by Patrick Ness
He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t even say the word.
Leave.
Gudmund looked back nervously at his house from the driver’s seat of his car. Lights were on downstairs, and Seth knew Gudmund’s parents were up. They could discover he was gone at any moment.
Seth crossed his arms tightly against the cold. “Gudmund –”
“I finish out the year at Bethel Academy or they don’t pay for college, Sethy,” Gudmund practically pleaded. “They’re that freaked out about it.” He frowned, angry. “We can’t all have crazy liberal European parents –”
“They’re not that crazy liberal. They’ll barely even look at me now.”
“They barely looked at you before,” Gudmund said. Then he turned to Seth. “Sorry, you know what I mean.”
Seth said nothing.
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Gudmund said. “We’ll meet up in college. We’ll find a way so that no one –”
But Seth was shaking his head.
“What?” Gudmund asked.
“I’m going to have to go to my dad’s college,” Seth said, still not looking up.
Gudmund made a surprised move in the driver’s seat. “What? But you said –”
“Owen’s therapy is costing them a fortune. If I want college at all, it has to be on the faculty family rate where my dad teaches.”
Gudmund’s mouth opened in shock. This hadn’t been their plan. Not at all. They were both going to go to the same college, both going to share a dorm room.
Both going to be hundreds of miles away from home.
“Oh, Seth –”
“You can’t go,” Seth said, shaking his head. “You can’t go now.”
“Seth, I have to –”
“You can’t.” Seth’s voice was breaking now, and he fought to control it. “Please.”
Gudmund put a hand on his shoulder. Seth jerked away from it, even though the feel of it was what he wanted more than the world.
“Seth,” Gudmund said. “It’ll be okay.”
“How?”
“This isn’t our whole lives. It isn’t even close. It’s high school, Sethy. It’s not meant to last forever. For a goddamn good reason.”
“It’s been –” Seth said to the windshield. “Since New Year, since you weren’t there, it’s been –”
He stopped. He couldn’t tell Gudmund how bad it had been. The worst time of his life. School had been nearly unbearable, and sometimes he’d gone whole days without actually speaking to anyone. There were a few people, girls mostly, who tried to tell him they thought what was happening to him was unfair, but all that did was serve to remind him that he’d gone from having three good friends to having none. Gudmund had been pulled out of school by his parents. H was hanging out with a different crowd and not speaking to him.
And Monica.
He couldn’t even think about Monica.
“It’s a few more months,” Gudmund said. “Hang in there. You’ll make it through.”
“Not without you.”
“Seth, please don’t say stuff like that. I can’t take it when you say stuff like that.”
“You’re everything I’ve got, Gudmund,” Seth said quietly. “You’re it. I don’t have anything else.”
“Don’t say that!” Gudmund said. “I can’t be anyone’s everything. Not even yours. I’m going out of my mind with all this. I can’t stand the fact that I have to go away. I want to kill someone! But I can take it if I know you’re out there, surviving, getting through it. This won’t be forever. There’s a future. There really is. We’ll find a way, Seth. Seth?”
Seth looked at him, and he could now see what he hadn’t seen before. Gudmund was already gone, had already put his mind into Bethel Academy, sixty-five miles away, that he was already living in a future at UW or WSU, which were even farther, and maybe that future included Seth somehow, maybe that future really did have a place for the two of them –
But Seth was only here. He wasn’t in that future. He was only in this unimaginable present.
And he didn’t see how he’d ever get from here to there.
“There’s more than this, Sethy,” Gudmund said. “This sucks beyond belief, but there’s more. We just have to get there.”
“We just have to get there,” Seth said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“That’s right.” Gudmund touched Seth’s shoulder again. “Hang in there, please. We’ll make it. I promise you.”
They both jumped at the sound of a door slamming. “Gudmund!” Gudmund’s father shouted from the porch, loud enough to wake the neighbors. “You’d better answer me, boy!”
Gudmund rolled down his window. “I’m here!” he shouted back. “I needed some fresh air.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” His father squinted into the darkness where Seth and Gudmund were parked. “You get back in here. Now!”
Gudmund turned back to Seth. “We’ll e-mail. We’ll talk on the phone. We won’t lose contact, I promise.”
He lunged forward and kissed Seth hard, one last time, the smell of him filling Seth’s nose, the bulk of his body rocking Seth back in the seat, the squeeze of his hands around Seth’s torso –
And then he was gone, sliding out the door, hurrying back into the glow of the porchlight, arguing with his father on the way.
Seth watched him go.
And as Gudmund disappeared behind another slamming door, Seth felt his own doors closing.
The doors of the present, shutting all around him, locking him inside.
Forever.
It takes Seth a moment to realize he’s on the floor. He doesn’t remember lying down, but he’s cramped and stiff, like he’s been there for hours.
He sits up. He feels lighter.
Like he’s almost empty.
