and maybe once it does, my head will quieten. Maybe the pain will stop. I can’t, cannot, won’t do this anymore.
“Maddy! Wait!”
I have to protect myself. I think I’ll go mad if I don’t, because everything inside me is shouting as hard as Finn is. The constant hum of failure and grief
mixes with the heady buzz of fear and the sharp pain from my knee. Every time I close my eyes, I see all the images I’m trying to push away. The drops of blood on the porch. The look of betrayal on Finn’s face. The empty nothingness in Carter’s eyes. The pack of pills. Liva’s proud smile when she showed us the cabin and when she showed it to me every time we visited. Her deft hands, creating.
I hear her scream. I hear Finn call out to Ever—and call out to me. I think I can maybe still hear him calling out to me. I hear Carter’s voice, reassuring me, telling me that he will find my painkillers, that everything will be okay, wait here, I’ll be back as soon as I can. That’s what friends are for, right? Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out.
My feet crash through the grove. My cloak snags and tears on the branches, but I push through. I’m on my way to the lookout spot I showed Ever, and once I realize it, I come to a tumbling halt. I catch myself against one of the tree trunks, to slow my pace, and the suddenness causes my knee to twist and scream.
I scream too. My mouth closed, so I won’t draw attention to myself. Until my throat hurts and I struggle to breathe.
The pain and sorrow only grow—and threaten to drown me.
I move on memory, away from the clearing but to another edge of the grove. Until I reach a point where the ground drops away. There seems to be a tear in the world, between a forest on the one hand, and a moonlit cliff on the other. I used to be afraid of heights, a lifetime ago.
I could simply step down; instead, I sit.
I lean against a tree and stare at the darkest stars and push my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. Then I hiss, pulling them out as if I, too, have been shocked.
The game isn’t done yet. There is no escaping. And maybe there never will be.
Both of my pockets are filled with pills. I empty them out into the moonlit night and light up one of the matches to observe them more closely. They’re exactly like the ones my doctor gave me. Exactly like the ones Carter buys for me. Blue. Round. Simple markings.
I find a small, folded note at the bottom of one of the pockets. It’s folded in four, and on it, in the same handwriting as the other notes, though barely visible here, one word:
Addict.
It may as well have been an Alice in Wonderland–type note, because it’s ever so clear what the subtext is here. Not just that I’m an addict—I am, aren’t I? Or I could be. I never really thought of it in those terms.
But: Eat me.
It may be kinder than being stabbed to death or left to rot in a cabin. This is me. This is personal.
I am an addict, aren’t I?
Huh.
I stare at the pills in my hands. There’re enough of them that some slide from the stack and down the cliff. I tilt my hands a little. What a waste.
When my doctor prescribed me the painkillers for the first time, she gave me a firm talking to on how to use them safely. She told me she’d prescribed me the lowest effective dose and that I could only take them for a limited amount of time, only to deal with the most severe pain. I listened, nodded, and promised to follow the rules. I’d seen Finn with his painkillers; I knew how much they helped and how important it was to be responsible.
I intended to.
But it was so easy to take one. Take another.
She prescribed me enough pills for a week, which I later learned was more than the safety guidelines, especially because we didn’t know yet what the lasting damage would be. But I took the pills for a couple of days and the remaining pain was minor enough that if I didn’t look at the scars, I could almost pretend the accident didn’t happen. I felt like I could breathe again. After that week, it was easy enough to convince her the pain hadn’t decreased and could I please have a refill?
I started to realize that it wasn’t just the pain. Once I took the pills, the world dulled. Everything wasn’t quite so loud anymore, my thoughts weren’t churning. I could spend whole hours just…doing nothing. I hated losing control at first, but the flip side was I didn’t feel like I needed the control either.
I felt like I could fit in.
I felt like I belonged.
I could laugh with Carter whenever he came to visit. I didn’t mind losing games to Sav. I didn’t have to be constantly aware. The pills quieted the part of my brain that was constantly working, constantly interpreting, constantly adjusting—because if I didn’t adjust, others rarely adjusted to me. I didn’t have to think about what it meant to be me.
My doctor should have done something after the third refill, but perhaps she was busy or didn’t realize what was happening, or perhaps she was one of those people—even medical professionals—who believe people with autism are innocent and incapable of lying. I guess all the terrible media had to work to my advantage once.
