By Naomi Sabel
And just like that I was back, back where my real life was in the earthy underground where we made our home. The tears I held back were for the people who didn’t exist in this world – they were all dead, and I had nearly used up all my visitations to the parallel universe where we still did things like visit the seaside all together. In this world, my cat didn’t purr on my bed, my grandpa didn’t yell at the smoke alarm, my sister didn’t tell me her secrets in the dark in the room we shared because in this world, she wasn’t here.
I willed myself to feel cold, like emotionless stone. I couldn’t afford to go through all these old mangled feelings every time I went back and forth; it would tear me apart. The warmth of the shadows here was comforting. I headed back to my real room, knowing it would be like I never left. People passed me in the hallway, talking, laughing, wearing their uniforms. I tried to avoid the sense I was underwater or behind glass.
“Pippa!” I turned around to see a grinning dark haired boy waving at me. I smiled.
“Hey, Barney.” Barney was one of my two best friends. It had never been complicated between us. I had missed his easiness.
“How’s it going? Did you just get back?” He sounded slightly out of breath, but still his cheerful self.
“Yeah yeah, I literally just came back. I was heading to our room-”
“Oh no no, you have to surprise Matt with me! He’s just finishing his training class. C’mon, he’d love to see you.” He eyed me hopefully, without a clue that my stomach was swimming. Matt was my other best friend, and it was…slightly more complicated with him. But I couldn’t say no to Barney’s puppy eyes. I sighed.
“Yeah, all right, fine.”
“Woo!” He cheered, and started dragging me along by the arm back the way we had come, narrowly missing a group of teenage girls. I started laughing.
“You are so chaotic, you know that?” I told him.
“Of course,” He said, glancing back with a twinkle in his eye. “Keeps life interesting for everyone.”
The walls started getting cleaner and I knew by the sense that we were walking down a corridor rather than a burrow that we’d left the living quarters and were going into the training area. I had missed the smell of this place, and I lifted my nose up to it like it was sunlight.
“So how was it?” Barney asked, glancing sideways at me. I nodded.
“It was all right,” I answered, not knowing what else to say. “My sister’s getting older. It was sad to leave.”
Barney looked sympathetic.
“You know you don’t have to keep going back, right? If it’s too painful.”
“I know, I know. But I want to. It’s just adjusting back is hard. Like always.” I didn’t really need to tell him, we’d known each other since we were kids and he’d been there when I first came back, howling. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to go back, but then I missed them, and I had the option, so I just found myself returning every now and then.
We reached the door to the training room, where everyone with powers did their daily classes. Barney had already specialised and I hadn’t produced anything magical yet, so for now it was just Matt from our trio who went. I stared at the white door, wondering if I wanted it to open or not.
“You should know…about Matt,” Barney began, slightly awkwardly, as he lounged his long limbs against the wall.
“What’s happened?” I asked, immediately, turning back to Barney. Matt wasn’t always the most mentally stable, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if while I was gone he had decided to become a toilet cleaner and/or taken to arson.
“He’s not been doing too well,” Barney said. “Ever since you left…I dunno, he’s been kinda off. Sad, I guess. But like, distant. And he’s been getting bad feedback in training recently. He’s stopped being able to do the basics.”
“Can that happen?” I asked, worriedly, trying to ignore the spark I felt when Barney said since you left.
“Yeah, apparently.” Barney scratched his head. “I dunno…you’ll see. I’ve been worried about him. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t.” Sounded like typical Matt.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” I leaned against the wall, hearing voices from the other side of the door. My heart started thumping. You’re going to see him again, like literally, really soon. Like now. A stupid smile crept up on my face.
The door opened and a flood of students came out, talking loudly, in their training uniform. I recognised a few, and they waved, as they headed away. I waved absently back, trying to look for Matt’s familiar face. He didn’t seem to be anywhere.
Finally, as the stream of students began to trickle out, I saw tousled blonde hair and blue eyes that lit up when they saw me.
