Content warnings for occasional violence and swearing and a bunch of poor-mental-health-related stuff, including depression, dissociation, and (remembered, undescribed) self-harm.
ONE: FOURTEEN DAYS
Friday, 9th September
"Live from Kanto! Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished guests and all our beloved viewers, this is utterly unprecedented! Earlier today long-time Champion Casey Rigadeau was unseated by hotshot newbie Blue Mercurio – and now, mere hours later, a second trainer reaches the final round of the Indigo League challenge! Presenting, Red Mitchell!"
Figures moving onscreen. Charizard and venusaur, orange and green.
"The battle has been postponed slightly to allow the new Champion's pokémon to recover from their previous gruelling match, but we here at IBN will be keeping tabs on the situation and will bring you all the action as it occurs. For now, here's Karen with a few words from Mercurio …"
IBN, flashes the screen with unnecessary force. International! Battle! Network!
A noise. Gwyneth mutes the TV and listens. Phone. Okay.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Gwyn, it's Shane." (It must be Shane.) "How's things?"
Good question. Gwyneth looks at the room around her. Broken lampshade, split sofa cushion, quietly festering pile of unwashed clothes. Cracked plastic TV showing battles from the other side of the world. How's things? About usual, to be honest.
"They're okay," she says. "What's up, Shane?"
"Oh, nothin', man, nothin' much, really. Listen, have you heard from your mom at all?"
"What?" Gwyneth sits up. She has not. She has forgotten to give her mother her new number. Forgotten, in the sense that she didn't do it, and then told herself she forgot. "No, why? Something wrong?"
"Well, no, not really, man, it's just like I just got off the phone with Cheren now, and he says that she says she's been tryin' to get hold of you for months. You never told her you moved, she says, or that you got a different phone. So she's like been callin' everybody up, tryin' to find you."
"Okay," says Gwyneth. She's worried. What is it now? What's happened to make it so important that her mother contact her? "So what's up? Why's she after me?"
"It's your brother," says Shane, and Gwyneth holds her breath, mind filling with possibilities: he's hurt, he's sick, he's dead … "He's gettin' married."
She starts so hard she nearly falls off the couch.
"What? What d'you mean, he's getting married?"
"I mean, Gwyn, he's gettin' married," he says. "Hell, man, you speak Unovan, don't you? Yeah, he's gettin' married, and you never replied to the weddin' invitation, I'm guessin' 'cause you moved and you never got it, so your mom wanted to tell you that―"
"Who?"
"Say what?"
"Who's he marrying?"
"Oh, right, right." The casualness of Shane's voice is infuriating. Gwyneth has to consciously stop herself from grinding her teeth. "Yeah, uh, so that's the thing." He pauses, no longer casual. Gwyneth remembers being a kid, climbing on the rail of the Skyarrow Bridge, just one misplaced foot away from a long drop and a sudden stop. She feels the same way now. She feels vertiginous.
"Who's he marrying, Shane?" she repeats.
"It's, uh … well, it's Nika."
On the bridge of her mind's eye, she loses her footing and watches silently as the sea rushes up to meet her.
"Nika," she says. Her voice comes from a long way outside her.
"Ye-eah," confirms Shane slowly. "Nika. Sorry, Gwyn. I figured that would sting."
"Thanks for telling me," she says, still a hundred miles away from the words she speaks.
"Hey, no problem, man, no problem." He pauses. "You okay?"
(Some people get chosen and some do not.)
"Sure, dude, I'm fine."
"Well … okay, man, if you're sure. You know, they'd all probably understand if you didn't―"
"When is it?"
"Huh?"
"The wedding, Shane. When is it?"
"Uh, hang on, Cheren told me, I wrote it down … okay, it's the twenty-second."
"What?" She stands up. She isn't sure why. "The twenty― Shane, that's in less than two weeks!"
"Well yeah, Gwyn, like I said, they tried to tell you before, only the invitation never got there. I said you shoulda paid to have stuff forwarded from your old place―"
"Shane, how … you know what, never mind. Sorry. Didn't mean to snap."
