Afterword

Author's Note:

This afterword was written back in late December of 2012, and has not been changed. When I announced the project for NaNoWriMo in 2013, I mentioned that I had written an afterword for Death Like Wine, but had never posted it. A couple people expressed interest in reading it, so here you are.

The statistics mentioned below are all old. You can find new ones in the introduction for the 2013 NaNoWriMo effort, Ex Profundis. The request for feedback is old too-- I had the great pleasure of being in a writing group in the Spring that dissected the majority of Death Like Wine. If you have feedback, I would love to hear it, but it is no longer a pressing concern.

Hello again, dear readers,

It's been a while. I haven't looked at Death Like Wine since the very early morning of December 1^st, and I've only looked at the site a couple times since then. But I figured it was high time to give you the promised afterword-- if anyone is still reading, that is.

First, let me give you some statistics.

At the current count, the blog has over 2,350 page views. And no, this doesn't count your author maniacally refreshing the page. It's not unique visitors either. But people who were not me went to the site over two thousand three hundred and fifty times.

At the end of November, the blog was the number two result on google for the phrase “Death Like Wine.” We're number five now.

Throughout November, the vast majority of page views came from the United States. Italy was well represented too, Germany much less, and then, astonishingly, also China, Australia, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden with a single view each. I have no idea what that's about.

Open Office lists the final word count as 5,3392, well over the 50,000 mark required to win NaNoWriMo. There are 127 pages, single spaced. This isn’t counting the author’s notes for each chapter, or all my planning notes and graphs—literal, Computer-Science-y graphs.

All in all, by the numbers, I think it was a pretty successful month of writing.

But was it successful from a standpoint of, ah, art? That's point number two: the content. There is a lot to talk about, so I'm sorry if this is somewhat fragmented, but hopefully it will shed a bit of light on the novel.

Although I'm getting ahead of myself-- let's talk for a bit about why I'm writing this afterword.

In part, I'm writing it because, well, to be quite, quite honest, I'm in need of some feedback. I've gotten surprisingly little. I'm in need of feedback from myself, and this is the start of a long re-writing process that will end sometime in the spring, and end with 5 free published copies of Death Like Wine courtesy of some NaNoWriMo partners. But I'm also in need of feedback from you— what you liked, what you didn't like, what interested you, what was cold turkey, etc. I know you're out there, with interesting thoughts— my mother alone can't generate 2,300 page views. So hopefully, by writing and posting this afterword, it can jump-start my self-editorial process, and jump-start yours as well.

In all seriousness, though, I would love to hear anything any of you thought about the work as a whole. Comment on this, e-mail me, facebook me, pull me aside the next time you see me, anything. I'd love to hear critiques.

Ok, I'm done with the begging. Onto the actual self review of content. Now, this won't be anything detailed— no chapter-by-chapter critiques. This is more a sweeping meditation on the point of the novel, and whether I think I achieved it or not.

Let's start with the title, then. Death Like Wine. Why did I pick that?

The answer is that I needed a name for the blog, and for my entry on the NaNoWriMo website from Day 0. At this point, I had a good idea of four of my characters and the idea of the Brews. I also knew my main theme: why people live, and more properly, how.

Death like Wine is actually a quote from Chesterton: “he must desire life like water, and drink death like wine.” I won't unpack the quote, since it would spoil parts of the Ball and the Cross, but there is the idea of not seeking something too desperately. Even though the character desires life, he cannot limit his experiences to just that. He must experience some of death too.

What do I mean by that? Well, it's something that I think our culture struggles with, and something my character would struggle with. People get extremely focused on the idea of doing something memorable and entertaining, and the trap is that people might do these things solely for those reasons, and not for the intrinsic joy those actions may bring. Let me give you a concrete example: I was hiking around some frozen rivers with my family, and my mother and I were both taking pictures. My siblings would have fun with their crazy antics, and then they would scurry over to see the pictures we had taken. I got very disturbed with the whole process when I realize that we were looking at the pictures more than we were actually having fun— and the fun was transforming into something that would only be worthy of a picture.

We see this all the time. Someone makes an awesome pose-- facebook profile pic! But then people start making awesome poses simply to get facebook profile pics, instead of the other way around. Now, there's nothing wrong with this on the surface, but there's a sad trend of doing things less because of the joy, and more because of the joy of remembering it. I know I'm explaining this poorly, so let me try this: when we are doing things, we need to do them because they're good, not because we can say that they're good later. The obvious proof of this is whether we would still do these things if there were no outsiders watching: would we pray as piously by ourselves? Would we still creep close to the mountain edge if there were no cameras?

Tied up in all of that, I think, was the fear that we can lose the joy of an activity by pursuing the joy too fiercely. So that worked with the title, if we keep the larger Chesterton quote in mind.

But I also had the ideas of the Brews in mind: the Brews are a kind of death, for a lot of reasons that Miranda and Alexandria talk about in Chapter 17. And they're literally like wine, insomuch as they're liquid, and are consumed for similar reasons at similar times. And there's a nice ambiguity about both as well: some characters can handle the Brews just fine. Some characters cannot. Some friends I know can handle alcohol just fine. Some cannot.

With all of that in mind, I picked the title as best I could, and proceeded not to worry about it. If I had to do it all again, I would have picked a lunar title, since the moon ended up being a much more important symbol than I ever suspected. But we'll get to the moon in a bit.

The title was set from the beginning, as were four of the characters: Alexandria, Alexander, Calvin (in my notes, he was called Caliban), and Miranda. When I started planning, I had a list of 7 or so questions that each of my characters had to “answer”, and I had mapped out all the 1 on 1 interactions: their areas of conflict, their areas of overlap, etc. After a week of doing this, I added on the character of Adrian, who completed the five well. Theresa's growth as a character was a happy accident: she wasn't supposed to have a life beyond Chapter 3, but I'm glad she did.

