Dwindle

  Chapter Fifteen: The Silent Cartographer

  She sobbed loudly. I heard her from the outside of the ruins even as I approached. I ran faster than I had in a while with an urgency I couldn’t explain, and it made me struggle to see the structure in which Fisher was cooped in the dark.

  The door was closed. I ran to it, pushing it hard to try to get in. The door wouldn’t move. I pushed again harder, ignoring the outside and the dark. The door wouldn’t budge. Her sobs racked through me as I hit it now, hard enough to make my hand bleed. I glanced at the blood a little, wondering why I had done it. She cried louder. I remembered. My hands slid down the door frantically to find a way to open it. To my surprise, there was a knob. I turned it, nearly tumbled in, and slammed the door closed behind me.

  I found her inside, and I saw immediately that she’d given up. She had broken. She could no longer hide her weaknesses, so they tumbled out of her in a jumble that was incapable of being stopped.

  She wanted to die.

  I didn’t know why I had come to such a conclusion, but I did and I immediately knew it was the right one. I didn’t even know what it was that had made me get up in the night to find her, but seeing her like that against the far wall, barely able to stand straight or keep her eyes open, reminded me of all the reasons why I had.

  She sobbed louder. It brought me all forms of pain that I was unfamiliar with, raw and fresh and lingering. It came from deep within my stomach and in the depths of my throat, from the tips of my fingers to the shoulders in my back, from my shaky legs to my heaving chest. And no matter how long I blinked, the pain refused to pass like it usually did.

  I just breathed, but as was becoming custom, I couldn’t retain any oxygen. I found, even as I stared, that something was building in me that I couldn’t explain. But the more I saw, the more I wanted to unleash it. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it when it came. I breathed and breathed for a long time, staring at her. Waiting for her to stop. She didn’t. Finally, when I knew I couldn’t take it anymore, when I knew the monster would explode, I did.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted, pinning her against the wall.

  I didn’t know how I had gotten from one point in the room to the other, her in my hands, but it had happened faster than I could even process.

  She wasn’t surprised. On the contrary, she acted as if she had almost expected me.

  “Ollie!” she said, laughing in my arms.

  I smelled alcohol on her. I recoiled, gentler.

  “Are you drunk?” I asked softly.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, glancing at the bottles at our feet. “But another few might do the trick.”

  The smell was pungent and all too familiar. The anger returned.

  “So you’re just going to drink yourself to death, is that it?” I shouted.

  It was something I would have done – not a Deviant. Not her. Even though I saw in her eyes what I felt – and hid, even from myself – I wanted her to be better than me.

  “Why not?” she asked, shrugging flippantly.

  I had to appeal to something, penetrate that glibness with something that hooked her will to live. Then, I could draw her out, yanking her out like a fish from a pond.

  “So you’re going to give up? Go crawl in a hole?” I shouted louder. “What the hell is that? That isn’t you!”

  My anger resonated with her, and the smirk fell from her face.

  “What the hell does it matter to you, Ollie?” she shouted, struggling in my arms. “What do you know about what is me and isn’t me?”

  I was much stronger, and I didn’t relent.

  “Let go of me!” she shrieked, looking up at me fiercely.

  “No!” I shouted. “You’re being an idiot! I won’t let that happen!”

  “And why do you care, huh?” She tried to get away again. “Why the fuck do you care?”

  I’d never heard her talk like that. She’d confided in me that foul language was considered to be awful in her land. Really, I’d only heard her swear sparsely, only a few times, but to her and her people, she had a foul mouth.

  That made her words all that more jarring. She reached forward and hit my shoulder weakly.

  “What are you doing, Ollie?” she shouted. “What are you doing here? Come to yell at me? Leave me alone! Let go!”

  She still struggled, but she really was very small. And she was so weak that it broke my heart. Finally, exhausted, she stopped, sagging a little into the hands that held her up by her shoulders. I was surprised at the dependence she had on me to keep her up. No one had ever leaned on me before.

  “I came to find you!” I finally snapped defensively. “You shouldn’t be out here like this, and you know that!”

  “Do I?” she asked, head rolling this way and that. “Who cares if I die? I’d be doing the world a favor. Just ask your pal, Alison Bright!”