“Pippa!” He said, and rushed over to give me a brief hug. I hastily collected my thoughts together.
“I just got back,” I explained. “Barney ambushed me, and dragged me along here. Literally.”
Barney held his hands up in surrender. “In fairness, I may have done that. But it was with the best of intentions.”
Matt laughed, flashing white teeth and dimples. “It’s good to see you anyway.” I blushed, unnecessarily. “Actually,” he added, “I need to talk to you about something. Is it all right if we catch up later, Barney?”
Barney looked taken aback, as well he might. Matt and I only did things together if Barney wasn’t around or didn’t know about it. I felt bad for making him feel like an outsider but…he’d wanted me to talk to him, hadn’t he?
“Er, yeah, sure,” he said. “Later guys?”
“Yeah, catch you later,” Matt said, and we smiled at him.
Barney started walking off, a little uncertainly but clearly trying to look blasé, which hurt my heart a little bit. Then Matt touched my elbow.
“C’mon, I need to talk to you.”
We went to an empty classroom next door, and he sat on a table, legs swinging, looking at me seriously. I tried to ignore my brain telling me I was in an empty room with him, and what could happen with that. I gave him a friendly smile instead.
“So, what’s up?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” His blue eyes were fixed on me unnervingly. He really was serious. I had no idea what this was about.
“Go on.”
He lowered his voice, like there was someone going to overhear us. “Well, I’ve had these suspicions for a while. Trickles of unease about the place. Thinking that doesn’t feel right, something’s going on there.”
“Wait, what do you mean? Where?”
“Everywhere. In the Institution, I mean. And while you’ve been gone, I’ve been doing some research, a bit of digging, and I’ve realised it doesn’t make sense. So much doesn’t make sense. Why are we here, Pippa?”
“Our worlds were destroyed,” I told him, slowly. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. He knew as well as I did that the Institution was a refuge for space orphans, giving them a place to feel safe and have a purpose.
“But were they though?” He still hadn’t broken eye contact, and it was making me nervous. “We don’t know anything about our planets, our personal details-”
“Because we were babies,” I interrupted him. “How could we remember?”
“Then they should have told us,” Matt said, gesticulating wildly. “Give us information when we are old enough. They never tell us anything. What if our worlds weren’t destroyed after all, what if we were abducted?”
“Woah, woah. How come they give us access to worlds where our families are still alive? That’s not really the actions of kidnappers.”
“Is that really a nice thing to do though? You know that as well as anybody. Going through everything all over again. Seeing a world that could never be, that isn’t real. And anyway, what if they’re not really our family? Just a made up simulation?”
“Where are you getting this idea from?” I asked, confused and a bit alarmed.
“People don’t really talk about their families. It gets upsetting. They like having their own little secret world to go back to, to hold on to. But when I started asking people about it, I realised there were similarities.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. Sibling secrets. Pets. Seaside trips.”
I felt uncomfortable suddenly, like maybe what he was saying made a bit of sense.
“Lots of people go to the seaside, Matt.”
“Maybe they do, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, it’s weird that so many do. Aren’t there other things to do? Geographically speaking, there should be more varied landscapes-”
“I don’t think there’s enough evidence for this massive conspiracy theory you’re trying to claim.”
Matt jumped off his table and stood right in front of me. My breathing sped up.
“It’s not a conspiracy theory, Pippa. You know it isn’t.”
I couldn’t look at him. He was too close.
“Have you talked to Barney about this?”
“No. I don’t think he’d get it.”
“And you thought I would?”
“I think you understand me better, yeah.”
I willed him to continue. To finally address what was going on between us or maybe it was just me, maybe just me as usual with my stupid head and his stupid hair getting in the way of our friendship and the way it used to be. I felt like crying, suddenly, because he was trying to tell me something important and I couldn’t even focus on it because he was the most gorgeous human being the world had ever produced and I wanted to wrap my arms around him and never let go but I could never tell him that. Because to lose him would be to lose it all.