In the end, I'm happiest about the interaction between Calvin and Alexandria. There wasn't too much romance, and their relationship helped me explore one of the big themes of the book: the human as an actor (I'll talk about that later, too). My biggest regret in this relationship was that Calvin doesn't really have an ending: he turns the lighthouse back on, which is incredibly important, but that's about it for his character. I didn't have time to get back to him in the story, and I'm not quite sure where he would end up— but I think it's fine that there are loose ends in a work like this.

The interaction I'm the least happy about is Theresa and Adrian. About a week into November, I planned out the entirety of the rest of the story. In it, Adrian was slowly going to seduce Theresa into relying on the Brews, in a more direct way to what he was doing with Adrian, and eventually, she was going to kill herself. Alexander, of course, was going to have the same problem, but find a correct way out of his problems, and the book would end happily. Originally, the whole group of six were going to go into the mountains: Alexander and Miranda would act about the same, but Alexandria and Adrian would discover the Lighthouse, while Theresa would beg Calvin for help (which, being hyper-rational and bad with people, he wouldn't get at all), and Alexandria would start to figure out that all is not well with Adrian.

But there simply wasn't time in November. I cut Theresa and Adrian from the trip, tied together all their conflicts that I had carefully set up earlier, and hastily ended their relationship. And besides, three suicides at the end of the book is too much.

Alexander and Miranda went about as well as I could expect, except I always worry that Alexander's pathos isn't really clear. I'll leave that to you, dear reader, since I'm too close to the story to really tell whether it worked.

The central question of the story is why we read books, watch films, or do anything at all. Why do we live the way we do?

 Do we do things merely for their emotional value? A movie like Citizen Kane or A Man for All Seasons might not hit someone in the feels in the same way that, say, Titanic would, but I think most people would agree that the former two are better movies. This is one of the huge problems that I have with things like the Twilight series, or Eragon, or any of that other sub-standard sci-fi/fantasy stuff out there: whatever you want to say about their quality, the simple fact is that people like them, and are getting emotional goodies out of those things. Does there need to be anything more?

Philosophical readers might notice here an old problem in utilitarianism. You can establish that pleasure is the be-all, end-all of human existence— but what kind of pleasure is important? Can we really compare the pleasure of eating a steak to playing a great board game to having sex? Are some pleasures higher than others? You certainly feel more when watching a sob-fest like Titanic, those kind of movies are designed to hit every single heart string in your body, but should mere quantity be the standard?

Anyway, I conceived the idea of a drink that was called ‘Utility.’ I thought of putting this joke in the book, but decided against it. Essentially, the drink was pure pleasure— you could get whatever feels you wanted whenever you wanted them. What would society look like if such a thing existed?

In the end, I decided to nerf it down a ton. A friend of mine pointed out that society would probably completely collapse—and I don’t disagree with her. So I added the drop, made the emotions less specific (and therefore less desirable), and less powerful.

In the novel, though, you can still tell that it’s a problem for society. I tried to put hints like this in a couple places, most noticeably at the end when we realize that no one goes camping anymore. Let me know if you wanted more hints like this, dear readers.

But at the end of the day, the central question is this: when you have something that gives you pleasure when you want it, do you need anything else? In a lot of ways, that’s the culmination of the utilitarian project, or even the human project.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but my answer is a resounding no.

But getting that across through the novel turned out to be a huge problem. There were a couple things in my way: first, I struggle a lot with characters being a mouthpiece for my ideas, without any life of their own. In the past, my characters have essentially been walking collections of ideas. I think I did better this time, but it still would be annoying to have one character just come out and say what I consider to be the answer.

Second, who would do it? What character has life figured out to that degree? Alexandria’s main struggle is with empathy and the over-important will (the old Palagianism problem), it was enough to her to merely understand the question in the first place. Miranda is a little closer, but she hasn’t grown enough to figure everything out. Adrian doesn’t get it at all, and Calvin wouldn’t either. And Alexander can’t figure it out. So who would say it? If I had more time to set up I could probably give it to Miranda, but as it stands, none of my characters are in places where they can figure it out.

Third, I think it’s nice if the author doesn’t necessarily come out and state the answer. Doing that too firmly makes it sound like a moral. I would have loved the reader to have to stare at this question themselves, and look deep down and try to figure it out for themselves. Because, in a sense, I think it’s a question that everyone really has to answer. Why do you go those good things that you do? It can’t just be because you get warm fuzzies for doing it, because you often don’t, and it’s just pushing the problem to a higher level.

I don’t know that I have much more to say without being a huge bore. I could go into certain themes that I tried to spin through the book, motivations for characters, etc., but I’m more interested in what you guys have to say.

So I have some questions for you, dear reader: did the main problem of the story really hit you the way I wanted it to? Did you have to think about it at all? If so, what is your answer, and if not, should I have pushed the problem more? Or is that a game you, as a reader, just don’t want to play? And if you don’t want to play it, should I explicitly give my answer at the end, or just hint at it and bring it up a lot more?

Other things I wouldn’t mind hearing feedback on are the characters. Was Alexander’s plight well established? Did you like the fact that Adrian was hard (I don’t think it was impossible) to figure out, or should he have been more understandable? Did the characters end up the way you think they should?

If you are going to comment, dear reader, and I really, really hope you do, please write out the answer to those questions. I’m not going to give you any of my answers, because I hope you can find it in the book or in yourself and I don’t want to prejudice you. But if you’re interested in my answers, feel free to pull me aside the next time you see me and ask, “John, what’s the meaning of life, and stuff like that?” I’ll happily oblige.

Chapter 30: Moonrise

Alexander stood on the second rail of the Observation Walk.

It was only eight at night, but it still felt like the hour of the wolf. That hour from three to four in the morning when every doubt and mistake ever made comes back to haunt, when you see all those chances to turn back that you didn't take, all those opportunities you let slip by, forever irretrievable. When you look down into that deep and dark well and know that you can throw the whole damn world in and it would barely make a splash.

