It was from a conversation he’d been having with Dr. Diaz in the days between the Derby and the road trip. Everyone stopped bickering to look at him.
“Otto, give me my bag.” His voice was calm. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He just wanted to be holding the knife his father had given him.
His bag stayed hidden inside Otto’s guts.
“They say you’re supposed to start giving your stuff away if you’re gonna commit suicide, but I feel like that would suck, because what if you want to play a game and you’re like, oh shit, I gave my Xbox away, that was dumb.”
William stood up and delivered a swift kick to the bench where the storage area dilated. He felt the RenderLux membrane give, and he pulled his foot away and kicked again.
“Dude,” Daniel said.
This time his shoe punched a hole in the material—it felt like sliding through clay. He pulled his foot out, and the RenderLux hung in tattered flaps with honeycombed edges, struggling to repair itself. He knelt, shoved an arm in past his elbow, felt around for his backpack, unzipped the front flap, and reached inside.
He could sense Otto speeding up while he rummaged around. His fingers closed around the knife’s worn leather sheath, and he pulled his arm free.
“What are you doing?” Christina asked. Outside, the work zone went by in a blur of orange and white.
William glanced at her and then looked away. He could have lived his entire life never knowing what she’d done. Now he’d never see Buffalo. But that was okay. Lesson learned.
The interior dimmed. The window screens began cycling through images—hundreds of them, a torrent of pictures from their road trip. He froze, overwhelmed by the smiling faces on Club Rooftop, the Natasha Lynn Chao boutique, Riverbend Shorty’s. So many ecstatic selfies! The windows were not entirely opaque, and outside a woolly mammoth reared its head above the construction wall, tusks raised to the sky behind a picture of Melissa drinking a Red Bull with a Twizzler straw, making a sour face.
“We’re going way too fast,” Melissa said. She picked up her smartwatch. “Text Otto: Stop.”
The car’s engine revved in spiteful reply. A fresh burst of speed made William’s stomach flip. He steadied himself with a wide stance on the floor. His voice kept coming.
“Sometimes when I dream about Tommy, everything’s exactly like it was in the hospital, except I’m the patient in the other bed. We’re hospital roommates. And he keeps saying he wants to watch NASCAR Wives, and I’m like, ugh, dude, I’m not watching some housewives bullshit. And he just looks at me with that perfect Tommy face and says, If you change the channel, I swear to God I’ll tell Mom and Dad you’re the one who gave me cancer.”
The windows were plastered with kaleidoscopic happenings, strobing rivers of moments that had never existed. Melissa and Daniel eating Lucky Dogs in the French Quarter, Christina and William sitting at an outdoor table, a huge frosted cake between them and a cartoon moon smiling down, bathing the spires of some fictional city in its cheery romantic glow….
Otto was creating #AutonomousRoadTrip fanfiction.
William drew his knife and let the sheath fall to the floor.
Melissa’s voice locked into methodical repetition. “Text Otto: Stop. Text Otto: Stop.”
“Dude,” Daniel said again, struggling to his feet. Otto swerved into the eastbound lane, staggering William and sending Daniel back down to the bench. William kept his balance, careful to keep the long blade out in front of him. He stalked forward through a roiling sea of RenderLux. His peripheral vision swam with videos of a trip to an aquarium that had never happened, the sudden watery panorama blocking the view of Route 66. Beluga whales mashed against the glass. Mood sprites burst like errant fireworks. Each little piece of radiant shrapnel that brushed his skin carried some impression Otto had retained. He shivered with Daniel’s amphetamine rushes and opiate nods. The grand mystery of Basketball Fundamentals’ final chapter washed over him.
He took another step, and when his foot came down, he was spying on Christina’s first month in her dorm room: a lonely unpacking, a roommate she barely spoke to, emails to an old Next-Door Neighbor Friend sitting in her drafts folder, forever unsent.
He remembered the game Christina had described to him. Doubles, she called it. A mirror-world reflection of their group. But she hadn’t been able to find a way back to it from Otto’s gaming menus, and William was pretty sure she’d been dreaming. But now, all at once, here he was. Christina’s hair had started to grow back, and she’d dyed it a washed-out violet streaked with gray. Her hair lengthened in time-lapse while snow piled up on the windowsill. Her army jacket remained on its hook by the door. The sun rose and fell and rose and fell. She never went out.
“I know what you want,” she said, staring at her computer screen. William knew it was just Otto and ignored the voice. He tried to keep moving toward the front of the car. “You’re so desperate to—”
He waved his empty hand as if banishing a cloud of smoke. The dorm room hazed, and Christina’s voice glitched. He could see the front windshield, closer now, two steps away. Then the room reset itself, and Christina was standing before him. Her bangs hung in front of her eyes and she swept them aside.
“I don’t think you can comprehend this fully, but your desire to hold your friends close, to build a big house for the four of you to live in, to keep all your memories and be able to relive them whenever you want, the people with whom you made these memories always by your side, forever—I can build this house for you, William. I can BE this house.”
“Too late for that, Otto. It’s all fucked.”
He reached
