I NEVER

by cassandra clare

The moment Lisle walks up to the front door, swinging her duffel bag determinedly over her arm, I have the strangest urge to grab her arm and tell her to get back in the car with me, that we should drive home and not come back. That this whole meetup thing is a bad idea. That I want to go home.

But the moment is brief and passes, and besides, Lisle would never listen to me anyway. She’s already ringing the doorbell of the condo, over and over, a manic grin on her face. I can hear the harsh buzz of the bell as it echoes over and over inside. I glance around. The condominium is one of several dozen fake chalet-style structures scattered up and down the side of a grassy hill. A lake sparkles distantly under the gray winter sun. The air is cold and I shiver, wondering what the hell I’m doing here.

At last, the door is opened by a middle-aged woman with curling brown hair streaked with gray. She is stocky, wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt with the face of a wolf airbrushed onto the front. She drips silver pendants: pentagrams, Hands of Fatimah, Stars of David, and ankhs dangling from her neck, a sort of decorative spiritual grab bag.

“Well, hello there,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. She has a distinct British accent. “And you are…?”

“Jane,” I say, and then when Lisle’s elbow jams into my ribs, “Catherine Earnshaw.”

“Oh, right, you’re one of the book people.” She smiles, extends a hand. “Xena, Warrior Princess. This is my place.”

Xena, Warrior Princess? The kickass chick with the breastplates? This woman resembles someone’s weirdo aunt, or an elementary school art teacher, the kind who’s always telling you to “feel” the paintings.

Lisle is grinning. “I’m Faith,” she says. “The Slayer.”

“Then I’d better let you in before you start slaying!” The woman laughs like she’s said something uproariously funny, and stands aside. “You can drop your bags in the first bedroom on the left. Everyone’s in the living room.”

We drop our bags as ordered in a small, plain bedroom with a king-size bed. The bed is covered in bags; I balance my duffel gingerly on top of a backpack covered in Invader Zim buttons. Lisle is already stripping off her sweater to reveal her black halter top and studded belt. She looks hot, enough to get me worried. I didn’t really bring any special clothes, just jeans and T-shirts. But then, all that Ben has seen of me so far is my left eye, my hands, and my feet in sandals. It’s hard to live up to that sort of mystery.

Lisle grabs my hand. “Come on.”

The hum of voices hits us before we reach the living room. It’s as big as promised, with a balcony overlooking a green lawn that slopes down to the lake. There’s a granite island separating the living room from the kitchen, and lined up on it are all sorts of bottles—all sorts of booze, and some soda-pop mixers. Xena, Warrior Princess, is behind the island, mixing drinks into plastic cups. Everyone else is sprawled out all over the living room, and of course I recognize no one. One thing I can say: no one looks like their online icons. There are two skinny girls seated uncomfortably on a couch, staring at each other, and a bunch of college-age-looking boys sprawled around a low table on the floor, rolling dice and arguing in loud voices. There are older people, too: a woman with glasses, knitting in a chair. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says THE HAMSTER OF DOOM RAINS COCONUTS ON YOUR PITIFUL CITY. Some teenage girls with long hair are playing cards at a round table. They look up as Lisle and I come into the room, then look down again, obviously uninterested.

I feel suddenly so uncomfortable that I’m almost dizzy. It’s like I crashed a party where I don’t know anyone, a party I shouldn’t have been invited to in the first place. Everyone’s wearing these long, color-blocked scarves, too, even inside. I rack my brain. Was I supposed to bring one? Is it a Game thing?

“Huh,” says Lisle, looking around. She has that expression, an expression I know. It’s “Where are the cute guys?” I’m briefly, meanly pleased that she feels uncomfortable, too, before I realize that Lisle’s never uncomfortable. She just feels cheated of the cute guys that are her due. “Well, everyone’s not here yet,” she says to no one in particular. Then she grabs my hand, and hisses in a stage whisper: “Is one of these guys Ben?”

“I have no idea,” I say with a jolt of shock, realizing that of course I don’t know. The image of Ben I carry around in my head is just that, an image in my head. He could look like anything at all. He could be one of the bearded guys at the table. I stare at them in horror.

“Like some welcome drinks?” Xena, Warrior Princess, is standing at our elbows, holding two red plastic cups. She frowns at me and Lisle. “You are eighteen, right?”

“Yep,” Lisle agrees cheerfully. I wonder if anyone’s going to tell Xena, Warrior Princess, that the legal drinking age in the U.S. is twenty-one, not eighteen. But no one says anything. I take one of the cups and stare down at the murky brown mixture.

“It’s vodka and diet chocolate soda,” explains Xena. “Sorry I don’t have any real soda—I’m on Atkins. But I sent some of the guys out to get mixers, so we should have them soon.”

I nod and drink some of the brown mixture. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.

Xena claps her hands together. “Okay, everybody! Roll call. Faith and Catherine, everyone. Everyone, Catherine and Faith.” In quick succession we are introduced to Sherlock Holmes, Neo and Trinity from The Matrix, Luke Skywalker, G’Kar, Starbuck (the boy), Starbuck (the girl), Edward Elric, Dracula, Lana Lang, Kenshin, Modesty Blaise, and Hazel, who is apparently a rabbit from Watership Down. I breathe a little sigh of relief—no Heathcliff yet.

The two girls on the couch introduce themselves to us belatedly as Jack and Ennis from Brokeback Mountain, which makes Lisle snort. I remember their torrid journal posts and passionate online protestations of love. They don’t look so torrid now—they’re sitting as far as they can get from each other on the couch, wearing identical panicked expressions.

The doorbell rings and Xena goes to answer it. When she returns, she’s trailed by two teenage boys carrying grocery bags. Both are about the same height, both have dark hair.

