Hollowgirl

by Sean Williams

  She shook her head. Her throat was full and thick with tears she couldn’t indulge because he wouldn’t understand. It would scare him away.

  “You didn’t say anything wrong.” She sat up, feeling as though she weighed a ton. “Do you remember what you told me in Wallace’s office, before Turner came?”

  He turned bright pink. “Yes.”

  “And you remember the train . . . when we kissed?”

  “Of course.”

  Concentrate on that, she told herself.

  “Can I kiss you now?”

  “Uh, sure, yes. I’d like that.”

  He brushed back his fringe and she stretched her neck so her lips could meet his. He was cautious, shy. His mouth didn’t open. But he smelled like him. He was him. Just different, on the inside.

  The Jesse she had spent the night with in Antarctica, the Jesse who had fought with her over d-mat, the Jesse who had confessed that he loved her . . . that Jesse was gone forever.

  But this Jesse was here. He was alive.

  “I’m glad I didn’t freak you out,” he said when they pulled apart. “In New York, I mean. It was such a stupid thing to say in front of everyone.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “You’re not stupid. It was sweet. I’m glad you told me.”

  He looked at her expectantly, and she didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him that she had had a crush on him in return, because she hadn’t. She had barely noticed him, except as the school weirdo. But now their situations were reversed: she was more invested than he was, which came with its own set of complications. She couldn’t mistake him for the Jesse she had known, and she couldn’t pretend they were the same person—that would be like stalking. He would have every right to be angry if she thought she was using him as a substitute for the Jesse she really wanted.

  “Will you tell me something?” he asked her after the silence had stretched too long.

  “Sure.”

  “How are you an Abstainer? I mean, that’s a good thing, but . . . I just don’t understand it. You’re d-mat girl. What changed your mind?”

  You did. She shook her head, unready to talk about that with him just yet.

  “Tell me about the rips, first,” she said. “How does all that work? And how did you know where I was?”

  “I followed the glitches.” His fringe fell back down over his eyes. “I could hear your voice, even down here, underground. No one else could, but I knew I wasn’t imagining things. I assumed that it was because we had been . . . connected . . . outside the Yard.”

  “What was I saying?”

  He blushed again. “Stuff I’d never actually heard you say. Doesn’t matter.”

  She thought maybe it did matter, very much, but let him move on.

  “It was like you were calling me. I felt that if I concentrated hard enough, I’d go right to you, wherever you were. And I did, kind of. Lucky I brought bikes with me, in case you weren’t alone. I didn’t know there’d be two of you.”

  Clair didn’t want to get stuck on that point. “I thought Q must have told you.”

  “I haven’t heard from her at all.”

  “She’s been weird. I’m not sure why.” Clair tugged her bottom lip down. “Go on.”

  “Yeah, well, when I told Dad I was going to get you, he freaked, of course. But I’m tired of him and his bullshit. Just because we’re together again doesn’t mean he gets to order me around.” Jesse’s brow knitted, and for a moment he looked like his father. “So I went.”

  “How?” she said. “That part I still don’t get. How exactly do you go anywhere without d-mat?”

  “It was Theo and Cashile who figured it out. When they woke up in the Yard, they were out in the middle of nowhere, where they’d been captured. They tried to follow the road back to the cache at Escalon—where we picked up the electrobikes back at the beginning, remember?—but they started going in circles, like people do here. They panicked and headed cross-country and went through a gate leading from one field to another. That’s important. Also, Theo still had one of the pistols on her from the cache, which acted as an anchor. The world ripped, and there she was. Just like that. It freaked her out, of course, but when similar things started happening to other people, we guessed what was going on.”

  “What is going on?”

  “It’s like . . . if you clearly remember somewhere . . . and if you can find something like a doorway or, or even a window . . . to act as a kind of symbol, I guess . . . then sometimes you’ll go exactly where you need to go. Like the Yard reads what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it, and . . . makes it happen. That’s what we did when I picked you up in Harmony.”

  Clair stared at him. “The Yard makes it happen?”

  “It sounds like magic, doesn’t it?” His eyes were delighted even if his expression was serious. “But this place is a simulation, so information is the same thing as matter, with its own extra rules. The Yard sometimes makes real things that you think should be real. That’s why I asked you to think about Dad when we were trying to get here; that extra connection brought us to him, even though the dupes didn’t want us to go and were trying to hold us back their own way.”

  “And you’re okay with this?”

  “Well, it’s not the same thing as d-mat, is it? No one’s taking us apart. We’re moved as one piece, instantaneously. And even if we weren’t, it’s like Dad says: the damage has already been done.”

  “As in, he’s already been copied, so what difference does it make?”

  “I guess so.” Jesse shrugged. “At some point we have to take it on faith that something that feels real is actually real. As long as I don’t have to use d-mat again, I can live with it.”

  Clair bit her tongue on the knowledge that her version of him had used d-mat outside, before he had died. Willingly and unwillingly. She didn’t think he would want to know that yet.

