“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 –
41
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.”