Adrian had gone, Alexander didn't know where, and he hardly cared. Why had he expected anything else? What sort of monumental self delusion had caused him to think that this was a problem that could be solved?

Earlier, Alexander had been going through the night of the wolf, with sips of Comfort now and then to keep the wolf at bay. It hadn't worked. It never would. He knew now that the wolf was insatiable, and at the moment the wolf was very, very hungry.

The Neptune River churned below, the only sound he could hear apart from his own racing heart.

Miranda laced up her shoes as tightly as she could, but her fingers were shaking too much for her to get them tight. She bit the inside of her lip, hard, and managed to tie a good knot.

The thing had came together, at last, once she had found out from Alexandria that her brother had been taking the brews for a while. The missing piece.

As long as there's life, there's hope, the woman had said, in Adrian's tape, so long ago. If there's life, then there's hope. But that implied a terrible logical necessity: if there's no hope, there's no life. And Alexander had been without hope for a while, for too long.

She had done her best to give it to him. But the best idea she had turned out to be a path long discarded, a path that lead to no where. She didn't know what she could offer Alexander anymore.

But she intended to find out.

Alexandria's feet hit the ground in a relentless pace. Grove Cemetery rushed by. It had been a place of comfort, a place of safety. A place where she could drink in the cool air and the morning sun like wine, and remind her that she was still alive and fresh. But in every tomb, she imagined the man from the lighthouse, abandoned, forgotten, and each man had Alexander's face.

She had once felt that she didn't care how people died, she could respect and care for their bodies equally. It wasn't true. If Alexander just gave up like this, she couldn't handle it, she didn't know what she would do.

Cliffside Library loomed into view, blocking out the pale stars in the back. She leapt onto the Observation Walk, and saw her brother, feet on the second railing, hands on the third rail. She threw her arms around him, and pulled him to the ground, hard.

She gasped, her side feeling like it was about to split open. “Are you okay?” she managed to say. As soon as she did, she wanted to hit herself. Of course he wasn't okay.

Alexander did not respond, but just shook in her arms.

“You scared me,” she said. “Damn it, Al, what were you thinking? How could you think of doing this to your friends, your family, to me?”

Alexander stopped shaking. “Self centered to the end, Lex.” His voice was low and cold. It frightened her, and she felt Alexander pull away. Alexandria put her back to the railing, intending to grab him again if he made a move for it.

But Alexander did no such thing. He just stood in the shadows, hidden, more or less, from Alexandria's sight.

“How could I do this to you? Did you ever stop to consider what I was doing to myself? You didn't. Because there's no room for anyone in your story but you.” His voice softened. “And that's okay, Lex. I don't mind anymore.”

Alexandria couldn't say anything. She was still breathing too hard. But she inwardly, she was cursing herself for saying what she said. She was trying desperately to think of the right thing to say, the right thing to do, but she couldn't come up with anything.

“At this moment, perhaps, you're trying to think of what you can say to change my mind,” Alexander said. “But it's all mapped out. I've read those sort of stories, I've seen those sort of programs. I've heard it all before.”

“It will hurt you terribly. Well, people avoid doing those sort of things that hurt because we hate feeling guilt, we hate feeling bad. And if I'm dead, I can hardly feel anything at all, can I? No, Lex, that one won't work.”

“But there's so much to live for,” he continued. “So much. But it doesn't last forever, does it? Where there's life, there's hope. Miranda used to say that. Hope for what? The next pleasure, the next piece of entertainment? It's all just a jolt, all just a temporary chemical surge in the brain, that's here one moment, gone the next.”

“For your own story, then,” Alexandria said. “Is this the way you wanted it to end? Is this the kind of death you read about, or dreamed about? What sort of story will this make?”

Her brother paused at that. “Does it matter?” he said, softly. “I won't be there to see my story.”

“Others will be,” she said.

“Back to yourself, again.” He chuckled. “But let me consider it.”

“That man in the lighthouse,” he said. “What was his story? Do you think he thought about that, before the end? Do you think he thought about what sort of impact he would leave? That didn't work out well for him, did it. We can't even decide amongst ourselves what he felt like, why he did what he did. Because we don't care about what he felt, what he was thinking. You said it was a depression because of the brews. Did you ever stop to think what he actually thought? Or did you just use his death as a way to put forth your own desires?”

“No, Lex, it doesn't matter to other people what I do. They'll think what they want to regardless, in the end.”

“Why haven't you done it, then?” Tears streamed down her face; the question came out raw.

“You're standing in front of me,” Alexander said. “And you're much faster and stronger than I am.”

Her voice broke. “That's the only reason?” she whispered. That couldn't be it. He had been standing there for at least some time, she had seen him from a bit of a distance, there had to be something that was holding him back. “That can't be the only reason. You would have done it by now.”

Even though her brother's face was in darkness, she saw something in that iron cold mask of his break slightly. His mouth twitched; his eyes blinked a couple times, rapidly. And then he steadied himself.

They heard the sound of footsteps, fast from around the corner. As Miranda raced around the Cliffside Library toward them, Alexander held out his hand into the light to stop her. She did, an astonished look on her face as she took in the surroundings.

“I know, Al,” Miranda said. “I understand. It's okay.”

Alexander cocked his head to one side. “Do you? You haven't before. You've been mistaken this entire time. What do you know now that you didn't before?”

“You're sad,” she said. Alexander chuckled, but she went on as best she could. “You're sad because you can't see any genuine pleasure in life, anymore. You have tried...” she closed her eyes, and did her best to remember. “You have loved, Al. And you have tried your best to live the good life. And you found out that it can't be done. You found out that any sort of happiness doesn't last, that it will all be washed away, in time.”

“Yes,” he said, simply.

“But that doesn't matter. If you really thought that, if that was all this was about... you'd be happy, now. Because you would know that you're just going to sleep after a very long and very tiring day.”

