More Than This (24 page)

“I never said –”

“Well, we can’t. Take my word for it. Me and my mama, God, we sounded like two lonely moose.” She laughs to herself. “Doesn’t matter, though, does it? When it’s just you and your mama.”

Seth stretches out his legs. “But you say all that wasn’t real.”

“You’re purposely misunderstanding,” she says, sounding frustrated. “I was there. My mama was there. Even if we were fast asleep in different places. It was real. If it hadn’t been real, why didn’t we sing beautifully?”

“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Something someone I once knew used to say.”

She looks at him closely, too closely. “You had someone. Someone you loved.”

“None of your business.”

“And you’re wondering if it was real. You’re wondering if you really knew . . .
him,
I’m guessing?”

Seth says nothing. Then he says, “Gudmund.”

“Good Man? That some kind of nickname?”

“Gud
mund.
It’s Norwegian.”

“Yeah, okay, so you’re wondering if Norwegian Gudmund was real, aren’t you? You’re wondering if all those wonderful times really happened. If you were really there. If
he
was really there.”

Seth’s mind goes again to the smell of Gudmund on his fingertips. To the tapping of Gudmund’s fingers on his chest. To the kiss from those pictures, the pictures that everyone saw –

“He was,” Seth says. “He had to be.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Regine says. “That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it? They have to be, or where does that leave us?”

It’s grown darker, even in the short time they’ve spoken, the shadows in the store bleeding out to cover them.

“Here’s what I think,” Regine says, lighting a cigarette. “I think I’m the only real thing I’ve got, except maybe Tommy. Even here, in this place, because who’s to say
this
isn’t some simulation, too, some other level we’ll wake up from. But wherever I am, whatever this world is, I’ve just got to be sure I’m me and that’s what’s real.” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Know yourself and go in swinging. If it hurts when you hit it, it might be real, too.”

“It hurt when you hit
me.
”

“That’s interesting,” Regine says, reaching above her to the counter, “because I didn’t feel a thing.” She flicks the lighter on to show him the piece of paper she’s brought down. “I’ve made a map back to where Tommy and I are staying.”

“But aren’t we –”

“It’s so you can find your way back to us after you go to the prison.”

“Don’t tell Tommy,” she says, lowering her voice. “Tell him you’re going back to your house to change clothes and you’ll join us later.” She looks at him sternly. “I mean it.”

“I believe you.”

He takes the map from her. He recognizes a road, peeling away from this side of the train tracks and heading north. There’s an X drawn on a side street and a number written below it for the address.

“You’ve got to add three to everything,” Regine says. “It’s actually three streets more north than that one and for the real address you add three to the first digit and three to the second. If you get caught, I don’t want it to find us.”

“What about the prison?” he asks. “The main entrance is way on the other side from my house.”

“You can’t get in that way,” Regine says. “It’s boarded and locked up like you wouldn’t believe, like they didn’t want anyone to get in or out no matter what happened. Which is probably true, I guess. What you want to do is –”

“What is that?” Tomasz’s voice comes to them out of the darkness, his tone suspicious.

“Map back to your house,” Seth says quickly.

“Why are you not coming with us?” The flicker from the lighter is enough to reflect his obvious worry back at them.

“If you didn’t burn my house down, I need to change clothes,” Seth says, and mimes smelling his armpit.

“Then why are we not coming with
you
? There is safety in numerals.”

“Numbers,” Seth says. “Safety in numbers.”

“Yes,” Tomasz frowns, “because grammatical rightness is exactly what we are talking about at the present moment.”

“I want to get back,” Regine says. “Too risky hanging around, all of us outside.”

“But
he
will risk it.”

“That’s his choice,” Regine says, standing up.

“
I
do not choose this,” Tomasz says. He opens and closes his hands into stubby little fists, the same way Owen used to when he was nervous about something, Seth remembers. Owen would stand there, impossibly vulnerable, so that you either wanted to pick him up and tell him everything was going to be okay or start slapping him for being so ridiculously available for harm.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Seth says, then he says. “I promise.”

“Well,” Tomasz says, perhaps unconvinced. “That is good.” He looks at Regine. “We should take supplies. Water. And food. And toilet paper. I found birthday candles, also. For when we are having birthdays.”

There’s a beat as they both stare at him.

“What?” he says. “I like birthdays.”

“How old
are
you both, actually?” Seth asks, curious.

Regine shrugs. “Before I woke up, I was seventeen. Who knows how old I really am? If time is even the same here as there.”

“Really?” Seth asks. “You don’t think –”

“No way of knowing one way or the other.”

“I am fourteen!” Tomasz says.

Seth and Regine look down on the mighty, mighty shortness of him and laugh out loud.

“I
am,
” Tomasz insists.

“Yeah,” Regine says, “and you were struck by lightning and Poland is paved with gold and chocolate. It’s time to go.”

Regine and Tomasz take bags from the cash registers and fill them with what supplies they can carry, then they all head back out onto the High Street. There’s still no sound of the engine, but they walk cautiously into what is now almost full night.

“Will you be able to find us in the dark?” Tomasz says, sounding worried. “We will leave a candle burning outside –”

“No, we will
not,
” Regine says. “He’ll find it, don’t worry.”

“I still do not see why we cannot wait for him –”

“I just need time to gather my stuff,” Seth says. “Some of it’s private. It might take a while.”

“But still –”

“Sweet Jesus, Tommy,” Regine snaps. “He probably just wants to wank again in the last moment of privacy you’ll ever give him.”

Tomasz looks at him, astonished. “This is true?”

