by Patrick Ness
These two funny, difficult people.
He hears them and his heart hurts a little.
But he pushes on it and realizes it’s not a bad hurt. Not bad at all.
He smiles to himself briefly. And then, after a moment, he taps a finger on the coffin like he did down in the prison.
After a few tries, a display lights up, broken but readable.
A little while later, Tomasz comes out of the kitchen with some steaming bowls in his hands.
“Special occasion,” he says, handing one to Seth. “Hot dogs, creamed corn and chili con carne.”
“You’re making a joke, but for an American, this is almost a barbecue.”
“Ah, yes, I keep forgetting you are American.”
“Well, I’m not really anythi –”
“REGINE!” Tomasz shouts at ear-splitting volume. “Dinner is ready!”
“I’m right here,” Regine says, coming down the stairs in fresh clothes, pressing a towel against her hair.
“Is in the kitchen,” Tomasz says. “Keeping warm by lit stove.”
“Good way to burn the whole house down.”
“You are welcome,” Tomasz singsongs after her.
They eat in silence for a while. Tomasz finishes first, burping happily and setting his plate on a side table. “So,” he says, “what are we going to do now?”
“I’d like to sleep for a week,” Regine says. “Or a month.”
“I was thinking we could go back to the supermarket,” Tomasz says. “We never got back there. So much food and things for taking.”
“Yeah, I could use some more –”
“Do not say cigarettes!” Tomasz interrupts. “You are living now. We have saved you. Let the end of the smoking be a celebration.”
“Actually, you know what?” Regine says. “I think maybe we are in need of a celebration.”
Tomasz looks over, surprised. “You mean?”
She nods. “I mean.”
“You mean what?” Seth asks as she takes her plate into the kitchen.
“Well,” she says, “not everything goes bad after years and years, does it?”
Seth glances at Tomasz, who’s grinning madly. “What’s she talking about?”
“Celebration!” Tomasz says, then his face gets serious. “Though we have not had much to celebrate until now.”
Regine reappears in the kitchen doorway, a bottle of wine in one hand and three coffee mugs in the other. “We don’t have refrigerators, so I hope you like red.”
She opens the bottle with an alarmingly rusty corkscrew and pours a full mug for her and Seth, half a mug for Tomasz. “Hey!” he protests.
“Give him some more,” Seth says. “He’s earned it.”
Regine looks skeptical but fills Tomasz’s mug, then they raise them in an awkward toast. “To being alive,” Regine says.
“Again,” Seth says.
“Na zdrowie,” Tomasz says.
They drink. Tomasz spits his right back into his cup. “Bleck!” he says. “People like this?”
“Haven’t you had communion wine?” Regine asks. “I thought Poles were Catholic.”
“We are,” Tomasz says, “but I always believed communion wine was flavored to be hard to drink, otherwise, why such a small taste? But real wine . . .”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, so Regine does. “Is supposed to taste like grape juice?”
He nods. “It does not.” He sniffs at his mug and takes another drink, a small sip this time. “It is terrible,” he says. Then he sips it again.
Seth drinks his own. He’s had wine at dinner with his mum and dad, much to the scandalized chagrin of his friends’ decidedly non-European parents. He never much liked it, too vinegary, but here, now, this feels like less a drink than a ritual, and he’s happy to have it.
Regine doesn’t drink much, though. She holds it in front of her awhile, then sets it down on the table.
“Don’t you like it?” Seth says. “It’s not bad. A little heavy, but –”
“He drank,” she says. “His breath, it always stank of . . . Even in the memory, it stank. I didn’t think it would bother me, I’ve had it before, but.”
“But,” Seth agrees. He sets his own mug down. Tomasz does too.
Regine scratches at a non-existent spot on her pants. “Is he down there, you think? I guess I didn’t really believe it till now but . . . He’s gotta be, doesn’t he?”
“My parents are,” Seth says. “I saw them on a display screen. They’re in there somewhere. Living their lives.”
“And my mother, too,” Regine says. “Carrying on with a dead daughter and a shit husband.” She coughs away some emotion, but there’s a dark question on her face and she says no more.
“My mother is dead,” Tomasz says, matter-of-factly. “But I find a new family! A brother and a sister.”
“Stepbrother,” Regine says, grinning as Tomasz makes to protest. “All right, half-brother. Adopted.”
“Oh,” Tomasz says, “I am thinking we are all adopted.”
“I saw a baby in there,” Seth says at this. “In one of the coffins. With its mother.”
They stare at them. “But how is that possible?” Tomasz asks.
“There are probably ways, if you think about it,” Seth says. “But however they did it, they believed in the future.” He leans forward and places his hands on the coffin in front of him. “Listen.”
Tomasz simply looks at him, but he can see Regine tense, see her bracing herself.
“Right,” he continues. “Okay. I saw both of your deaths. I didn’t mean to, but I did.” He taps the coffin, no longer looking them in the eye. “I think it’s only fair I tell you about mine.”
He begins to talk.
He tells them everything.
Including the end.
“You’ve got a visitor,” his mother said curtly through his bedroom door on a Saturday morning.