But I know Ben immediately. When we were first getting acquainted online, we sent flirty photos of ourselves to each other—I’d take a picture of my elbow and send it to him, and he’d respond with a photo of just his left eye, or the curve of his ear. I couldn’t have put a picture of his face together in my mind, but I knew he had a scar on his right thumb, and a spray of freckles across one cheek, light as powder dust. Looking at him now, I know him by the curling hair at his temples, like ivy curling up at the corners, just like in the photos he sent me. I recognize the shape of his hands, the blue of his eyes. Now that the rest of him is filled in around the edges I am amazed—he looks just like I thought he would.

I barely notice the boy who’s with him. He has dark hair, too, and glasses, and is skinnier than Ben, more what I imagine a nerdy online role-player to look like. He hoists his bag. “Snacks and mixers,” he says. “Where should we put them?”

Ben starts to look over in my direction. And that’s it—I’m out of the room, my feet carrying me down the hallway, so fast that I’m practically running. Running from what? I have no idea. I duck into a bathroom, almost slamming the door behind me. I turn the sink on and grab handfuls of icy water, splashing them up over my burning face. The bathroom is gross, too—the floor is sticky, and powder from burned incense covers the counter, though the air still smells like mold.

“Jane? Jane!” Lisle bangs on the door, her voice filled with anxiety. “Jane, are you okay?”

I suppose I should appreciate that she’s come to find me, but instead I just feel more humiliated than ever. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the sticky, wet linoleum, and put my face in my hands.

I should take this moment to point out that me playing Catherine Earnshaw in a massive online multiplayer game was Lisle’s idea in the first place. It would never have occurred to me, mostly because I don’t use the computer that much—or at least, I didn’t. It was Lisle who was crazy about the Game. Lisle and I had been friends for so many years that I’d forgotten when we’d met. She lived next door to me and was just always there, like a sister more than a friend. She annoyed me like a sister might, too. Especially since she’d become completely addicted to her online journal. She had a fair number of people logging on to read the rambling thoughts and massive multi-chaptered Buffy fanfiction she posted on her site, Pretty When You Blog. To be totally honest, Lisle isn’t that great a writer. She never seems to be able to streamline her thoughts into any sort of logical shape, and she doesn’t care about spelling or capitalization either. But she has a really cute icon of herself in a black corset top up on the page, which on the Internet is better than being able to spell.

It was because of her other blogger friends that she wound up being in the Game. There are lots of role-playing games online, but the Game is the most famous because it’s so huge. The idea behind the Game is that every player picks a character from a book, TV show, movie, video game—anything, as long as it’s a character a fair number of people can be expected to recognize. Every character gets a journal, and the ability to message other characters. The idea is that everyone in the Game is trapped in a huge castle together, where they live and eat and sleep and interact with each other. In theory, they’re trying to get out of the castle, but nobody pays much attention to that part of the Game. Mostly they flirt and fight. And you’re not supposed to interact exclusively with people from your own fictional “universe,” which is why you get Alice in Wonderland hanging out with Indiana Jones and Lolita hooking up with Conan the Barbarian.

“It’s a total mindfuck,” Lisle explained when she first joined it. She was into the Game fairly early and got to pick the character she wanted—Faith, in her case. She’d been obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer since we were about ten years old and first watched it together and she’d declared that she was Buffy. Later she decided she was Faith, because Faith had the dark hair. Lisle had been a crazed fan of a lot of things since, but nothing else seemed to have the staying power of Buffy.

Lisle quickly struck up an online love triangle with the brothers from Supernatural. (Lisle likes it when boys fight over her.) She never seemed to take it too seriously, but she was online constantly, messaging them, exchanging photos, and giggling. She got caught up in all the backstage dramas of the Game, always telling me who’d deleted their journal recently in a fit of pique, who was trolling who, and who had hooked up with who behind who’s back.

It drove me crazy. For years, every day after school and on the weekends I’d gone by Lisle’s house and hung out with her in her bedroom. We used to sprawl on the floor and watch movies together. (Lisle wanted to watch Legend and Alien and I wanted to watch black-and-white classics. We compromised on Merchant Ivory costume dramas, because she liked the boys with the English accents.) Once the Game started, all I did was lie on Lisle’s bed and watch while she typed on her computer. She could sit there for hours, literally, without ever looking up. Every few seconds I’d hear that “pong” noise that meant someone was sending her an online message. After a while I felt like every time I heard it was another punch in the face.

Finally, I cracked. I joined the Game because it was either that or move and find a new best friend. Lisle was so excited that I was going to play in the Game with her, she practically cried. “I’ll play if I can be Catherine Earnshaw,” I told her, thinking of my favorite fictional character in my favorite book of all time, WutheringHeights. I didn’t think I’d get her—Cathy is such a great character, and her love story with Heathcliff is so intense, someone was sure to be playing her already.

But no one was. Lisle was practically dancing while she set up my journal for me and showed me how to message other players within the game interface. But there was one big problem: no one was playing Heathcliff, and a Cathy with no Heathcliff is like a bike with no wheels. I made a few journal entries about how life on the moors was dull and how I wished something exciting would happen and about how the heather was growing plentifully this season. I figured I must have the most boring Game journal ever.

Sometimes other characters would come into my journal and try to interact with me. Lisle bopped by occasionally and pinged me with messages; Draco Malfoy tried to start up a chat, and when I wasn’t responsive, left some nasty comments in my journal and departed. Sherlock Holmes pinged to ask if I’d seen an enormous dog on the moors, and since I do love The Hound of the Baskervilles I considered e-mailing him back, but wound up being too shy. Lisle was disgusted with me and declared me a failure at the Game—and, it was strongly implied, at life.

And then there was Ben. He didn’t tell me his real name at first, of course. I logged into my Game account one day and there it was: a note that I’d been added by a new character: Heathcliff. And a message in my inbox. I opened it, expecting it to be of the “What up UR kewl and Kute!” variety, but it wasn’t. It was a love letter from Heathcliff to Cathy. And it was beautiful.

