1037: Chapter 20

We sat down in the living room. I had brought some coffee in. I was surprised to see Aril drinking it, but apparently he had something of a taste for it, not to mention an asbestos mouth, given the rate at which he knocked it back.

After we’d all calmed down a bit — even Aril had looked somewhat on edge, which surprised me — I tried to explain what had happened, to the best of my memory.

It was strange. I couldn’t remember all of it. It was fading rapidly, like a dream. Was it a dream? No, of course it wasn’t, because both Aril and Alice had seen me disappear, and had said so.

Aril and Alice. Two people who didn’t belong in this world. My only assurance that what I thought had happened was real came from two people who shouldn’t exist.

“Are you all right?” said Alice. “You stopped in mid-sentence.”

“Oh, right,” I said, catching myself. “No, I’m fine, I was just… trying to remember.”

Alice gave me a funny look, but didn’t say anything else. I continued trying to explain.

There was darkness, definitely. And loneliness. A feeling of being nowhere. A feeling almost like I’d been completely erased from existence, but was still somehow aware. Perhaps existence had been erased from around me instead. I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

Something had happened to me. Someone was there. Who?

The memory was there, I could tell, but every time I tried to remember it in detail it was as if it was “hiding” in a dark corner like a frightened animal.

“Some girl came over,” said Alice suddenly. “She was looking for you.”

Laura? Was it Laura?

Wait. Laura was… was she…?

No, she couldn’t be. If she was here, then she couldn’t have been… but then she did disappear… but that wouldn’t make any sense, because this doesn’t have anything to do with her.

“No, it’s worth considering,” said Aril out loud, apparently reading my thoughts. Alice gave him a curious look.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked. “It’s weird.”

“Do what?” said Alice.

“Root around inside my head,” I said. “Him, not you,” I added, for clarification.

“Oh,” said Alice. “Right.” She looked a little confused. I realised that she still had no idea what we were talking about.

“Did you know the girl who came over?” I asked her.

“I thought I knew her,” she said, “but I couldn’t remember her name.”

“What did she look like?” I asked.

“She was pretty,” said Alice. “And about your age. I guess she’s a friend of yours or something.” She paused and gave me a rather childish smile. “Or your girlfriend, perhaps?”

I winced slightly.

“She is your girlfriend?” she said. “Oh, I was just teasing. But…”

“She’s not,” I growled. I was remembering the confusing sequence of events that had happened the last time I had seen her. Had that really happened? I realised it had come out a little more acidic than I had perhaps intended. “Sorry. No. She’s… just a friend. I think. That’s neither here nor there, really. You didn’t finish describing her.”

Alice rattled off a fairly vague physical description that sounded pretty much like Laura. I nodded. Hm. So she’d come back to see me? That was… unexpected. She was the one who had said she needed space and wanted to get away after… whatever had happened. But she’d come back?

I was confused. Very confused. And thinking about it wasn’t helping matters.

After a short silence, eventually Aril spoke.

“So,” he said. “It sounds like our friend is paying attention to you, at least. If it interfered with you to such a degree that you can barely remember what happened, it’s certainly taking an interest. So we apparently know how to attract it. Now all we have to do is figure out how to deal with it.”

How do you deal with “chaos” anyway? I had no idea. I was well out of my depth. I was only just coming to terms with the fact that I could apparently step between worlds. And, given what had happened, I was in no real rush to try that again.

Aril once again sensed what I was thinking.

“It’s a difficult question,” he said. “Logically, the way to beat ‘chaos’ is with ‘law’, but I’m not entirely sure how that applies here.”

I scratched my head. “Law,” huh? I wondered what that looked like. If “chaos” was a confusing mass of conflicting messages that didn’t make any sense and “law” was the opposite, then it must be a sense of being firmly grounded in reality, of being absolutely sure of the truth and sticking resolutely to it.

I thought once again about Aril’s words — my “weak connection” to this world. I wondered if that was the key somehow. If I could somehow strengthen that connection, then perhaps that would count as “law” standing against “chaos”. But how would I strengthen that connection? I had no idea whatsoever what a “connection” to this world even meant — although I had assumed that Laura’s sudden departure after the strange events had weakened that connection further.

Hmm.

“You could be on to something there,” said Aril. Damn him. Why couldn’t he have a conversation out loud like a normal person? “So we need to think about how you can strengthen your connections to this world to ward off the chaos. It’s something to try, if nothing else.”

“So basically you need to make some friends?” said Alice. “That doesn’t sound so tough.”

Of course it doesn’t sound tough, I thought. You always had friends swarming around you.

I was suddenly wracked with guilt at the wave of bitterness towards Alice I had just felt, but I couldn’t deny where it had come from. She had always been much more outgoing and social than I ever was. She had always had lots of friends, and was always spending time with them — going out at the weekends, having people over, having sleepovers at her friends’ houses. At least, I assumed that this Alice was the same as the one I had known.

