by Patrick Ness
She waited again, almost dancing in place with what was obvious reluctance. “I found some photos,” she finally said. “On Gudmund’s phone.”
And there it was, simple as that, the world ending almost quietly.
“I’m so sorry, Seth,” Monica said, crying again. “I’m so sorry –”
“What did you do?” he said. “What the hell did you do, Monica?”
She flinched, but she didn’t look away. He’d remember that. She’d been brave and sorry enough to not look away when she told him what she did.
But also, damn her. Goddamn her forever.
“I sent them to H,” she said, “and everyone else I could find from school who was on Gudmund’s phone.”
Seth said nothing, just found himself stepping back, as if he was losing his balance. He half fell onto the stone bench his parents kept by the front door.
“I’m sorry,” Monica said, crying more. “I’ve never been more sorry about anything in my life –”
“Why?” Seth said quietly. “Why would you do that? Why would you –?”
“I was angry. So angry I didn’t even think.”
“But why?” Seth said. “You’re my friend. I mean everyone knows you like him but –”
“Those pictures,” she said. “They’re not . . . They’re not sex, you know? And sex, I could understand, I guess, but . . .”
“But what?”
She looked him in the eye. “But they were love, Seth.”
She stopped, and he didn’t ask what she meant, why love was so much more painful to see.
“I loved him first,” she said. “I’m so sorry, that is such a shitty reason, but I loved him first. Before you.”
Even in his free fall, even in what felt like the first tip of the world crashing down on him – everyone knowing his most private thing, his friends, his parents, everyone at school – all he could think about was Gudmund, how it would still be all right if Gudmund was all right, how he could put up with everything, with anything, if Gudmund was there with him.
He stood. “I need to call him.”
“Seth –”
“No, I need to talk to him –”
He opened his front door and –
Seth wakes. He’s curled against the cigarette counter, using some stiff old kitchen towels they’d found for a pillow. He feels the dream washing from him, and he tries not to let it take him down with it.
One conversation on a doorstep. A few words from Monica while he shivered there. That had been the beginning of the end.
The end that had brought him here.
But why had he dreamed that? There’d been worse in all that had happened. He’d dreamed worse while he’d been here. And why had it ended where it had? He’d opened the door and –
He can’t remember. He remembers frantically trying to find Gudmund, of course, but exactly what happened after he went inside –
It feels important, a little. Something there. Something just out of reach.
“Bad one?” Regine asks, standing over him.
“Did I cry out?” he asks, sitting up. He’s still, amazingly, wearing his running gear. It’s starting to smell sour.
“No, but they’re usually bad, aren’t they?”
“Not always.”
“Yeah,” she says, sitting down next to him and handing him a bottle of water, “but if they’re good, they’re good in a way that feels really, really bad anyway.”
“Where’s Tomasz?” he asks, taking a drink.
“Finding a private place to go to the toilet. You wouldn’t believe how much of an old lady he is about that. Won’t even say the word out loud. Just disappears, does his business, and never mentions it again. I swear he cried when he saw all the toilet paper they’ve got here.”
The rain’s stopped outside, and night is beginning to fall over the pedestrianized part of the street down from the supermarket. Still no sound of the engine, no sign of smoke in the air. The world is quiet again, save for the two of them breathing here.
“I was thinking about what you said,” Regine says. “About why we’d put ourselves in an online world that was so messed up.” She nods toward the glass. “Maybe compared to how the real world was going, it was paradise. Maybe all we wanted was a chance to live real lives again, without everything falling apart all the time.”
“So you really believe all that?” Seth asks. “That this is the real world, and everything else was a dream we were having with other people?”
She takes in a long breath. “I miss my mother,” she says, looking out into the dusk. “My mother when I was young, not who she turned into, not who she became after she married him, but from before. We used to have fun, just the two of us. We used to laugh and sing really badly.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “You know how all black women are supposed to have amazing voices? Like the world won’t let us run things or get any real power or be president or anything, but that’s okay because we can all sing like a choir of angels?”
“I never said –”
“Well, we can’t. Take my word for it. Me and my mama, God, we sounded like two lonely moose.” She laughs to herself. “Doesn’t matter, though, does it? When it’s just you and your mama.”
Seth stretches out his legs. “But you say all that wasn’t real.”
“You’re purposely misunderstanding,” she says, sounding frustrated. “I was there. My mama was there. Even if we were fast asleep in different places. It was real. If it hadn’t been real, why didn’t we sing beautifully?”
“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Something someone I once knew used to say.”
She looks at him closely, too closely. “You had someone. Someone you loved.”
“None of your business.”
“And you’re wondering if it was real. You’re wondering if you really knew . . . him, I’m guessing?”
Seth says nothing. Then he says, “Gudmund.”
“Good Man? That some kind of nickname?”
“Gudmund. It’s Norwegian.”
“Yeah, okay, so you’re wondering if Norwegian Gudmund was real, aren’t you? You’re wondering if all those wonderful times really happened. If you were really there. If he was really there.”