“Gudmund,” he said to himself, his heart lurching in his chest enough to make him light-headed. He hadn’t seen him since that night a few weeks back, when Gudmund had promised they wouldn’t lose contact, when he promised there was a future, if they just held out for it.
Since then, though, Gudmund’s cell phone had either been confiscated or had its number changed, and there were no answers at any of his e-mail addresses. But surely he could have borrowed someone’s phone at his new school or set up a fake e-mail account. You couldn’t keep people from communicating these days, not if they wanted to.
But there’d been nothing.
Until now.
He practically bounded out of bed to the door, opening it –
And finding Owen blocking the way.
“Hi, Seth,” his brother said.
Seth placed a soft hand on Owen’s chest to push him back. “Outta the way. I’ve got –”
“I wrote a song on the clarinet.”
“Later, Owen.”
Seth thumped heavily down the stairs, turning into the living room, his eyes bright, his voice too loud, saying, “Christ, Gudmund, I never thought I’d –”
He stopped. It wasn’t Gudmund.
“H,” Seth said. He felt his skin getting hot and knew an embarrassed blush was starting up his neck.
But it was an angry blush, too.
H hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t even acknowledged his existence since the pictures had come out. The worst of the abuse at school had settled down some, but there was still the minefield around him that felt as if no one could approach him, even if they wanted to. Seth knew H had always been the weakest of them, the one who’d suffer the most by association when it turned out that his two closest male friends were doing each other.
But he’d always been good-hearted, too, hadn’t he? Beneath all the stupid jokes and goofing around, Seth had always thought H was basically decent. Which made the exile particularly painful.
“I’m not him,” H said, hunched there on the sofa, sitting underneath that awful painting by Seth’s
uncle that used to scare him as a little kid. H hadn’t even taken off his coat. “I haven’t seen him.”
They were alone. Seth’s mum had disappeared to who knew where, and his dad was still working on the kitchen.
The silence stretched, until H finally said, “I can go, if you want.”
“Why are you here?”
“I need to tell you something,” H said. “I need to tell you something that I don’t even know if you need to know. But.”
“But what?”
“But maybe you do.”
Seth waited for a moment, then went to the chair that faced the couch and sat down. “It’s been shit, H.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I know –”
“I didn’t do anything to you. We didn’t do anything to –”
“That’s bullshit. You lied.”
“We didn’t lie.”
“You lied by not telling. Though it’s not like anyone with eyes couldn’t see it.”
“See what?” Seth said warily.
H looked him in the eye. “That you loved him.”
Seth felt his face flushing again, but he said nothing.
H started turning his gloves over in his hands. “I mean, I didn’t see it. Because I’m a total idiot. But looking back, I mean. Looking back, it’s obvious.”
“And how was I supposed to tell you a thing like that? If this is the way you were going to react?”
“That’s not –” H said, raising his voice, then looking around and lowering it again. “That’s not why. That’s not why I’ve been acting like I have.”
“Really.”
H sighed. “Okay, a little, but not for any major freaky-outy reasons or anything. It’s not easy for me either, you know? Everyone thinks I’m a fag now, too, don’t they?”
“No, they don’t. You’ve been dating Monica for ages –”
H got a funny look. “Yeah, well.”
“What?”
“I’m not seeing her anymore.”
Seth was surprised. “Well, good. She’s the one who made this whole mess. If it wasn’t for her –”
H interrupted him. “Seth.”
Seth stopped. A faint sick feeling started to swirl in his stomach at the way H had said his name. “What?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder how she got those pictures?”
“What do you mean?”
H fidgeted with his gloves again, turning them, folding them. “You think Gudmund just left his phone lying around for her to find? You think he was that stupid? The Boy Wonder?”
“You’re saying . . .” Seth started, but had to try again. “You’re saying he gave it to her –?”
But H was already shaking his head. “No, Seth, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Well, what then?”
H took a deep breath, reluctant. “You know how she always flirted with Gudmund, right? And he’d flirt back?”
“Yeah, she was totally in love with him.” He saw H wince. “I mean, sorry, man, no offense, she was with you and that was good, but you know . . .”
“Yeah.” H nodded sadly. “I know.”
“That’s why she did it. She even told me. She found out about me and Gudmund and was jealous and –”
“She found out, because she was sleeping with him, too.”
The words hung in the air, almost in physical form, almost as if Seth could see them.
See them, but refuse to read them.
“What?” he finally managed to whisper.
“She told me,” H said. “Finally. Last night.” He frowned. “When she was breaking up with me. Said she found the pictures when she grabbed his phone one night to take a photo of them.” H was now wringing his gloves so tightly they were in danger of tearing. “And they fought, I guess. And I guess he said he was only sleeping with her because she needed him to. That he cared for her as a friend and didn’t know how to handle it so he just gave her what she wanted because he thought, well” – H shrugged –“that was what she wanted.”
Seth felt like everything had frozen around him. Like there was never going to be anything that moved ever again. Like it was only ever going to be cold.
And empty.
I can’t be anyone’s everything, Gudmund had said on that last night. Not even yours, Seth.
That was Gudmund’s biggest fault. That he couldn’t be anyone’s everything.
But that he’d try anyway.