“No more wolves,” she said, and reached out her arm. “No more doubts and despair. If you really felt that this was soon to be the end, you would be happy.”

“But you're not.” Alexander had not moved, and Miranda laid her hand gently upon his arm. She continued. “You're still not happy. Because you still believe there's some way out, there's some path, there's some escape you haven't tried yet. And you want it so, so badly. You just can't see what it is.”

“I told my sister,” Alexander said, “I've heard it all before. I've explained to her why all those stories, why all those arguments aren't true. They've been said before, they're not new. Would you like me to explain it to you, too?” The words were confident, but his voice shook even as he said it.

“No,” Miranda said, softly. “Because I don't believe it. Just because you can't think of it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You think you have every story, every argument, everything all perfectly mapped out. But you don't. There are moves untried; there are paths not taken.”

“And you know this,” she said. “That's why you're not happy right now. That's why you're not at peace. You just want to hear one.”

“Yes,” Alexander whispered. “Yes, I do.”

“Look,” Alexandria said.

Far in the distance, far beyond the rushing anger of the Neptune River, far beyond the barren expanse of the Great Wyoming Plains, the stars were blocked from the horizon by a black shadowy ridge. And on one of the peaks of that black ridge, there was a lone star. It was slowly, ever so slowly, blinking. Going on, and going off. It was the lighthouse, still spinning.

“I don't know what those paths are,” Miranda said, softly. She felt Alexander's muscles clench, and him start to shake under her hand. “I'm not that wise.”

She pulled Alexander close to her, and embraced him as tightly as she could. “But you should never stop searching for them.”

Miranda felt Alexandria join their embrace, and together they knelt down, holding Alexander together as he shook and sobbed.

In time, they got up, and broke apart.

“You alright?” Alexandria asked.

Alexander nodded. “Yeah, I'm alright. I'm not happy, but I'm alright.”

“You don't need to be,” Alexandria said. She took a deep breath. “Happiness is over rated, anyway.”

She took a deep breath, and held her brother's hand tightly. “Let's go home.”

As the trio walked away, Alexandria thought she saw a shadowy figure, from the grove of trees beyond the library move away. But when she shook her head to clear her eyes of tears, she couldn't see anything.

The three of them walked together, arms around each other, back towards the twins' apartment. The slim crescent moon had risen in front of them, slight and faint, but barely visible. And as they walked, the lighthouse spun on behind them.

Chapter 30: 1,951 | 53,212/50,000

Author’s Note in Comments

Chapter 29: Lights Out

Alexandria shivered as the cold wins bit into her sweater. Her coat was open around her, but she didn't bother to button it up. It gave her clarity of thought and clarity of vision, and she needed to think.

When she had gone to Theresa's she was so sure of what the conversation would be like. Theresa would captured, more or less, by Adrian and the brews, and it would be her job to get Theresa out of it.

But that wasn't what happened at all. The brews hadn't seemed to effect Theresa overly much, and the lack of them wasn't causing excessive pain either. And she and Adrian were no longer together, a decision that had apparently been mutual.

So what the hell was Adrian doing? He can't have just been interested in Theresa, because then he wouldn't have broken it off as easily as he did. But if he was... manipulating her, he wouldn't have let her go this easily either.

She was extremely confused. Part of her mind, perhaps, was still in shock from everything at the lighthouse. There were still things at the back of her mind about the whole event that she didn't quite get, but things she couldn't quite remember, either. Initially, she had just chalked her reaction to the fact that she worked in a morgue. She ran in graveyards for goodness sake. Death wasn't something to be afraid of, it was a natural part of life.

But ever since the lighthouse, she had been feeling increasingly more rattled. And it was abundantly clear that Theresa was right. She didn't have all the answers, and it felt more and more that she didn't have any.

She wished there had been a moon. She wished there had been more lights. But the sky did not oblige, and since most students were still out for winter break, the lights in the houses and apartment buildings were diminished or dark.

Alexandria walked up to her apartment, and thumbed the door to get in.

The person she really wanted to talk to was her brother. And as she stepped in the door, she was painfully aware that this was what she had wanted for a very long time, almost since the beginning of the semester. Theresa's criticism had finally drove home the point: Alexandria didn't understand what was going on in people's minds, and her brother was the first person of which that was most true.

She entered the door, and called her brother's name. She had done this many times this semester, and nearly every time, she had heard nothing but silence.

This time was no different. The lights were on, and the door to Alexander's bedroom was open, but when she peered inside, there was nobody there. His travel bag was open, but nothing was unpacked. His bed was messed up-- but then, he probably hadn't made it before he left for their trip.

And on his bedside table was a small black flask.

Her heart dropped in her chest. She walked over to it, and smelled it. It wasn't alcoholic. It sure as hell wasn't juice, or water. It was a brew.

She stood there, the flask loosely held in her hand, trying to calm herself down.

Alexander was on the brews. And perhaps he had been for some time. But he was still okay. He was still functioning. In that sense, the worst had happened already, and it hadn't been that bad.

On the other hand, that meant that he had been lying to her. Or had he? She tried to remember a specific time when she had directly asked him whether he was on the brews, and he lied. She couldn't remember an instance.

So he hadn't been open with her. Well, she had known that for a while.

Miranda, though, had lied to her. She had told her that Alexander wasn't on the brews-- that was what there whole argument was about, to see whether he should get on them at all. Unless Alexander had lied to Miranda as well.

Alexandria sat down on her brother's bed, heavily. It was time for this to end. She thumbed her phone, and called her brother.

She jumped as a loud buzzing sound came from the bookshelf next to her. His phone was sitting on top of it, forgotten. She picked it up, and thumbed it open.

It would not open. It wasn't Alexander's thumb print. Stupid, stupid, stupid security stuff.

She did the only thing she could think of. She called Miranda.

“Hello?” Miranda's voice on the other end was hesitant, cautious. She probably thought Alexandria was going to yell at her or something. Not tonight, though.