Seth’s mind goes again to the smell of Gudmund on his fingertips. To the tapping of Gudmund’s fingers on his chest. To the kiss from those pictures, the pictures that everyone saw –
“He was,” Seth says. “He had to be.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Regine says. “That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it? They have to be, or where does that leave us?”
It’s grown darker, even in the short time they’ve spoken, the shadows in the store bleeding out to cover them.
“Here’s what I think,” Regine says, lighting a cigarette. “I think I’m the only real thing I’ve got, except maybe Tommy. Even here, in this place, because who’s to say this isn’t some simulation, too, some other level we’ll wake up from. But wherever I am, whatever this world is, I’ve just got to be sure I’m me and that’s what’s real.” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Know yourself and go in swinging. If it hurts when you hit it, it might be real, too.”
“It hurt when you hit me.”
“That’s interesting,” Regine says, reaching above her to the counter, “because I didn’t feel a thing.” She flicks the lighter on to show him the piece of paper she’s brought down. “I’ve made a map back to where Tommy and I are staying.”
“But aren’t we –”
“It’s so you can find your way back to us after you go to the prison.”
“Don’t tell Tommy,” she says, lowering her voice. “Tell him you’re going back to your house to change clothes and you’ll join us later.” She looks at him sternly. “I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
He takes the map from her. He recognizes a road, peeling away from this side
of the train tracks and heading north. There’s an X drawn on a side street and a number written below it for the address.
“You’ve got to add three to everything,” Regine says. “It’s actually three streets more north than that one and for the real address you add three to the first digit and three to the second. If you get caught, I don’t want it to find us.”
“What about the prison?” he asks. “The main entrance is way on the other side from my house.”
“You can’t get in that way,” Regine says. “It’s boarded and locked up like you wouldn’t believe, like they didn’t want anyone to get in or out no matter what happened. Which is probably true, I guess. What you want to do is –”
“What is that?” Tomasz’s voice comes to them out of the darkness, his tone suspicious.
“Map back to your house,” Seth says quickly.
“Why are you not coming with us?” The flicker from the lighter is enough to reflect his obvious worry back at them.
“If you didn’t burn my house down, I need to change clothes,” Seth says, and mimes smelling his armpit.
“Then why are we not coming with you? There is safety in numerals.”
“Numbers,” Seth says. “Safety in numbers.”
“Yes,” Tomasz frowns, “because grammatical rightness is exactly what we are talking about at the present moment.”
“I want to get back,” Regine says. “Too risky hanging around, all of us outside.”
“But he will risk it.”
“That’s his choice,” Regine says, standing up.
“I do not choose this,” Tomasz says. He opens and closes his hands into stubby little fists, the same way Owen used to when he was nervous about something, Seth remembers. Owen would stand there, impossibly vulnerable, so that you either wanted to pick him up and tell him everything was going to be okay or start slapping him for being so ridiculously available for harm.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Seth says, then he says. “I promise.”
“Well,” Tomasz says, perhaps unconvinced. “That is good.” He looks at Regine. “We should take supplies. Water. And food. And toilet paper. I found birthday candles, also. For when we are having birthdays.”
There’s a beat as they both stare at him.
“What?” he says. “I like birthdays.”
“How old are you both, actually?” Seth asks, curious.
Regine shrugs. “Before I woke up, I was seventeen. Who knows how old I really am? If time is even the same here as there.”
“Really?” Seth asks. “You don’t think –”
“No way of knowing one way or the other.”
“I am fourteen!” Tomasz says.
Seth and Regine look down on the mighty, mighty shortness of him and laugh out loud.
“I am,” Tomasz insists.
“Yeah,” Regine says, “and you were struck by lightning and Poland is paved with gold and chocolate. It’s time to go.”
Regine and Tomasz take bags from the cash registers and fill them with what supplies they can carry, then they all head back out onto the High Street. There’s still no sound of the engine, but they walk cautiously into what is now almost full night.
“Will you be able to find us in the dark?” Tomasz says, sounding worried. “We will leave a candle burning outside –”
“No, we will not,” Regine says. “He’ll find it, don’t worry.”
“I still do not see why we cannot wait for him –”
“I just need time to gather my stuff,” Seth says. “Some of it’s private. It might take a while.”
“But still –”
“Sweet Jesus, Tommy,” Regine snaps. “He probably just wants to wank again in the last moment of privacy you’ll ever give him.”
Tomasz looks at him, astonished. “This is true?”
Seth can see Regine laughing silently in the moonlight. “I have a brother, Tomasz,” he says. “Wherever he is now, we grew up in that house. Before we moved to America.”
Regine has stopped laughing, and Seth can see her light another cigarette, pretending not to listen.
“While we lived there, something bad happened to him,” Seth says. “Something that made him different, not right. And in an important way, it was my fault.”
“It was?” Tomasz whispers, his eyes wide.
