“What,” Seth said, “and then secretly find out she’s got a heart of gold and actually fall in love with her and then she dumps you when she finds out about the bet but you prove yourself to her by standing outside her house in the rain playing her your special song and on prom night you share a dance that reminds not just the school but the entire wounded world what love really means?”
He stopped because they were all looking at him.
“Damn, Seth,” Monica said admiringly. “‘The entire wounded world.’ I’m putting that in my next paper for Edson.”
Seth crossed his arms. “I’m just saying a bet over Gudmund ha**ng s*x with Chiara Leithauser sounds like some piece of shit teenage movie none of us would watch in a million years.”
“Truer words, never spoken,” Gudmund said, standing up from the grass. “She doesn’t deserve me, anyway.”
“You’re right,” Monica said. “Dating the best-looking, richest, and most popular guy in school must be punishment enough.”
H made a scoffing sound. “Blake Woodrow isn’t that good-looking.”
They all stared at him again. “I am so sick of you guys doing that!” he said. “Not everything I say is stupid. Blake Woodrow has a girl’s haircut and the forehead of a caveman.”
There was another pause before Monica nodded. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that.”
“And Gudmund could totally get her if he wanted,” H said, getting up to join the rest of them.
“Thanks, man,” Gudmund said. “From you that’s almost a compliment.”
“But you’re not even going to try?” H said hopefully.
Monica hit him again. “That’s enough. I may hate her, but she’s not a prostitute. Quit talking about her like she’s someone you can just take off a shelf.” She looked at Gudmund. “Even you.”
“I wasn’t serious, you feminist,” Gudmund said, smiling. “I only said it was possible. If I wanted to.”
Monica stuck her tongue out at him before setting off across the field and onto the track, H on her heels, both of them trying to look as if they’d been running for the past half hour.
Gudmund glanced at Seth, who was watching him seriously. “You don’t think I could?”
“Monica would be so jealous she’d probably choke to death,” Seth said as they started running back across the field, too.
Gudmund shook his head. “Nah, Monica and I are like brother and sister.”
“You flirt that much with your sister? She wants you so bad, it’s like she’s got a permanent toothache.”
“Jeez, are you sure she’s the jealous one, Sethy?” Gudmund punched Seth playfully on the shoulder. “Homo,” he said.
But he said it with a grin.
They ran toward the now-shouting Coach Goodall and –
15
Seth snaps his head up.
The world is still the same. The sun still in the same place. The park still wild beneath him. It doesn’t even feel like he dozed off.
He groans. Are they going to come every time he closes his eyes? All the things that are most painful in their different ways, whether because they’re too bad or because they’re too good?
Hell, he reminds himself. This is hell. Why wouldn’t it suck?
He gathers his stuff and pushes the cart back toward the High Street, beginning to feel tired again.
“This is stupid,” he says, sweating profusely under the insulated clothes, the backpack on his shoulders, and the weight of the cans in the cart. He stops by the doors of the supermarket, swaps the spaghetti-stained T-shirt for a fresh one, then unloads half the cans onto the ground to come back for later.
He wipes the sweat from his brow and takes another drink of water. Nothing has moved down the High Street. The glass from where he broke into the outdoor store is still lying there, glinting in the sun. The bats have flown off to who knows where. It’s all just weeds and silence.
Lots and lots and lots of silence.
He feels it again. A strangeness. A threat. Something not right with this place beyond all that’s so obviously wrong.
He thinks again about the prison. It sits out there, unseen, like it’s waiting for him. A huge, heavy thing, almost like it has a gravity all its own, almost like it’s pulling at him to –
Maybe he’ll take the food back to the house now.
Yeah, maybe that’s what he’ll do.
He grows more and more tired as he pushes the cart back down the main road, unreasonably so, like he’s getting over being really sick. By the time he makes it to the sinkhole – the fox and her kits long gone – he feels like he’s run a marathon and has to stop and take in more water.
He turns down his own street. The cart grows heavier as he approaches his front path, and as much as he doesn’t feel like he should just leave it on the sidewalk, he’s too tired to bring it all in just now. He takes his backpack, the torch, and a couple cans of food and heads into the house.
The door swings open again under his touch, and he holds up the torch, halfheartedly ready to swing it should he meet anyone who needs clobbering. The hallway is still shadowy, and the light from the torch guides his way in. As he heads down the hall, he thinks he might just heat up some custard next, if it’s still good in these cans. He hasn’t had custard since –
He freezes.
The torch has caught the stairs. It’s the first time he’s properly looked at them, the first time a proper light has been on them, and he sees –
Footprints.
In the dust coming down the stairs.
He’s not alone. There’s somebody else here.
He backs up so quickly his new pack catches the door, shutting it behind him, and for a moment he panics at being trapped inside with whoever it is. He scrambles around and gets the door open, running back down the front steps, dropping the cans of custard, looking behind him to ward off whoever might be there –
He stops by the shopping cart, panting heavily, holding the torch out like a club, shaking with adrenaline, ready to fight.
But there’s no one.
No one comes running out after him. No one attacks him. No sound at all from inside the house.
“Hey!” he calls. “I know you’re in there!” He grips the torch even tighter. “Who’s there? Who is it?”
And again, nothing.