“Pippa?”
I had left a long pause and he was trying to catch my eye again but I was staring at the floor. I realised I was going to cry, and I couldn’t explain it to him, not then. So, feeling rather weightless, I left the room without saying anything.
“Pippa!” He said, having followed me out. He sounded worried.
I said nothing, and walked back to the living quarter where the everyday-use portals were. Matt’s footsteps subsided. He always knew when I wanted to be alone. As by second nature, I stepped into the dark hole of the portal that took me to the quiet seaside town. I never read up on the world behind it. I never had to – all I ever went to was the shingly beach.
There was a soft wind, and I clutched my elbows in my hands, wishing I wasn’t wearing a t-shirt. I walked along the concrete pier to the pebbly beach in a small cove. The sky was blue-grey, and the rocks were black shadows. There were tears falling down my face but I barely noticed them.
I sat down near the sea, where the waves crashed in front of me and then seeped away. I watched them come and go like a visible heartbeat. I thought of my family in the other world, how we had sat together and eaten lunch while the sky drizzled on us. They felt like ghosts. I liked being alone.
It was hard to pinpoint when I realised I liked Matt. Probably in the last year or so, consciously. But unconsciously, perhaps always. I liked having my boys as my friends. In the other life, I had girlfriends and my sister. In this life, I needed boys so that I felt tough.
But recently, Matt made me feel soft, not stony. He made me want to curl up beside him or melt like honey into a warm scarf about his neck. When I was sad I wanted him there. When I was happy I wanted to share it. It was hard to know if he felt the same. We’d become a sort of duo. But he had never seemed interested in romance. Never brought it up, never teased me about it. I wondered if there was something different about him, or more piercingly, if there was something wrong about me that stopped him from acting that way. I thought perhaps we were more than friends. But what is that?
And why should I care this ridiculously much? Why couldn’t I be happy with what we had, like I used to? Wasn’t this all so degrading?
I heard footsteps, and nearly jumped out of my skin to see Matt walking towards me. How the hell did he know where I was?
I curled my knees into my chest, self-consciously. My face was wet with tears. I felt exhausted. But Matt was there. He sat down beside me and we carried on watching the sea like it was the most interesting painting you could ever hope to witness. I wanted him to put his arm around me and I was glad he didn’t.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was so quiet.
“What about?” My voice was choked up a little.
“Coming out with all that. You’d literally just got back. You were probably still processing. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I meant it. I wasn’t sure he could ever purposefully hurt me.
“Yeah well, I’m still sorry.”
I let his words wash around us and wash away with the surf. I liked our silences. I could lie in them like a hammock.
“I missed you,” I told him.
He looked at me for the first time. “You did? With your family?”
“Yeah.” I gave my knees a small smile.
“I missed you too,” He said. “I always miss you.”
My smile grew wider, but my eyes dropped more tears. It was always like this with him. He made me so happy yet so sad.
He shifted beside me. I could tell he didn’t know what to do. I knew he couldn’t just hold me like we were friends. There was something else now. And I couldn’t help but think it was something he didn’t want. Which made me not want it either.
“Why do we have emotions?” I asked the air.
“Emotions are like signposts maybe,” Matt said. His voice was still soft and quiet. I liked this side of him too. “They tell us whether people and situations are good for us.”
“Sometimes that can be confusing though.”
“That’s just ‘cause things are confusing. Everything gets worked out in the end. It’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“Mm. Yeah, I’m sure.”
I gave him a watery smile. He smiled back, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I longed to know where his heart was, exactly. And this was the problem – we couldn’t be friends, not properly, with this sitting between us. I wanted to tell him the only reason why I came back was for him. That I missed my family when I was here but I missed him more whenever he left the room. I didn’t know what to say to him anymore.
His eyes shifted away to the distant horizon. I watched it too, for a long, long time. Trying to see what he saw there. Trying to see what secrets it promised, what colours it produced that I knew I could never match.