Even though it was addressed to Cathy, and not to me, and was from someone I’d never met, it made me cry. I sat there crying while I read it and feeling stupid but sort of not caring that I felt stupid. It was a letter about that sort of amazing, total love you always hope someone will feel for you someday, that obliterating passion that makes everything else in the world not matter. It didn’t use any of the words from the book, but it still sounded like the Heathcliff who said about Cathy: I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul. The letter talked about how his soul would wander the dark moors forever, in purgatory until I—or Cathy, really—came down to speak with him once again.

I wrote back. How could I not write back to that? It felt like someone had reached right into my chest and zapped it with forty-thousand volts. When he messaged me, I stayed up all night, fingers flying over the keyboard. When I was messaging Ben, I was Cathy. He was Heathcliff. I could smell the air out on the moors, feel the cold, the loneliness, the excitement.

It was weeks before Ben even told me his real name, and then I was sort of shocked, a little bit, that he had one and that it was so ordinary. I felt a sort of terror—what if he was just completely ordinary in every way? But then, no one ordinary could write those letters, those messages. I asked him for a photo of himself, and he sent me elliptical pictures he took with his phone camera, just a piece of himself at a time: an eye here, a hand there, the side of his chin. I sent the same sort of pictures back, standing in the quad at school taking pictures of my painted toes in sandals. And the weird thing is that I felt like Cathy when I was doing it, even though Cathy lived hundreds of years before cell phones and text messaging. But I felt wild and flirty and free, just like her.

I thought Lisle would be pleased, but she seemed sort of annoyed about it. After all, she kept telling me, the point of the Game was to interact with everyone, and I only interacted with Ben. I didn’t know any of the gossip she knew, and I still stared at her blankly when she talked about who was a drama queen and who was a sock puppet and who had deleted whose journal. Plus I’d been mean to Draco Malfoy, who was a friend of hers. Still, she told me she “shipped” me and Ben together, whatever that meant, and she kept trying to think of ways for me to meet him. Which, since he lived like two states away, didn’t seem very likely.

But then Xena suggested the meetup. She had a condo out by a lake, she said, with a timeshare, and nobody was ever there in the winter. Why shouldn’t she host a party for the East Coast members of the Game? Anyone who wanted could come and crash on the floor, as long as they were eighteen years old. “We’re going,” Lisle told me, with a manic gleam in her eye.

“But we’re not eighteen.”

“That’s what the Internet is for. Lying about your age,” she said, punching out a YES WE ARE GOING message into her AIM messenger box. “Besides. Ben’s going to be there.”

I sank down on her bed, gripping a pillow between my hands, which had gone suddenly numb. “He is?”

Lisle turned around and grinned at me. After that, it was just a matter of lying to our parents about visiting Lisle’s older sister Alice at college, and we were gone. We drove up in Lisle’s yellow Datsun with the radio on, Lisle singing her head off and me quietly freaking out with every mile marker we passed. I’m going to see him, my mind said, over and over. I heard his name in the soft grind of the wheels on the asphalt, the crunch of old snow. Heathcliff. Heathcliff. Then we were at the condo and Lisle was jumping out of the car, slamming the door behind her with a short, decided bang.

Ben.

“Jane!” The door thuds under my back. Lisle must be kicking at it with her feet. “Jane, open the goddamned door!”

“FINE!” I yell back. I get to my feet and yank the door open and there’s Lisle, looking actually pretty Faith-like since her face is screwed up in rage and her hair’s sticking up.

“Jesus Christ, Jane.” She grabs me by the shoulders. “I thought you were trying to drown yourself in the bathtub in there. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

She glances toward the living room. “Is it Ben? But—he’s cute. Hot, even.”

“I know.”

She smirks a little. “So now you’re freaked out.”

“Yeah. I mean—I don’t know.” I shrug angrily. “I wish you hadn’t run out after me. It makes it look like something’s really wrong.”

Lisle takes my arm. “We’ll tell everyone you got carsick,” she says, “and you totally had to puke. How’s that?”

I pull away, brushing past her and into the living room. The energy in the room has gone up, maybe thanks to Xena’s disgusting drinks. People are laughing and chatting, sitting on the floor and on the arms of chairs. There are bags of chips and snacks all over the floor, torn open, with people passing them around and munching, crumbs flying while they talk.

Ben’s in the kitchen, a row of bottles lined up in front of him, a cocktail shaker in one hand. Jack and Ennis are leaning on the counter while he mixes them drinks, giggling and flirty. Now that they’re both standing up I can see how tall and skinny they are. They almost look alike.

Ben’s friend has taken my place on the couch. He has a fat book open on his lap—a graphic novel, probably. I can see the brightly colored drawings from here.

“What is he doing?” I whisper to Lisle, my eyes on Ben.

“Xena said he promised to be bartender, so—he’s bartending.” She shrugs. “Look, I’ll go see what’s going on with him. You wait here.”

I perch on the edge of the couch while Lisle edges into the kitchen past the gay cowboy girls. I’m sitting next to a group of some of the kids I got introduced to earlier. I can’t help but listen in on their conversation, since they’re practically shouting—arguing about who makes a better starship captain, Captain Kirk or Captain Picard. Kirk, says the guy who introduced himself as John Connor, is clearly the better captain, because he was the youngest captain ever in Starfleet and Picard wasn’t. Besides, Kirk is more virile and “manly.”

“Oh, please. He shouldn’t get points for being a horndog,” snaps Trinity. “Kirk was sexist and misogynistic.”

“He was a product of his time,” points out G’Kar mildly.

“What time is that? The future?” Trinity hoots, and everyone else joins in. Hazel leans forward in her chair, her knitting dangling.

“I think you’re all forgetting that both of them pale in comparison to the greatest captain of all time,” she announces. “Captain Adama.”

