Something Good

I don’t know how exactly he hacks, but when I go into my VR piano room, he somehow manages to follow me there without an explicit invite. “I didn’t add lyrics,” I say quickly, so he doesn’t get the wrong idea.

As I settle in on the bench, I glance up at him to see he’s still smiling slightly, a crack of light through the emptiness. “Stubborn,” he replies.

Then he sits down beside me, the bench stretching to accommodate him and the space between us, just as it had before. I frown at him. “Just be quiet and listen.”

His smile grows wider.

I find myself feeling pleased about that. He’s an unhappy person, a loner, a slacker, sure, but he’s more than that. I can be myself with him. He likes it when I’m bossy, when I bite back. He likes me.

And so I play. It’s the new version of the song, the one I’d been working on, and it includes his accidental additions, though I’m not sure he remembers them enough to realize. But I don’t worry about that. I focus on the music, focus so deeply I forget he’s there, forget everything that’s happened, forget about Earth, Nova, and Mars, Sol, Tori, and Zach, my dad, my mom, me. All that’s left is the feeling of the keys beneath my fingertips and the melody that pours out around us. A fake piano, two fake people, in a fake room, with the sound of something real that had to fight its way out of me.

I like the song now. No, I love it. I love playing it. I love hearing it. I realize it all at once—how much it means to me right now, in this moment. How badly I needed this. Not just to play it, or to hear it, but to perform it for someone else. To know someone else is hearing it too.

That someone cares enough to listen to my song. One I’m starting to feel proud of.

When I land on the last chord, a heavy exhale leaves me, final like a deathrattle. After a week of holing up in the house, finally playing it for someone feels like an exorcism. I look over at him with a smile, which fades quickly at what I see.

He’s… crying. His head is lowered, turned slightly away, but I can see the occasional shudder rock his body as he fights his tears back. He must feel my gaze on him, because he wipes his eyes on his sleeve, sniffles, and says, “That was pretty good.”

“Understatement of the year,” I joke halfheartedly. I fold my hands in my lap, not quite sure what to do. It’s been a heavy day for him. Maybe a heavy week. Or even a heavy last few years.

He just laughs and sniffles again. “Oh, now you’re cocky, huh?”

After a moment of hesitation, I put my hand on his shoulder, hoping it’ll comfort him, but it seems to have the opposite effect, because he starts crying in earnest now, his sobs hard and heavy. Unsure of how to proceed, I squeeze his shoulder and sit in the silence with him.

Then he speaks.

“They were working on something,” he says. He lets out a shaky breath. “A tool that would let people travel outside of the public atmospheres safely. A ‘personal atmosphere.’ It had worked before, but it was still a prototype, still faulty. It stopped working that day. It would’ve been just fine if they hadn’t… celebrated. If they hadn’t embraced.” I can see his tears falling into his lap, but he still won’t look at me. “Something about the devices being too close together caused them to stop working—or maybe it was the overlap in the forcefields, I don’t know—but they just… they…”

I’m only sort of following, but I think I get what he’s saying. So they did suffocate. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “It was a good idea. They were so… brilliant. The last thing she did was shake her head at me when I tried to go to them… and the last thing my dad did was hold her hand…” He breaks down further, and I feel it too, the sting of tears.

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

Now he looks at me. His eyes are full of emotion, more than I’ve ever seen from him—maybe more than I’ve seen from anyone ever. But there’s a determination there that makes me feel uneasy. “I’m going to make it work. For them.”

“You’re…” My grip on his shoulder tightens. He’s been working on their invention? Is that why he doesn’t come to school? He’s not just wasting away in his room, slacking off. He’s been doing something else this whole time.

An image flashes through my head. A bad one. I can see it—see him suffocating out there on the dusty red ground outside the public atmosphere, alone—and I feel sick. But I also recognize the look on his face.

He won’t give up. I can’t stop him from doing this.

“Be careful,” I whisper.

He has nothing to lose. He won’t be cautious. He’ll endanger himself. He’s too reckless.

“Please.”

I can’t let him do that.

Another rare, genuine smile breaks through, a sorrowful contradiction to the tears staining his cheeks, but then he wipes the last of them away until the only remaining proof of his sadness is the puffiness around his eyes. “Don’t worry about me,” he says.

Am I? Is that what I’m doing?

I am, aren’t I?

He straightens up slightly and clears his throat, his gaze still on me. “Hey,” he says suddenly, a bit of that mischievous sparkle returning to his eyes. “Let’s get out of here. Wanna see something cool?”

Huh? I blink at him. “Okay,” I hear myself say before I can take it back.

And then we’re somewhere else. Hacked footage. It has to be.

Spending time with Nico is like a roller coaster.

We’re in a thick, loud crowd of people, in a city that I recognize from my history textbooks: New York. This is Times Square. I know that much from the bright billboards, flashing lights, and red stairs. People are wearing glasses that say 2025 on them and silly plastic top hats, and they’re yelling to their friends, shouting, and pointing, and cheering, and laughing. There’s a drunk girl crying about a guy, and an older couple being jostled about by a group of loud boys trying to get past them. Nico grabs my wrist gently to pull me through the crowd, and I look up at what they’re all staring at as they start to chant. 10… 9… 8… There’s a ball, like a big disco ball, up by a screen with a countdown.

New Years’ Eve. In another time. On another planet.

A different world.

7…

“It’s so crowded,” I shout to Nico. “No wonder they all got sick, all bunched together like this before the universal vaccine. It’s just stupid!” I don’t know why I think of that, of all things, in this moment. But my brain is fried, and it comes out in a rush as I feel a surge of claustrophobia at the hundreds of people bustling around us. I hurry along to stay close to Nico, letting his hand guide me.

6…

Nico laughs and shouts back, “Nerd.”

5…

Then he turns toward me, and I nearly stumble into him. His eyes are still a little red from crying, but there’s a look of pure freedom on his face now too. A joy and a weightlessness that makes my stomach churn with jealousy. I don’t know what it’s like to feel that carefree.

4…

“Why here?” I shout.

3…

He says, “‘I don’t want comfort… I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.’”

2…

“What?” The words are familiar, but I don’t know what he’s talking about, and I can barely hear him anyway.

1… Happy new year! The roar of the crowd is deafening, and I see the colorful flashes of fireworks reflected in his eyes. They light his tear-stained face in reds, greens, blues, white. He grins at me and leans in slowly, giving me time to back out. I don’t lean in too, my body tensing up as I realize what’s about to happen. But when he kisses me, I kiss him back with a desperation that borders on madness.

I know it’s a bad idea.

I don’t want to lead him on.

But I like him. I think I really like him.

Oh no.

I like Nico.