The weight from the dream feels like it’s in the room somewhere, and he’s distantly aware of it, but of himself, he feels –
Nothing. He feels nothing.
He gets to his feet. The sleep has returned some of his strength. He flexes his hands, rolls his neck, stretches.
Then he sees that small beams of sun are pouring through the cracks in the blinds.
The rain has stopped. The sun is back out.
And he promised himself a run, didn’t he?
Keeping his mind clear, he changes into a pair of shorts and one of the new T-shirts. His sneakers aren’t proper running shoes, but they’ll do. He debates whether to take one of the bottles of water but decides to leave it behind.
He skips breakfast. He’s barely eaten in the last day and a half, but there’s a purpose in his chest that feels like it’s feeding him.
It’s the same purpose he felt when he went down to the beach.
He lets the thought slide through his head and out the other side.
There is nothing this morning.
Nothing at all.
Nothing but running.
He goes to the front door. He doesn’t shut it behind him.
He runs.
It was cold, possibly below freezing when he left his house that afternoon, having meticulously cleaned his room without really knowing why, without somehow even really being aware of doing it, just getting everything in its right place, neat and tidy and final, so nothing was left undone.
His mother had taken Owen to therapy and his father was working in the kitchen. Seth walked down the stairs to the living room. His eyes caught that horrible painting by his uncle, the horse, in terror, in agony, but stilled, forever, watching him go, watching as he closed the front door behind him.
It was a good half hour walk to the beach, the sky threatening snow but not delivering. The sea that day wasn’t as monstrous as it often was in winter. The waves were shallower, but still reaching, still grabbing. The beach as rocky as ever.
He stood there for a moment, then he started to take off his shoes.
Seth runs toward the train station, leaving footprints in the drying mud, his legs creaking and groanin
g from lack of this kind of use. He turns up the stairs between the blocks of flats, heading to the station.
His first sweat is on, the drops stinging his eyes as they drip from his forehead. The sun is blazing down. His breathing is heavy.
He runs.
And as he runs, he remembers.
He runs faster, as if he might escape it.
There was sand there, between the rocks, and he stood on a little patch of it to remove first one shoe and then the other. He set them carefully together, then he sat on a rock to take off his socks, folding them and tucking them deep inside his shoes.
He felt . . . not quite calm, calm wasn’t the right word, but there were moments, moments when he wasn’t focused on the precise folding of his socks when he felt almost faint with relief.
Relief because at last, at last, at last.
At last, there didn’t have to be anymore, didn’t have to be anymore burden, anymore weight to carry.
He took a moment to try and shake off the tightening in his chest.
He breathed.
Seth leaps over the ticket barrier at the train station and pounds up the steps to the platform. He doesn’t look at the train as he heads for the bridge over the tracks. He hears nothing from the boar, no doubt sleeping away a hot day in the confines of its den.
Up the steps, across the bridge, and down the other side.
He took off his jacket, because that seemed right, too. He was only wearing a T-shirt underneath, and the wind stung his bare arms. He shivered more as he folded up his coat and placed it on his shoes.
He felt present there, but also separate at the same time, as if he was watching himself from a height, looking down on a shoeless, coatless boy, staring at the sea.
Like he was waiting.
But for what?
Whatever it was, it never come.
And then, “I’m ready,” he whispered to himself.
He found, to his surprise, with a sudden upsurge of grief that nearly knocked him flat, that he was telling the truth.
He was ready.
He began walking toward the sea.
He leaps over the gate at the other side of the train station and out the far exit. He pounds down the incline toward the first main road, wincing at the strain on his feet, but his muscles seem to be awakening, returning to the memory of themselves, returning to the memory of running –
He takes the first running steps into the destroyed neighborhood.
Everything around him is dead.
The cold of the water was shocking, brutally so, even in those first steps, and he couldn’t keep himself from gasping. A wave of gooseflesh marched up his arms, the thin black hairs standing almost vertical. It felt for a moment as if he had already started to drown ankle-deep in five inches of water.
He knew then that if the water didn’t get him, the cold would.
He forced himself to take another step.
And another.
It’s so quiet, all he can hear are his footfalls and his breathing. In this first street, everything’s been flattened, so there’s only blackened ground reaching out on either side. He kicks up clumps of ash into the air, some of it drying now in the sun and making a trailing cloud.
He turns his gaze forward again.
Toward Masons Hill.
His feet – almost blue with cold – went numb as they stepped from rock to rock. Each new shock as he waded in deeper was like a knife slicing into him, but he pressed on. The water reached his knees, his thighs, darkening his jeans to black. There was a long shallows, but he knew it deepened suddenly a little farther out to depths that had to be swum. He also knew there was a current, one that would take an unsuspecting swimmer and smash them into the rocks that loomed down the beach.