“Whoa, a BSG throwdown.” Neo nods respectfully. He looks nothing like Keanu Reeves, of course, but is instead a chunky boy with slicked-back hair and a bright polyester shirt; I can’t be sure if he’s wearing it ironically or not. “Intense, intense.”

I stare at them, mystified. I have no idea what they’re talking about or how I could possibly join in. And I can’t help the feeling that if I tried to, I’d be about as welcome as ants at a picnic. There’s a whole language here and I don’t speak it.

“It’s a dorkument,” says a voice at my elbow. “Your first?”

I turn and stare. The boy who came in with Ben has put his book aside and is looking at me curiously. He has what I’ve always thought of as a “sharp” face: bony, slightly angular, with high cheekbones. His eyes, a warm hazel, soften the harshness. He is cute, though not in an obvious way like Ben is. Maybe he’d be good for Lisle? I glance over at her, but she’s still in the kitchen, showing Ben and the others how to make pie.

“A dorkument?” I echo. “What’s that?”

“It’s an argument between dorks meant to clarify some finer point of geek culture,” the boy explains. “They’ve sort of grown out of the long-held comics tradition of arguing about which superhero could beat up which other superhero. You know: who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman? Alien or Predator? They made a whole movie about that last one.”

“I think I missed it.”

“I think you did.” His hazel eyes spark as he holds out his hand: “By the way, I’m Noah.”

Noah what? I wonder. I shuffle rapidly through the journals I’m familiar with; I don’t know a Noah, but that doesn’t mean he—or his character—doesn’t exist. As Lisle already pointed out, I’m not good at paying attention.

“I’m Cathy.” I shake his hand.

“I know who you are. Ben talks about you all the time.”

My heart flips. “He does?”

“Sure. I’ve seen those pictures of you. I’d have recognized your left eye anywhere.” He smiles. It’s a nice smile. “Hey, I’m getting cabin fever—do you want to come for a walk outside? I wanted to check out the lake before it gets too dark.”

“A walk?” Part of me would love to get out of this close, stuffy room; the other part can’t help looking over at Ben in the kitchen. He’s stirring something in a bowl; he’s got flour on his face; it’s adorable. “I…”

“Uh-huh.” Noah looks from me to Ben, and grins crookedly. “It’ll be at least half an hour before they’re done in there. We can be back by then.”

There’s something about the way he’s looking at me, like a dare. I can tell that if I stay here, not wanting to be away from Ben, he’ll know that’s why I’m staying and think I’m pathetic. Because I will be.

I stand up. “I’ll get my coat.”

No one seems to notice us leaving, grabbing our jackets from the hooks by the front door. Noah’s is a dark blue toggled peacoat that makes his eyes sparkle. The sky is grayish, the air cold and clear. The path runs from the condo down to the lake and around its edges; leaves crunch under our feet as we walk. It’s good to be outside, in the clear, cold air.

Noah is silent as we walk. He bends down sometimes to pick up rocks, juggle them in his hand, and toss them toward the lake water. They fall with tiny splashes like tinkling crystal. “So,” I say, realizing finally that he’s never going to say anything. “I have a question.”

He looks over at me. “Shoot.”

“What’s with the scarves?” I ask him.

“The scarves?”

“The color-blocked scarves everyone’s wearing. It’s like a uniform. I don’t get it.”

“The scarf is from DoctorWho,” he explains.

“Oh.” I try to sound like this makes sense to me. “DoctorWho.”

“I take it you’re not familiar with the good Doctor?”

“I have no idea who he is,” I say, giving up.

Noah smiles. “He’s a character from a long-running BBC science fiction show. He’s an alien.”

“I thought he was a doctor.”

“You can be both. Anyway, it was a cult classic, that show, and they recently remade it, which explains the scarves. Everyone’s excited about watching the new show.”

“Well,” I say, “not everyone.”

Noah doesn’t say anything, just tosses another rock at the lake.

“Why did you ask me to come for a walk with you?” I ask. I’m not usually so blunt, especially with boys, but there’s something about this particular boy—I feel like if I’m not blunt, all I’ll get in return is that strange soft smile. Besides, there’s no reason to be nervous around him, I tell myself. He’s not Ben, just Ben’s friend.

“You looked so miserable,” he says. Which is not what I expected to hear. “Everyone else was having fun, but not you.”

“It’s just—it’s not my world.”

“Not your world,” he says after a pause. “But you’re in the Game, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not one of these people. I’m not?—”

“Not a geek?”

“Right,” I say, and then realize I’ve said the wrong thing. His eyebrows go sproinging up like rubber bands.

“Not a geek?” he says. “I know how much time you’ve spent messaging with Ben online. Not a geek?”

“There’s nothing geeky about messaging people,” I protest. “It’s just a form of communication. That’s like saying telephone calls are geeky.”

“It’s geeky when you’re pretending to be a fictional character while you’re doing it,” he says. “There’s nothing about being someone from a book, even a classic book, that makes you less geeky than someone from a movie. Or a TV show. Or whatever.”

“Or whatever?” I’m starting to get mad, which hardly ever happens. “So what are you, then? Who do you play?”

“Mr. Kool-Aid,” he says without missing a beat.

“Mr. Kool-Aid? You mean the big red pitcher from the old commercials? The one who bursts through the wall and says ‘Hey kids, who wants Kool-Aid’”

“Yep.”

“Wow.” I’m not even trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “So what drew you to that character particularly? Were you just really thirsty one day?”

“Mr. Kool-Aid spreads happiness and joy through the world. He’s a party guy. I like that.”

I snort. “No offense, but you don’t really seem like a party guy.”

“And you don’t really seem like a geek,” he says, “and yet you are one.” So we’re back to that. “Besides,” he adds, “people aren’t always like the characters they play online.”

“Do you mean me?” I blink at him, and then, suddenly, realize what he actually means. I feel my face flush. “Or do you mean Ben? Are you saying he’s not like his online character?”

