All The Lonely People

by David Owen

  ‘There!’

  The track curved slightly before it ended. As they came around, Wesley saw they wouldn’t be outnumbered after all. A small crowd of people was swarmed around the final unit. They beat their fists against the metal and tried to wrench it up from the ground.

  ‘What the—?’ said Jordan as he stopped the car.

  The side door of the unit was flung open, and Luke and Justin came running out. The car doors blocked the track, stopping them short. Wesley didn’t hesitate – he took advantage of Luke’s surprise, tackling him hard and knocking the wind out of him.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Luke wheezed, but Wesley pinned his arms to the ground so he couldn’t fight back.

  Jordan took down Justin without much of a fight. The crowd found the open side door and streamed into the unit.

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ said Jordan.

  Luke wriggled under Wesley’s weight but couldn’t get free. ‘If you don’t let me go, you’ll go down for this too.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Wesley. ‘And maybe it’s exactly what I deserve.’

  He lifted his head to look for any sign of Kat.

  The crowd, all the people she had inhabited the night before, filled the unit and trapped Tru against the back wall, grabbing his arms so he couldn’t fight his way out.

  ‘Help her!’ shouted Kat. Although nobody looked at her, the boy whose kiss she had stolen broke away from the group to retrieve the keys and began unlocking Tinker’s bonds.

  Kat had done it. She had stopped the attack, with a little luck and a lot of weirdness. The crowd had followed her here, as they always would, whether she was in danger or not. Maybe they had sensed something was wrong, or had simply heard enough to intervene. She thought of the protesters at the march who had run towards the attackers instead of away.

  Lightheaded, Kat stumbled out of the unit. A car was blocking the track, Luke and Justin pinned to the ground by two other guys. Wesley and his brother. He had received her message and come to help. Finally, he had done the right thing.

  And now he looked right at her, mouth falling open with shock.

  ‘You can see me?’ she said.

  His mouth closed, opened again, not finding any words along the way. Kat looked down at herself – she was every bit as faded as before. Stopping the attack hadn’t had any effect. To him, she must have appeared as a ghost.

  She was near the end, and that made her remember.

  ‘Take my phone,’ she said.

  ‘Wha—?’

  Moving closer, she jutted her front pocket at him. ‘I can’t hold my phone. I need to know if there’s a message.’

  The thralls were exiting the unit, leading Tru with them like a prisoner of war. Now he was caught the bravado was stripped away, and he looked on the edge of tears. Tinker stayed inside. There would be someone here to take care of her soon enough.

  Seeing how outnumbered they were, Luke didn’t try to take advantage when Wesley lifted a hand to take out her phone.

  Kat told him the access code. ‘Is there anything?’

  ‘There’s a message.’ He looked up at her. ‘It’s from Safa.’

  She wouldn’t have been able to touch her phone either, but there was nothing to keep her from dictating to it.

  ‘I can’t hold on any longer,’ Wesley read. ‘I have to go to her.’

  Police sirens in the distance, growing closer.

  ‘When was it sent?’ said Kat.

  ‘Only twenty minutes ago.’

  If it hadn’t happened yet, there was only one place Safa would go. Only one person she could need to find at the end of herself.

  ‘Can you drive me?’ she said to Wesley.

  ‘My brother . . . but he can’t see you.’

  Indeed, Jordan was looking across at his brother – apparently talking to thin air – as if he had gone mad.

  There were enough people there to hold all the attackers, and they took over gladly, faces fierce as they held the captives down. The police would be here any moment to take control.

  Kat started towards the car. ‘So you tell him where I have to go. I don’t have much time.’

  36

  Revenant

  Wesley could not stop staring at Kat in the rear mirror. There was something so unreal about her, the worn pattern of the backseat criss-crossing through her body. And yet with his memories unlocked he knew she had been there all along. So close to being forgotten, but not quite.

  ‘The traffic’s going to be a nightmare,’ said Jordan.

  ‘Just keep going,’ said Wesley.

  There had been no complaints from Jordan any step of the way, despite him being told almost nothing about what was happening. He was helping his brother without question. Wesley would remember it.

  There was so much he wanted to say to Kat, but her eyes were glued to the window. Even if it felt like the right moment to talk, he didn’t want to freak Jordan out any more by speaking to an apparently empty back seat.

  Quickly, Wesley checked Twitter on his phone. ‘The police found Tinker,’ he said, so they both would hear. ‘And it says they have three people in custody.’

  Behind them, Kat blinked, but her eyes never left the window.

  Five minutes from the centre of town, they hit traffic. Roadworks filled the air with noise and dust, and a long line of traffic snaked past in a fugue of exhaust fumes. Wesley opened his door and stepped out for a better view. ‘It’s solid all the way down.’

  Jordan slumped down in his seat. ‘We’ll be here for hours.’

  Wesley was about to sit back down when Kat spoke for the first time during the ride.

  ‘Let me out.’

  ‘Don’t you want—?’

  She scrabbled at the door, but her hands couldn’t grasp the handle. ‘Let me out!’

  Wesley opened the door, and Kat ghosted past him. He watched her run into the traffic, and after a moment she was lost in the smoke.

