More Than This

by Patrick Ness

He doesn’t dare blink for what he sees whenever his eyes are closed. Even when they’re open, he can still see shadows of it all, one world laid down over the top of another, everyone he ever loved, everyone he ever knew, seeping into the flight of bicycles up a hill –

“Seth,” she says, “wherever you are, it’s okay. You can come back from it. Whatever happened to you down there, whatever the world looks like now, that’s not how it always looks. That’s not how it’s always going to look. There’s more. There’s always more. Whatever you see, wherever you are, we’re still here with you. Me and Tommy.”

“I don’t remember anything from before,” she says. “I’m sorry.” “That’s how we made it, I think,” Seth says. “So we’d forget there was ever anything else. Your own memories rewritten to make it all work, and then your life was there in front of you. Online. The real one, as far as you ever knew.”

“You mean Lethe.” He pronounced it Lee-Thee. “The river of forgetfulness in Hades. So the dead don’t remember their former lives and spend eternity mourning them.”

It’s also the name of the process people have started to undertake when they enter the Link.”

Exchange them. For a chance to make something out of themselves and their futures in a world that hasn’t been so damaged.” The

maybe all this tragedy of how you made the wrong decision and your parents punished you for the rest of your life, maybe that’s a story you just want to be true, because it’s easier.” “Easier? How the hell is it easier?” “Because then you wouldn’t have to do anything yourself! If it’s your fault, that clears everything up. You’ve done this horrible thing and that’s easy. You don’t ever have to risk being happy.”

“Oh, poor little Seth, with his poor little parents who didn’t love him. You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there’s always more than this. There’s always something you don’t know. Maybe your parents didn’t love you enough, and that sucks, yes, it does, but maybe it wasn’t because you were bad. Maybe it was just because the worst thing in the world had happened to them and they weren’t able to deal with it.”

“This is who you are, do you see?” Tomasz continues. “You are not a boy who hands his brother over to a murderer instead of yourself. You are a man who will save his friends. You are a man who does not even hesitate to save his friends.” “My friends,”

wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.” He shakes his head. “And there was more. I just couldn’t see it.”

They’re weak and strong and they make mistakes, like anyone, like he has. And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there’s room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more. More and more and more. Sometimes in the shape of other people, surprising people, with unexpected, unimaginable stories of their own. People who looked at the world in a completely different way and by doing so, made it different. People who could turn out to be friends. And he doesn’t know what will happen when