Chapter 116

SUMMERTIME RECORD SIDE -NO. 6- If anyone ever asks me what I think about this journey, I’ll probably say “None of us knew a thing about it.” I think I heard someone say something similar about it once, but I won’t let that bother me. It’s not like anyone’s going to ask anyway. Calling it a “journey” might be exaggerating things a little, but it seems like the perfect word to me. I lost my body, I lost my friend—and then I woke up in this world where I only exist as a consciousness. I’ve spent two years like this. Flying around this virtual world, as if fleeing from something. I wound up over on his computer to hide from it all. And yet now I am here. To face it all down. Looking back, I think my life’s been pretty awful from start to finish, but all these things that happened to me—and the pain they brought—made me feel I was still alive, whether I had my body or not. I don’t mean to sound like I’m thankful for it, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t hate my life or anything. It’s been an adventure, one I was completely unprepared for. Nothing ever went right. I was scared, I stumbled around, but I still managed to fly all the way here. Once this battle is over, maybe I should write it all out on my favorite web forum. Then, when people start commenting about how made-up it sounds, we can all gather around the screen and laugh at it. I fly on, soundlessly, through a world the color of green rust. All I can tell—and I don’t know how I know this, but I do—is that there’s no turning back from where I am. I recall the events that led me here, the situations I shall never again return to: The first time I fell in love, and found myself unable to express my feelings. The time I realized someone I hated was actually a pretty cool guy. The moment I realized that I was almost astonishingly incapable of doing anything. That, and the fact that someone like me still had people who called her their friend. I’ll likely wind up losing something again. But up ahead here, I’m bound to obtain something else. No, I have absolutely no regrets for this awful, yet wonderful, life. No matter what kind of ending’s waiting for me.