by Patrick Ness
He stares at them for a moment. The fences and walls are all still there, with some of the empty spaces between them actually free of all but the sparsest of weeds. He can’t see the prison itself. It’s down in a small valley and behind a row of thick trees and more barbed wire and brick.
But he knows it’s there.
Just the presence of it strikes a weird chord through his stomach. Like it’s watching him back. Watching to see what he’ll do.
Waiting for him to come to it.
He turns away, thinking he’ll see if he can find the allotments from here, find an easy way to get to them. He raises his hand to shield his view from the sun –
And sees that everything on the other side of the tracks – the sports center, the allotment fields, dozens upon dozens of streets and houses stretching to the horizon – has burnt to the ground.
The land slopes down on the other side of the train station, spreading out into the shallowest of valleys with barely perceptible rises several miles to either side. It stretches back and back, street upon street, toward Masons Hill – whose name Seth remembers now – the only real rise for miles around, a wooded lump on the landscape, with one sheer side that falls fifty feet to the road below, a place where youths were routinely rousted for dropping rocks on passing cars.
Everything between the train station and that distant hill is a blackened ruin.
Some blocks are nothing more than ash and rubble, others still have husks of brick, their roofs and doors gone. Even the roads have buckled and bent, in some places indistinguishable from the buildings they separated. There’s a stretch of ground where Seth is pretty sure the sports center was, and he can see what looks like the remnants of a large square hole that could have been its swimming pool, now filled with charcoal and weeds.
Though not as many weeds as the streets behind him, he notices. And not as tall. There are weeds and grasses scattered through the rest of the burn, now that he thinks to look for them, but they’re far scraggier than the ones on his own street, and some of them are just plain dead.
There’s no sign at all of the field where the allotments were. He thinks he can see where his memory tells him it should be, but amongst all the ash and burnt timber and blasted concrete, it could also just be his imagination trying to make it be there.
The destruction stretches on for what must be miles, as far both to the left and right as he can see in the hazy sunshine. The fire – or whatever it was; destruction this big may have even been some kind of bomb – stretches all the way back to Masons Hill, stopping around its base much like it stops at the rise where the train station sits. Too much bare concrete to cross to actually burn down the station.
He’s looking at a wasteland. One that seems as if it might as well go on forever.
It explains all the dust, is the first thing Seth really thinks. The layers upon layers of it, covering nearly everything in the streets behind him. It’s not just dust – it’s ash, dropped from whatever this huge fire was and never cleaned away.
It’s also, in a way that troubles him more than he can really say, a past event. Something caught fire, or was blown up, or whatever happened, and then that fire raged out of control before burning itself out some time later, taking most of this neighborhood with it.
Which means that there was a time before the fire, a time of the fire, and a time after the fire.
He thinks he’s being foolish feeling troubled about this – there are weeds growing everywhere, obviously, and the food didn’t rot in an instant – but those things were just time, time passing in stillness.
But a fire is an event. A fire happens.
And if there was an event, then there was also a was for it to happen in.
“When, though?” Seth says to himself, shielding his eyes from the sun and scanning up and down the ruins.
Then he turns back to his own neighborhood on the other side of the tracks.
What if the fire had happened over there rather than here? What if his own house had burnt down, not all these empty ones of strangers?
Would he have woken up at all?
On the other hand, he thinks, is this my mind trying to tell me something?
Because the blackened ground feels like a barrier, doesn’t it? Feels like a place where hell stops. He’s gone out exploring and reached an area that might as well have a sign on it saying, DO NOT PASS.
The world, this world, suddenly feels a whole lot smaller.
He suddenly doesn’t feel much like exploring anymore today. Silently, he drops his backpack through the window of the bridge and climbs down after it. He heads back down the stairs, taking care to tread quietly when he retrieves the torch so as not to disturb that huge, alien boar from the train.
Then he shoves his hands in his pockets, hunches his shoulders down, and trudges on home.
“What do you expect us to say?” his mother asked, angrily. “How do you expect us to react?”
His father sighed and crossed his legs in the other chair facing Seth. They were in the kitchen, which – and Seth wondered if they even knew they did this – was where they always had their serious talks with him, especially when he got in trouble.
He was in here way more often than Owen ever was.
“It’s not that we,” – his father looked up in the air, trying to find the right word –“mind, Seth –”
“What are you talking about?” his mother snapped. “Of course we goddamn well mind.”
“Candace –”
“Oh, I can already see the thinking here. You’re already halfway to forgiving him –”
“Why is it a question of forgiveness?”
“Always just this laissez-faire approach, not giving a damn as long as you can do your precious little projects. It’s no wonder he’s acted like an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Seth said, arms crossed, looking down at his sneakers.
