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  I suppose I will not. I suppose the only thing I have to distinguish whether this is lies or factuality is my own wit.

  So.

  What do I believe?

  “Okay, Scree.”

  “Now it just sounds like ‘scream’.”

  “It means basically the same thing. Besides, my name sounds like ‘frick’.”

  “That’s a baby word.”

  “You’re eight!”

  The silhouette of two kids, none wiser for the alternate world they’re in, begins moving up the staircase at a slow, agonizing pace.

  Two nameless children.

  Screech and Freckles.

  What do they believe?

  I recall Freckles’ words, still lingering in the back of my mind, about the other world that she either envisions, returns to, or dreams of.

  “People that smile and have brown hair.”

  She believes there is another world she can return to. She believes... there is more than what is immediately around her. More than what she can feel, and touch, and see.

  She believes in the dreams, not in the facts.

  What do I believe in?

  I take in a shaking breath as I hear Thomas question me on my sudden stillness and silence.

  I believe...

  “I am fine. Just thinking.”

  ... that I have started calling them Screech and Freckles, based upon nothing more than a self-naming ceremony that lasted only moments.

  ... Fascinating.

  sixteen

  This is not an easy story to tell.

  It is not an easy story to tell because, of course, it is not my story to tell.

  It is the story of a young girl and boy, facing the odds, facing the universe, together.

  Climbing stair after tedious stair, breath hardly labored, mind fixed on a goal that seems totally unattainable.

  To get to the top.

  I do not know if there is something at the top. I do not know if they are wasting their entire lives, scrambling, pushing, pulling, aching towards a goal that can never, ever be met.

  “Ever seen anything strange?”

  I’m laughing, and Freckles is laughing with her eyes, and as this group moves, this group that does not hold hands, that does not hold each other’s gaze, this group that is newly formed and has just met, I wonder if there ever has been a better one.

  He’s inquisitive. He keeps asking her questions, just as I asked Thomas, but they have different direction, and I feel something akin to pride in that acknowledgment.

  He knows much about the other world, the one that I seem to have mostly forgotten. He lists names – dragonflies and butterflies and birds and cats and dogs – and they sound familiar, but I am unsure if I can place creatures, figures, with each of those muttered words.

  “You said you met others, right?”

  A charged question, and both Freckles and I feel wary of the answer. Merely muttered words, and yet, they have power to drag me out of my own universe, shake me so totally. These two wonder innocently if there are any more that exist – and never, ever, will they know that I do.

  For them to know me would be for me to lose myself. They could only meet me if I dragged my body through my barrier and, in many senses of the word, abandoned all of the regulations I have been using to build myself.

  They contemplate on beings outside of them existing, and yet could not dream up a scope wide enough to include Thomas, Isaac, or me.

  They will never understand the simplicity and magnitude of what it is like to not live a life, but to watch others live theirs and base all of your worlds and words off of it.

  “You could just be a figment of my imagination.”

  And they could just be a figment of mine. All of this could just be some fevered, confused sleep I am having. But as my fingers brush against the barrier again, and I feel the teeth-shattering, spine-aching shiver in every part of my body, I know, perhaps for one of the first times, that it can’t be.

  Perhaps they are my only reality. They are thoughts, just beliefs, just... imaginations...

  But they, still, are the only reality I can rely on, the only one I know, or pray, must be true.

  “So there are other humans here.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m here,” I whisper, as though my words can reach out and hold them, unlike my fingertips. I feel a pull in my gut, to the glass, the barrier, to them looking at each other, where the other universe is breathing and living, content without the knowledge that I exist. I see them, and nothing but them: no staircase, no sky, no barrier. Just them. I am with them, and they me, and we are together, and we are real, and there is no Thomas, and no beginning, and no end, just togetherness, and completeness, and nearness, and...

  “Ives?” It’s Thomas’ voice that shocks me out of the trance that I was in. I start and look around. The invisible staircase is below me, the barrier next to me. Two figures talk and live and breathe within a world I cannot touch.

  My hands had been pressed against the barrier, so far that they had started fading within the reflective light. I jerk away, suddenly, rub my tingling palms together and follow them with a bowed head, attempting to ignore the yearning that had just sparked something deep in me.

  The air around me, for the first time, feels warm. I decide I do not like it.

  Where had I just been? Had my mind gone to the same place that the lost souls’ minds go to? Had I been far, far away, in something like another galaxy? Moments ago, I felt different. Like I had believed that I myself was somewhere in that other world, not being seen and hardly seeing, not touching and not being touched, existing, simply, among them. And it felt right.

  As it should be.

  And now I am here, knowing firmly where and who I am.

  How fascinating a change of pace. How strange! To at one minute, believe you are a part of one world, and the next, know you are a part of another, when in reality, you are not even confident of what worlds or realities are.

  “What do you think of them?” Thomas’ voice is somewhat shaky in the simple query. I wonder if it is because of the weight of the question or the weight of me almost sliding through the barrier.

