So Live Your Life

Day 2

Entry Fees

I had had a hard time sleeping that night. I spent most of the night laying awake in my bed, visualizing the faces of those that had been erased the day before within the Game. They were gone, lost forever. Their right to exist had been forfeited, as had their entrance fees. What happened to their entry fees anyways? They too could have been erased, but that wasn’t fair.

School was hard for me the next day. I was running on roughly three hours of sleep and looked like a complete mess. Everyone shot questions at me. What’s wrong? Are you alright? Do you want to talk about it? Of course I wanted to talk about it, but there wasn’t a person in the entire school that I could tell these things too. Least of all Sara. If she knew that I was a Reaper now, the thought was difficult to bear. Not as difficult as the change in our relationship though. We’d become friends over that week, but now I found myself unable to talk to her at all. I constantly was in fear that she would ask the one question “how did you come back to life?”

Avoiding her was impossible. There I stood, in the hallway putting on my track shoes when she and Megan came across me. They were the giggly type and namely kept to themselves, but we were all friends on the team. I guess it was just the day to taunt me though, because they both put their backs against the locker and slid down on each side of me. Their white smiles were like the sun shining down on me, and I couldn’t help offering my own.

“Jared, it’s been so long,” Megan said.

“Yeah, why don’t you talk to us?” Sara asked. “We’ve been dying for a little attention. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Oh forgive me,” I said, playing along with their act. “I’ve just been busy with other things.”

“Too busy for us?” Megan asked. “I’m insulted, aren’t you?”

“Very insulted,” Sara agreed.

“You should run with us today.”

“What’s the run?”

“Five miles, easy day,” Sara said.

“Alright,” I said.

And so I followed them outside and we ran. Can I say there have never been two stranger girls? They’re loveable though, and they were fun. I was too tired to join in with any of their festivities, but they would trot around, singing songs loudly with their pretty voices. They brought smiles to everyone around. As I ran with them, I couldn’t help but think of how right the Composer had been in selecting the winner of the last Game. Sara had had this within her the entire time, but now she was really beginning to shine.

It was more than just the songs that made everyone was passed by a little happier, she just reached out to people. When we were stopped at a crosswalk she would turn and talk to anyone else that was around, asking their name and starting up a real conversation within the few seconds before we were off again. Watching her, it made me wonder if I was any further along than I had been.

So far, the only change I felt was a sickening feeling that constantly grew within my stomach. I wanted to know that my life was making a difference as well. As much as I hated to admit it, I envied Sara. When she came back to life she had more life in her than I had ever seen in any person. What was I contributing?

We had to stop at a park for Megan to go to the bathroom. While she was in there, I was left alone with Sara. We hung out by the side of the bathroom, refreshing ourselves at the drinking fountain. Then, we just stood there, silence falling. It didn’t fall long enough though.

“Are you alright?” Sara asked. “You look like someone tried to strangle you in your sleep.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been having a hard time sleeping.”

“It’s the Game, isn’t it?”

I turned to her, surprised. This was the first she had ever spoken of the Game since we had returned from it.

“I’ve had nightmares too,” Sara said. “Thinking about everyone that didn’t come back to life.”

“I can still see their faces… watching them as they are erased,” I said. “I just can’t get them out of my head.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “But, you know, bad things happen. We’ve clashed with people, and though they may be gone we still have them. It’s like… we have to live more just for them.”

I nodded. “Would you say that I’ve been living more?”

“What do you mean?”

“You knew me before the Game, and after the Game. Has there been a change?”

Sara bit her lip. “You seem terrified.”

I listened.

“I… I mean, argh,” she shook her head. “I really don’t know how to say it but…”

She took a deep breath and turned to me. “You need to love life. Stop thinking things through and just do something! Remember when I kissed you?”

“Hard to forget.”

“You need to do something like that,” she said. “You know, grab the moment. Live it up?”

I laughed. “Right, go grab some random girl and kiss her.”

“Exactly!”

“Yeah… well,” I said. “I found out something after you had left that final day. It seems that I was wrong about your entry fee. Your memories of me, they were my entry fee.”

“I know,” Sara said. “I figured it out when I got my entry fee back.”

“Did that change the way you acted towards me at all during the Game?”

Sara nodded. “It did at first, but even after I realized the truth… I didn’t regret anything. You know, you wouldn’t be a bad entry fee. Whenever I saw you, you were just a nice guy. You just did the right thing by you, even if it wasn’t popular, and it made you look a little dorky, but it was nice to know that there was a good guy. Like I told you, I’ve had some bad experience… I wouldn’t have been surprised if they took my memories of you being a good guy for my fee.”

“What was your fee?”