Noah holds his hands up. “Look, I’m not saying anything like?—”

“I want to go back to the house,” I say, and turn around abruptly. I can hear Noah calling my name but I’m already hurrying up the path to the condo, the cold wind stinging my eyes.

After the fresh air, the smell in the living room hits me even more intensely. It’s equal parts booze and BO. Everyone’s sprawled on the floor in groups—Ben is in the middle of a crowd of girls, one of them Lisle. There are bags of chips open on the floor and someone’s torn open a packet of M&M’s and scattered them everywhere. M&M’s sit melting on the coffee table in bright green, red, and blue pools of spilled booze. The effect is pretty and gross at the same time.

Ben doesn’t seem to see me come in, so I go over and sit back down on the couch next to Jack and Ennis, who still aren’t talking to each other. The boys who were arguing about Captain Kirk before are now arguing about some particular point of their role-play game. “But you can’t be an anthropomorphic bat,” Luke Skywalker is explaining patiently to Sherlock Holmes. “This isn’t a monster campaign.”

Xena, Warrior Princess, claps her hands together loudly, silencing the room. “Okay, we’re all here now, so how about some icebreaking games? Charades?”

Oddly, the idea appeals to me. In Victorian times, before there were TV and video games and the Internet, people were always doing things like playing charades and putting on amateur theatricals to amuse themselves. I figure nobody else will be into the idea and get ready to look like I’m not interested either, when Jack pipes up that we should act out scenes from movies and TV shows and see if everyone can guess what they are.

“And books,” I say before I can stop myself.

Jack blinks at me. “What?”

“And scenes from books,” I say, and add, “You know, BrokebackMountain was a book. Before it was a movie.”

“Actually,” says Noah, coming in through the door, “it was a short story.” Cold has reddened his cheeks and his eyes are bright behind the glasses. He grins at me while he hangs up his jacket, but I don’t smile back.

“I know that!” Jack looks furious.

“I think charades are a good idea,” Lisle says hurriedly, standing up and brushing crumbs off the legs of her skinny jeans. “I’ll go first.”

Lisle hurries up to the front of the room and starts acting out a scene I know perfectly well is from Buffy. Big shock there. I slink lower in the sofa, then feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Ben.

“Come on,” he says, jerking his head toward the hallway. “No one will notice.”

Like I care if they do notice. I’m up and off the couch so fast I feel like I ought to leave smoking tracks behind, like the Road Runner. Lisle is acting out Buffy’s death from the fifth season of the show, toppling into the void as I follow Ben down the corridor and into one of the beige bedrooms off it. I close the door behind me and turn to face him. I have to lean against the door a little because I feel weak in my knees. He’s so handsome right now, his eyes startlingly blue under all that dark hair.

“You all right?” Ben asks. “You looked a little weird in there, like maybe you felt sick.”

“No,” I say. “No, I’m all right.”

He looks at me more closely. “You’re not upset with me, are you?”

“No, it’s just—” I swallow hard. I can’t believe I’m even going to say this. I would never normally say this to a boy. But Cathy would. Cathy always said exactly what she thought. “I thought we’d get to talk alone, just you and me.”

“I know. I told you, I promised—” He gives a shrug, a lopsided smile. “Anyway, I’m here now.” He moves over to me, puts his hands on my shoulders. “I know, I’m the reason you came here, right?”

“Well…” His cockiness is unbelievable; but then again, it’s just like Heathcliff to be that way. Online, that arrogance he could imitate so perfectly made me laugh, made my heart race. In person, it’s sort of—annoying. Maybe because I’m not so sure he’s just imitating someone else anymore. “Lisle’s the reason I came.”

“Right, sure.” He has his face in my hair, is nuzzling my cheek through it, my neck. His hands slide down to my waist, then back up again. I don’t want to do this right now—I want to talk, the way we talked online, the way we could talk about anything and everything. My mind races, trying to think of a topic to distract him, and meanwhile his hands race up my shirt, his fingers clamping down on the clasp of my bra.

“Stop that.” I push him away.

“Cathy?—”

I suddenly wish he wouldn’t call me that. But that seems unfair—I never minded him calling me Cathy online. I liked it, even. But it’s weird to have him look me right in the face and say it. Like he’s looking at me, but not seeing me. He presses up against me, harder. He says her name again, in a breathy voice. “Cathy.”

There’s a loud banging on the door. Ben jumps, banging me in the chin with his shoulder, and we move apart. I’m pulling my shirt down as the door opens. It’s Noah, framed in the hallway light. “Xena wanted to know where you were,” he says. “She wants everyone in the living room. We’re playing I Never.”

Ben raises an eyebrow at Noah; he’s giving him that look, that look boys give each other when they’re trying to communicate that they just got some action. Noah doesn’t look very happy. “Duty calls, I guess.”

Everyone in the living room is sitting in a big circle now, with bottles of booze in the middle, and shot glasses lined up. I squeeze in next to Lisle as Xena explains that I Never is a drinking game. We go around the circle and each person makes a true statement starting with the words ‘I never,’ like ‘I never have been to the Ice Capades.’” Then everyone who has been to the Ice Capades has to drink. That way you find out what everyone in the room has done. “It’s an icebreaker,” Xena explains. “Now, who wants to start?”

The statements start off pretty tame—“I’ve never flown in an airplane”—“I’ve never broken the speed limit”—and practically everyone has to drink to those. I’m happy to find out that whatever’s in my shot glass doesn’t contain diet chocolate soda. When it’s Lisle’s turn, she grins wickedly. I can tell she’s pretty drunk already—she’s listing to the side like a damaged sailboat, her hair extensions trailing. “I’ve never worn a rubber chicken suit,” she announces, and takes a big swig from her glass. She’s such a show-off—just because she once spent the summer working as the mascot at El Pollo Loco.