  Raised voices came from the other side of the cave. Clair peered out of their niche, conscious of Jesse moving closer to do the same.

  Her friends were arguing. She figured she’d better do something about that.

  “Wait,” said Jesse, before she could leave. “You never said what became of me. Out there.”

  Another subject she had deliberately avoided.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I think I need to,” he said, “particularly if he’s, you know, still on the scene.”

  “What?”

  “Well, there’re two of you. Why can’t there be two of me, too?”

  That would make things so much easier, she thought. Or harder in different ways.

  “Clair One doesn’t remember you like I do,” Clair said, trying not to sound too harsh. “None of that has happened for her. None of . . . us. But if you want to take your chances—”

  “No,” he said. “I like this version of you better, and not just because you want to kiss me.” A smile flickered across his features. “But at the same time . . . I don’t want to get hurt. What if he shows up one day? Better to let me down now, don’t you think?”

  She swallowed. “He’s not going to show up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem really sure.”

  It never got easy, telling the people she loved that they had died. With Jesse she didn’t need words.

  His face fell. “What happened to him?”

  “He was trying to stop Wallace. That’s all you need to know.”

  “No, I mean what happened to him . . . in general. . . . What am I missing?”

  She couldn’t break away from his wounded stare. They were both agonizing over the same thing. But what could she say? You saw a dupe of your mother being shot at the muster. You accidentally destroyed the world. You loved me, and I never got to tell you that I loved you back.

  This wasn’t something she could fix, no matter how much both of them wanted it to be.

  “You’re not missing anything,” she said. “Ju
st be yourself. How can that go wrong?”

  [15]

  * * *

  “EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS is wrong,” Clair One shouted. “You can’t make me stay here. I’m not a prisoner!”

  The disagreement between her friends had blossomed into a full-on argument. By nature, Clair didn’t like confrontation or anger, but when pushed too far and there were no other options . . . giving in wasn’t her style.

  Together she and Jesse hurried over to where the others were sitting in the lee of a pile of boulders that had fallen from the limestone ceiling. Clair One was standing with fists clenched, the echoes of her cry still flying around them. Ronnie and Zep stared up at her in shock, their mouths open in almost identical expressions. Tash reached one hand out from under her blanket to pull her back down, but Clair One yanked furiously away.

  “What’s wrong?” Clair asked, coming up to them with her hands tucked nonaggressively, she hoped, behind her back.

  “Stay out of this,” seethed Clair One. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “If it concerns you, it concerns me.”

  “Why? Because I’m you? I’m not you. I’m nothing like you. I would never be an Abstainer. I would never date him. I wouldn’t break d-mat or destroy the world or kill anyone, ever. Whoever you are, I want you to stay the hell away from me!”

  Clair didn’t back down, but she didn’t raise her voice, either, although it took considerable effort.

  “You’re not me,” she said. “That’s right. But you became me, and I’m not your enemy now. I’m certainly not keeping you here by force. If you choose to leave, go right ahead. No one will stop you, if that’s what you really want.”

  “Listen to her, Clair,” said Libby to Clair One. “She’s making sense. You always make sense, even when you’re being an idiot.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Clair One said to Libby, looking betrayed. “I’m trying to look after us. All of us, including me. I don’t want to become her.”

  “Well, if I’d had a choice,” said Clair, “I might have felt the same. But here I am. You’re stuck with me.”

  “Not if I leave.”

  “If you leave, I’ll have to go with you.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. Because you need me out there. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Ask Kari, if you don’t believe me.” Clair looked around for the PK. “Where is she, by the way?”

  “Talking to Señor Linwood about something they didn’t share with us,” said Zep.

  “Dad’s like that,” said Jesse with a roll of his eyes.

  “Come on, Clair,” Tash said to Clair One. “If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”

  Clair One simmered for a moment, then thought of something. “That’s a good point. And that’s why I think we should split up.”

  “Give it a rest,” said Libby.

  “No, think about it. She should trust me. We need information about Wallace that we won’t find hiding down here. There must be someone out there who knows where he and the exit are, and I volunteer to go looking for them. Does anyone want to come with me?”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” said Ronnie. “I’ll go.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” said Jesse. “The hollowmen—”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Clair One cut him off. “What about you, Zep? Are you in or out?”

  He looked from Clair to Clair One to Libby. “In. You, Libs?”

  “No way,” she said. “But I won’t stop you from running off with your new girlfriend. Just don’t expect me to be waiting for you when you get back.”

  That dropped like a bomb into the conversation. Clair One, Libby, and Zep stared at one another with an entirely new, silent intensity that only Clair truly understood. And Jesse, to a lesser extent. She had told him some of it before his pattern had been copied into the Yard.

  “Uh, if you’re talking about me . . . ,” Ronnie started to say.

  “We’re not,” said Libby. “You’re not idiot enough to fall for your best friend’s boyfriend.”

  Clair, through pangs of shame that might possibly never leave her, could only admire how Libby had defused the situation—by moving everyone from one crisis to another, distracting them from the almost certainly disastrous plan of splitting up.