  I wonder, briefly, why he did not attempt to stop me.

  My charges are silent, merely continuing to walk. They move swaying, gently, up the incline. By the bend of Screech’s body and face, I believe him to be in some sort of deep thought. Freckles, however, has not joined him in such a depth – her eyes pass rather emptily over the expansive world around her.

  I consider the question posed to me with a breath drawn deep inside my lungs. Feeling begins to return to my fingers, and I flex and play with my hands as I consider everything.

  “I think... he is different, too.”

  Thomas’ stillness offers up an automatic question.

  “Do you not remember? When I once said, asked you of Freckles?”

  “Freckles?” His voice is light, jesting. “You’ve joined in? You’re gonna be calling her that too?”

  “I said that she was different.” I move on as if he’d never posed the question in the first place, but the laugh he offers me tells me that he believes me to be silly. “Do you not remember that?”

  “Yes,” he answers through the breaks of laughter. “I do remember.”

  “I think he is different, too.” My eyes follow the slight boy, memorize every curve and turn of his body.

  “And why is it, exactly, that you think he’s different?”

  “He has that sort of... vibe about him, I believe.”

  “A vibe about him?” he repeats.

  “Can you not hear my statements the first time, that you must repeat them?”

  “No, no. I can hear them.” Another laugh that he gives away, freely, completely relaxed. “I just don’t believe what I’m hearing. From you, Miss Logical.”

  “What? Is it illogical for some people to be different from others?”

  This chuckle sounds a bit more like a sc
off, and I’m not sure I like its implications. “What others are you talking about, Ives? Huh? The two lost souls? The other Moderators? The three humans we’ve met so far, one of which being a baby? You’re comparing two people against three others. Of course they’re going to be different.”

  “But they’re different – in a different way.” I know what I mean, as I watch soot puff from each step up the Ashen Staircase and follow them, gently, on my stagnant staircase, toes pointed deliberately, but I do not know how to say it. “They’re just – different, Thomas.”

  “Different how?”

  “Just different!”

  “Everyone is different, Ives! I’m different from you, and you’re different from them.”

  “No, but it’s – ”

  “What?” He laughs again, and I feel cold, even though the sound is light enough. “Oh, I know what it is. It’s that you like them, isn’t it? You like them, so you see something in them, so they’re better than the other beings that you’ve never really met or understood?”

  My mouth opens and closes, gapes like a dying fish searching for the oxygen in water.

  “Is that is, Ives? You like them, you like yourself, and everyone else is just part of the large gray of boring and nothing, right?”

  I cannot answer, for I believe any words that I allow would be rude. (How does he even know I envision something boring as a gray blob, in the first place? Have we had this conversation before?)

  “Am I different? Or am I one of the gray blobs?”

  “You aren’t even – you’re not a blob – you don’t even truly, really – ”

  And instantly, I know it would have been more intelligent to stay silent. Staying silent never got me into any trouble. All have the right to hold their opinions to themselves, but once those opinions hit the air, usually kicking and clawing and fighting... There is never any way to return them to their cage.

  “I don’t even truly, really, what, Miss Logical?”

  There is no way out of this now. Silence can no longer buy my freedom. I swallow a dry throat, attempt not to look up, and let my long, pale fingers fold in front of me, staring at them as though they hold my attention more than this conversation does.

  “Exist. You’re not real.”

  This silence seems more cacophonous than I could have ever imagined a silence being. My feet find their marks up the staircase slowly, feet still pointed as if I am ready to pirouette on the tips at any moment. I strain to hear something from footsteps, but instead, I only hear crunching from the Ashen Staircase, half-muted as it comes through the barrier. I swallow again. Wait to feel some sort of apology or regret in my soul.

  It never comes.

  But Thomas’ voice does.

  “So that’s what you think of me, huh?” Even when angry, Thomas laughs. Even if nothing in his tone is bright and loving, as he seems to be always, he still laughs.

  “Thomas – ”

  “What? Thomas what? Just because you have not seen me in this cycle – that means I’m not real?”

  Not to me, I think. I don’t say anything, though.

  “Just because you do not believe that I exist for one wild reason or another – I’m supposed to believe that? Live by that?”

  “I didn’t say you had to.”

  He sits in silence for a moment. Then, somehow, I feel him gesturing me towards the pair on the staircase, and I look.

  “Do you believe they’re real?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? What’s the difference? You’ve never touched them. They could just be thoughts.”

  “They’re not.” My voice is quick, sharp, near angry at the mere suggestion. I had thought the same moments before – but having another pose it makes some sort of fire spark.

  “Why are you so quick to defend them, and so quick to give me up?”

  “I haven’t given you up, Thomas.” My answer comes after only a moment of contemplation, minutes less than I’m sure he wanted me to be lost in thoughts.

  “Really? You just told me I’m not real.”

  “I – I know.”

  “And how long have you been believing that?”

