There was a knock at the door and Jay looked up. Jeremy stood in the doorway, wearing a baseball hat with blotches of white paint on his face.
“Hey.” He nodded.
Jay held up the yearbook. “It’s a great reference, if you need it.”
Things had changed between him and Jeremy. Jeremy hadn’t brought up what had happened between them. He seemed to take it for granted that he wasn’t able to fully understand. But his attitude toward Jay had shifted. Jay wouldn’t call him friendly, but . . . respectful? Without talking about it, he and Jay had somehow divvied up the responsibility of rebuilding Bickleton. Jeremy was at the forefront of the deletion, working with the Johns to remember what had gone where, checking progress, returning to Jay to report.
Jeremy nodded at the yearbook. “Yeah, good call. Just so you know, the far wall of A-Court is missing some lockers.”
“You sure? Colin just went down there and double-checked everything.”
Jeremy grunted. “My locker’s missing.”
Jay nodded. “Gotcha. Okay, well, if you want to draw where it was, that’d be helpful.”
Jeremy nodded and disappeared. Jay felt his body relax. Rebuilding Bickleton was going to take a long time. He threw the yearbook back in the box, kicked the box under the table, and walked out of C-Court. He didn’t stop until he was in the parking lot.
He felt hollow. The feeling had been with him for the last week. For all the effort he was pouring into Bickleton’s rebuilding, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that none of it really mattered.
And now, after his conversation with Liz, it was there even stronger. He hadn’t had time to realize it in the days leading up to prom, but he loved her. She was different from everyone else he’d ever met. She was real, like he had once been. He missed her gallows humor, her ability to call Bickleton out for what it really was.
He walked down Simmons Road, lost in thought. Up ahead, the road blurred into gray as their patch of school faded into the Great Deletion. He heard footsteps on the pavement and looked up.
Impossible, he thought.
Liz strode down the road toward him. Not the old Liz he’d just spoken to through the video stream. Young Liz. The Liz he remembered. Her dark hair swayed as she walked. There was a little bit of curl to it, like he’d seen at prom. She wore a black bomber jacket, ripped jeans, a white T-shirt, and sunglasses. And she was smiling.
Jay’s heart leapt up in his chest. “What are you doing here?!”
She skipped forward. “Surprised?”
“Well, yeah, I saw you leave.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t see me finish.”
“Finish what?”
She stopped a few feet away from him. “The upload.”
Jay remembered what Liz had said in the video feed. It’s another gift. He shook his head.
“Wait, you’re an upload? You’re here, like, for good?”
Liz nodded. “It wasn’t an easy decision. But I will admit, some part of me was curious what you guys were up to. Some part of me”—she grimaced—“missed being back here. And now, some part of me gets to stay.”
Jay instinctively leapt forward and wrapped her in a hug. Liz hugged him back and laughed.
“It’s good to see you, too! But,” she continued playfully, pushing him back, “I want in on the goods, ’kay? Seat at the table and all that. Should’ve negotiated those terms before coming back, really.” She gestured to two Johns hammering plywood on the roof of C-Court. “How do I get in on the rebuilding? Without, ya know, all the hammers.”
Jay was beaming at Liz, shaking his head in disbelief. He felt happier than he’d been since she’d asked him to prom. He followed her gaze back to the Johns.
“Oh yeah, that. I don’t think you’ll find it very exciting. Everyone here voted for things to go back to the way they were.”
“The way things were? But that way sucked!” Liz frowned. “What did Colin and Stevie say?”
Jay shrugged. “Them, too. I guess it’s the curse of not being an upload.”
“Well, that’s not very fun.”
“Tell me about it.” Then he leaned in conspiratorially. “But can you keep a secret?”
“Like the secret I kept that we’re all living in a video game? The one where I didn’t tell you or anyone else?”
“Fair enough.” Jay whispered. “I’ve been working on something.”
Liz tilted her sunglasses down. “Do tell.”
“Well, I get up pretty early these days. Before anyone else. And I’ve been working in The Build. There’s a little patch of land, see, far outside where the map used to end, and I’ve been . . .” He trailed off.
“You’ve been . . . ?”
Jay turned back to the C-Court parking lot. He’d allowed himself a brand-new blue Miata. It now sat next to Jeremy’s red one.
“Do you want to see it?”
Liz glanced back at the high school. “So they’re just rebuilding the school?”
Jay nodded.
“So I’ve already seen that.” Liz shrugged. “Let’s go see your thing!”
The warmth grew in Jay’s stomach and spread up through his body. He grinned. At last, there was someone who understood. Before he could even think, he reached for Liz’s hand, but then jerked it away, hesitating. Liz laughed, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him forward, and then they were both running through the parking lot.
“Come on!”
They leapt through the doors of the Miata, and Jay turned the ignition. The car shot down Simmons Road, toward the gray blankness that marked Bickleton’s edge.
“Wooo!” Liz screamed at the sun and the trees. “You got any tunes?”
“Here, let’s see—”
Jay flipped on the radio and fiddled with the knob. Suddenly, he caught a signal, and then a familiar voice drawled through the speakers.
“Hello, boys and girls . . . this is . . . Marvelous Mark—”
A look of horror crossed Liz’s face. Jay slowed the car.
“It can’t be—”
The voice continued. “. . . excited to bring you what will undoubtedly be the album of the summer. This is Lush singing the song ‘Scarlet.’”
Thrashing guitars riffed out a pop melody. Jay’s fingers tapped along on his steering wheel despite himself.
“How is that—?”
“He must have recorded them in advance? Right?”
The Miata bumped over the edge of Simmons Road and onto the flat expanse of gray canvas. Liz turned to watch the small patch of Bickleton recede in the distance, and her voice rose.
“Where did you say we were going?”
* * *
Acknowledgments
I started this project about a decade ago. Back then, it was called Awesome Movie and it followed a group of seventh graders who found a magic VCR that brought eighties movie clichés to life. Between first and last draft, Ready Player One, The Lego Movie, and Free Guy all saw releases. Genre-mashing became the norm, and I was forced to change course to stay fresh. Suffice to say, this book has taken a long time, and I owe many thanks.
Thanks to Michael Ecker and my brother for helping me brainstorm early on. To Tyler Shortt, Scott Davis, Sean Garcia, and Hanna Davis for fighting ferociously to see me win the Inkshares Nerdist competition. To Clete Smith for pinch-hitting in the editorial process. To Daniel Wilson for bringing me into your writers’ group and helping me see myself as an author. To Meg Harvey, my wife, the most capable person I’ve ever met, for her patience through all the mornings I was absent from the family breakfast table. You got me into this mess: you also helped me find my way back out.
Thanks to all my own high school dickheads. Because of you, I finally settled on small-town Washington as the setting. It was my highest hope in writing this book that I might free myself from languishing
resentment before I became my own Hal Banksman. You inspire me with your awfulness.
Inkshares
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While we’ve published books by established writers like Big Fish author Daniel Wallace and Star Wars: Rogue One scribe Gary Whitta, our aim remains surfacing and developing the new author voices of tomorrow.
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