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.
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.
There's no television, of course. No computer. No electronic games. For lack of anything better, he
takes a book from the bookcase. It's one of his father's, one Seth has already read part of years ago,
sneaking it from the shelf in America when his father wasn't looking. It was far too old for him at the
time and, he smiles wryly, is probably too old for him now. There's large quantities of good-spirited
sex, metaphors that run on just for the hell of it, and plenty of philosophical musing about immortality.
There's also a satyr who features heavily, which Seth remembers was the thing that got him caught.
He'd asked his father about "satire," having heard that word said out loud and assuming it was the
one he was reading. After a lengthy, baffled explanation, his father had said, "Why on earth are you
asking?" and that had been the end of that reading adventure. He remembers now that he'd never
actually been able to sneak it off the shelf again to find out what happened in the end.
So he reads on the settee, letting the rain continue and the day pass outside. At some point in the
afternoon, he grows too hungry not to notice and heats up a can of hot dogs, eating half and leaving the
rest beside the cold can of potato soup. When dusk comes, he lights one of the lanterns he took from
the outdoor store, sending stark shadows around the room but illuminating enough to see the pages.
He forgets about dinner.
A book, he thinks at one point, rubbing his eyes, tired from so much focused reading. It's a world
all on its own, too. He looks at the cover again. A satyr playing pan pipes, far more innocent-looking
than what it got up to in the story. A world made of words, Seth thinks, where you live for a while.
"And then it's over," he says. He's only got about fifty pages left; he can finally find out what
happens in the end.
And then he'll leave that world forever.
He folds down a corner to mark his place and sets the book on the coffee table.
It's fully dark now, and he realizes he's never seen this place at night. He picks up the lantern and
stands in the front doorway again, keeping out of the rain, which seems lighter now but still steady.
He's amazed at the unyielding blackness. Not a single other light is shining back at him, not a
streetlight or porchlight or even that glow that's always on the horizon from the gathered lights of a
city. Here, there's nothing. Nothing but darkness.
He flicks off the lantern, and for a moment, the world disappears completely. He stands there,
breathing into it, listening to the rain. Slowly, slowly, his eyes begin to adjust to a dim light, which
can only be the moon behind the clouds. The neighborhood starts to resolve itself into house fronts
and gardens, the mud now swirled in rivers and deltas on the sidewalk and street.
Nothing stirring, nothing moving.
And then, suddenly, a break in the clouds, shining starlight that's faint but like the blowing of a
trumpet compared to the darkness. Because it's so dark, Seth can see more stars in the small rip in the
sky than he thinks he's ever seen in the whole expanse of it. The break widens, shining more, and Seth
can't quite figure out the strange streak of faint white he's seeing across it, as if someone's spilled –
Milk.
The Milky Way.
"Holy shit," he whispers.
He's seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right
there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them, all
those seemingly endless possibilities, not fictional, but real, out there, existing, right now. There is so
much more out there than just the world he knows, so much more than his tiny Washington town, so
much more than even London. Or England. Or hell, for that matter.
So much more that he'll never see. So much more that he'll never get to. So much that he can only
glimpse enough of to know that it's forever beyond his reach.
The clouds close up again. The Milky Way vanishes.