Reality Check

Our World

The Best Is Yet To Come (by Sheppard)

"Help me understand the best is yet to come. Take me by the hand before I come undone. 'Cause all this emptiness has left me feeling numb . . ."

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After spending another extra few hours in the hospital, Owen was released to go home, given a warning to not move his arm too much and to come back in a week for a checkup appointment. He was too exhausted to do much of anything, so both him and his mother had retreated to their rooms for sleep. Despite how tired he was, though, he doubted he'd have an easy time falling asleep. Not after the crazy day he had.

As Owen had recently found out in the car ride back from the hospital, his mother had gone a bit insane while he was gone, contacting every police station and hospital within four states. Obviously, the police hadn't been able to find him. They'd set up an investigation that lasted nearly three months, but since there were no leads, the search had ended. After about a year of searching on her own, his mother ultimately gave up, hoping that he would return home. And he did, but his timing was much later than he had wanted it to be.

When he got home, Owen was hesitant to go to sleep. He hadn't been home in ages, and it felt extremely weird to be back to a normal agenda. After a week, or apparently three years, of sleeping in a cot in a prison, it was strange to be back in his comfortable bed after what he'd been through. He was having some trouble adjusting, since he'd only been home for a few hours. Everything felt different.

Much to his relief, his bedroom hadn't changed much. He still had the same Star Wars themed bedspread, the same computer on his desk and the same boxes hidden under his bed, which contains sheets of the embarrassing Kiel Gnomenfoot fanfiction he once wrote when he was ten. Every shelf in the room still overflowed with books without covers or with splitting spines, and there were even still the collections of pages held together with rubber bands. It was comforting to know that at least one thing was still the same.

After a long and emotional talk with his mother, he'd been sent to bed. He had told her the best explanation he could without sounding absolutely crazy . . . so he left out the part of him being trapped in a Pick The Plot book. He tried making his story sound as close to the truth as possible without giving away Bethany's identity or the fact that the fictional world was real.

In his made-up story, he was wandering around town and got very lost. His phone didn't have any reception and was running low on battery, so there was no way to contact his mother. He ended up a long way from home, and instead of finding a way to get home he decided to learn how to live on his own for a short while. A week turned into a few months, and soon he found himself living in homeless shelters and trying to scrounge for money.

Owen attempted to go home many times, but he didn't have money for a bus ticket and wasn't sure how he could walk home without directions. He wasn't even sure how long he'd been living on his own. In this scenario, he was forced to get a low-paying job and was able to make a small sum of money that would allow him to take a bus ride home.

This fake story, Owen concluded later, was very far from the truth but at least his mom believed it. She would probably never let him out of her sight again, and he didn't blame her. She was probably freaking out now that Owen was finally home, especially given the fact that he'd shown up at her doorstep with a broken arm and a complicated explanation. Once he agreed many times to never do that again, he was sent upstairs to get some sleep.

Sleep, however, didn't come. He was slightly traumatized after all that time in Pick The Plot, and the memories of the past week were like a nightmare that never seemed to end. He was thankful to finally be somewhere safe and comfortable. He was even more thankful that Bethany was safe and out of harm's way; due to Nobody's selfishness, she'd been separated for some time, but now she was back to her regular half-fictional self. They'd both agreed that they wanted a break, and Owen guessed Kiel would feel the same way.