“Hi, Miranda,” Alexandria said. Her voice almost failed her, as she hoped against hope. “Is Alexander with you?”

There was a long pause on the other end. “No.”

“Please don't lie to me,” Alexandria said. She closed her eyes and put her hand against her forehead. “He's not at home; he left his phone in his room, and I found an empty flask of brews in his room. He's been drinking them, Miranda, and I don't know if you planned that or whatever, I don't care right now, but he's been drinking them. And he's gone.”

Again, the silence. Alexandria trembled as she waited. Clearly Miranda was thinking about something, thinking very, very hard. Finally, Miranda spoke. “The Observation Walk. I'm getting my shoes on and heading there as fast as I can. And Alexandria?”

“Yes?”

“If I were you, I would run.”

She didn't need to be told twice.

She shrugged off her walking coat and sweater, and pulled on her athletic K3. After a second's thought, she ripped through her travel bag, and pulled out an emergency blanket, and stuffed it in her breast pocket alongside her phone. As she was doing this, she kicked off her boots, and pulled on her running shoes. Then she stepped out onto Lindon St and ran as fast as she had ever ran in her life.

Chapter 29: 1,018 | 51,261/50,000

Author’s Note in Comments

Chapter 28: The Drop

Adrian stood against the stone wall of the far side of the library, watching the river far below. He leaned into the out jutting stone blocks, which had been hand picked, so the brochures said, from the surrounding Great Wyoming Plains.

The sky was unusually clear tonight. There were no clouds, no haze from any of the nearby cities, nothing. The stars themselves were softer than he had ever seen them. There was no moon. You could see for miles, if you wanted to. He lights from the library did not reach him down on the Observation Walk.

He turned his head. Alexander had arrived. Illuminated by the lights of the library, Adrian could see that he was dressed in an over sized winter coat that fit him poorly. His hair was on end, as if he had been running his fingers through it in aggravation. He didn't have gloves with him, and it was clear that the winter air was biting through his jeans. Despite all this, he wore a smile on his face. Alexander tried to keep the smile small and subtle, but it would break out into a great goofy grin before he got it under control again. He looked a bit maniacal.

Adrian smiled too. “Hello, Alexander,” he said softly. “You look well.”

“I'm not, though,” Alexander replied.

“I've heard that, too. You've had quite a few people very scared. Why don't you tell me what's going on?”

Alexander's eyes flickered. He looked around for somewhere to sit. In response, Adrian opened his hand out into the light and towards the rail on the Observation Walkway. Alexander walked over to it, and leaned against it as well. They faced each other. Adrian was under the shadow of the walls and could not really be seen, but Alexander was far enough from Cliffside that the windows from above cast light on his face, but nothing else.

“Tell me what you've been up to, Alexander. It's been a while since we've talked.”

“I'm on the brews. Bad.”

“That much I knew,” Adrian said. “Nobody else seems to, though, do they? Why is that?”

“I haven't told them.”

Adrian exhaled. The frost from his breath entered the light, and dispersed. “Of course you haven't.”

“I mean... you know everything already, don't you?” Alexander ran his fingers through his hair again, messing it up even more. “You've been through it. You said it yourself the first time at the brewery that you don't touch the stuff. And now I know why.”

Adrian raised his eyebrows-- which Alexander could not see, of course. He stayed silent. Alexander would keep talking.

“I also know why you gave me Euphoria right away. You were trying to scare me. If this kid is gonna get on the brews, give him the biggest drop possible so that he won't come back.” Alexander looked down, and spoke quietly. “I'm sorry that it didn't work out that way. I wish it had.”

“I also know why you did what you did during the dinner party. Your glass was clearer and more, um, liquidy than the rest of ours. It's because you weren't drinking them that night, were you, even though you served it to everyone else? I remember that too. Because it doesn't effect everyone this way, does it? Just a few of us.”

Alexander's eyes tightened. “Why is it just some of us?” he asked.

It took a moment for Adrian to realize that it wasn't a rhetorical question. But he fielded it back nonetheless. “You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” he said. “You tell me.”

“This isn't the only reason, I think,” Alexander said, slowly. “Realistically, it could be different for any number of people. This might not be your reason. But it is mine.”

He took a deep breath, and spoke. “It's because the brews tell a story. And we know that you can't make up any story you like. Because stories matter. Stories change how you act, they change how you think. And when you take a brew, you're creating a story that fundamentally does not fit with the rest of you. You jam the wrong puzzle piece into the hole, and it takes pressure and force to keep it in there. But when you remove your hand... it pops out, and the hole remains. Empty, and terrible.”

“It's because I know fiction from reality.” He finished, looking triumphant.

Adrian pushed himself off of the wall with his shoulders. He remained in the shadows, but he was standing fully, now.

“Do you?” he said. “You've been awfully talkative tonight. More talkative than I've ever seen you. When was the last time you had a brew?”

Alexander's eyes widened, and Adrian's smile grew full.

“Is this really a genuine moment of blessed and sweet revelation?” Adrian asked. “Or is this just another story? How many moments like these have you had so far, this semester? Moments when you think that you have it all figured out. When you think that everything from here on out is going to be okay.”

“But it never is, is it, Alexander? Things are never good forever. They're not even good for very long. This is not some small pit in the ground that you can fill up with some time and sand, Alexander. This is a deep well, deeper than you could possibly imagine, and the only thing you gain when you try to fill it up is a sore back and wasted hours. After a while, you learn to stop trying and accept it.”

Alexander's face broke, and his hand went to his breast pocket in a gesture of true desperation, and came out empty. Adrian grinned savagely.

“You didn't bring anything with you tonight, did you Alexander? That's a shame. It looks to me like you really need it.”

Alexander's legs gave out, he slid to the ground, until he was sitting back against the railing. He gazed up at Adrian, still enclosed in the darkness, mouth open, aghast.