"You ain't snappin', Gwyn, s'all cool." She can hear the concern in his voice, somewhere underneath the cigarette rasp. "Listen, man, I know this is real sudden, and I'm sorry. If you wanna talk …"
"I – uh – maybe, Shane." She sighs. The indignant burst of energy is over now. "I got to think about this. Thanks for letting me know."
"S'okay."
"Yeah, well, I really appreciate it. I bet Mom does too."
"Cheren said she asked you to call …"
"Maybe. We'll see." It means no, and Shane knows it, and he knows that she knows that he knows it. She won't call her. She hasn't in years. Life leads you in directions you never intended, and sometimes you wind up in places you don't want your parents to follow. "Anyway, Shane, thanks again. I … I got to go."
"Well, okay, man, if you gotta then you gotta." He doesn't sound convinced. "Catch you later then, Gwyn."
"See you, Shane."
A click and a thump and the phone's on the cushion again, and Gwyneth stands there in her room watching the images move on the TV screen. It looks like the utterly unprecedented battle has started. Charizard and venusaur. Orange and green. Impossible to say who's winning yet.
She turns the TV off and stands there, staring.
Three in the afternoon and it's already been a long damn day.
She has this dream, often. It goes like this: she'll be standing in some dark room with Professor Juniper, a single spotlight picking out her brow and the slope of her cheekbones, and she suddenly starts interrogating her. What's your name, the professor demands to know. Are you a boy or a girl? And in the dream she freezes up, can't answer; she's a kid again, she thinks, because the professor seems very tall, but she can't feel her body, can't tell what she's wearing or what name she bears. She feels her heart pounding in her throat, right up against the back of her teeth. Boy or girl? Blake or Gwyneth? What's your name? Boy or girl? Who are you? What are you?
The professor keeps asking, over and over, and she just stands there, helpless, terrified for no reason that she can see, and then in the end her brother steps out of the dark alongside her and he starts answering. Boy. Hilbert. And just like that, the professor forgets her and starts talking to him, and the two of them walk away into the shadows, leaving her alone in the dark with the humiliation and the fear.
She doesn't tell anyone about this dream. She is afraid of being misunderstood.
Some people get chosen and some do not. That's how Gwyneth has always thought of it. Hilbert? Hilbert was chosen. She remembers it like it was yesterday.
In the memory, it's ten years ago, and she's fourteen. She has been Gwyneth for just a couple of months. Blake follows her around still, looking over her shoulder in mirrors, but she is learning to unsee him, to find new ways of mapping the geometries of her face. It's okay. She is okay. But Hilbert is better than okay; Hilbert is exceptional. He's fifteen now, tall and strong and quiet, in the way that very confident people are quiet, and he and his friends have been chosen.
It's a bright, clear day in spring, and all the trees of Nuvema are in full flower. Every morning at dawn, Gwyneth hears the cooing of the pidove echoing down the chimney that passes by her bedroom wall. They're nesting up there, and it's kind of a bother because they always wake her up, but today she's awake before even they are. She just can't sleep. Today, everything changes.
When the knock at the door comes, she's the first to answer it, and when she sees Professor Juniper there with the box, she's practically bouncing off the walls.
"Hi!" she says, eagerly. "Hi, Professor!"
Juniper smiles indulgently. Gwyneth is a good kid, she thinks; she's only in her late twenties herself, young enough to still have a last few accurate memories of what it's like to be fourteen. She thinks Gwyneth is handling being fourteen better than she did. She thinks Gwyneth is brave and bright and will grow up to be someone special. She never tells Gwyneth any of this, but she thinks it, and some of it is visible in her face as she speaks.
"Hello, Gwyneth," she says. "Um, could you just mind out the way a moment? I don't want to drop this."
No, that wouldn't do. Gwyneth stands aside, staying perfectly still while Juniper navigates the porch. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be if she dropped the box? The thought makes Gwyneth feel cold inside.
"Oh, hello, Aurea," says her mother, coming in. "Let me take that for you."
