The screen shows the sea as if I’m sitting on the seabed, not my own bed, or even a bench in the middle of Tokyo. Thousands of multicoloured fish dart about, flitting between long-fingered coral and short-fingered divers. Turtles stroke their way over my head and whales blast out fountains at the top.

And I’m reminded that the sea is filled with Living. From tiny green specks of life all the way to its biggest monsters. It’s a place to float. To be everything and nothing and everyone and no one. Where there are no spoons to be taken – just silence. Just light.

I breathe it in and it’s like the whole world seems to stop, just for one moment.

And then the band Hana was watching finishes and she uses both hands to clap, dissolving the stream into bubbles.

You have disconnected from this stream.

9

Alice

I close my laptop. The house is silent with Mum and Dad at work. There’s just the sound of my breaths, the light buzzing of Manta’s tank and the breeze from the open window making my curtains flutter against the window sill.

And outside, in the distance, I see the bell tower. Wesley’s own finish line and the last thing he saw before –

I shake my head. It used to be nice to have the window open and see, just one street away, the school where Cecelia studies and Mum works as a careers advisor, helping lost students navigate their way through life after lessons.

Before the Illness got me, Mum was a singer. She toured in a Spice Girls cover band as Posh Spice – which Dad and I always found ironic, seeing as we’ve both witnessed her eat crumbs from her bra. But onstage she was a star. And I used to love watching her perform, holding her microphone out to the crowd and getting the whole room dancing.

These days, she keeps her music low and the singing to downstairs, where the sound can’t reach me and take spoons. And, instead of a microphone, she holds meetings about other people’s dreams.

I watch Mum putting her life on pause to look after me and I feel the guilt like a thousand tonnes of water on my bones. It makes me feel heavy, and the walls of my room a little smaller, and the empty-house silence almost –

I take a deep breath and open my laptop again. My mouse hovers over the Stream Cast icon on my desktop.

Welcome back to Stream Cast, Alice

Users online:

Users offline:

daddycool-007

Last online: 72 days

Connect to a channel to start watching.

My blood seems to freeze mid-pump.

Rowan. Online for two minutes.