“What the hell do you call it?” his mother demanded. “How exactly is this situation not one big idiotic catastrophe for you? You know what they’re like here –”
“Candace, that’s enough,” his father said, more strongly now. His mother made a sign with her hands of sarcastic surrender, then stared firmly at the ceiling. His father turned to look at him, and Seth realized with a shock how rare it was for his father to look him straight in the eye. It was like having a statue suddenly ask you for directions.
The thing was, though, Seth couldn’t even say that his mother was wrong. About it being a catastrophe. The pictures had been found. Had gotten out. From an impossible source, one they’d never expected. But then they’d been stupid to ever think they wouldn’t, because how could you keep anything for yourself in this uselessly connected world?
“Seth,” his father continued, “what we’re trying to say is that . . .” He paused again, thinking how to phrase it. For a horrible moment, Seth thought he was going to have to help him along, say the words for him. “Whatever . . . choices you make, we’re still your mum and dad, and we’ll still love you. No matter what.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence at this.
No matter what, Seth thought, but didn’t say. “No matter what” had happened eight years ago. It had come and gone, and it turned out it hadn’t been true then, either.
“But this . . .” – his father sighed again –“ . . .situation you’ve got yourself into –”
“I knew we couldn’t trust that boy,” his mother said, shaking her head. “I knew he was bad news from the moment I met him. Right down to his stupid name –”
“Don’t talk about him that way,” Seth said, quietly but the anger in his voice shocked both his parents into silence. He’d only been able to see Gudmund today for just enough time to tell him, to warn him, before Gudmund’s parents had thrown Seth out of their house. “Don’t you ever talk about him in any way, ever again.”
His mother’s mouth dropped open. “How dare you speak to me like that? How DARE you think you can –”
“Candace –” his father said, trying to stop her as she rose from her chair.
“You can’t possibly think you’re going to see him again.”
“Just try and stop me,” Seth said, his eyes burning.
“Enough!” his father shouted. “Both of you!”
There was a moment of stand-off as Seth and his mother locked eyes, but she eventually sat back down.
“Seth,” his father said, “I’d like you to think about maybe taking some antidepressants, or even something stronger –”
His mother let out a cry of exasperation. “That’s your answer to this? Disappear into oblivion like you do? Maybe you can both do silent DIY projects for the rest of your lives.”
“I’m just saying,” his father tried again, “Seth is obviously struggling with something –”
“He’s not struggling with anything. He’s crying for attention. Can’t bear that his little brother needs more care than he does, so he goes and does something like this.” She shook her head. “Well, you’re only hurting yourself, Seth. You’re the one who’s going to have to go to school next week, not us.”
Seth felt a twisting in his gut. She’d nailed exactly what had been worrying him.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” his father said. “Not until this blows over. Or we can change schools –”
His mother gave another exasperated gasp.
“I don’t want to change schools,” Seth said. “And I’m not going to stop seeing Gudmund.”
“I don’t even want to hear his name,” his mother said.
His father looked pained. “Seth, don’t you think you might be a little young to be taking decisions this enormous? To be doing these . . . things with . . .” He trailed off again, not quite able to say “another boy.”
“And all this when you know how much we’ve got to deal with for Owen right now,” his mother said.
Seth rolled his eyes. “You always have to deal with Owen. That’s what your whole stupid life is. Dealing With Owen.”
His mother’s face hardened. “You have the gall to say that? You, of all people?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Seth spat back at her. “‘Of all people’?”
“All we’re saying,” his father said, talking loudly over them both, “is that you could have come to us. You can come to us with anything.”
And there was another long silence that none of them bothered to fill, as perhaps they all wondered if that was true.
Seth looked down at his feet again. “What’s wrong with Owen now?” he asked, unable to stop himself from putting all his anger into the last word.
His mother’s answer was to rise quickly to her feet and leave the kitchen. They heard her stomping upstairs, heading straight for Owen’s room, heard him start an excited explanation about the new video game he’d gotten at Christmas last week.
Seth looked at his father in confusion. “What’s she so mad about? How does any of this hurt her?”
His father frowned, but not at Seth. “It’s not entirely you. Your brother’s scans came back.”
“The ones because of his eyes?”
Owen’s eyes had started a strange twitching a few weeks back. He could see something when it was directly in front of him, like his computer games or his clarinet, but walking anywhere had become a wild hazard of knocking things over or simply falling all the way down to the ground. He’d given himself four bloody noses in the past ten days.
“The neurological damage,” his father said. “From . . . from before.”
Seth looked away, almost automatically.
“It was either going to get worse or better as he grew,” his father said.
“And it’s got worse.”
His father nodded. “And will continue to do so.”
“So what happens now?”
“Surgery,” his father said. “And cognitive therapy. Almost every day.”
Seth looked back up. “I thought you said we couldn’t afford that.”
“We can’t. Insurance only covers so much. Your mum’s going to have to go back to work to help with the costs and it’s going to eat badly into our savings. We’ve got rough times ahead, Seth.”
