“Nobody,” I insisted, “it’s not...it’s not what you think, okay?”
Kyle’s expression was skeptical.“What do I think?”
Everything I could say, everything I could try, only seemed likely to dig up fresh questions I couldn’t answer.Or, at least, that I couldn’t answer without telling my friend something which might completely destroy our relationship.
I sat down on the edge of the bed instead.Lips tight, eyes pleading.Hoping Kyle would, if not forget everything that’d just made the last couple of minutes so unbearable, then at least be willing to ignore it.Conspire with me in pretending that life was okay.Normal.
“You’re scaring me, dude.”
My shrug was jerky, lopsided.
His frown deepened.“Are you in trouble?”
I shook my head.
“Are you hacking into other people’s accounts or something?”
Another shake.
Kyle looked frustrated.“Oli!”
“It’s just...it’s just a name I use, sometimes.Online, I mean.”
“Who with?”
“Just...”I winced.I’d been about to say “guys,” but that was far too close an admission for comfort.“Just, y’know...people.”
“But why?”
The frustration simmered up in me, before I even realized it was there.Seeping between the cracks of my anxiety and fear: at how unfair this all was, at how foreign the very idea of it would be to Kyle.Because he never felt obliged to hide who he really was.
I hissed annoyance through my clenched teeth.“Don’t you ever want to be someone different, for once?”
He looked at me, his gaze steady.Challenging.“Who is it you want to be?”
“Don’t,” I said, turning away.
“How can I treat you like the person you want to be, if you won’t tell me who that is?”
It was the sort of beguiling argument that makes you think, maybe it’ll all be okay.Maybe someone else knowing wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“I can’t,” I told him, softly.
“Can’t, or don’t want to?”
I sighed.“Axolotl454.”
“What?”
I gestured with my chin, at the screen behind him.“The password.Axolotl454.With a capital A.”
He turned on the swivel chair, and a moment later I heard him typing.Strangely clear, despite the fact that the sound of my rasping lungs and my thundering heartbeat were competing to drown me.
The mouse, clicking.Part of me wanted to watch over his shoulder.To see what Kyle was seeing at the same time as he did; to be able to piece together my argument, my excuses, in real-time.
“This isn’t you.”
I looked up, to see a shirtless, headless torso filling the screen.
