intents up into the clouds.
“Have you been outside today?” I asked.
“No,” he started. “I mean, not out the door, but–”
“Right.”
“–we’re basically–”
“Right.”
“We’re basically outside.”
“I know.”
Silence. He looked at his shoes again. The gray light of morning
was the only light in the room; it shone in through the open sliding
door, casting light into the open space, but it showed nothing at all. The
basement was a void save for the circle drawn by the morning light. I
stepped back and hung on the doorframe.
“Everyone’s gone,” I told him. He looked up at me. At that, I’d
expected confusion. Getting emotions from Josh was tough; reading
them, tougher. But on his face, I clearly read no confusion, simply
intrigue.
“Well, let’s go look for them,” he told me.
I put one foot on the gravel outside the door.
Sometime later, we were walking down the road. The road
widened as we reached the sharp rightward bend, but the shoulders
disappeared; we were walking on the road already, though. The dense,
high treetops drew a path on the sky in the shape of the bend. As we
rounded the bend to the long, straight hill that is my street, the treetops
straightened out to form a channel; a bright, gray streak extending until
the sides of the channel seem to meet, far down the road. Where they
meet, the road will bend again, this time sharply to the left; the shoulder
will disappear, again, and the treetops will bend with the road, again.
And, again, the treetops will straighten out with the road, forming a long,
bright, gray channel extending just as far as the last.
We didn’t know where we were going, but we decided to take
Josh’s car to get there.
We coasted down the roads of our neighborhood; we started at
his house, coasted down, turned right, coasted past my house, turned left,
coasted, right, coasted. The roads were empty, and the houses illuminated
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