Who wants to know?

No one on his friends list updated enough. Neither did any of the people on his journal. Didn't any of them realize that he had nothing to do with his life besides read about them hurting and joking and flirting and being so much realer and more alive than the shell spying on them?

Of course not.

He read every rambling email Jeff sent. Sometimes he wrote replies and didn't send them. More often than not, what he did send were demands that Jeff to leave him alone, and then he worried without end until the next email came. When there was a day or even an hour with nothing, no Shen no entries no emails no sleep, a gulf of loneliness opened and refused to close. But he often ached after reading the emails, because each one reminded him that there was no one coming for him. Just people claiming they would.

Greg fantasized about meeting the strangers who shared his journal. What did Yezidi look like? Exactly what had happened to Jeff's eye? Was Rita really that pretty? And Natana—he wondered what she looked like so often that he probably had a crush on her.

The thought was so amusing he thought it would make his stingingly dry eyes well up. He had never dated. He had never kissed anyone. He hadn't hugged anyone in months; Shen was so composed and Greg didn't want to hurt his arm, and no one else was there. He couldn't hug his spirit friends. And even if he could, his spirit friends were gone. He saw spirits sometimes, uninterested in him, and wondered if he really was crazy, and Shen was just humoring him because he was his girlfriend's crazy little brother. But Shen had to like him. No one in the world had that much patience.

He spent all day waiting for Shen to come home. Quite often, he brightened up and laughed and was truly, genuinely happy until the moment he was alone and the gulf opened right back up. Almost as often, Shen had to work, or Greg was only pretending to laugh. When Shen asked if he was ok, he said yes, even though he both knew they weren't. Shen never pushed him. Only Jeff pushed him, and Jeff was miles and miles away. What he needed was someone here to push him. What he needed was a real hug, not a hug on the internet.

He needed help, and the thought made him sick. Greg wasn't supposed to need help. Greg was supposed to help. Greg was supposed to save people and cheer them up, not expect hem to cheer him up.

If anyone from the journal came, they wouldn't know who he was. They wouldn't recognize the scrawny boy in his too-short jacket and too-loose pants as anything but a stranger passing by.

No one was coming to save him.