She takes the box. Gwyneth watches it passing between their hands with an intensity of stare usually restricted to birds of prey.
"Thanks," says Juniper, one hand on the door behind her. "I'm sorry, I can't stay – I have to pick up Dad from the station – but tell the kids to come find me at the lab later, okay? I should be there all day."
"Oh, of course," replies Gwyneth's mother. "Don't worry about it!"
"You'll be all right with the pokémon for now?"
"I was a trainer too once, you know. I'm sure we'll be fine. Besides, I have Gwyn to help me till the kids are back!"
The two women glance at her and Gwyneth stands up straight, her heart swelling with pride. She's helpful. She's going to be the best at this.
"Well, in that case I can rest easy," says Juniper. "I'm leaving them in good hands. Bye now!"
And she goes, and the box goes upstairs, and then somehow, time crawls forwards until yes, Hilbert and Cheren are back – where were they that day? Gwyneth has never been able to remember that – and then, a little later, Bianca too. And Gwyneth watches them from the corner of the room, wide-eyed and intent, as they pick the poké balls out of the box, as Hilbert and his new snivy, each as laconic as the other, thrash Cheren and Bianca consecutively and comprehensively; and she trails in their wake as they go downstairs and head out for the lab; and then the door closes behind them and the spell breaks and she realises that all her excitement was entirely misplaced. Today isn't the day everything changes. Today is the day that Hilbert changes.
She hears about him, over the next twelve months. He and Cheren clear out Gyms like it's going out of style, gaining badges left and right. He comes into contact with those Plasma people who've been on the news, and he drives them away from more than one attempt at what they generously term pokémon liberation. She sees Hilbert on the news himself a couple of times, his serperior coiled at his side with hooded eyes, both of them unbearably cool. He's in the trainers' magazine she gets: Meet the Latest Sensation on the Battling Circuit! She looks at the glossy photograph and sees the familiar face looking up at her, made unfamiliar with studio lights and context. Even after reading the article, she can't tell what's going on behind that smile. She wonders if she ever could.
When she's fifteen (old enough, officially; secure enough, unofficially), Professor Juniper comes back. Gwyneth doesn't have a little group of friends like Hilbert does; there's no ceremony this time, no gift box, no battle in the bedroom. She says she's always looking for more help tracking pokémon in the wild, and the more trainers are out there the more data she gets. Would Gwyneth be willing to help?
Oh, she would! She's been waiting for this. She's been planning for it, even. On her pinboard is a map of Unova with potential routes scrawled all over it in marker pen, and cuttings from the magazine about spots where trainers congregate and you can get yourself a good battle, and the places where sometimes you find swarms or pokémon with rare abilities. Gwyneth is so ready for this. Juniper takes her to the lab, and as she steps through those glass doors into the radiant white light inside she feels like she could burst with happiness.
There's no one else. Other kids will be going, obviously, but none of them are friends with Juniper, and they won't be getting their pokémon from her lab. Gwyneth is a little worried; if no one's starting out with her, how is she going to find a rival? She knows already that Hilbert and Cheren chose each other as their rivals, and she had hoped that there'd be someone else here who might choose her. But she's too happy for her misgivings to last, and okay, so the pokémon she's given to choose from aren't as rare as snivy and tepig, but this is still her starter, right? This is the greatest day of her life, right up there with the day she looked in the mirror and realised how far she'd come from her days as Blake. She leaves the lab with her pokédex and her minccino, a wriggly bundle of fluff and high spirits who keeps sweeping Gwyneth's hair with her tail and who apropos of nothing she names Blossom, and she sets off up Route 1 towards Accumula with a sense that her time has come. Hilbert, you'd better watch out!