  The high street was busy, afternoon shoppers out in force. Kat knew exactly where Safa would be, and she fought her way through the crowds to reach the Greek restaurant near the end of the street.

  At first she saw nobody outside, only passers-by. What if she was too late? Safa might have gone before Kat had a final chance to stop her. Just the thought of it made Kat feel like she would break apart like a dandelion in the wind.

  She fixed Safa in her mind and looked again – properly looked – and the shape of a girl became clear. Safa stood opposite the restaurant in the middle of the street, eyes fixed on the people inside. Kat, oddly nervous, went to her.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  Safa turned, smiled. ‘You made it.’

  For a long moment they simply gazed at what remained of each other. Kat held an image of Safa in her mind from the first day they met, the other girl rescuing her from exile in a school toilet, and it made her easier to see now.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I was busy stopping a terror attack.’

  ‘You did it?’

  Kat could hardly believe it herself. ‘I did it.’

  ‘My dude.’ Safa’s smile, fragile but true, quickly died. ‘You’re still faded.’

  ‘That’s because I need you to stay.’

  ‘I think it’s clear you don’t need me.’ Safa pointed inside the restaurant, where her chosen Cradle was at the same table as before, books spread across its surface. ‘But I need her.’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Kat, furious that she wasn’t able to take the other girl’s hands inside her own. ‘You think you do. You think you’re broken, but you’re not. I realised what I was feeling whenever I was inside those other people. They look like they’re living perfect lives, but it’s a cover. Everybody is trying their best not to fuck everything up. They’re all just as scared as you are. It takes everything they have to hide it.’

  The girl inside the restaurant looked up from her work, talking to a man who was busy wiping down the counter. Kat wondered what landscape lay inside he
r; how well that distended black box would be hidden beneath it.

  ‘It’s not about being broken, or being bad, or not fitting in,’ said Kat. ‘You just have to find the people who allow you to be you.’

  Safa shook her head. ‘I never thought I would.’

  Kat’s whole body felt charged, every particle of her being humming with energy. If she could cling on hard enough, maybe she could force Safa back. She felt more real than she ever had, and she willed the other girl to feel it too.

  ‘You did. You found me. And I found you.’ Kat was beginning to cry, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t wipe the tears away. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever felt I could be myself with, without hiding anything. Without being ashamed. You made me happy to be me. We don’t need to become anybody else – if we’re together we can be us.’

  There was hardly a face left to see, but she somehow sensed that Safa was smiling. ‘Look,’ she said.

  Kat lifted her hands. They were solid again. Complete. She turned them over, saw the lines and blemishes and whorls of fingerprints she thought she had lost. She rubbed her fingers together, astounded by her skin’s friction. Rubbed them up her arms, along her legs, pressed her fingertips to her face and laughed.

  ‘I’m back,’ she said. She was so glad. To stand here as herself, happy inside her reimbursed skin, was liberating beyond belief. She had fought to save herself, fought to like herself, and been rewarded.

  Still that air of a smile. ‘You sexy cow.’

  ‘Now you.’

  A tear traced the curve of her jaw, her skin fizzing in its path, and Safa lifted the idea of a hand to dry it. ‘I want to.’

  Kat’s heart leapt. ‘I want you to.’

  ‘You mean it? You would have me?’

  Kat tried to find her eyes. ‘If you want to stay with me, then stay.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can hold on.’ Safa’s body momentarily flickered out of existence, before sputtering back with frightened eyes as clear as day. She reached for Kat’s hands, desperate to cling onto the world, but could find no grip. ‘I’m scared, Kat. I can feel myself coming apart. I’m going and I can’t stop it.’

  ‘No!’ Everybody else on the street could see her now, and the passing shoppers regarded her curiously or rushed their children past. She didn’t care. ‘You’re too stubborn to let it happen if it’s not what you want. You told me to fight for myself. Now you have to do it too. Fight.’

  When they had first learned to step inside the lives of other people, it had been fuelled by thoughts of everything they felt they had got wrong in their lives. All the reasons they should be excused to leave themselves behind. Now Kat held tight to all the reasons she had discovered to stay.

  ‘Remember singing “Mr Pretzel”?’ she said.

  Safa’s form sputtered, reformed. ‘And messing with Miss Jalloh’s precious bell.’

  ‘You put your thumb inside my mouth when I had brain freeze.’

  ‘You dance like you’re getting attacked by bees.’

  A tear rolled down Kat’s cheek as she smiled. ‘Only with you.’ A steadying breath, before she lifted her hands in a final bid to reach for Safa’s fingers . . .

  And felt them graze her palm.

  They both cried out in delight. Kat fumbled for a better hold, clutching Safa’s hands inside her own. They grew firmer, friction seeming to throw sparks between their skin.

  Kat held her eyes. ‘Now come back to me.’

  She pulled gently, as if guiding her back through a rent in the universe, and Safa coalesced in front of her. Colour rushed back into her skin, filled her lines and rounded her features, until she was complete again, emancipated from the void.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ said Kat.

  They squeezed each other’s hands – strong, unequivocal – as tightly as they could. In that embrace was a promise: that they would be there for each other, hold each other up, and never let the other forget they were wanted.

