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your
shit to handle. It’s
your
burden to carry. You don’t drag other people down with you. You don’t
turn up on the doorstep in the middle of the night acting like a raving lunatic.”
I began crying again, holding my head in my hands. “I shouldn’t have
disappeared like that last week.”
“It was a shitty thing for you to do; I won’t deny it. I would have been livid if
Freddy had done the same to me. But it still doesn’t justify Duck’s behavior last
night. He had every right to be angry, but not like that.”
“What if he comes back again?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a knock at the door. Lucy and I looked at each other, and we
cautiously went to the front door. “It’s Duck’s mum,” said Lucy, peeking
through the front curtain. We opened the door.
“Hi, Zoe,” I said.
“Audrey, Lucy, can I come in?”
I nodded and closed the door as we headed to the kitchen.
“Want a coffee?” asked Lucy.
“No, thanks, it looks like you girls have been up all night. Why don’t you have
a seat? I’ll make you both coffee.” She busied herself in the kitchen, and Lucy
and I sat back down. Zoe set our coffee on the kitchen table, then sat down
across from me. She reached out and took my hand. “I’m sorry about last night,
Audrey,” she said with a frown. Tears began welling up in my eyes again. She
gave my hand a squeeze. “Now, I don’t want you blaming yourself in any way,
you hear. Duck knows full well he was in the wrong.”
“Zoe’s right, Audrey.” Lucy handed me a box of tissues. “It’s not your fault.”
I nodded, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I should have been paying more attention,” said Zoe. “I thought he was fine,
but I guess I was way off the mark.”
“He knows how much I still care about him, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he does, Audrey. The two of you go way back. That’s something
that never goes away.”
My lips trembled, and fresh tears spilled down. “No,” I whispered. “Never.”
She smiled at me. “I’m sure you’ll be the best of friends again—in time.”
“I hope so,” I said as Lucy put her arm around my shoulder.
“Now, I had a trip planned to see Duck’s grandma in Europe,” said Zoe. “I’m
going to take Duck with me too. The change in scenery will do him good.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Next week and we’ll be away for a while, so it will give you both some
breathing space.”
“Okay,” I said softly. “Please take care of him.”
“You know I will.” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Now—I have a
million things to do before the trip, so I’d better get going.” She got up, slinging
her handbag over her shoulder. “You girls take care.”
Twenty
A
LTHOUGH
A
GOOD
amount of time had passed since Duck and I broke up, Rad
and I had agreed to take things one day at a time. So this was my first visit to
Rad’s apartment, and I was browsing through the books on his shelf. His place
was tiny but cozy. It looked exactly how I had pictured it—messy in a way that
was inviting—and I could see myself padding around in my pajamas with a cereal
bowl in hand. Best of all, it was three floors above a French-style café, and the
delicious smell of freshly baked croissants occasionally wafted in from the open
window.
“Hey, I remember these,” I said, spying a
Choose Your Own Adventure
book
among a sea of science fiction titles and tattered paperbacks. I picked it up,
running my fingers across the cover. “
Inside
UFO 54-40
. Is this one any good?”
“Well, it’s a strange book,” said Rad. “Like, the goal is to get to Ultima—it’s
meant to be some kind of paradise, a nirvana or whatever. When I read it as a
kid, I couldn’t get to Ultima no matter what choices I made throughout the
book. But it was right there, in front of me.” He took the book from me and
flipped through until he found the page he was looking for. “That’s Ultima.”
There was an illustration of a futuristic cityscape surrounded by mountain
greenery and piercing rays of sunlight.
“Why couldn’t you get there?” I asked.
“That’s what I was trying to work out as a kid. I got so obsessed that my
mother had to take the book away from me at one point. Years later, I came
across a thread about it on a forum. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who
couldn’t get to Ultima. I followed a link someone posted to a wiki and learned
there is actually no legitimate way to get to there. The author was a sadist.”
“What a cruel thing to do to children.”
“Tell me about it.” Rad closed the book and passed it to me. “You can give it
a try if you want.”
“No, thanks, I’m not really into sadomasochism.”
“You’re not? Well, that’s definitely a deal-breaker for me.”
I laughed, tracing the spine of his books with my fingers. They felt vibrant and
alive, like they carried parts of his DNA. My hand hit something cold on the
middle shelf, and I craned my neck to get a closer look. A thin metal box was
wedged between a copy of
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