It's amazing. It's the best thing she's ever known. Blossom is a quick learner, and Gwyneth isn't too bad herself; they run into some other trainers on the wilderness trail up to Accumula, and the week she spends hiking through the hills with them is unforgettable. Everyone is so excited. There's a girl called Ashley from Kanto who has a nidoran with the cutest little nose, and a boy called Tomás with a timburr that can pick up a whole log all by itself, and one day they stumble across a whole group of patrat all on lookout, and all of them squeak and thump their tails on the ground and attack, but it's fine because there's three of them and they have their pokémon, and later that night around their campfire they laugh and exaggerate to each other. Did you see? There were like fifteen of them, at least! No, more like twenty! And later on, after Ashley and Tomás are asleep, Gwyneth lies on her back in the cool grass amidst the soft crackle of the dying fire and the zithering of the crickets and looks up at the full moon holding court among the stars, and she thinks maybe she should get in her tent and go to sleep but Blossom is snoring next to her, a little puddle of warmth lapping up against her ribs, and the night is so beautiful, and for the longest time she just can't move for the magnificence of it all.
In Accumula, she finds she sees everything strangely, as if for the first time. The world works differently for kids on a trainer journey; everyone is delighted to see them, everyone has a word of advice or some relic of their own childhood journey to pass on. A woman at the bus stop gives Gwyneth an ultra ball that she found in a box of her old things and has been carrying around in her purse in case she bumps into any trainers. An actual ultra ball! She can't remember exactly how many badges you need before you qualify to buy those in Pokémon Centres, but she knows it's quite a few. Gwyneth grips it tightly in her pocket as she and her new friends make their way through town and out onto the longer trail winding past Route 2 up to Striaton. If she finds a psychic-type, she decides, maybe she'll use it on that. She definitely needs something to cover Blossom's fighting weakness, or she'll never beat Tomás and his timburr.
She does find one, in Striaton. The old Mind's Eye Industries site, what locals call the Dreamyard, is full of munna, she's heard – in fact, she has the species list pinned up on her board at home – and she catches one, just as planned, although in the end she doesn't use her ultra ball. (What if it didn't work? It's just too precious to be wasted. She'll save it for when she really needs it.) Her new munna is sleepy and tractable, and levitates with surprising force; Blossom soon learns he can keep hovering with her standing on his back, and the two of them orbit Gwyneth's head like a cosmic giant riding a planet around the sun. His name, she decides, is Corbin. Ashley is deliciously jealous – she hasn't been able to find a munna that will partner with her – and with Corbin's psybeam, Gwyneth is finally able to put a stop to Tomás' timburr's swinging fists. Victory! Unova League, here we come.
That evening, they gather in the Pokémon Centre lobby, talking excitedly about the Gym. Tomás wants to challenge it; Ashley isn't so sure. Gwyneth has read in her magazine that eighty per cent of first-time Gym challengers fail, underestimating the difficulty. She's with Ashley on this: her plan is to keep travelling on, get tougher, and come back later. But Tomás won't be talked down, and Gwyneth has known for some days now that Ashley is nursing a crush on him and doesn't want to split up, so she agrees to stay and cheer him on during his challenge.
The next day he goes to register. There's a queue: kids, mostly, at various stages of the way through their teenage years, but one or two adults too. Someone in their twenties, a drifblim floating like a tame balloon above their head. An old lady with a fabulously extravagant pair of sunglasses and a mienshao that moves around her with quick, practised motions, watching the crowd for the slightest sign of danger and assiduously passing her a water bottle, her phone, a roll of mints. Gwyneth stares in open fascination. How long have those two been partners? There's grey in the mienshao's fur. She is captivated by the idea that someone could do this forever, could live their whole life on this magical road.
While she's waiting for Tomás' turn to come, Gwyneth flicks through a magazine from the rack near the reception desk. There's Hilbert's face again, same unreadable smile, and another boy she doesn't recognise, alongside a photo of Dragonspiral Tower. Legendary Dragons Take Wing?!, asks the headline, with what is for once warranted astonishment. It seems like those Plasma people might have some right on their side after all. Their leader has been chosen by one of the legendary twin dragons. Apparently Hilbert was there, although the article seems vague about what exactly happened.
"Oh, can I have that when you're done?" asks someone, and Gwyneth looks up from the pages to see a girl, tall, olive-skinned, with unfortunate braces and three poké balls hanging from her belt. To Gwyneth, she looks intimidatingly well-travelled.
