IM by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-14T15:00:00+00:00

Eventually, the silence on the phone stretched out for long enough that I had to admit that Great-Aunt Angela had hung up. I sighed and sat up, dropping the phone onto my pillow as I rolled out of the bed. One more day without Sarah. The worst part was that I wasn’t even surprised anymore. I just got on with life.

I didn’t want to get on with life. I wanted to sit next to my phone and stare at it until it magically rang and it was her on the other end. And I knew that was never going to happen, just like I knew that--when and if she finally did get better--I wasn’t going to be her first priority. I loved her, but she didn’t love me. That was the way the world was, and I had long since come to terms with it, no matter how much my cousin Annie teased me and tried to get me to ask her out. (What did Annie know, anyway? It wasn’t like she dated all that much, or dated at all. The last time she had gone out with an actual boy, she’d been in high school, and a cheerleader, and he’d been on the football team, and it had been the homecoming dance, and anyway, he wound up in therapy and trying to convince his psychiatrist that there were monsters in the woods behind the school. Which there were, but that was beside the point.)

Mechanically, I sat down at my computer and pulled up a browser, loading my email. There was nothing interesting in there, or at least nothing interesting enough to serve as a distraction. I pushed my chair back and started picking up my laundry off the basement floor. If I was going to be spending another day alone at home with my thoughts, I might as well make myself useful.

My computer beeped.

I glanced at it automatically, and saw that my IM contact list had popped up on the screen. That meant that one of my starred contacts had logged on--probably Antimony, which could mean something was about to try to eat downtown Portland or something. That was always good for a distraction. I scanned down the list, looking for her name, and felt my heart skip a beat. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. At that specific moment in time, I found that I didn’t mind…because the second name on the list was one I hadn’t seen for a very long time, and hadn’t been sure I was ever going to see again.

MIDWICH_GIRL

I sat back down, barely able to feel my fingers as I opened a chat window and quickly tapped out a message.

INCUBOY: HELLO?

There was no response.

I stared at the screen, willing her to answer. The window sat open in front of me, almost like an accusation, like a punishment for daring to hope that things could be changing. But her name was still on my contact list, and so I tried again, typing out a slightly longer message:

INCUBOY: SARAH, IS THAT YOU? ARE YOU THERE?

No response.

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