Seth’s mind was reeling, for his brother, for their money troubles, for the fact, he was ashamed to think, that he had college tuition payments starting in the fall that were going to need some of those very savings and if they weren’t there –
“So, this whole thing with you and your friend?” his father said. “Not the best timing in the world.”
Laughter rang down the staircase. They turned to look, even though there was nothing to see. Seth’s mother and Owen, sharing something between the two of them, just like they always did.
“When is it ever good timing?” Seth asked.
His father patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “I really am.”
But when Seth turned back around, his father had broken eye contact.
It’s raining again the next morning when Seth wakes, though it takes him a few minutes to notice because of how the dream is still ringing through him.
He lies motionless on the settee. He still hasn’t slept in any of the beds upstairs; his own in the attic is far too small for him now, even if he wanted to use it, which he doesn’t, and sleeping in his parents’ bed just feels too weird, so he’s stayed on this dusty couch, under the terrified eye of the horse above the mantelpiece.
Dreaming.
The weight in his chest has grown heavier, almost too heavy to move.
The greatest thing with Gudmund had been the secrecy of it all. When they were together like that, they had been their own private universe, bounded just by themselves, a population of two. They were the world, and the world was them. And no one deserved to know, not his mum and dad, not his friends, no one, not then, not yet.
Not because it was wrong – because it definitely wasn’t that – but because it was his. The one thing that was entirely his.
And then the world found out, his parents found out. Those two photos Gudmund took, painfully innocent compared to what some of the boys at school sent their girlfriends, but so private, so something that no one else should have seen, that Seth burns even now with anger and humiliation.
His mother had been right. Going back to school had been a nightmare. The whole world changed in an instant, collapsed to a place where Seth almost didn’t even live. After Christmas vacation was over and he’d stepped back onto school grounds, there had been only him and everyone else. Far away. Beyond reach. The school tried to clamp down on the worst of the abuse, but they couldn’t catch it all. And the whispers were everywhere; his phone vibrated constantly, even throughout the night, with jeering texts. Nor did he dare look on any social networking, where the picture – and accompanying comments – seemed to be everywhere. His private universe exposed to the egged-on scorn of all.
But he couldn’t leave. Gudmund was still out of school while his parents decided what to do about him. And Seth had to be there, for whenever he came back. He had to bear it, alone.
“Self-contained,” Gudmund had described him, but what that really meant was that it felt like he’d had a private burden to shoulder for as long as he could remember, and maybe not all of it even to do with what happened to Owen. Worse, it had been accompanied by an equally hard lifelong yearning, a feeling that there had to be more, more than just all this weight.
Because if there wasn’t, what was the point?
That had been the other great thing about Gudmund since that surprising spring night at the end of junior year when they had become more than just friends. It was suddenly as if, for the briefest of moments, the burden had been lifted, like there was no gravity at all, like he had finally set down the heavy load he’d been carrying –
He knows he should stop this thinking, knows he should get moving, keep himself occupied with simply surviving this place, but he feels like he’s at the bottom of a
well, with sunshine and life and escape all miles away, no one to hear him, even if he could call for help.
He’s felt like this before.
He lies there, listening to the rain, for a long, long time.
Eventually, biology again forces him to get up. He has a pee, then stands at his front door. The rain pours, rivulets coursing everywhere through the mud. He wonders for a moment why it doesn’t just wash away, but he sees that the street is slowly becoming a stagnant flood, great ponds forming at blocked drains, everything swirling together in a muddy mess.
It’s nearly as warm as it was yesterday, so he gets the block of dishwashing liquid, leaves his clothes in a heap, and uses the rain as a shower right there on the front path.
He lathers himself up, making a soapy mop of his buzzed-off hair, then closes his eyes and lifts his face to the rain to let it all rinse off. Almost idly, he tries to see if playing with himself will have any results, but the weight on his chest is too heavy, the memories of everything too much. He gives up and just crosses his arms, letting the soap slowly wash off him, the suds slopping down to the brown water gathering on the footpath.
Have I done this? he thinks, pulling his arms tighter around himself. Have I brought this rain? Have I made this place even more miserable?
He stands there, motionless, until he begins to shiver.
The rain isn’t that warm after all.
It rains all through the day, the flooding on the street getting bad down at one end, but most of it near his house draining slowly into the sinkhole before it gets too deep. He hopes the fox and her kits are all right.
He heats up a can of potato soup. While it cooks, he looks out to the back garden, watching the rain come down on the deck and the now-soaking pile of bandages. The sky is a uniform gray, impossible to separate out any individual cloud, just solid rain from horizon to horizon, however far away those horizons might be. When the soup is hot, he takes two mouthfuls before losing his appetite and leaving the rest by the switched-off camp stove.