  “Libby—” Clair One started to say.

  “Save it. The time for that conversation isn’t now. You’re right about one thing, though. A little space is just what we all need to get our heads straight, so I’ll get the ball rolling.”

  Libby gathered up her blanket and went to sit elsewhere in the cave. Tash hesitated, then went after her, but not before giving Zep an I’m-doing-your-job-for-you look. Clair One stared after them for a moment with her mouth firmly set, then picked up her blanket and went in the opposite direction. She didn’t look at Clair. She didn’t look at anyone.

  Clair knew that mood. Her mother had called it the Brooding Bear when Clair was small, and still occasionally did so, to annoy her.

  Zep started to go after Clair One, but Ronnie caught his arm.

  “You must be joking,” she said. “Keep your head down until someone tells you otherwise. I’ll go.”

  Clair watched her leave with gratitude. Ronnie was a good friend, and so was Tash. In the real world, she hadn’t appreciated just how good until almost too late.

  “Did you tell her?”

  Zep’s question brought her out of her memories.

  “What? Oh, you mean Libby. No. She figured it out. We were stupid to keep it from her.”

  “Is that what you did? You and, uh, your Zep?”

  “He wasn’t my Zep . . . but yes, that’s what we did and it was the worst thing ever. Remember that, next time you’re in this position.”

  “You think there’ll be a next time?”

  “God yes. You’ve got all the staying power of a butterfly.”

  “What I mean is . . . you’re absolutely sure we’re not going to die in here?”

  Perhaps she was being too hard on him.

  “I don’t plan on it.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed, struggling to reassure both of them. She hadn’t realized that saving her friends from each other would be so difficult or so time-consuming. It was exhausting. “Just try to rest. Later we’ll find a fabber and get us some better clothes. You need something practical and I need something that doesn’t smell like ass. Then we’ll make plans. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He flashed a grin up at her. “Three’s company. I get it.”

  Clair had momentarily forgotten Jesse.

  “I don’t know about him,” she said, “but I’m going to get some sleep.”

  Jesse took the hint gracefully. He understood when to give her space. If anything, he was too good at it. They were a pair, in that sense. If circumstances hadn’t thrown them together, nothing might ever have happened between them. And nothing might ever happen now, if she wasn’t careful.

  “I hope that’s okay,” she said, reaching out to take his hand.

  “Of course.” He smiled and blew her a kiss, something he had never done in the real world. It was a start, she told herself. Not an ending.

  [16]

  * * *

  EVERYTHING WAS QUIET in the caves apart from a low murmur of conversation from the members of WHOLE that Clair couldn’t overhear. She found a blanket and a spot that wasn’t too cold or damp, and made herself as comfortable as she could on the cold stone with her parka zipped up tight. From behind her, under a ceiling covered with twisting rock straws, came a steady drip of water, like the ticking of a crystalline clock. She concentrated on that rather than on Clair One, Q, and Wallace—or her mother, or Billie, or any living person who might or might not be in the Yard and need saving right now. Don’t think about the exit, she told herself, or reconnecting with the outside, or rebuilding everything that is currently only numbers. She would deal with that later, when she had gotten some sleep. Out of the ashes, she swore, a phoenix would be born. But the fear rema
ined: unless Wallace finds me first . . .

  When she slept, she dreamed of rising oceans and clouds of ash. Lightning struck all around the horizon, creating a flickering electric cage. She was afraid of the light. It was alive somehow, and yet the sound it made was a hissing crackling noise utterly unlike anything natural. If it touched her, she knew, she would become like it and never be able to turn back. The thought terrified her so much she couldn’t breathe.

  A rough hand shook her awake.

  “Clair.”

  She blinked and sat up, flinging the blanket from her. Dylan Linwood was bending over her. Dupes. She needed to run.

  Only it was Dylan Linwood for real, this time, not Nobody.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Your pet peeker wants to talk to you.”

  “Wallace hasn’t found us?”

  “No.”

  Clair wiped sleep from her eyes. It was hard getting her thoughts in a line, perhaps because she had been asleep less than an hour. Peeker. PK. Kari. “What does she want to talk about?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Maybe she had found the exit, or Wallace, or both. Dylan held out a hand and Clair let herself be pulled up. His palms were callused from a long life of making everything he needed, instead of using a fabber like an ordinary person. That could be her one day, she thought, depending on what kind of Abstainer she would be. She hadn’t considered the finer details of her pledge. Maybe just giving up d-mat would be enough. . . .

  Jesse was standing behind his father. His hand was much softer than Dylan’s. He took her along the ramp that led to the cave entrance. Immediately outside, waiting silently in the night air, they found Aunt Arabelle in her wheelchair, reading an old novel called Decompression. Ronnie had made Clair read it once; it was about a man trapped deep underground by a d-mat outage, which seemed almost too appropriate.

  The old woman looked up as they emerged, then indicated the hall’s rear entrance with a tilt of her head.

  “I don’t think I need remind you,” she said, “that just one electronic peep could bring the hounds of hell howling down on us in an instant.”