"Okay," she says, slightly tongue-tied. She wishes she had Blossom and Corbin out of their balls, to make her look more experienced. "Um, I was just finishing."
"Oh, no need to stop on my account," says the girl. She sits down next to Gwyneth, smiling her metal-webbed smile. "I really just wanted to see this page," she admits. "What's that Hilbert guy up to now?"
It's crushingly weird to find herself talking about her brother as someone else's celebrity. Gwyneth stammers more than she'd like trying to explain.
"I-it's this thing a-about the l-legendary dragon p-pokémon," she says. "Um, apparently he was there? It's n-not really about him, anyway."
The girl can see her anxiety, and something good in her heart makes her want to put Gwyneth at her ease. She has been hiking across the country for a few months now; she started up in Humilau, made her way southwest with bands of other rookies that changed at every town as people went their separate ways. She's met a lot of anxious kids, homesick kids, and she's made a lot of them feel better, too.
So she smiles again and asks Gwyneth her name.
"I'm Gwyneth."
"Okay, Gwyneth," she says. "I'm Nika."
And now – what? Now a dead-end address in the wrong part of Aspertia. Now no more pokémon. Now Nika's marrying Hilbert.
Some people get chosen and some do not.
Gwyneth sits on her couch and watches the utterly unprecedented battle between Blue Mercurio and Red Mitchell without comprehension. Charizard and venusaur. Orange and green. Flashes of fire and sunlight.
She feels a choice looming in her immediate future. It weighs on her with the awful pressure of unavoidable responsibility.
Her brother's wedding. She shouldn't miss it. Should she? No, she shouldn't. There are people who would kill to have an invitation to this wedding. He's world-class good, she knows. Reshiram chose him. He was the Champion, even, and if he hadn't abdicated and left Iris in charge while he went looking for N he probably still would be. At least, Gwyneth can't think of anyone in Unova who realistically stands much of a chance versus him, even without Reshiram.
So this will be big. It's exclusive. And he's her brother …
Onscreen, the charizard goes down with a groan. Out comes a pidgeot, crest like a comet's tail.
He is her brother, Gwyneth reminds herself. Even if they hardly speak. Even if she doesn't know what lies under that smile. Even if he was chosen.
But then, complicating the whole thing, there's Nika.
She can't sit still. She paces up and down, casting the occasional irritated glance at the battle on the TV as if it were responsible for this.
Are they even still friends? Gwyneth doesn't know. She hasn't spoken to Nika for well over a year now. That probably means they aren't. Would Nika want her there? (The other question, pulsing like the offbeat underneath the first: does she want to be there with Nika?) It's hard to say. Nika is a fundamentally good person; this is something Gwyneth believes to be true with every fibre of her being. Perhaps that means forgiveness is on the cards. Perhaps it doesn't.
The problem, as Gwyneth is starting to see it, is that she herself is not a fundamentally good person. She's spent the last few years of her life proving that. Anyone who poisons so many things just by being near them is not, she imagines, a good person. There's a risk in going to this wedding. Put a person like her at an event like that, and things could go very badly wrong indeed.
The TV crowd roars. Gwyneth stops and looks; there's the kid Red, a pikachu on his shoulder, looking out at them. Silent. Enigmatic smile.
"Do they make them in batches or what?" she asks, part bitter, part plaintive, and turns the TV off.
Gwyneth heads out, past the broken-down elevator and downstairs into the lobby. There's no mail – always that faint sense of dashed expectations, even though she knows that practically no one who'd send her anything knows her address – and she moves on out into the street. It's cold today, the first hint of autumn in the wind. Her breath hangs around her in the air, and she has to tread carefully so as not to lose her footing on the mess of rain-slicked leaves under the oak on the corner. She stuffs her hands into her pockets and picks her way west, past shuttered convenience stores and run-down tenement blocks, ignoring the shabby beige brick all around her. This isn't the part of Aspertia you stop to admire. This is the east side, the bit you move through quickly to get to somewhere nicer.