After a second, everyone else breaks up laughing, too. Suddenly people are yelling out I Nevers. I never kissed someone in a moving car. Made out on a plane. Had sex in a plane bathroom. Fooled around in public. All the statements are about sex now, and I hold my drink nervously, twirling the stem of the glass between my fingers. I have hardly anything I’d drink for, and even if I did I wouldn’t do it in front of all these people, these strangers.

I’m watching Ben out of the corner of my eye, seeing when he drinks. It’s a lot of times. He has his hand on Lisle’s knee. After a few minutes she brushes it aside.

“I’ve never slept with two guys at once,” announces Xena, chortling, and takes a big drink. Everyone’s suddenly quiet. Only the thoughtful-looking woman with the knitting gazes serenely into the distance and takes a small sip from her cup. I wonder what that means? Maybe she slept with two guys, but she only did it once? Xena seems to notice everyone staring at her, and shrugs. “What? I’m polyamorous!”

Noah is looking down at the ground, clearly trying not to laugh. It’s Lisle who speaks into the silence, as usual. “I’ve never,” she says slowly, “gotten turned on while I was role-playing online with someone.”

She drinks, slowly and deliberately. She’s looking around the circle as she does it, like she’s flirting with everyone at once. There’s a low rustle of nervous giggles. Then Jack, looking across the circle at Ennis, drops her chin and takes a drink. And now the others are drinking, tipping their cups back, and I look over at Ben and he’s drinking, but not looking at me while he’s doing it. Lisle nudges my side and I know she wants me to drink, but I’m frozen, holding my stupid plastic cup and thinking: Turned on? Really? Is that what was going on with us, with me and Ben? Here I thought we had this amazing thing, this connection where we could talk about anything, this connection that was special. But maybe we were just like all the other billion jerks online using the Internet and anonymity to get their rocks off.

I wobble to my feet, feeling dizzy and sick. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face—my cheeks are bright red, my hair escaping out of its ponytail and sticking to my cheeks. I’d like to think I look wild and untamed, like Cathy, but I know I don’t. I just look sweaty and a little insane. I tell myself I have to get back in there and sit next to Ben. Claim my place.

I push my way back into the living room, where the I Never game is still in full flow. People are hooting and screaming with laughter while they drink, and the room stinks like vodka. I look around for Ben, but he isn’t there. My gaze lights on Lisle instead. Her eyes dart away from mine, quickly, toward the hallway. Lisle can never help herself. She’s a terrible liar; her body language always gives her away.

Halfway down the hall Jack is standing in front of a closed door, her face puffy. She’s pounding on it. “Ennis,” she says. “Ennis, open up.”

“You know,” I say, “I bet her name isn’t actually Ennis.”

Jack scowls at me. “They’re in there together, you know,” she says, and there’s real spite in it. I guess she doesn’t like me much, but then why would she? I reach past her, twiddle the doorknob. “It’s just stuck,” I say, and without thinking, I push it open, hard.

Light floods into the bedroom, where Ben and the girl whose name I only know as Ennis are sitting on the bed, their arms around each other, their faces mashed together. Seeing people kiss in real life is never like it is in movies, is my first thought. My second thought is that I feel like I’m going to throw up. Again.

“Ennis!” cries Jack dramatically. Her eyes are huge, but I have the feeling she’s not so much upset as enjoying the drama of the moment.

Ben and the girl jump away from each other guiltily, but their hands are still touching. The girl—I can’t think of her as Ennis—shakes her head. “Oh, Jack,” she says. “Really.”

Jack makes a snuffling noise, but I don’t stick around to see what she says to her friend—if they are even friends anymore. I’m heading out of the bedroom as fast as I can go.

Halfway down the hall something clamps around my wrist. I’m spun around to face Ben, who’s glowering down at me, not looking very sorry at all. “Look, Cathy,” he says. “Sorry if you’re upset, but it’s a game. It’s the Game. We’re just having fun.”

But that’s just it. I’m not having fun. “Let go of my wrist, Ben.”

He lets go, a scowl passing across his handsome face. “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not exactly like some character in a book?—”

“See, that’s just it,” I say, realizing the truth while I’m speaking it. “You are just like Heathcliff.” And he is. Heathcliff was a selfish, rotten bastard, really. He didn’t care about anyone but himself, and maybe Cathy. And I’m not Cathy, which doesn’t leave anyone for Ben to care about, except, maybe, himself.

My bags are still in a huge pile on the bed, tangled up with a dozen other people’s belongings. I grab the bright green strap of my duffel and start hauling it free. I have no idea where Lisle is or what she’s doing, or how I’m going to get out of here without her or her car. Maybe I’ll take a taxi. Maybe I’ll walk to the nearby highway and hitchhike.

“Jane.” It’s Noah in the doorway, looking rumpled and worried. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m leaving. I’m out of here.” I jerk hard on the strap. It breaks off in my hand. “Shit.”

“You don’t have to go.” He comes up beside me and puts his hand on my back, his fingers tracing circles between my shoulder blades. It’s not at all the way Ben touched me: this is gentle, reassuring. My nausea starts to ebb, at least to the point where I can glance over at Noah without feeling like my stomach is about to shoot up into my throat. He’s looking at me with concern.

“I don’t have to. I want to. I don’t belong here.”

“Look, these people—” he gestures toward the door “—the people in the living room, you might not feel like you have a lot in common with them, but they’re nice people. Who cares if they like science fiction and fantasy and you don’t? The main reason they’re here is because they love a character enough to want to be that person sometimes. Isn’t that true for you, too?”

“It wasn’t Cathy I loved,” I said, throwing the broken strap down on the bed. “It was—oh, never mind. He’s your friend; you’ll just defend him.”

“Ben might be my friend,” Noah says carefully, “but he’s not perfect. I know that.”

A light flicks on in the back of my mind. “You were trying to warn me about him,” I said. “Earlier, out by the lake—weren’t you?”