Besides, I was careful. After the first two weeks, I didn’t just rely on the refills anymore. I found an old prescription bottle when I was plant-sitting at the neighbors’ house. My dad still had some stored away from kidney stones, years ago. It’s shocking how much people have stuffed away in their medicine cabinets that they’re not aware of. And sure, I didn’t know if the best-by dates affected anything—or if I built up tolerance—but it was easy enough to take that extra pill. And one more.
And one more.
Maybe the pain got worse. Maybe that’s what happened.
Just one more.
I could grow to live with the pain, perhaps. In the back of my mind, I knew I didn’t need them the way other people legitimately did.
But one more.
The pills I hold in my hand could last me for weeks. Or, at least a couple of them. That is, if I take them with me instead of taking them now, as is clearly the intended purpose.
Addict.
It would make life so much easier too, to just…stop. Stop the pain. Stop the fear. Stop the worries. Stop feeling alone. The pills are exactly as tempting as the person who put them there wanted them to be.
All I have to do is put my hands to my mouth.
I could.
Maybe I will.
I put my hands back into my pocket and pull away from the edge. I get to my feet and start walking in a direction, any direction, into the darkness.
I don’t know yet.
Twenty-Two
Ever
Hey, Damien, remember when games were innocent?
We had that conversation this past WyvernCon, in part because I knew exactly what Damien would say and I needed to hear it.
He took a sip from his gigantic soda and shook his head. “First of all, what does innocent mean in this context? Neutral? Unassuming? Because if you think games ever were, I have shocking news for you. Every form of art or expression, including games, is by definition not neutral. Every world-building choice we make, whether it’s including or excluding, focusing on one detail over the other, is a statement. Whether it’s the puzzles we create, or what we describe as different or strange, it all matters.”
In this deadly cabin, I can still see him smile at me. “If there was a neutral position, it would be as simple as including people like us in worlds—because we’re clearly here in the real world, talking to one another—and somehow that’s seen as the most political statement possible.”
“Harmless, then,” I countered.
“Harmless or not hurting? It’s not a bad thing to occasionally hurt, whether it is heartache or joy or the pain that comes from discomfort. Hurt and happiness make us human, and if games can play a role in that, I can only applaud it. What brought this on?”
The same reason why I’m thinking about it now. I wanted to run a game that made my friends happy. Simply that, nothing more. Because I wanted to know that this dream I had, of designing games and building stories, actually mattered. Because I know stories have power.
“You’re not really a ghost, are you?” I whisper now into the shadows
. Elle’s voice has dissipated and the music box has stopped playing. It’s quiet. And cold, colder than it was when we were in Carter’s room. And dark. The sound of my own voice is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind completely. “It takes a whole lot of consideration to fix a cabin like a trap. It takes knowledge of our game to twist it into something so macabre.”
Finn is still slamming his crutch against the window, though the sound is more intermittent now. He looks so small and broken. Behind him, where Maddy once stood, is only night.
He’s alone. I have to get back to the door and find the other crutch, and try to get to him from the other side.
But I have a few more things to say to our ghost. “It’s personal for you, isn’t it? Why? Who are you? What have we done to you?”
I’ve wronged people, I’m sure. We all have. I’m not perfect, nor do I pretend to be. I try to do my best and take care of the people around me, but I can’t take care of everyone and I have pushed people away to protect myself. “Was it one of us in particular? I know you think Liva is a liar, and Carter is a thief, but what does it mean? Care to elaborate?”
I don’t need to know why they think I’m worthless. That one is obvious. Plenty of people do. Walk around with threadbare clothes and a DIY haircut for long enough, and people will have opinions. They look at my dad as if he doesn’t treat us well, like he doesn’t work long days to give us what he can. They look at my sister like she’s a basket case for dreaming of going to college when she comes from a good-for-nothing family.
And me, well. My sins are clear in my presentation, aren’t they? The thing is, I’m proud of who I am. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t try to change it for me.
The silence remains.
I remember Finn’s suspicions and try again, a stab in the dark. “Zac?”
Nothing.
I failed Zac, I know. I held him to standards he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—meet. But the truth is, I wouldn’t do anything differently. Asking someone to be a better person is a kindness, not a threat.
Even If We Break Page 14