He was so cold now that it felt as if his skin had been dipped in acid. A larger wave splashed across his T-shirt, and he couldn’t help but call out. He was shaking uncontrollably and had to force himself to keep moving forward.
Another wave came, larger than the last and he almost lost his balance. Another followed that. He wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer, his feet and toes gripping hard on the submerged rocks, the tide pulling forward and back. He readied himself to let go, to plunge in, to begin the swim out into the farther cold, out into the terrible, terrible freedom that awaited.
He was here. He had made it this far. There was so very little distance left to go, and he was the one who had brought himself here.
It was almost over. He was almost there.
He had never, not once in his life, felt this powerful.
Down another street, the concrete frames of some houses are still standing, though burnt through, inside and out. Not just houses, but storefronts and larger structures, too.
All blackened, all empty, all dead.
His throat is burning, and he thinks he should have brought water. But the thought is fleeting and he lets it go.
Masons Hill remains firmly on the horizon, and that’s all he needs.
He feels empty. Emptied of everything.
He could run forever.
He feels powerful.
Then a wave, larger than any before, engulfed him, plunging him under the freezing water. The cold was so fierce it was like an electric shock, sending his body into a painful spasm. He was afloat, twisting underwater, narrowly avoiding cracking his skull on an outcropping.
Coughing, spluttering, he broke the surface as another wave crashed down. He surged up again, his feet scrambling for purchase, but the undertow was already pulling him out fast. He spat out seawater and was thrust under by another wave.
(He fought; despite everything, he was fighting –)
The cold was so enormous it was like a living thing. In an impossibly short time, he was unable to make his muscles work properly, and though he could still see the empty shore in the seconds he had above water, it receded farther and farther into the distance, the current pushing him toward the rocks.
It was too late.
There was no going back.
(He felt himself fighting anyway –)
Seth picks up his speed, his breath starting to come in raking gasps, pushing the memories away, not letting them take root.
I’ll make it, he thinks. I’ll make it to the hill. Not far now.
Another street, and another street more, empty buildings all around, reaching up like tombstones, his breath getting louder in his lungs, his legs growing weaker.
I’ll make it. I’ll run up to the top –
Here is the boy, running.
Here was the boy, drowning.
In those last moments, it wasn’t the water that had finally done for him; it was the cold. It had bled all the energy from his body and contracted his muscles into a painful uselessness, no matter how much he fought to keep himself above the surface –
(And he did fight in the end, he did –)
He was strong, and young, nearly seventeen, but the wintry waves kept coming, each one seemingly larger than the last. They spun him round, toppled him over, forcing him deeper down and down.
He doesn’t think about his final destination as he runs, not in words. There is only intention. There is only a lightness.
The lightness of it all being over. The lightness of letting it all go.
Then, without warning, the game the sea seemed to have been playing, the cruel game of keeping him just alive enough to think he might make it, that game seemed to be over.
The current surged, slamming him into the killingly hard rocks. His right shoulder blade snapped in two so loudly he could hear the crack, even underwater, even in this rush of tide. The mindless intensity of the pain was so great he called out, his mouth instantly filling with freezing, briny seawater. He coughed against it, but only dragged more into his lungs. He curved into the pain of his shoulder, blinded by it, paralyzed by its intensity. He was unable to even try and swim now, unable to brace himself as the waves turned him over once more.
Please, was all
he thought. Just the one word, echoing through his head.
Please.
Please, he thinks –
There is the sheer drop on one side of Masons Hill. He can see it in the distance.
Fifty feet down to concrete below –
Please –
The current gripped him a final time. It reared back as if to throw him, and it dashed him headfirst into the rocks. He slammed into them with the full, furious weight of an angry ocean behind him.
But it didn’t make him free.
He woke up here.
Here where there is nothing.
Nothing but a loneliness more awful than what he’d left.
One that is no longer bearable –
He is nearly there. One last turn. One more long street, and he’ll reach the base of the hill.
He turns a corner –
And in the distance, far down the road in front of him, he sees a black van.
And it’s moving.
He stops so suddenly he falls, burying his hands in inches of ash.
A van.
A van that’s driving away from him.
A van that’s being driven.
It’s going slowly, heading off into the distance, kicking up a low cloud of ash behind it, but there it is, solid as the world.
There’s someone else in hell.
Seth staggers upright, waving his arms over his head before he can even think if it’s a good idea or not.
“Wait!” he shouts. “WAIT!”
And almost immediately, the van stops. It’s far enough away that it shimmers in the heat rising from the drying ash, but it definitely stops.
It definitely heard him.
Seth watches, his heart racing, his lungs laboring for air.
The door to the van opens.
And a pair of hands slap themselves over Seth’s mouth from behind and drag him off his feet.
The hands bend Seth back so far he can hardly keep his balance. He tries to fight but finds himself so weakened – by lack of food and sleep, by the running, by the sheer weight on his chest – that all he can do is stumble backward, trying not to fall –
