Sean
"Oh? Who s over—?"
"Bethan. I m serious."
"What happened?" her tone changed.
I thought for a moment. "Have you ever seen a nuclear bomb go off?"
"Ralph…"
"The people in the center, they don t feel anything. One minute they re alive, the next, they re just ash. It s the people who are far away that really suffer."
"Ralph, I don t understand."
"A bomb went off today, and it was my fault. I saw the
Do Not Touch
sign, and I knew that if I did, that something bad would happen, but I just wanted to know what that something was, and then the bomb went off. I never expected it to be as bad as it was…"
"I m coming over," she said.
"No, I m fine."
"No you re not! Listen to yourself Ralph, you re talking crazy."
"I just want to go back to that week, everything was better that week," I said, talking more to myself than to her. "I ll call you later. I gotta go."