She isn't sure yet where she's going. There are no shifts at the Centre lined up for her today; she hadn't really planned on going out. Too cold for a walk, and she isn't really much of a walker, anyway. She did it when she was on her trainer journey, sure, but that wasn't the same thing. That was a part of a bigger whole. Walking for its own sake, she feels, is more effort than it's worth. If she's honest, she's not even sure why she went out, other than that being inside by herself suddenly seemed incredibly unappealing.
The buildings pass her by in an uninspiring line. Bank. Drugstore. Café. Someone inside that one, huddled close around a mug of black coffee. He has the right idea, Gwyneth thinks. It's too cold for this.
It would be warmer out east.
She lets the thought sit in her head for a while while the cold eats into the edges of her ears.
Almost without realising it, she finds, she's wandered down towards the shopping street between Nelson and Bent. That puts her a hundred yards or so away from the video game store. She weighs her options – will Shane be working today? did he sound like he was at home? – and then decides that she doesn't care; it's cold and she'd like to go inside. The worst that can happen is that he isn't there, and then she leaves again. Hardly the most terrible thing in the world.
Inside, the video game store is just as warm as she was hoping. She takes her fingers out of her pockets, massages her ears for a second, moves past racks of plastic cases to the counter.
"Hey," she says to the woman behind it, who she vaguely recognises as being new. "Is Shane in?"
The woman looks at her, and Gwyneth sees herself doubled in her eyes. It's a long look and a wary one, and Gwyneth knows what it means. She's seeing the ratty old bomber jacket, the scuffed boots, the hair that is the particular shade of rust you only get when purple dye fades badly. That certain something, they're never sure what, but some ethnicity not quite white; the thinness of someone for whom a balanced diet is something that happens to other people; the (not particularly well) pierced eyebrow. A bloodless androgyny that seems in some sense suspicious.
Gwyneth has seen it all before, the people seeing her. She knows there's no point trying to change their minds. And hell, maybe this woman's just new to this part of town, still nervous of all the rough voices and scruffy loiterers. Either way, she knows better than to say anything. So she stands there while the woman watches, wondering how Shane knows this creep, and waits for her to say:
"Yeah, I think he's in the back. You want I should get him for you?"
Gwyneth smiles. It makes a difference. Not much, but it's a difference. The woman's stance towards her softens slightly.
"Yeah, if you could, please," says Gwyneth. "Tell him it's Gwyneth."
She can see the surprise on the woman's face. A Gwyneth, in that jacket? It seems too classy a name to be standing there with an inexpertly mended tear in its jeans. But okay, Gwyneth it is, and the woman says all right and sticks her head through the door leading back into the stockroom.
"Hey, Shane? You're wanted. Someone called Gwyneth?"
And here's Shane, ambling out (he always ambles; he has only one speed and it is leisurely), gold ring on a thread around his neck. Shaggy dark hair. Purple shirt open at the collar. Shane.
His is a friendlier view of Gwyneth, at least. The Gwyneth in his eyes is a friend, always tired, always bitter, unreliable and apologetic; someone you can't trust to keep appointments, who treats flaking out as a way of life, but who at least, if you really need her, will always come fight for you, vicious and loyal as a scolipede. Shane thinks that she's a good kid, at heart. It's never occurred to him that she's actually older than he is. It's never occurred to her to tell him.
"Hey, man," he says, smiling amiably. "How's it goin'?"
"I'm okay," answers Gwyneth. She is beginning to realise that she had a reason for coming here after all. "Listen, dude, I need a favour. Are you doing anything tomorrow morning?"
"Nah, Gwyn, I'm free. Why, you wanna talk after all?"
"Um, kinda." She takes a breath. "Can you give me a ride out of town?"
