More Than This (23 page)

They eat in grumpy silence for a few minutes.

“So what about this?” Seth says, thinking. “If the whole world is online, how did dying make us wake up here? Wouldn’t we just reset or something?”

“I don’t know,” Regine says again, “but people still died there, didn’t they? My Auntie Genevieve died of pancreatic cancer. And my father . . .” She clears her throat. “But if it was meant to be real,
so
real we’d forget we ever lived anywhere else, then even death would have to work, wouldn’t it? Maybe our brains couldn’t accept it otherwise. You die online, you die for real, because that’s life.”

“But
we
didn’t die for real.” Seth’s getting angry again, thinking about what happened to Owen, what happened with Gudmund, what happened to
him.
“And why would we do that anyway? Why would we live in a world where that shit still happens? If we were supposedly in a place so perfect we forgot we moved there –”

“Don’t look at me. My mother married my bastard of a stepfather in that perfect world, so I have no idea.” Her hand goes unconsciously to the back of her neck. “What I do know is that if you give a human being a chance to be stupid and violent, then they’re going to take it, every time. No matter where they are.”

“But how did we end up here, then?” Seth persists. “How come this world isn’t filled with people who died and just woke up?”

“We were supposed to die in this world, too, I think. But I fell down the stairs and hit my head in a certain spot. You drowned and hit
your
head in the exact
same
spot. Tommy –” she looks down at him, still sleeping –“well, Tommy says he got struck by lightning, but I’m guessing that whatever it was is something he doesn’t want to remember, so fair enough, but still, the same spot. Some malfunction right at the point of connection that overloads the system and instead of killing us, disconnects us.” She shrugs, suddenly out of energy. “Or that’s what we think anyway.”

She runs her hand lightly over Tomasz’s wild hair. “It was his idea, actually, even though he keeps saying he doesn’t believe it. Lots of good guesses in that funny little head.” Tomasz presses himself closer against her, sleeping on.

“But if everything that happened to us isn’t real,” Seth says, “if everything we know was just some online simulation –”

“Oh, it was real, all right,” she says. “We lived it; we were there. If you go through something and put up with it even if you want to get away from it more than anything in the whole world, then it was definitely bloody real.”

Seth thinks back to Gudmund, thinks back to the smell of him, the
feel
of him. Thinks back to everything that happened this past year, good and bad and very, very bad indeed. Thinks back to what happened to Owen, to the frantic days when he was missing, to every small bit of punishment he received from his mum and dad in the years that followed.

It sure
felt
real. But if it was all somehow simulated, how could it have been?

And if he was here, right now, where was Gudmund?

“We shouldn’t go back to our house until dark,” Regine says. “We could take turns sleeping, one of us keeping an eye out.”

At the thought of this, Seth feels how tired he is. After staying up nearly all night, after the run, after the adrenaline rush of the day, it suddenly becomes some sort of miracle he’s even managing to keep his eyes open.

“All right,” he says. “But when I wake up –”

“When you wake up,” Regine says, “I’ll tell you how to get into the prison.”

“You have to forgive me,” Monica said on his front step before even saying hello. “I didn’t mean it. I was just so angry and –”

Seth stepped out into the cold, closing the door behind him. “What are you talking about?” he said. “What’s going on?”

She looked at him fearfully. Yes, there was no other word for it. She was frightened of what she had to tell him. He felt his stomach turn to ice. “Monica?” he said.

Instead of answering, she looked up into the sky, like help might be found there. Stupidly, Seth found himself looking up, too. It was freezing, had been for the weeks leading up to Christmas, but without any snow falling. The sky was a collection of gray smears, like the snow was too angry to fall.

He looked back at Monica to find her crying.

And he knew.

Because it could only be one thing, couldn’t it? It could only mean that the one good thing in his life was about to end. All that was left was finding out exactly how it was going to happen.

“You and Gudmund,” she said quietly, her nose running in the cold air, her breath coming out over her scarf in white puffs. “You and fucking Gudmund.”

She looked almost childlike in her ultra-thick winter coat and knitted hat with the red reindeer across it that she’d worn in cold weather from when it was far too big on her growing head until now when she didn’t even wear it ironically. It was Monica’s red reindeer hat, as much a part of her as her hair or her laugh.

“It makes sense,” she said. “Looking back. If you’d asked me before, I’d have even wished it.” She smiled at him, her eyes sad. “Wished it for you, Seth. Something that could make you so happy.”

“Monica,” Seth said, his voice barely audible. “Monica, I don’t –”

“Please don’t say it’s not true. Don’t do that. Before everything turns to shit, please don’t pretend it wasn’t a real thing.”

He frowned. “Before everything turns to –”

“Hello, Monica,” his mother’s voice boomed as she came out the front door. Owen clattered out behind her, wrapped up like a mummy, thermos in one hand, clarinet case in the other. “Why are you making her wait out here, Seth?” his mother asked. “You’ll freeze to death.” She smiled at Monica, a smile that disappeared when she saw Monica’s face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Monica said, forcing cheerfulness and wiping her nose with her glove. “Just a winter cold.” She even coughed into her hand.

“All right,” Seth’s mother said, clearly not believing her but using a tone that said she was willing to be fooled. “All the more reason to go inside then. The kettle’s still hot.”

“Hi, Monica!” Owen said cheerfully.

“Hey, Owen,” Monica said.

Owen waved the thermos. “We made hot chocolate.”

“Yeah,” Monica said, forcing a laugh. “You still got some on your mouth there, kiddo.”

Owen just smiled back and didn’t even attempt to wipe the chocolate from his lips.

“Seriously,” Seth’s mother said, pulling Owen toward the car. “Go inside. Much warmer.” She waved as she got into the driver’s seat. “Bye, Monica.”

“Bye, Mrs. Wearing,” Monica said, waving a single glove.

Seth’s mother watched them both with a serious look on her face as she and Owen drove away.

“She calls it a kettle,” Monica said.

“Monica,” Seth said, pulling his arms around himself, and not just because the cold air was cutting straight through his flimsy shirt. “Tell me.”

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?”