Seth glances down the street. The sinkhole’s ahead of them, his own road next to it. He’s only intended to mollify Tomasz, but the truth of his words cuts sharper than he expects. “Whatever this place is, real or not, my house is dangerous because of how close it is to the prison. And if I’m not coming back, I want to say good-bye to it.” He looks at Regine. “I want to say good-bye to the brother I had there before all the bad stuff happened.”
“And this needs to be done privately, yes, I see,” Tomasz says, nodding gravely.
Seth smiles, despite himself. “You remind me of him. You’re like a version of what he might have been. If he was Polish.”
“I thought you were going to say he was like the version of your brother that wasn’t right,” Regine says, taking another puff of smoke.
“That is not nice,” Tomasz says. “For myriad reasons.”
“We’re going to get the bikes,” Regine says, “so we’ll see you tonight, yes?”
“I’ll try not to be long, but don’t worry if I –”
He nearly falls backward onto the sidewalk as Tomasz lunges into him with a hug. “Be safe, Mr. Seth,” Tomasz says, his voice muffled against Seth’s shirt. “Do not let death get you.”
Seth’s hand hovers over the springy mess that is Tomasz’s hair. “I’ll be careful.”
“Leave him be,” Regine says. Tomasz backs away, letting Regine approach. “I’m not going to hug you,” she says.
“I’m okay with that,” Seth says.
“I wasn’t asking for your approval.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t even bother with the main entrance. That’s what I was going to tell you earlier. Follow the train tracks down to the far side of the prison. You’ll see a big section where the walls have fallen in.”
“Thanks,” Seth whispers back.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Regine says. “You’re not going to find whatever it is you’re looking for and you’re going to get yourself killed in the process.”
He grins at her. “Nice to know I’ll be missed.”
She doesn’t grin back.
“What are you two talking about?” Tomasz says.
“Nothing,” Regine says, then lowers her voice again. “Just think about maybe keeping your promise to Tommy.”
Seth swallows. “I’ll think about it.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, turning away from him. “Nice knowing ya.”
Tomasz waves happily again in the moonlight, but Regine doesn’t look back as they disappear into the darkness.
“Nice knowing you, too,” Seth says to himself.
Then turns and starts walking toward the sinkhole.
Walking toward his home.
The van is gone from the front of his house. From where Seth is hiding down the road, he can see the ruts it made in the mud as it turned around and drove away. He waits, but nothing moves, not even a cloud passing in front of the moon in the newly clear sky, the weather changing so quickly it’s like it’s on fast forward.
Somewhere out there, many streets away, Regine and Tomasz are riding northward, their bikes overladen with food and supplies. He takes a moment to wish for their safety. And the wish feels like as much of a prayer as this place can allow.
He moves out into the street, slowly, cautiously, trying to see any sign of the van or the Driver lying in wait, but nothing leaps out at him as he goes. The house looks unchanged as he approaches, aside from the shattered glass of the front window. It’s too dark to see through the broken blinds, and he curses himself for not taking one of Tomasz’s birthday candles to light. He’ll have to go pawing around in the dark for his lantern, and who knows how much dama
ge the fire caused before the rain stopped it? There might be no lantern left to find, no clothes to change into.
No trace of the stuff left over from his family.
What is that stuff, anyway? he wonders, considering Regine’s explanation of everything. Is it his memories reconstructing a place or is it actually the same physical house from when his family moved to America?
Or when they chose to believe they moved to America, when in fact they just lay down in sleek black coffins and welcomed a new version of what was real?
He remembers the move, though, the stress and anxiety of it. Owen hadn’t been out of hospital very long and was still deep in rehab to get his motor skills functioning properly. The doctors were always hesitant to say how much was damage from his injuries and how much was psychological trauma, but his mother had been insistent on a change. It wasn’t too soon, she’d said, and even if it was, surely a new environment with entirely new stimuli – and entirely new doctors, for that matter, who weren’t so bloody useless – could only help her younger son. Plus, she couldn’t stand living in this house for one moment longer.
Seth’s father had come up with a surprising solution. A small liberal-arts college on the dark, wet coast of Washington, where he’d once spent a semester as a young visiting professor, had answered an inquiry and said yes, as a matter of fact, they did have a place for him to teach, should he want. It was even less money than he made in England, but the college was so desperate for staff, they’d provide a housing stipend and moving expenses.
Seth’s mother hadn’t hesitated, not even at the remote location, two hours’ drive from the nearest cities. She’d started packing boxes before his father had even accepted the job, and they were gone from England in a bewildering tornado of a month, moving to Halfmarket, a place that may not have been under a permanent winter’s night but sure felt that way.
Seth shakes his head now, rejecting the idea that the whole experience had somehow just been online. His mum had been too angry about everything, his father too unhappy, Owen too injured, and Seth too ignored. If it was all fake or programmed or whatever the hell it was, why wouldn’t they be better? Why wouldn’t they be happier?