Saturday, 10th September
Half seven in the morning: sodium lamplight yellowing the street outside Shane's place; pidove cooing disconsolately from the rooftops; a single feral purrloin pacing stealthily along a wall. Gwyneth knocks on his door again, blows on her fingers and returns them to her pockets. This damn cold. Well, if she had to pick a time to get out of town …
She's still not quite sure she believes she's going. Back in the video game store, the words came out almost without her realising, and the decision was made, just like that. In truth, it had been made as soon as she heard the news, she sees that now. This was never going to end any other way than with her kicking up the dust on the long road back east.
This simplifies things, she supposes. Even so. Is she really doing this? It's a long way to Nuvema, and she has sixty-one dollars to her name. If she disappears for two weeks she's fairly sure there won't be a place for her in the Pokémon Centre when she gets back. She works in the trainer supply shop in its east wing, stacking shelves and staffing the checkout, and the shifts are irregular; it's not like she has a permanent position. She's seen other employees disappear before. There's never any trouble replacing them.
It's not too late to turn back, she thinks. She's supposed to be working today anyway. All she needs to do is turn around and walk west and open up with Maurice, and put potions on shelves and smile kindly at nervous kids looking for poké balls and buy coffee from the vending machine and put more potions on shelves and load a TM into the machine for a rookie trainer who doesn't know how to work it and clean up after a lillipup knocks over a display and buy another coffee from the machine and put more potions on shelves and go sort the inventory in the back and put more potions on shelves and lock up and go home and eat whatever's left in the fridge and sleep.
Okay. It's not exactly what she dreamed of as a kid. But some people are chosen and some are not, and there's good work to be done even by those who aren't chosen. All those adults she met on her trainer journey who had presents and kind words and advice? She's one of them now. That's what you are, if you work in the training industry. You are one of the people whose job it is to teach those kids that life, despite appearances, can be kind and joyous. Gwyneth hates her work, hates the kids for still having what she does not, but she does her best to be good to them and that eases her conscience at night. It's okay to not be chosen, she wants to think. You can be the woman with the ultra ball instead.
And she could still be that woman. All she has to do is turn around and go. What, after all, does she really hope to achieve by going to this wedding anyway? Make herself angry, upset her mother, ruin Nika and Hilbert's big day? What could possibly be worth alienating her entire family and throwing away two weeks of income, two weeks that could be the difference between making rent and being evicted?
Well, she thinks, there's Nika. But that thought's no good, and thankfully she doesn't have to face up to it because just then Shane finally opens the door to let her in.
"Whoa! Sorry, man, I hope you weren't waitin' too long. Slept right through the alarm."
"No, it's cool," says Gwyneth, stepping inside gladly. "I just got here."
"Great, great." Shane's apartment isn't much bigger than Gwyneth's, but it's substantially cleaner, and in better repair. Left to his own devices, he'd probably turn it into the same sort of tip as Gwyneth has hers, but he has Casey, of course, and he's not only organised but good at fixing things to boot. Shane raves about him; Gwyneth tries not to be envious, and sometimes succeeds.
"Sorry to wake you up so early."
"Nah, s'all cool, man." Shane pokes through a bowl on a shelf, looking for keys. "Always happy to help out a friend. And I don't have to work till later, so. Ah. Here we are."
He holds up the keys. Now it's out through the cold again, down to Shane's car, parked round the corner in the next street. It's the kind of car that coughs and limps, but it is a car, and that's really what Gwyneth needs right now. She throws her pack on the rear seat and sits next to Shane in the front.
"Lemme get the heating on," says Shane, fiddling with the dashboard. "Right, okay, should warm up in a minute."
They coast through darkened streets, lit windows gliding past like a shadow-puppet parade. There are lives on the other side of the glass. People at home, waking up, eating breakfast. Quietly getting on with the business of living. It's enough to make Gwyneth homesick, and she thinks for a little while about arriving in Nuvema early in the morning, walking down all the old familiar roads again, street signs glinting in the light of the rising sun.
"So you got a plan?" asks Shane, as they make their way northwards. "'S a long way to Humilau."
"Humilau? What's this about Humilau?" The word tears her mind unwillingly from the dream of home. "Shane, what do you mean, Humilau?"
"Well, where'd you think the wedding was? It's Nika's hometown, man. She's the bride and all."