  “I don’t know. I do not remember ever entertaining such thoughts for too long before. I know that I – ”

  More things I should not say aloud. So I do not, until I feel an annoyed prodding.

  “Say it.”

  “I harbored the belief that maybe... perhaps... this was all some sort of dream I was having. That really nothing was real. That would include you, of course.”

  “And?”

  “And I decided that it does not matter if this is a dream. This is all I know, for now. I must believe it.”

  “But you don’t believe in me?”

  “I do – to a point. But I’m still unsure of your... solidity.”

  “Because you’ve never seen me?”

  “In part, I suppose.”

  “You’ve never touched them. You don’t know that they’re not a hallucination.”

  “It would be quite an elaborate, detailed hallucination,” I note, with a shade of humor.

  “So would I be, Ives.”

  I suppose that is true, I consider, as I hear the melancholy in the crevices and crannies of his tone. He would be a much, much more detailed dream, if he were one.

  The silence between us is long. Soured in sadness. Nearly heartbroken, if such a thing could be said. I start at the simple thought that, in some way, I may have broken some part of him. Some... metaphorical heart, somewhere in there. I have never known much of those work, and after all, I do not know much about the voice that towers over me. I suppose there was really no point, when I was first starting out, to worry over a thought in the sky, but now that the thought has presented itself to me...

  “Are you seeing someone romantically, Thomas?”

  The laugh that spills from the skies is almost automatic – a gut reaction to such words. I raise my eyebrows as I stare upwards.

  “Sorry, just h–ha– sorry. That really came out of nowhere.”

  “I didn’t upset you, did I?”

  “Not one bit. I mean – not for that.”

  “I see.”

  The slightest moment to signal a pause, then, “Oh, come on.” I can feel the smile in the mist that sweeps my face. “You have to do better than that. That’s not an apology.”

  “If I didn’t offend you, I do not need to apologize.”

  His sigh comes tittering, as though laughter is present in it. “You did offend me when you said you think I’m not real.”

  “Alright. Then I apologize that me being honest made you feel poorly.”

  A beat. I tilt my head as I shift my weight to my core, to the tips of my toes.

  “You’re kidding,” he says, voice hushed as if he has to believe that rather than whatever the opposite would lead him to conclude.

  I hum once, low, then, “Not at all.”

  “That’s– ha... that’s not an apology either!”

  “An apology is an admittance of wrongdoing, and making some sort of unspoken pact to not repeat such actions in the future.” I near recite the words as I walk, back rod-straight as I balance on the tips of my toes up the stairs. “In what way was my apology lacking?”

  “Well, first of all, you didn’t say you’d done anything wrong.”

  I shrug. “I was just honest. Is that... doing something wrong?”

  “I mean... you were cruel for no reason. You were rude.”

  “I see.”

  “You mean, you’re sorry.”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “God, you’re impossible.” His sigh is evident in each expanse of the world. “Like... here, I’ll give you lessons.”

  Now it’s my turn to release a sudden bark of laughter. “You’ll give me lessons?” One word, and he’s sparked something other than anger – something light, something happy.

  “Yes!”

  “Sorry lessons?” My voice is incredulous and diverted.


  “Yes!” Even he is beginning to dissolve in an early laughter. “Stop, you’re gonna make me laugh!”

  “Hard not to,” I huff back, and his amusement rings around us.

  “Stop it! Please!” he guffaws through.

  And then it falls. Silence, all around us, a sudden cut off from his laugh. I pull some of my silvery hair in front of me and begin to interlock the strands of hair. I wait for him to say something, but it is very obvious, as the silence stretches on, that he is waiting for me to say something.

  “What?”

  “You’re failing already. We’ve been doing this for five seconds and you’re already failing.”

  My voice is none too pleased, yet none too serious. “How am I failing?”

  “You were supposed to apologize.”

  “Apologize? Why? I did not do anything wrong.”

  “I asked you to stop, because you were gonna make me laugh.”

  “Oh.” I feign realization, pulling up the ends of one bunch of hair and staring at it. “Alright.” I look away from my hair to gaze into the depths of empty, swirling fog clouds above. “I should not have brought joy and laughter to your day. I search fervently for such forgiveness on such a heart wrenching occas – ”

  “God, you suck.” No part of his voice is rude, as it never seems to be, and he’s, once again, fading into the rumbling that ensues into laughter.

  “I believe myself to be doing pretty well, actually.” I grin and return to my assessment of my hair.

  “Look, okay – ” He’s heaving a happy sigh, but seeming to attempt to be serious. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  And then he speaks – I believe he does, at least. His voice lowers and a string of vowels and consonants falls from him, with seemingly no intended meaning. I wait a few moments, perhaps for an explanation, but when none comes, decide that it is obviously my turn to respond to the incomprehensible murmurings of a disembodied voice.

  “I did not understand you.”

  “No! No. You were supposed to say ‘sorry’.”