“My dreams,” Sara said. “With nothing to fight for, it made the difficult very hard. But, that’s why they took what they did right? We had to find new reasons to live, new reasons to be ourselves.”

“Right.”

That was my problem. I had my entry fee back and it meant nothing more to me now than it had before. My reason for playing the Game was to get Sara back to life, and my mission had been accomplished. There, I had no mission anymore. Nothing to live for. I had to find something to live for, someone to live for.

“Hey, thanks Sara,” I said. “You totally helped me.”

Sara smiled. “Helped you how? Repealing your virgin lips status?”

Just like her. It was a shot to the pride, but I didn’t have the chance to react.

“You kissed Jared?”

We both turned in surprise as Megan reappeared. I just laughed while Sara immediately had to try to explain the situation. It must’ve been difficult lying to your best friend, but I doubt she would have believed the death Game we had played. Then again, maybe she would have believed it. If you watch the way those two talked to one another, they would stand by each other through anything. They would take each other’s side in an argument no matter what.

Once Megan had swallowed the story Sara had made up from her, to which I agreed with everything she said, we ran back to the school. Then, it was time for my job to begin. After showering, I took the trax downtown once again to begin my second day as a Reaper.

Again Jessica met me at the station, and again we passed into the RG. I was still unfamiliar with the run of things, but apparently Players weren’t the only ones to receive missions. Our missions weren’t the same as theirs were, but the Game Master apparently carried out his or her plans through us. The Officers weren’t the type to dirty their hands by participating directly in the Game, it was all done by proxy. It seemed as though they didn’t have to erase Players though, or did they? I didn’t even understand why we had to, so I asked.

“Why do we have to erase Players to stay alive?” I asked as we walked to the Gateway.

“It’s all about Soul,” Jessica replied. “You see, in the UG, you don’t have a real body. The you in the UG is merely your soul manifest. Players look like themselves, but some Reapers can change their appearance as they gain power over Soul. That’s how your GM took on a Noise form last week.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “So we erase Players and take their Soul? I guess that makes sense, we are Reapers after all.”

Jessica smiled. “It isn’t as morbid as it sounds. You see, when a Player is erased that person’s Soul is released all around. So yes, we do use that Soul to maintain ourselves, but Soul does a lot more than that too. It can become pins, such as the ones we use for psyches to fight with, or it can become Noise as well. It can influence the trends based on who was erased. So, even though that person doesn’t exist as a being anymore, their Soul lives on and becomes refined into other things. Rarely, that Soul can be collected and restored into a mortal body, but only the Composer can do that. Reapers are talented if they can collect Soul to forge pins, it really is very tricky to use properly.”

“So I see,” I said. “What’s the mission for today?”

“It’s a bit of an obstacle course,” Jessica said. “The GM threw a bunch of walls everywhere and Reapers aren’t supposed to let Players pass unless they collect certain pins from Noise. The Noise is also different in each area, it’s actually pretty clever. They have to run back and forth between each area to fight Noise, collect pins, then go to another area to open it. Pretty tough for the second day.”

“Is there a limit on how hard the missions have to be?”

“The first mission is always the fountain,” Jessica said. “We start off easy to give Players a fighting chance, and the first day is a lot to take in for most of them. That’s why the most are eliminated. If you manage to live past the first day, though, you’re chances of winning the game rise astronomically. Each day is supposed to get progressively harder, but it all depends on the GM and what the Conductor believes as appropriate. Your fifth day mission was considered to be incredibly hard, especially with how ambiguous the mission details were, and that’s why the Conductor ordered the GM to have no mission for the next day. We’re tough, but we’re not cruel.”

“Yeah, it would’ve been impossible for anyone but Sara,” I replied. “She just knew what to do.”

“You’re lucky to have had such a good partner.”

“I was.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” Jessica asked. “The GM told us to keep our hands off of the Players today, so the Harriers pretty much have the day off.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Rarely,” Jessica smiled. “So we can enjoy it while it lasts. What do you say?”

I smiled. “Dinner, movie?”

“It’s a start.”

We went back into the RG, we had never really needed to go into the UG at all, but it had been nice to talk privately. The more I thought about it, I could really enjoy this double life. Having the UG as a place to fall back to was a great bonus to being a Reaper, even if my job was to erase Players. That in itself didn’t appear to be evil though, and thankfully I had Jessica to tell me as much.

She linked her arm in mine and away we went, having a night on the town. Movie, dinner, dessert, we did anything we wanted. We popped in and out of the UG as we pleased to talk or to just freak some people out, it was one of the best nights of my life. I was finally doing it, I was really beginning to live my life, I wasn’t afraid to live. Sara had been right when she told me that I needed some spontaneity in my life, and I took her advice.

I kissed the girl.