Gwyneth stares at him, trying not to be angry. Humilau! Okay, Nuvema wasn't going to be easy in two weeks and on her budget – but Humilau? You literally can't get further away from Aspertia without actually leaving the country.
"I didn't – I was thinking it was Nuvema," she says. "When were you planning on telling me?"
"Hey, Gwyn, I thought you knew," he answers. "Sorry." He pauses. "I take it you like don't have a plan, then?"
"Uh, well, no." Gwyneth looks studiously out of the window, busies her fingers in fiddling with the zip of her jacket. "Not as such."
Silence. The engine coughs. It's starting to get lighter out now as the sun peeks out from behind the buildings.
"Listen," says Shane kindly, "don't take this the wrong way, Gwyn, but … what's your thinkin' here? What're you tryin' to do?"
"I don't know. It's my brother's wedding. Isn't that enough?"
"It's also your ex's."
"I'm not planning on trying to break up the wedding, dude."
"Didn't say you were. I just wanna make sure you know what you're doin', man." Red light. Shane stops, looks at her. "'S a long damn way to Humilau, Gwyn."
She knows that. Does he think she doesn't know that? No: he knows, he knows, he's just worried. Because he's her friend. Something that she should try harder to remember, she tells herself.
"Well, it's probably time I saw my folks again anyway," she says. "It's been a while."
Shane lifts his hands from the wheel in mock surrender.
"Okay, man, okay," he says. "You don't got to tell me. Hell, maybe you don't even know yet. I only told you yesterday."
Green. He looks back at the road and on they go, the city growing shorter all around them as they leave the inner core. There are trees here – bare at this time of year, but still, they're here. Parks, houses, natural light. It's what Nika might call salubrious.
"I just figure I have to," says Gwyneth, after a while. "Even if it's Humilau. Can't not." She looks out of the window at a postal worker making her way around the block, a bagful of catalogues on her back. "Sometimes you got to go, I guess. And if I'm gonna go, I have to go now, or I'll never make it in time."
Shane nods.
"Can't disagree with you there, Gwyn. And, speakin' of that – how are you makin' it there?"
"Yeah, well, like I said, I don't have a plan." She sighs. He's not trying to make this difficult, she reminds herself. It's just that it is difficult and he's being realistic. "I've got enough for the bus to Virbank." Or she thinks she has, anyway. She hasn't checked. Oh, she should have done, she knows that, but she didn't. She was afraid that if she thought about the trip too much she wouldn't go.
"So what about the ferry?"
"Not sure." She shrugs. "I'll figure something out."
They drive on in silence for a while. Suburbs come and go, and then they hit the Route 19 highway, curving gently northeast through the woods. Somewhere to the right of here is the trainers' trail, a thin path let into the wilderness that even now at this early hour probably has a few kids hiking up and down its length, heading to and from Aspertia the old-fashioned way. The thought is almost unbearable.
"I got a friend in Castelia," says Shane after a while. "Maxine. You'd like her." (Gwyneth suppresses a grimace. She doesn't like being told she'll like people. It usually proves to be too optimistic an assessment.) "Anyway, I'll call her. See if she's willin' to help out, like as a favour to me."
"Hey, dude, you don't have to―"
"You're gonna have to pass through Castelia one way or another, man," he says pragmatically. "Lemme do this for you. You never know, maybe she knows someone. If not, hey, maybe you'll have a couch to crash on. Fair enough?"
Gwyneth sighs.
"Fair enough," she agrees. "Thanks, Shane."
"Hey, no problem, man, no problem."
The forest spreads on either side of the road like black wings. All the traffic is going the other way, into the city, and even then there isn't much of it, not on a Saturday; the car fills up slowly with the eerie calm of early morning, peaceful and lonely. Shane lights a cigarette. Somewhere, birds are singing.
For the first time in a very long time, Gwyneth feels something unclench inside her, settle down into her bones. She leans back in her seat and shuts her eyes.
Well. She's going, right? That's something. It's a decision.
And hell, at least it'll be warm in Humilau.