Me, on the other hand… I had always found it difficult to make friends. Any time I even thought about talking to someone other than Laura, I felt choked up and unable to speak. My old problem tended to raise its head — I’d imagine talking to the person in front of me, then I’d imagine the conversations going as bad as it was possible to go, and then I’d walk away without actually having the conversation.

This was a silly way to be, I knew, but it was the way I’d always been. I’d never really trained myself out of it as a young child, which meant it was even harder to do so now. I’d somehow survived my entire school life without really having anyone close to me — apart from Laura, of course — and had come out of the other end relatively unscathed. Well, unless you counted all the terrible things that had happened since then. But I somehow doubted they were anything to do with me having friends or not.

Alice frowned at me.

“You haven’t said anything for ages,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Mm,” I said, absent-mindedly. I was still considering what we’d just talked about. It made a certain amount of sense. It was perfectly logical that the more people I knew — or who knew me — the stronger a “connection” I’d have. But the prospect of doing that terrified me somewhat. Wasn’t there another way?

“You don’t sound all right,” said Alice. “Are you worried about the prospect of making some new friends?”

I paused for a moment. There was no point in lying.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“Hm,” said Alice. “Perhaps I can help you out with that somehow.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well,” she said. “You go to college, right? Perhaps I should come along and try and help you meet some new people. People seem to like me. At least they did before they all, you know, disappeared.”

I nodded. It actually wasn’t a bad idea. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to sneak her into lessons, but there was nothing stopping her coming onto the campus at lunchtime and helping me make some friends. I didn’t want to come to rely on her, though. But I grudgingly accepted that I needed some help.

The big question was where to start. I wasn’t a member of any of the clubs or societies that ran, and I didn’t have any real talents that made any of them a particularly good fit. Also, we were already well into the term, so I figured that they probably wouldn’t want to take on new people.

This was pointless, I thought. There’s no way this can work.

“Stop it,” said Aril.

“What?” said Alice.

“He’s thinking about giving up before he’s even tried,” he said, tapping his fingertips together and turning to address me directly. “That’s a poor habit. You need to stop that.”

He was right, of course. There was really no rational reason for me to not give this a try. If the person I tried to talk to didn’t like me, then all I had to do was move on to someone else and avoid the original person. With so many people milling around the college each day, that surely wouldn’t be a problem.

Alice repeated almost exactly what I was thinking. I smiled at her. We were apparently on the same wavelength. That knowledge was comforting.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. Where should I start? A club?”

“A club’s not a bad idea,” said Alice. “It’s a good chance to meet people who like things you like. Plus you can meet several people at once. I know that might be a bit scary, knowing you, but it’s a good, quick way of getting to know people. And I sort of get the impression we should hurry a bit.”

“All right,” I said.

“So what club are you going to start with?” she asked, her eyes bright. She was enjoying this a little too much. But given that back in her world, joining a club and hanging out with people was something that was now impossible for her, I didn’t begrudge her the feeling.

“I don’t know,” I said, a sour expression on my face.

“Oh, cheer up,” she said. “What do you like doing?”

I considered this for a moment.

“Reading,” I said. “And writing.”

“So your ideal club is just ‘school’, then,” she said sarcastically. “I’m just kidding. Is there a book club or a magazine or newspaper or something? I used to help out with the newspaper at my school.”

“I remember,” I said fondly. “I used to like your articles.”

She smiled at me. I knew that the articles I read and the ones she wrote might not have been quite the same, given the circumstances, but it wasn’t a lie. Her school newspaper was a surprisingly professional production. It only came out about once or twice a term, though, depending on whether or not the club could be bothered. Someone needed to teach them about deadlines.

“I’m not sure,” I added. “That’s one thing to have a look at.”

“What about music?” she said. “You don’t play anything, do you? What about singing?”

The prospect of singing filled me with enormous dread, but I knew that the college had a decent choir. I mentally filed it under “possible” — one to fall back on if there was really nothing else.

“And sports?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Oh come on,” she said. “No sports at all? You’ll get fat and unfit.”

Her words stung a bit. I wasn’t any good at sports, and had always felt a bit excluded for my lack of skill.

“Hey!” she said, apparently seeing my expression. “I was just joking! Stop being so sensitive.”

She’d always been like this, joking around and light-heartedly needling me about various things. It was a trait that had always frustrated me back then, but now it was quite endearing, perhaps because I hadn’t been around it for so long. I felt a bit sad.

“All right,” she said. “Well, we have an idea. You should go to college tomorrow and scout out what clubs there are. Then when you decide to join one, I’ll come along and be awesome and help you make friends. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” I said, smiling.

Perhaps this would work after all. It wouldn’t be easy for me, but nothing ever was. At least this was doing something positive.

I felt myself filling with resolve. I looked at Alice and her eyes seemed to sparkle. I looked at Aril and he gave me a slightly bored-looking smile.

I felt strong.