“Er.” Noah looks like a trapped rat. “I was just saying that maybe he wasn’t exactly like you thought. People are sometimes—different—than they seem online.”

“Why would he even come to this?” I whisper. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. “If he didn’t even want to see me?”

Noah looks at the floor, the wall, anywhere but at me. “I can tell you what he told me. He said meetups like this were always full of lonely, geeky girls who go online looking to hook up. He said he was certain to score with someone. Probably you, but if not you…someone.”

“Probably me?” My voice is still a whisper and even the whisper hurts. In books, no one ever says “It’s probably you.” It’s always “It’s only you” or “It’s always been you.” Not “It’s probably you.”

“I’m sorry.” And Noah does look sorry, truly.

“I don’t get it.” I shake my head. “The things he wrote me, online, in e-mail—how could the kind of guy who goes to a party to take advantage of girls he thinks are lonely and pathetic be the same kind of guy who writes things like that?”

“Because,” Noah says, very slowly, “he didn’t write those things. I did.”

“You wrote them?” I stare at him. “All those letters—those messages—everything?”

“Not the messages. That was Ben. Just the letters.”

I want to not believe it, but I can’t help thinking about how I always thought the messages sounded like they were in a different voice than the letters, that it was never quite the same, that Ben would never say the same amazing things in IM or chat as he would in the letters he sent. But I always thought that it was just because his prose required time and polish. Now I know better.

“So you lied to me,” I say. “You knew Ben never wrote those letters and you didn’t say anything about it. Probably because you knew that if you did, you’d be screwing him out of his chance to score with some lonely, geeky girl.” My eyes are burning.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Noah protests. “I just—” He breaks off. “Okay, fine. I lied to you. But I didn’t mean to.”

I suddenly feel very tired. “Just go away, Noah.”

He looks as if he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. With a sigh, he turns and leaves, shutting the door gently behind him.

I look down at my bag, the broken strap, and even my bones feel aching and exhausted. I want to creep into a hole and die, but since I know that’s not going to happen, I do the next best thing. I get onto the bed and burrow in among the bags, pushing them up and aside until I’ve made a little crawl space for myself, a hidden cave where no one can find me. I curl up under the bags and fall asleep.

A loud banging wakes me up. I pop up from among the bags to see that the doorknob is jerking back and forth like someone’s yanking on it desperately. Before I can get to my feet the door bursts open and G’Kar staggers in. He takes one look at me and streaks past me into the bathroom, where I can hear him throwing up.

Light is streaming in through the windows and I realize with some surprise that it’s morning. Strange that no one came in at any point during the night looking for their bags. Or maybe they did and I slept right through it. My head is aching and I wonder if I’m hungover. I’ve never been hungover before.

I fight my way out from among the bags and go looking for Lisle. Once I’m in the living room I realize why nobody came looking for their bags last night. Everyone’s sprawled out asleep on chairs, on the sofas, or on the floor. I don’t see Ben or Noah or Lisle anywhere, but standing there in the doorway looking at the passed-out crowd I realize that I’m not thinking about what a bunch of weirdos these people are. What I’m thinking is that this looks like the morning after a party where people had fun.

I find Lisle eventually in the bathroom, asleep on the floor. She’s not alone, either. Neo and Trinity are both with her, Neo’s arms around her waist. She has her hand on Trinity’s shoulder. Looks like Lisle will be drinking a lot more at the next I Never game.

Back in the living room, I pick my way across the sprawled bodies to the kitchen. Doritos are melting into soggy puddles in pools of spilled soda. The whole room smells sour. I grab a towel and a shiny green bottle of Comet and go to town on the mess.

Cleaning always helps me clear my mind. I’m humming under my breath and scrubbing when Jack comes into the room, red-eyed and with her hair in a tangled mess. She eyes me like I’m a bomb that might go off. “Is there anything to eat?”

I think about snapping at her, telling her off for asking me, like I would know. But for some reason Noah’s voice is in my head, saying, These are nice people. You might even like them.

I put the sponge down and turn to face her. “I was thinking about making pancakes,” I say. “But it depends if we have the ingredients.”

She pulls open the refrigerator door and nods. “There’s actually a lot of food here. Milk, eggs…”

“Great.” I wipe my soapy hands on a towel. “Do you want to help?”

She hesitates a moment, and then smiles. “Sure.”

Cooking is the other thing that helps me clear my mind. I’m a whirlwind, cracking eggs, mixing batter, throwing the towel over my shoulder. Jack is laughing as she watches me. She looks pretty when she laughs, less sullen and scary. She’s wearing a pair of tiny hoop earrings with zigzag patterns etched into the metal, and I realize with a funny jolt that I have the same earrings at home.

“Pancakes. Awesome.” Lisle appears, draping herself over one of the bar stools. She reaches out and sticks a finger in the batter. “Yum.”

“Ew. Unsanitary!” I swat her away with the corner of the towel.

Jack hands her a bag of the chocolate chips I was about to dump into the batter. “Here. Eat these.” She gives me a conspiratorial grin.

The kitchen is filling with good, warm smells, the smell of comfort and breakfast. I feel weirdly fine, even though I ought to be miserable. I see Ben file into the room, rumpling his hair, a scowl on his face. Ennis trails in behind him, looking vaguely embarrassed. I glance over at Jack, who’s blushing, so I hand her a bowl of batter and a spatula. “Mix!”

She mixes, looking grateful to have something to do. Ben looks over at me and then away, sauntering toward the patio doors, Ennis following him like a puppy. I know I ought to feel jealous, heartbroken, all those other things. But I don’t. I never really liked Ben. I just liked the person I thought he was.

I liked the person who wrote those letters.

As if on cue, Noah comes in. He doesn’t saunter, just gives me a look through his hair and ambles over to the couch, where he parks himself behind his graphic novel. I don’t have time to think about him, though, because Xena’s suddenly here, clanking her jewelry and clapping her hands. “Pancakes! Fantastic! Thanks so much, Cathy!”

