The Oreo war is put on pause, but only because I find a spare packet that I hid, and now she’s doing the annoying things she does when she writes.
We’re both in the living room, and I’m watching her type, her facial expressions changing every few seconds, from delighted to confused to happy to sad. She goes through about six different emotions, and it’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
“What?” she shouts, her music turned up so loud that I can hear the lyrics.
“Why are you doing that?” I ask, gesturing at my face.
She pulls the headphones off. “Doing what?”
“Your face,” I say. “You keep changing it. It’s distracting.”
“Oh, I have to have the same expression my character does while I’m writing dialogue,” she says. “It’s easier to describe it.”
I stare at her. “Every expression?”
“Yep.” She pauses the music. “So, if they laugh, I laugh; if they’re confused, I’m confused?—”
“Yeah, I get the idea,” I say, eyebrows still pinched together. She keeps her headphones down but starts typing again. “Do you cry, too?”
“Yep.”
“Real tears?”
“Yeah.”
This is probably one of the most interesting things she’s ever told me, because I haven’t really cried since I was fourteen. I didn’t cry when I left each foster home, even the nicer ones, because I expected the disappointment and crying wouldn’t help. The last time I shed a tear was theday Asher died, and even then, it had only been one or two. I just can’t do it. I can feel the pain, it’s definitely there, and it tears me up inside, but it never presents itself on the outside.
“How?” I ask.
She raises her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“How do you just … cry? That’s weird. Aren’t you supposed to actually be sad to cry?”
“I am sad when I cry. My characters are sad, and I feel it, too.”
I close my own laptop, work forgotten, not that there’s much to do. I’ve hired a few people through the dark web to find out more information about this drive, but anytime any of them gets close, they back off. This recent guy is the only one asking fewer questions and doing more work. But he also cost more money.
“Your characters aren’t real. How can they be sad?” I ask.
“They’re real to me.”
I frown. “But … you made them. You know more than anyone that they’re not real. It’s like baking cookies and then being surprised that they’re made from ingredients.”
She laughs. “They’re fully formed people in my head, Gable. They are real, they’re just not … here.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Well …” She closes her laptop slowly and takes the headphones from around her neck, placing them on the side table. The only things in the house she treats with care are her laptop and those headphones. “It’s like Asher. He’s not here, but we still feel something for him, right?”
“Yeah, but Asher was real. Asher was here. Your characters were never real.”
“But they’re built from everyone I’ve ever met. They’repieces of real people made into someone else. They have thoughts and fears and emotions and go through experiences, just like we do. They react just like we do. Like …” She gets up and sits beside me. “If we were having this conversation with Asher here, what would he say?”
“He’d probably agree with you and say it was cute.”
“But you don’t know that, do you?”
“Yes, I know him, and I know what he’d say.”