“I thought... I thought you were here to help me. I thought you had beaten this. I thought you had won.”

Adrian knelt down, and leaned forward until his face was in the light.

“Life is not a game that you can win, Alexander. But it, ah, sure seems to be something you can lose, doesn't it?”

He tipped an imaginary hat, and stood back up, into the shadows.

Alexander barely heard him walk away.

 

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Chapter 27: The Kick

Alexander sat in his room, flipping his phone around and around in his hand. His flask of Comfort lay on his side table. He felt nervous having it out in the open, but Alexandria was over at Theresa's. The chance of her coming home, with all she had to talk about, was negligible.

He was still thinking about the message that he had received.

'We need to talk about some things. Meet me at Cliffside at seven.' It had been from Adrian.

All the uncertainty from a month and a half ago at the dinner party had left him when he saw the text. If Adrian hadn't remembered their first meeting in the brewery then, he sure did now. Miranda had probably talked to him about the Christmas Break trip, and she couldn't do that without mentioning Alexander's problems... and if she had done that, she very easily would have mentioned her plan.

Her plan to get Alexander on the brews to cheer him up. And once Adrian heard that plan, he would remember and realize that Alexander had been lying to Miranda most of this time. And lying to his sister. Lying to everyone, really.

He reached over to the side table, and took a swig from the flask. A few moments later, happy chemicals rushed through his brain, and he tried to think.

Miranda hadn't mailed him about anything. And she would have, if Adrian had told her that he had been on the brews for a while. So Adrian hadn't betrayed his secret.

Therefore, Adrian probably wanted to meet in good faith. He was the one person in this group that probably had any idea of what he was going through. He couldn't tell his sister, he couldn't tell his girlfriend, but Adrian... yes, he could talk to Adrian.

He thumbed his phone on, and sent a message back. 'I'll see you there.'

That was in thirty minutes. He had better start walking, then. He got up and put on a winter coat. He reached for his flask, and paused.

What was he hoping to get out of this conversation? Honest help? Someone to complain to, with no lies or half truths? In either case, he shouldn't bring the flask. It warped his view of his own problems. In an odd moment of clarity, he knew that if he brought and drank from the flask he wouldn't be honest about what he was going through. And if he wasn't being honest, then what the hell was the point of talking? He would just create another person that he had to lie to constantly whenever the subject came up.

He left the flask on the counter, and headed out the door.

The night was black and cold. The stars seemed to him to be unusually dim, tonight. There was no moon, of course.

As he walked, he thought about the man in the lighthouse. He was tempted to believe Alexandria's version of things: lonely, stuck on the brews, and without any kind of a support group... and then they ran out, and he had no where to turn.

He was feeling better and better about his decision to leave the flask at home. It seemed so obvious once you saw the traps, the mistakes, and started to do something about them. The man in the lighthouse had no one, and he killed himself. Currently, he had no one-- and yes, he acknowledged fully that it was his own fault. But that was about to change.

An unlikely friend in a time of need to get him out of trouble. It was odd how much hope he was feeling right at the moment, now that he could plausibly see a way out. Adrian had said that he never drank the brews at there first meeting, but was at the dinner party he showed that he was familiar with them. That suggested that Adrian had struggled with the same things, and had beaten them.

That mean that this unhappiness and emptiness that he felt, achingly, constantly, could be beaten. It had been beaten before. And it had would be beaten again. That was the worst part of it: Miranda, Elanor, so many people acting as if this thing was normal. Nobody ever seemed to consider that the brews did lasting damage, and made people unhappy at the end of it. No one except for Alexandria, but her problems were purely selfish. She didn't understand anything about the problem. She was right, but for the wrong reasons.

Adrian must be right, and for the right reasons. He must have seen this darkness, struggled with these same problems. And won. Even though Alexander didn't know how, he couldn't know how, the mere fact that someone had done it gave him confidence.

He took a deep breath. Yes, this was how the story should go. A former addict-- yes, he had never labeled himself in that way before, but that was what he was, wasn't he? The stories all said the first step was naming the problem. The problem had been named. And Adrian, this former addict, helping Alexander, a current one, to safety... yes. That was it. That was the way out. It all fit together, it all made so much sense.

Let the darkness enclose around. Let the cold eat into his flesh and bone. It was Act Four, it was the dark before the dawn, it was the turn, it was the anagnorisis, and it was time for all of this to be over.

Cliffside Library loomed large and black ahead of him, but he didn't care. For the first time in a very, very long time, he knew that things were going to be okay.

Chapter 27: 956 | 49,131/50,000

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Chapter 26: The Darkness and the Dawn

Theresa sipped her coffee, watching Alexandria. She was trying to be sympathetic, but mostly she was just amused. Her friend seemed so shaken, but there was no good reason for it.

“Dear, it's fine for you to have worried about me, but I'm quite alright now.”

“Theresa, worried doesn't really begin to cover it. You're one of my best friends, and you totally fell off the map! You were involved with this guy that you didn't know at all, and you stopped talking to me! What was I supposed to think, what was I supposed to do? It was like you were a completely different person.”

“Yes, I suppose I did act that way, a bit, didn't I?” Theresa had tried to reach Alexandria to talk to her about her decision to break it off with Adrian, but then, she had been in the mountains. The fact that it had been a swift decision didn't help it either. “If you want to talk about it, that's fine, but I'm also interested in what your break so far has been like.”

Alexandria waved it off. “Later,” she said. “What happened? Why did you break it off?”

Theresa stood up, and walked over to the window. “It was over Christmas dinner, with my family,” she said. “They asked me whether I was happy with him.” She looked back at her. “You know how families are.”

Alexandria didn't. “It sure sounded like you were happy whenever you talked to me,” said Alexandria. “Which made no sense at all.”