I don’t bother to correct her about my name when she reaches out and hugs me. It’s a squishy hug, but kind of nice. The kitchen is half-full of people now, chattering, grabbing glasses, setting the table. Everyone seems appreciative of the pancakes. I realize Noah was right. These are nice people. I look over at him on the sofa, but he’s hiding behind the pages of his book like they are a curtain.

I even have fun at breakfast, with everyone laughing and chattering. We don’t have maple syrup, so people sprinkle sugar and smear jam on their pancakes—“Like they do in France!” Lisle announces, scattering sugar everywhere.

When the meal is over, I start carrying stacks of plates into the kitchen. Everyone’s in there, bumping, jostling, and pushing, but it’s a friendly sort of crowding. Jack is over by the sink, running hot water, wrist-deep in soap suds. “Oh, no you don’t,” she says, taking the plates from me with a soapy hand. “You shouldn’t have to clean. You cooked, you set the table, you didn’t even have a mimosa….”

“You cooked, too,” I point out. ”And I already have a hangover.”

“This will be the best thing for you, then,” she says, picking up a glass filled with champagne and orange juice. “Besides—you have somewhere else you should be. Don’t you?”

She’s looking out toward the deck, through the big glass doors. Noah is out there, sitting on the wooden railing, staring out toward the lake. I look back at Jack, who is smiling.

“Go on,” she says, handing me the glass, which I take without thinking. “We can wash up without you.”

I mouth “thanks” at her, and go. The air out on the porch is cold and sharp as an ice sliver. Noah has his feet braced against the lower railings and is looking at me warily, as if I might be about to throw my drink in his face. His hair is messy, his eyes bright hazel behind his glasses. “Look,” he says, before I can open my mouth, “if you came out here to ask me why I’m still here, it’s because Ben wanted to stay for breakfast. But we’re leaving right after.”

“That’s not why I came out here.” I stare down at my drink, which is the pale orange color I associate with Tang and orange candies. “I want to know why you wrote those letters. In the first place. Did Ben ask you to?”

Noah glanced up toward the sky, the heavy clouds overhead. “He didn’t ask me to. I wrote them for a class project. Write in the voice of a literary character. I left them out on my desk and Ben must have found them. It wasn’t until a while later that I found out he was using them online—with you.”

“How did you find out?”

“He told me. Ben’s never ashamed of anything he does. It’s just his way.” Noah shrugged. “He thought I’d think it was funny.”

“And did you?” Something cold hits my cheek and slides down my neck; it’s starting to rain. “Think it was funny?”

“No,” Noah says shortly. “He showed me all the e-mails between him and you, and trust me, I didn’t think what he was doing was funny. But I did really like your letters, Jane. I liked the way you wrote. I liked the things you wrote.” He still isn’t looking at me. “I know. Stupid. But I started looking forward to your letters. Ben would forward them to me and I’d write the responses. And because you were responding to my letters, I felt sort of like you were writing to me. That was why I wanted you to walk down to the lake with me. Because I felt like I knew you.”

My head is spinning. “So you never were Mr. Kool-Aid?”

He shrugs. “Ben gave me an account on the Game eventually. I just wanted it so I could read your journal entries. I picked Mr. Kool-Aid because I figured I’d never actually have to do anything. No one wants to interact with Mr. Kool-Aid, trust me.”

I know I should be mad, but I’m not. I feel strangely relieved. It all makes sense now—why Ben’s letters didn’t sound anything like his instant messages. Why when I met him, I felt absolutely nothing, no connection at all, but when I met Noah—

“You should have told me,” I say.

Rain is pattering down on the deck, turning the wood dark brown. Noah’s hair is stuck to his cheeks and forehead in black swipes. “Why? It wasn’t me you came here to see. It was Ben.”

“That’s not true.” I take a step forward. “The person I wanted to meet was the one who wrote those letters. That was all I ever cared about.”

I’m vaguely aware that there are faces pressed to the glass doors behind me, watching us, but I realize I don’t care. Noah is shivering inside his wet jacket, rain running down his face. He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.

I look down at the glass in my hand. Rain is mixing with the alcohol, diluting the orange color. “I never,” I say, very carefully, “yelled at someone because they told me something I didn’t want to hear, even though it was the truth.”

I lift the glass and take a drink out of it. Rainwater and oranges and champagne. When I lower the glass, Noah is staring at me.

“I never,” I say again, “made a totally stupid mistake about who it was I really liked, and only realized it when it was too late.”

I drink again. I feel a little dizzy, but it isn’t from the mimosa. The rain has diluted the alcohol so I hardly taste it. He’s sitting completely still, just watching me. I can feel my heart pounding, wondering if I have the nerve to say it, the last thing I want to say to him.

I do. “And I never,” I say, “wanted you to kiss me, right now.”

I lift the glass and drink the rest of it, fast. A second later Noah jumps down off the railing, his boots splashing up water from the deck. He comes over and puts his hands on my shoulders. I can see Lisle behind the glass doors, giving me the V for victory sign with her fingers. Ben is standing beside her, scowling.

“You mean it?” Noah says, water running off his eyelashes. “You want me to kiss you?”

“Cathy never says anything she doesn’t mean,” I tell him. “And neither do I.”

His kiss tastes like rain. When he lets me go, he’s grinning. “I’d tell you I’ve never kissed anyone like that before,” he says, “but I think we’re out of drinks.”

He tightens his arms around me as I laugh. Someone behind the glass door whistles—I think it’s Jack—and I know they’re laughing and cheering for us, and I don’t even mind that I just met all these people and don’t even know their real names. It’s nice. I know they’re cheering because it just feels right—however strange it might seem—Catherine Earnshaw and Mr. Kool-Aid, kissing in the rain.