“I’ll go in,” I hear myself say.
I don’t know what part of my brain said that.
Go in?
Claire echoes me. “Go in?”
Victoria lowers the gun by an inch. “Sorry?”
Slowly, I step off the bike. I spread my hands in front of me. “I trust Peter to find me. And once he does, I’ll make sure he finds Sean. Claire, please get Peter.”
“You cannot be serious,” Victoria says. “That’s insane. You can’t voluntarily—”
“She can!” Claire pipes up. Her eyes are shining. “She’s been in there before and come out! On her own!” She scampers to the bike and climbs on. Her feet don’t reach the pedals. She frowns at her feet and climbs off. And then she runs. She’s fast, a swirl of pink tulle.
“No one comes out of the void, not without the Finder,” Victoria says.
I look at the void and remember how I drove in and out of it again and again. A fluke? Or was Victoria wrong? “I want a guarantee of safety.”
“The void will destroy you. I can’t guarantee—”
“After,”I clarify. “After Peter finds me. You can’t shoot me. You can’t knife me. You can’t sic a lynch mob on me. You can’t tell anyone you saw me.”
Victoria’s eyes widen and then narrow, as if she’s calculating. At last, she shrugs. “Fine. Bring me back Sean, and I’m not your enemy.”
“It’s not my fault the Missing Man left. I did nothing wrong. I don’t know why he left. And I hate living in fear because of something I had no control over.”
“That’s nice.” She waves the gun at the brown-red dust. “If you intend to go in, then go in.” She doesn’t believe I’ll do it. I can see it in her eyes. She thinks it’s a trick or a bluff or... But she doesn’t have other options.
It’s no big deal,I tell myself. After all, I drove into the nothingness over and over when I first tried to leave Lost. It didn’t hurt me. The car didn’t disintegrate.It’s only dust.But it isn’t, and I know it isn’t. I’ve been deliberately avoiding it as I scavenge through the items it disgorges. I can’t delude myself into thinking it’s a patch of bad weather.
It’s a servant of despair,Peter said once.It will destroy you if it can.
God help me, but I believe him.
If I delay long enough, Claire will return with Peter and then I won’t have to enter the soul-destroying nothingness. On the other hand, if I delay long enough, Victoria could lose her sense of rationality and squeeze the trigger. She’s fidgeting, and she’s pointing the gun at me again.
The gun promises instant death. The void...I know from driving through it that its death won’t be instant. I’ll have a little time. And in that time, Peter will find me. It’s what he does. He’ll find her lost friend, and I’ll buy myself some safety, at least from one crazy gun-toting waitress, which is a start.
I walk into the dust.
It melts around me. I expect grit in my eyes, but I don’t feel any. The air feels soft on my skin. It’s like diving into water, except it’s neither hot nor cold. I don’t remember it feeling like this when I drove into it. It had felt like dust then, hadn’t it? I look behind me, but the dust has closed around me. It looks the same in every direction. Everything has blurred into reddish-beige. “Sean? Sean, can you hear me?” My words don’t echo. They’re absorbed by the void as if it’s a sponge. It deadens sound.
I continue to walk, though I have no sense of direction in this soup. Even up and down feel arbitrary. It’s more opaque than night because even though it isn’t black, there’s no light to cast any shadows or create any depth. It’s like soaking underwater with my eyes closed. It reminds me of how I used to spend hours every summer immersed in the ocean. I’d swim out beyond the white-crested breakers, I’d float on my back, my ears underwater, and I’d look up at the crystal-blue sky until I fuzzily heard my mom calling me from shore. She’d slather me with sunscreen every time I returned, and then I’d wriggle away and run laughing toward the water again.
In those moments, I felt like I had all the family I needed. It didn’t matter that I’d never known my father or that I had no brothers or sisters like other families on the beach. With my mom, on the beach and in the water, I was complete.
But here in the void I am very incomplete. By now, I’ve probably been fired.
Or pronounced dead.
Or at least missing.
Maybe I am missing. Maybe this won’t end. I won’t escape. I won’t find Sean. I won’t find a way home. The Missing Man is still gone, and there’s no sign that he’ll ever return.
Stop it,I tell myself. I have to think positively. To do otherwise... Ican’tdo otherwise. I have to believe that I’ll escape someday. But maybe there is no hope.
Maybe it’s over.