“Why are you telling me this?” Seth said.
“Because it’s true. Because I thought, I don’t know.” H sighed. “I thought it might make it easier for you that he’s gone.”
“It doesn’t. It doesn’t at all.”
H ran his hand through his hair, agitated. “Shit, Seth, I’m telling you because why does everybody have to lose everybody? We were friends. And people messed up, okay? They didn’t say shit they should have said and did shit they shouldn’t have done but Jesus, people need, you know? I know that. They need things and they don’t know why, they just need them. I don’t even really care that she slept with him. I only care that she broke up with me because who do I have now?”
He looked at Seth, and Seth saw how lost he was.
“I had three good friends, three best friends, and now what do I got? I got nobody. I got a bunch of brain-dead idiots who think I’m half-fag and won’t shut up about it.”
Seth sank back slowly in the chair, still reeling. “What are you doing here, H?”
H made a frustrated sound. “I don’t know. I thought you should know, I guess. The truth. Like I said, I thought it might make it easier.”
Seth said nothing to this, found he couldn’t even really look at H, and after a minute, H got up. He waited again to see if Seth would say anything, and when he didn’t, he put the gloves back on.
“I think he really did love you, though,” H said. “At least that’s how it seemed to her.”
And then H left. Seth heard the front door open and close again.
He was alone.
After a while, he didn’t know how long, he got up and climbed the stairs, though he was hardly aware of doing so. Owen was still waiting outside his bedroom door, holding his clarinet.
“Can I play you my song now?” he asked, smiling wide, his hair a really astonishing mess.
Seth went past him into his bedroom.
“I wrote it for you because you’ve been so sad,” Owen said and raised the clarinet to start playing. Seth shut the door on him. That didn’t stop him. A surprisingly melodic set of notes repeated themselves several times, way too fast, but Seth barely heard them, just sat on the edge of his bed.
He felt empty.
But also strangely calm. He heard his mother take Owen to therapy but sat so quietly on his bed, he didn’t even think she knew he was still home.
He was hardly aware of making a decision to start cleaning his room.
Making a decision to then put on his coat.
Making a decision to go to the ocean.
Tomasz looks ashen. “Oh, Mr. Seth,” he says. “You learned you could trust no one. Is very bleak lesson.”
“No,” Seth says, “that’s not quite –”
“I’m sorry,” Regine interrupts, obviously trying to contain her confusion, “but I don’t see why that was the last straw.”
“What?” Tomasz says. “But the Good Man was not who Seth thought he was.”
“Look, I don’t mean to downplay it or anything but –”
“But Tomasz got murdered,” Seth says, “and you got shoved down the stairs. All I did was get my heart broken.”
“Do not underestimate the broken heart, though,” Tomasz says. “My heart was broken, waking up here, without my mama. Was very painful.”
“I’m not saying it didn’t hurt,” Regine says, “but it seems a little –”
“Extreme,” Seth says. He taps the coffin again, gathering his thoughts. “You know that feeling we talked about,
that there had to be more? More life beyond the crappy ones we were living?”
“Yeah,” Regine says hesitantly.
“Well, I thought I had more. I thought Gudmund was my more. It didn’t matter how crap everything else was. The stuff with Owen, the stuff with my parents, even later with the stuff at school. I could live with all of that, because I had him. He was mine and no one else’s. We lived in this private world, that no one else knew about and no one else ever lived in. That was my more, do you see? That was the thing that made it all bearable.”
“But it wasn’t just yours,” Regine says, sounding like she’s understanding.
“I thought Gudmund being taken away was the worst thing that could ever happen to me,” Seth says, “but it wasn’t. The worst thing was finding out he was never really all mine in the first place. And so, for a moment, for a terrible, unbelievably shitty afternoon in a shitty little town on the shitty, freezing coast of Washington, I had nothing. There wasn’t anything more, and the one good thing that was mine wasn’t mine after all.”
He takes a thumb to wipe the tears from his face. He clears his throat, embarrassed.
“You miss him,” Tomasz says.
“More than I can say,” Seth says, his voice rough.
“But I can understand this,” Tomasz says to Regine. “Why it would feel so bad to lose someone so important. Why it would feel so bad you would want to walk into the ocean. Can you not?”
“I can understand pain,” she says. “Feeling so bad you want to get out. Believe me, I understand that. I’ve looked into the darkness. You aren’t the only one.”
“I never said I was,” Seth says.
“But the difference is that I think you never do it. Even if you’re tempted, even if you’re really close, because who knows? There might be more.”
“But –” Tomasz starts.
“No, she’s right,” Seth says. “There was more, even for me. More than I thought, more than I could see for myself. I mean, look at Owen. Even if that world was a lie, then part of that’s still true for my parents. Something terrible happened to their son. Why wouldn’t that affect them? And not even be about me?”
“But for your Good Man, though?” Tomasz asks. “Where is the more?”
“The more is in the things that made him so safe, that made him so good. They were exactly the same things that made him be with Monica, weren’t they?” He smiles sadly to himself. “Gudmund couldn’t stand to see people he cared about suffer. And he didn’t know how to stop their suffering, so he offered himself.”