“Yes,” Theresa said, still thinking. “And I told them as much as I told you. But when I said it, dear, I realized that I wasn't happy about it now. Well, then, I mean. I suppose I had that known it earlier, but whenever I would spend time with him, I would be happy again, but whenever I wasn't with him... I guess forget about it. It would take another date with him, to remember.”

“It was the brews,” said Alexandria. Theresa raised her eyebrow. Sometimes her friend just couldn't help herself.

“I'm not going to say you're wrong,” said Theresa, delicately, “but I suspect it was myself, too. Oh, and a whole host of other things. But it doesn't really matter what it was. The facts were that I was happy when I was with him, but I wasn't happy about the relationship when I wasn't with him.” She laughed. “I admit, dear, that I don't really know myself well enough to fully explain why. But that realization was enough for me.”

But it was clear by this point that Alexandria didn't want to hear any other explanation.

“Was Adrian upset?” Alexandria asked.

“Oh, no, dear. The decision was mutual. Well, not mutual. I made it, but he was fine with it.”

Alexandria looked like the didn't believe it one bit. Theresa moved over to her, and sat down.

“Lex,” she said softly, “you need to consider that, sometimes, you don't have all the answers. You don't know what's going on in other people's minds. He wasn't upset. Really.” Theresa felt a bit annoyed at this point. “And neither was I.”

Alexandria nodded. She was showing remarkable restraint, at least.

Theresa eased back into the couch, relaxing. “Now, dear, tell me about your break.”

“Some other time, maybe.” Alexandria stood up. “It was scary, it was sad, it was beautiful. I'm really sorry to do this to you, Theresa, but I need to go home and think about a few things.”

Theresa waved. “I understand. I'll get the full story from you eventually, I suppose.”

Theresa watched her friend put on her winter coat and head out the door. She went to the window again, and looked out at the campus.

She saw the head of the Neptune River, still wide and lazy before the canyon at the library. It had iced over during Christmas, but despite the rigid and broken surface, there was still cold and clear water flowing underneath.

She saw Alexandria exit her apartment building, her long brown hair trailing out from under her winter hat. The winds blew, and Alexandria's coat was pushed to either side, open. She had not buttoned it shut.

She watched the sky grow dark blue, knowing that the sun was setting behind her in the west. Even after the bulk of winter, it felt wrong to have the night come on this early.

As the sky faded to black and Alexandria moved out of her sight, Theresa remembered that the solstice had already passed, and the night would be pushed back further and further, until, one day, she would be walking under the evening sun amidst the flowers of spring.

“That's a very, very interesting story,” Adrian said. He was lying on Miranda's couch, as she sat in her desk chair.

“I thought it was terrible,” she replied. “But it's all true. The cops went up there a couple days after we left, confirmed the whole thing.”

He stretched and yawned. When he had finished, he said, “And you still don't understand why the man in the lighthouse did that?”

Miranda looked at him. “Are you going to tell me I can't be a therapist again? That's mean.”

“True things can be mean. They often are.”

“It just doesn't seem real,” said Miranda, softly. “It's too incredible.”

“Which is why you grabbed at the coldest and simplest explanation,” Adrian said. “Maybe you should consider the fact that you just fundamentally don't understand people.”

Miranda turned to look at Adrian. “Are you like this because that Theresa girl dumped you and you're upset about it?”

Adrian smiled. “Don't diagnose me just yet, doctor. You can't figure out people the same way you can figure out a biology diagram, or solve a chemical equation.”

Miranda folded her arms. “Sometimes, I don't know why I'm friends with you. I've... I've done tons of stuff for people. I'm a great girlfriend to Al, I'm... well, I hope I'm a good friend to you.” Adrian just looked at her, and said nothing. “We've played games where we predict people together! So don't say that I can't do it.” She looked down, afraid to say what she said next. “I don't like it when you belittle me.”

“If you never break, you will never know how much you can safely bend,” said Adrian, getting up off of the couch. “And despite whatever you think, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm trying to show you what you're missing. And you're missing a lot. You think your boyfriend is happy?”

“I know he's not! I'm trying to fix him, and I'm doing the best I can!”

“You can't fix people in that way, Miranda.” He got his shoes from before the door, and started to put them on.

“Well, what are you doing, then? Are you trying to fix me? Are you trying to diagnose me? Huh?” Miranda stood up from her chair, her fists balled. She had worked so hard to keep Al under control all week, and going home to the most unsympathetic person in the world was not what she needed right now.

Adrian looked up at her from tying his shoes. He cocked his head to one side, slightly.

“You're tired,” he said. “You're tired because you don't get along with Calvin, you hate Lex, and you love Al. But you can't be yourself around any of them. You're tired because you've been acting all week; you've been acting strong, you've been acting sure, and you're not. Because if you falter before Lex, she will rip you apart, and if you falter before Al, he will destroy himself. And you've been doing a good job.”

He stood up, and started to put on his coat.

“As to what I'm doing... I'll be honest with you, Miranda. Perhaps more honest than I've ever been to anyone before. You think you can diagnose people individually? You cannot. I cannot. People aren't a puzzle you can solve. People aren't a chart you can follow. People aren't a story you can read.”

The zipper moved up his jacket, slowly.

“And yet... we say people have free will. We say people have choice. You have a choice as to what you do, you have a choice as to what you say, you have a choice as to what you think. But the actuarial tables say otherwise. The advertisement analysts say that thirty percent of a specific group will buy this car, and those people do. The actuaries say that eight percent of another group will die due to car accidents, and those people do. The political scientists say that fifty eight percent of people will vote for this guy, and those people do.”

“All these people, all these souls with their own clever, clever minds, living and dying with roughly calculable regularity. That's the beautiful, horrifying thing about humanity. You cannot predict a person. But people... yes, you can predict people. You can predict them very well.”

“You learn to play the long game, Miranda. You learn to sit night after night at the table, trying to pass off your losses, because even thought you might not get it right away, one of those nights, you're dealt a killer hand. And then you run the god damned table.”