Seth can see Regine laughing silently in the moonlight. “I have a brother, Tomasz,” he says. “Wherever he is now, we grew up in that house. Before we moved to America.”

Regine has stopped laughing, and Seth can see her light another cigarette, pretending not to listen.

“While we lived there, something bad happened to him,” Seth says. “Something that made him different, not right. And in an important way, it was my fault.”

“It was?” Tomasz whispers, his eyes wide.

Seth glances down the street. The sinkhole’s ahead of them, his own road next to it. He’s only intended to mollify Tomasz, but the truth of his words cuts sharper than he expects. “Whatever this place is, real or not, my house is dangerous because of how close it is to the prison. And if I’m not coming back, I want to say good-bye to it.” He looks at Regine. “I want to say good-bye to the brother I had there before all the bad stuff happened.”

“And this needs to be done privately, yes, I see,” Tomasz says, nodding gravely.

Seth smiles, despite himself. “You remind me of him. You’re like a version of what he might have been. If he was Polish.”

“I thought you were going to say he was like the version of your brother that wasn’t right,” Regine says, taking another puff of smoke.

“That is
not
nice,” Tomasz says. “For myriad reasons.”

“We’re going to get the bikes,” Regine says, “so we’ll see you tonight, yes?”

“I’ll try not to be long, but don’t worry if I –”

He nearly falls backward onto the sidewalk as Tomasz lunges into him with a hug. “Be safe, Mr. Seth,” Tomasz says, his voice muffled against Seth’s shirt. “Do not let death get you.”

Seth’s hand hovers over the springy mess that is Tomasz’s hair. “I’ll be careful.”

“Leave him be,” Regine says. Tomasz backs away, letting Regine approach. “I’m not going to hug you,” she says.

“I’m okay with that,” Seth says.

“I wasn’t asking for your approval.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t even bother with the main entrance. That’s what I was going to tell you earlier. Follow the train tracks down to the far side of the prison. You’ll see a big section where the walls have fallen in.”

“Thanks,” Seth whispers back.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” Regine says. “You’re not going to find whatever it is you’re looking for and you’re going to get yourself killed in the process.”

He grins at her. “Nice to know I’ll be missed.”

She doesn’t grin back.

“What are you two talking about?” Tomasz says.

“Nothing,” Regine says, then lowers her voice again. “Just think about maybe keeping your promise to Tommy.”

Seth swallows. “I’ll think about it.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, turning away from him. “Nice knowing ya.”

Tomasz waves happily again in the moonlight, but Regine doesn’t look back as they disappear into the darkness.

“Nice knowing you, too,” Seth says to himself.

Then turns and starts walking toward the sinkhole.

Walking toward his home.

The van is gone from the front of his house. From where Seth is hiding down the road, he can see the ruts it made in the mud as it turned around and drove away. He waits, but nothing moves, not even a cloud passing in front of the moon in the newly clear sky, the weather changing so quickly it’s like it’s on fast forward.

Somewhere out there, many streets away, Regine and Tomasz are riding northward, their bikes overladen with food and supplies. He takes a moment to wish for their safety. And the wish feels like as much of a prayer as this place can allow.

He moves out into the street, slowly, cautiously, trying to see any sign of the van or the Driver lying in wait, but nothing leaps out at him as he goes. The house looks unchanged as he approaches, aside from the shattered glass of the front window. It’s too dark to see through the broken blinds, and he curses himself for not taking one of Tomasz’s birthday candles to light. He’ll have to go pawing around in the dark for his lantern, and who knows how much damage the fire caused before the rain stopped it? There might be no lantern left to find, no clothes to change into.

No trace of the stuff left over from his family.

What
is
that stuff, anyway?
he wonders, considering Regine’s explanation of everything. Is it his memories reconstructing a place or is it actually the same physical house from when his family moved to America?

Or when they
chose to believe
they moved to America, when in fact they just lay down in sleek black coffins and welcomed a new version of what was real?

He remembers the move, though, the stress and anxiety of it. Owen hadn’t been out of hospital very long and was still deep in rehab to get his motor skills functioning properly. The doctors were always hesitant to say how much was damage from his injuries and how much was psychological trauma, but his mother had been insistent on a change. It wasn’t too soon, she’d said, and even if it was, surely a new environment with entirely new stimuli – and entirely new doctors, for that matter, who weren’t so bloody useless – could only help her younger son. Plus, she couldn’t stand living in this house for
one moment longer.

Seth’s father had come up with a surprising solution. A small liberal-arts college on the dark, wet coast of Washington, where he’d once spent a semester as a young visiting professor, had answered an inquiry and said yes, as a matter of fact, they
did
have a place for him to teach, should he want. It was even less money than he made in England, but the college was so desperate for staff, they’d provide a housing stipend and moving expenses.

Seth’s mother hadn’t hesitated, not even at the remote location, two hours’ drive from the nearest cities. She’d started packing boxes before his father had even accepted the job, and they were gone from England in a bewildering tornado of a month, moving to Halfmarket, a place that may not have been under a permanent winter’s night but sure felt that way.

Seth shakes his head now, rejecting the idea that the whole experience had somehow just been online. His mum had been too angry about everything, his father too unhappy, Owen too injured, and Seth too ignored. If it was all fake or programmed or whatever the hell it was, why wouldn’t they be better? Why wouldn’t they be happier?

No, it didn’t make sense.

Well, okay, it made
more
sense than any other explanation so far, but still. The world might have done that, gone online to forget itself, but his parents? They wouldn’t have chosen that. Seth sure as hell wouldn’t have chosen those things to happen to him.