  ‘You’re stuck with me now, my dude,’ said Safa.

  Kat grinned. ‘We’re stuck with ourselves.’

  Together, they were ready for it.

  37

  Season Three, Episode One

  It had felt peculiar to leave each other after hours of sitting together on a bench in the middle of town, pressed tightly shoulder-to-shoulder and talking about . . . nothing in particular, without the shadow of the fade hanging over them, knowing they had as much time as they could ever want.

  Neither of them wanted to dwell on what they had almost lost. Instead, they read the news that Tinker had been rescued by a rather confused group of strangers, and three assailants had been arrested (‘You are actually a frickin’ hero,’ said Safa proudly). Plans were hatched for an all-night Doctor Backwash marathon, before they pooled ideas for a new video game to replace the one Kat had deleted.

  The bus journey home passed in contented silence, each knowing there was no rush to speak. They squeezed hands again before they parted, as if to confirm it had all been true.

  Now Kat stood alone on her doorstep, frightened to go inside.

  ‘Chances are he won’t realise anything has changed,’ she told herself, unsure if she believed it.

  They had spent so much time wondering where the fade would take them that she had never considered what might happen if she came back. It felt like returning home from a long voyage after everybody thought her lost at sea.

  Or maybe she was being a melodramatic butthole.

  She put her key in the door, relishing the solid push and turn, and stepped inside.

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  Dad appeared from the sitting room, eyes glistening and jaw slack with disbelief. Kat smiled timidly and opened her arms.

  He rushed forward and pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms around his daughter as if he would never let her go. ‘There you are,’ he said, breath hot on top of her head.

  Kat pressed her face into his chest and sniffed back a tear. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

  ‘It’s okay. You’re here now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m here.’

  38

  A Cure for Apathy

  Two weeks had passed before Wesley climbed Garden Hill, early enough that the rising sun smouldered on the horizon, and met Kat at the edge of the browning trees. The dewy grass was already clogged with fallen leaves.

  What he had to say was far more than a fortnight overdue. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘For everything.’

  When she had got in touch and asked to meet him there, he had almost been too ashamed to go. But he owed her this, and so much more besides. Now he was there, he couldn’t keep the words from spilling out.

  ‘I told my mum and her boyfriend about the car.’ Wesley had never seen Mum look so disappointed, but it meant Jordan could come back. It gave them another chance to fix everything. ‘And I told the police everything I knew about the attack. They might bring charges against me.’ If that was what he deserved, he would accept it.

  Framed by the trees, Kat hadn’t even looked at him. They were separated by a wide patch of overgrown grass, and neither moved to close the gap.

  ‘There’s nothing I can say to make this right, but—’

  ‘I know how you feel about yourself.’ Kat turned to him, expressionless. ‘Do you know what I did to you?’

  Wesley shifted uncomfortably. The urge to find her, to be close to her, had dissipated soon after she had run away from the car, but the painting on his bedroom wall still gnawed at him in a way that felt similar. Like being caught naked. As if the contents of his soul had been spilled out in front of him.

  ‘You went . . .’

  ‘Honestly, I’m sorry for that,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t see any other way.’

  It humiliated him, that somebody had seen who he really was. That she had seen. It made him want to hide his face.

  ‘That painting . . . is that what I look like inside?’

  ‘More people than you’ll ever know
feel the same way you do.’ Kat’s expression darkened. ‘It’s no excuse for the way you acted. To be so . . . hateful.’

  Wesley blanched at the word, stammered to defend himself, but Kat wasn’t finished.

  ‘Nobody would need to feel like that if we were kinder to each other. If we had more empathy.’ She nodded, as if egging herself on. ‘I’ve had to learn to be kind to myself. I can’t do that if any part of me is taken up by hatred for you. You don’t get to take anything more from me.’

  ‘I wanted to help,’ Wesley said. He had, hadn’t he? ‘I remembered you. Tried to keep you from fading.’

  She fixed him with a look that filled him with shame. It was only when there was really no other choice that he had truly tried to help.

  ‘You were scared for yourself. That’s all. You don’t deserve credit for doing what any decent person would have done sooner.’ said Kat. ‘I know what you’ve done for the other Lonely People, and I’m glad. Being kind is how you won’t be forgotten. We have to stop the people who want us to hate.’

  Wesley would do everything he could to make sure TrumourPixel was punished. To make amends to Mum and Dave. To welcome Jordan home. To be good to his new friends. It would be a start.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t my job to teach you.’ Kat began to walk, feet pressing the sodden grass flat, past him and onto the path. ‘I want you to remember me. But I never want to speak to you again.’

  She moved away down the hill and left him behind, never once looking back.

  Wesley waited there a while to watch the town below brighten and stir into life. Up here, he felt separate from the world. It spurred him to turn, and set off back along the path and home.

  39

  A Cautionary Tale for the Lonely

  The last time Wesley visited the flat it was almost empty. Their possessions had been transferred piecemeal to Dave’s place, as many boxes as would fit into a car at once, until hardly anything was left. Wesley had volunteered to collect the final few himself, leaving them to get on with unpacking.