He stepped out the door, and gave her a small smile. “Goodnight, Miranda. Sleep well.”

Miranda stood there, fists clenched, shaking. She felt as if she was a glass doll, fragile and transparent, that some child had picked up and examined, but decided not to smash. She did not understand what Adrian was trying to tell her, what he was trying to say.

Or maybe he wasn't trying to tell her anything. He had said that he was being honest, but did he really believe all that? Especially after perfectly predicting her struggles during that week, did he really think you couldn't model people in that way?

At the same time, she felt that Adrian was exactly right about one thing: she was missing something, she was missing a lot of things, and she knew that it was desperately important that she figure out what those things were.

Chapter 26: 1,758 | 48,175/50,000

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Chapter 25: Descending Quietly, Desperately

Calvin watched Alexander and Miranda enter their bedroom. He got up a few minutes later, in order to head over to the couch. He felt very tired from the afternoon's conversation, and confrontation. All he wanted to do was sit back and read something logical, something that made sense, something not about people. Alexandria stopped him.

“I'll take the couch tonight,” she said. She looked miserable, but her voice was firm. “One night it's yours, one night it's mine. That's fair.”

“And the other nights?” Calvin asked, as Alexandria went into her room to get her things.

She stopped, putting her hand on the door frame. She ran her hand up and down it's weathered wooden side. “There aren't going to be any more nights,” she said, softly. “We're going home tomorrow.”

She went into her room, and closed the door behind her. Calvin knocked on Miranda's door. She came to it, and opened it softly, making sure it made no sound.

“I think Al finally fell asleep, thank goodness,” she said. She was pitching her voice as quietly as possible. “So keep it down. What's up?”

Calvin spoke quietly as well. “Did you hear that we're going home tomorrow?”

She passed her hand over her forehead. “That doesn't surprise me. Tensions are running pretty high. But let's all sleep on it, and see what happens. I'll pack Alexander's and my things just in case, I suppose. I guess it was good that I did some cleaning today.”

“You did?” Calvin asked.

“Yes,” said Miranda. “Couldn't you tell?”

Calvin could not.

“After breakfast, Al went back to his room to try to rest. He hasn't been sleeping well at all, you know. You guys were on your hike, and I thought that I would be a poor guest if I didn't do anything to help. So I cleaned up as much as I could. Dusting, mostly. Their friend must keep things pretty clean when he leaves. And since we all have sleeping bags, we should have to do any laundry. I'm not even sure he has laundry here, for that matter. Anyway, we shouldn't have to do too much before we leave tomorrow.”

Calvin nodded, and let Miranda withdraw into her room again. He packed up his things by the couch, and by that point Alexandria was done packing up her things. They switched places, without a word.

He laid his possessions out inside the room, but not too many of them. He put a change of clothes in the closet, and his sleeping bag and pillow on the bed. There was no point in spreading his belongings everywhere if they were leaving the next morning.

Alexandria had probably been upset with him for not siding with her. But he could not get the journal out of his mind. The last entry had been dated for today. One of the two girls was right, and it was impossible to know without the journal. And if they were leaving tomorrow, they would never recover it.

Furthermore, it was probably not a good idea to steal from the dead man's house. And because he guessed that none of them read shorthand, they couldn't borrow it temporarily. It was good that he left it where it was.

Although the puzzle of the whole thing was surprisingly frustrating. And it wasn't helping that, now that he thought of it, the entry could have been anything-- a grocery list, a book he was writing, anything. It didn't have to be a suicide note. And if it had been a suicide note, the man probably would have written it in plain English so anybody could read it-- although, was that really true?

Calvin thought about it a little longer. But he still came to the conclusion that there was simply not enough information to figure out which girl was right. There wasn't even enough information to tell whether there was an answer, somewhere up in those high and cold mountains.

No, Calvin did not regret his decision for staying impartial. The girls weren't really interested in facts, anyway. Was that a bad thing? No, probably not.

It was getting late. He walked over to his window, drew back the curtains, and looked out.

Through the dim and flickering light of the fire coming from the windows of the next room, he could see that a fresh snow was starting to fall. It made no sound as it dropped, lazily, from high above. The tracks that he and Alexandria made on their return were slowly being buried. There would be no evidence that they had ever been here, soon enough, except for a clean house.

Alexandria had been right; it got dark very quickly up in the winter mountains. The slim crescent from the night before had vanished. The moon was new. He looked closer, and high above them he saw the lighthouse, still spinning, still shining. Oddly enough, the light did not seem so far away, now. Perhaps it was the fact that he had hiked to and from it in a day. But perhaps not.

He went back to his bed, and sat down. Would the police turn the light off when they got up there to investigate? He hoped not.

Calvin laid down, facing the ceiling, and closed his eyes. He heard the door open and close a moment later.

Alexandria had entered the room. She was wearing loose pajama bottoms and her oversized sweater. Her brown hair lay tangled about her, messy without the winter hat. Her eyes were red.

Calvin opened his mouth to speak.

“Don't talk,” she said. “Please. Please don't say anything.”

He closed his mouth again.

Alexandria hesitantly climbed onto the bed along side him. Calvin didn't move a muscle. She slid up along his left, and reached over and grabbed his right wrist. She turned away from him, pulling his arm with her as if she was curling up in a blanket. Her body pressed against his, very warm, very light, and very fragile.

Calvin knew that she didn't want to hear any of this; he knew that she had asked him not to speak, but he couldn't just sit there and let her do this to herself.

“Lex,” he said, softly. “You know that I don't feel this way about you. This isn't real.”

“Shut up,” she whispered. “Just shut up.”

And so he lay there, thinking of Alexander, and how stories matter. He could let her have this story for tonight, couldn't he?

As he held her, he noticed that she started to shake imperceptibly. And then she started to cry, softly, but desperately.

Yes. He could let her have this story for tonight. Yes he could.

The group drove back to campus the next morning.

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