Free Are You There and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead Page A

you mean?”
    “You’re spoiling it. Please, let’s make every second happy. Make it a day we’d want to relive a thousand times.”
    “I don’t want to live any day a thousand times.”
    “Let’s walk now.”
    “What’s the hurry?”
    She got out of bed and started dressing, her back to him.
    “Don’t be mad,” he said.
    “I’m not mad.”
    “You are.”
    She turned to him, buttoning her shirt. “Don’t tell me what I am.”
    “Sorry.”
    “You practically sleep walk through the most important day of your life.”
    “I’m not sleep-walking.”
    “Don’t you even want to fall in love with me?”
    He laughed uncertainly. “I don’t even know your name.”
    “You know it. Kylie.”
    “I mean your last name.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “It matters to me,” Toby said. “You matter to me.”
    Finished with her shirt, she sat on the edge of the bed to lace her shoes. “No you don’t,” she said. “You only care about me if you can know all about my past and our future. You can’t live one day well and be happy.”
    “Now you sound like Hemingway.”
    “I don’t know what that means and I don’t care.” She shrugged into her parka.
    “Where are you going?”
    “For a walk. I told you what I wanted.”
    “Yeah, I guess I was too ignorant to absorb it.”
    She slammed the door on her way out.
    She stood under the pumpkin-colored light of the street lamp, confused, face tilted up to be anointed by the rain. Was he watching her from the apartment window, his heart about to break? She waited and waited. This is the part where he would run to her and embrace her and kiss her and tell her that he loved, loved, loved her.
    He didn’t come out.
    She stared at the brick building checkered with light and dark apartment windows, not certain which one was his.
    He didn’t come out, and it was spoiled.
    A bus rumbled between her and the building, pale indifferent faces inside.
    Kylie walked in the rain. It was not poison but it was cold and after a while unpleasant. She pulled her hood up and walked with her head down. The wet sidewalk was a pallet of neon smears. Her fingers touched the shape of the explosive in her pocket. She could find the building with the papered windows. Even if the Tourists tried to stop her she might still get inside and destroy the Eternity Core. It’s what her mother wanted, what the Old Men wanted. But what if they caught her? If she remained in the loop through an entire cycle she would become a permanent part of it. She couldn’t stand that, not the way she hurt right now. She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t know the time . She had to reach her scutter and get out.
    A horn went off practically at her elbow. Startled, she looked up. A low and wide vehicle, a boy leaning out the passenger window, smirking.
    “Hey, you wanna go for a ride?”
    “No.”
    “Then fuck you, bitch!” He cackled, and the vehicle accelerated away, ripping the air into jagged splinters.
    She walked faster. The streets were confusing. She was lost. Her panic intensified. Why couldn’t he have come after her and be sorry and love her? But it wasn’t like the best parts of the movies. Some of it was good, but a lot of it wasn’t. Maybe her mother had been right. But Kylie didn’t believe in souls, so wasn’t it better to have one day forever than no days? Wasn’t it?
    Fuck you, bitch .
    She turned around and ran back in the direction from which she’d come. At first she didn’t think she could find it, but there it was, the apartment building! And Toby was coming out the lobby door, pulling his jacket closed. He saw her, and she ran to him. He didn’t mean it and she didn’t mean it, and this was the part where they made up, and then all the rest of the loop would be good—the good time after making up. You had to mix the good and bad. The bad made the good better. She ran to him and hugged him, the smell of the wet leather so strong.
    “You were coming after me,”