Chapter 19: Turning Pages

Blocks rolled past; Wood and Stone rolled in. Commercial districts should have had more Augmented Reality activity, but maybe they’d been picked over, because I found more Materials as I stalked through these mostly-residential neighborhoods. Wrong fences, brick walls off siding houses, street signs to nowhere.

I grinded faster alone. Longer legs. Fewer distractions.

It was better like this.

Colder though.

I picked up my pace. Almost ran. My legs burned.

I spotted a plastic sign that looked almost exactly like it was advertising a place For Rent, except the script reminded me of the runes on a signup bonus amulet. It startled a laugh out of me, briefly. What the hell? I collected it and replenished my Plastic.

I ran out of neighborhood and emerged onto a commercial block.

My favorite used bookstore had boards over one of its windows. I clenched my jaw and tilted the phone to the side to see the reality.

A window. Dusty but unobstructed.

I got my hundred XP and tapped my hand on what should have been the best three units of Wood since I started playing Third Eye. All I could muster was dull relief.

“Is that you, Cameron?”

I started. “Huh?”

Silver Dollar Books wasn’t open this early on Sunday, but the owner, Klaus, stood in the doorway. He was a skinny bald guy who’d been old when I first saw him acting as assistant manager to the previous owner, his truly ancient mom. I felt a pang, missing the old lady, hoping she’d just retired even though I thought it was, statistically speaking, unlikely. Longing, maybe, for the kind of family where I’d want to take over my parents’ business and they’d believe I could.

“I’m afraid we won’t open for a few hours,” Klaus said.

“That’s fine.” I almost said I’d worried for a minute they’d closed forever. For a wonder, I swallowed the comment. I didn’t want to upset someone whose business, again statistically speaking, probably hung on the edge most months. Nor did I feel up to trying to explain Third Eye to a guy born before personal computers. “I’m just...”

Just what?

Grinding? Did I want to explain Third Eye after all?

Running away? Did I want to explain my fight with Lena?

“... walking,” I finished.

Klaus smiled. “Do you want to stop walking for a few minutes and get warm?”

“I don’t want to trouble you,” I said.

“I’m untroubled.”

“Then I’d love to.”

He stepped back into the store and sat down behind the counter. His spectacles poked over the spines of the books he’d apparently decided to catalog this morning.

I sat down in the alcove near the door and looked around at the nearest books.

Sci-Fi. Most of it looked like Golden Age stuff with big ideas and cardboard characters. You know the kind of covers they had: a rocketship in front of a starfield. Maybe a gas giant in the background if they wanted to risk overstimulation. No pesky humans to make a prospective reader misconstrue how many relationships would appear in the story. No alien monsters to imply action, either.

I found one with at least a flying saucer. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke. I’d heard of the author, if not the book. I skimmed the back cover. Peaceful conquest by aliens of overwhelming power, huh?

I couldn’t help it. I snorted.

Like human beings would let overwhelming power stop them from throwing their lives away? We didn’t need aliens to do that.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Maybe the contents of the book would show off a more nuanced take on the human psyche, but when I opened it up and scanned the page, the tiny type blurred together and my headache worsened.

“Bad morning?” Klaus asked.

“Meh.” The shittiness of my behavior penetrated my haze. “Sorry. Yes. But you letting me sit down for a few minutes has improved it. Thanks, man.”

He waved it off. “You are a good customer.”

Was I? I read five times as much on my PC, twice as much on my phone, twice as much from library books. I bought maybe five books a year here and sold most of them back afterwards.

What did a bad customer look like?

I just repeated, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He fell silent again.

I read for a few minutes. The story interested me more than I expected, but I could tell it wouldn’t suck me in and keep me sitting still. Clarke’s prose just didn’t click with me. Too formal? Too impersonal. Maybe I’d force myself to tackle it on a snowy day.

I suspected if I wanted to, I could get it off Project Gutenberg. I knew I could get it from the Englewood Library.

I checked the inside cover, where a sticker told me the price. Three ninety nine I didn’t have for a backbroken paperback of a novel I didn’t want to read and could get for free.

After I stood up, I scavenged a fiver from the pocket of my parka. “Can I take this to go?”

“You can stay if you like,” Klaus said. “Recall, we are not open yet.”

“I know, but I’ve got stuff I need to do this morning and if I leave the book I’ll forget to come back for it. You can keep the change to cover the inconvenience?” I pushed the book and the bill onto the counter.

Klaus regarded both, then me. “I can,” he said.

I arranged my face into something presentable as I backed away. I almost forgot the book, but with an awkward shuffle, I picked it up and tucked it into my parka’s mesh inside pocket.

“Have a nice day, Cameron,” Klaus said.

“I’ll try, Klaus. You too.”

“I shall.” He smiled and waved me on my way.

I shall, the man says! I wanted that confidence almost as much as I wanted to find Water.

It didn’t come to me, but enough did to smile and wave back like a reasonable facsimile of a normal human being.

I returned to the cold street, hands in my pockets, a book heavier, feeling lighter. I walked a few blocks before I took my phone back out and started scanning.

Although I’d left the phone on the camera app, the notifications along the top of the screen told me I had one alert and zero messages. The alert reminded me that garbage pickup came on Monday morning. Way ahead of you, buddy.

The zero messages reminded me of Lena’s text and call from when I took the garbage out, both already acknowledged and dismissed.

She hadn’t texted since I walked out again.

I didn’t expect her to.

She’d tried to apologize, screwed it up and insulted me, and I’d chosen to get offended by it. I didn’t expect another attempt at an apology. Now she considered me the asshole.

I was too close to the fight to know who was the asshole.

Well.

I had a pretty strong suspicion we both were.

Regardless, I’d have to be the one to patch things up. Apologize? Maybe. I felt bad about enough of the exchange to sound sincere.

I felt worse for thinking of it that way.

What alternative did I have, though?

Well, two.

I could go home and say nothing about it, let it fester and add another drop of poison to whatever relationship Lena and I had left. We could spend another five years under the same roof while the joy seeped out of us and we forgot every time we’d been happy together, but at least neither of us would have to admit we were wrong.

Or I could draw a line in the sand.

Refuse to apologize, and when Lena wouldn’t, either, because of course she wouldn’t, learn if that meant the start of the laborious process of cutting her out of my life.

That wouldn’t just kill our own friendship. I’d introduced her to all my other friends as part of our project to get her out of her shell. Some of them would try to weld us back together. Some would side with her.

Then the apartment. Our financials. Neither of us could afford to live alone, so we’d both have to move. In with our families? She might, I’d never. To a cheaper town? A cheaper state? Would I have to start over in Alabama or something?

I realized I was actually picturing the final option. Planning how it might work, even. Not considering it. But.

My stomach lurched. If I hadn’t walked off my breakfast I might have thrown it up.

What the actual fuck was my problem?

Was I seriously imagining the end of the last five years of my life because I’d gotten pissed off about a prank?

If I was sick of Lena’s shit, and, yeah, at this point I kind of was, then I could sit down and talk it out with her. That didn’t have to mean an apology. It didn’t mean storming off to go grind Third Eye for an hour and popping back to deliver an ultimatum, either.

The Lena in my head wouldn’t stand for anything less than me begging forgiveness.

But the Lena in my head wouldn’t have stood at the bedroom door looking sad and sorry, either, not when I served her the perfect opportunity to mock me with my pajamas caught around my ankles.

Did I have it in me to nut up and have a real-ass conversation for once in my life?

Considering the alternatives? I had it in me to find out, at least. I needed to text Lena, and then I needed to go home.

I was just about to, when I heard rushing water.