  Disturbingly real anger came to me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked darkly.

  “We had a nice little chat, me and her.”

  “What did she say?” I growled menacingly.

  “That…Skate died because he was weak,” she said, looking up to me, her voice breaking suddenly.

  Tears penetrated her resolve.

  “She said it was all my fault…and that I failed them.”

  “That bitch…” I found myself muttering quietly, squeezing Fisher’s arms so tightly she cried out. I loosened immediately, eyeing her all the apologies she needed.

  “She’s right, you know,” Fisher said sadly.

  “No, she’s not,” I said determinedly. “Ali is an idiot!”

  The more disturbed I was at seeing her inebriated and weak, the angrier I became. But it wasn’t the normal kind of anger that I was so used to. It was different and much more real. It was anger at myself, for her loved ones for being so negligent and not helping her, for her cousin, who had died while she already had so little, for her uncle, who abused her without mercy. He had left her so little already, only bruises and scars, and they, unlike other wounds, would probably never heal.

  “You do know that everything in miles can hear you?” I asked, trying hard to forget the sadness that came to me with those realizations.

  She laughed hysterically.

  “Yes, yes, I do.”

  She laughed more. I couldn’t understand how, but there was no smile on her face.

  “But that was the plan,” she whispered. “Let them come.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I kill the ones that come, I can…save them in Hand. And they don’t need to worry about me failing anymore.”

  “I…” I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t think that’s the way it would go down, kid.”

  My anger had passed once it was made known to her, and it was replaced by only more human feelings. Panic was among them. It had been a few nights since she’d dismissed me, and since then the maniacal quality in her eyes had festered and grown determined.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”

  That was bitterness talking.

  “Why not?” I whispered.

  “Because I don’t get to die!” she said loudly.

  She leaned her head back and her neck was exposed to me. It seemed so close to me then. It didn’t look bad. It was beautiful, Deviant mark and all.

  “Why do you think you can’t die?”

  “Because…I am not allowed to die,” she said matter-of-factly. “That is how God has decided it.”

  “Dammit, that isn’t –”

  “You don’t know!” she shouted.

  She began to sob, and the shift was so sudden all I could do was blink. She shook her head against the wall. I held her tightly, but my hands shook. I was sure she felt it.

  “You are like them,” she said eventually, sniffling loudly.

  “Who?”

  “Everyone! You don’t know me! You don’t even know me! A
nd yet you pass judgments on the way I am like I’m some kind of animal! You think I don’t hear you talk about me?” Her mouth upturned. “You think I don’t hear you tell the others how bad I am? I refuse to take the fall for something I didn’t do! But that doesn’t matter! Nobody believes me when I say that I care! And I care, Dark, I care!”

  I know, I found myself thinking, wishing I was brave enough to say it. I know it hurts. I know I hurt you.

  “Well, go ahead!” she continued breathlessly. “Pass your judgments and laugh it up behind my back! You can stay in Hand at my place from now on for all I care because I don’t give a fuck!”

  I had no idea what to say.

  “Why won’t you be there?” I asked her quietly.

  The way she’d said it made it seem like she’d be gone.

  “I’ll be here,” she said, laughing again. “Hopefully you bury me.”

  This staggered me.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “That’s why you’re here, right?” she taunted maliciously. “To kill me? That’s why you came all this way out here in the middle of the night?”

  I couldn’t breathe again. The thought of her knowing my treachery was almost too much.

  “I can imagine you’ll have the integrity to make it fast. If you shoot me in the head, don’t miss, please. I’ve done that a few times.”

  “Fisher, shut up.”

  My eyes closed for a moment before I took a slow step forward, if that were possible. I was serious and sincere, for once. I wanted her to be.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I said dismissively. “And you’re just…tired. You’re tired. That’s all.”

  I didn’t know who I was trying to fool, me or her.

  “When you kill me, I bet you’ll enjoy making me scream,” she said nonchalantly, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  This prodded me just slightly too hard.

  “Shut up, kid,” I snapped.

  Anger began to fester, but it wasn’t at her – not exactly.

  “Breaking me, that’s Rhyme’s favorite part too,” she continued, undeterred.

  Again, she paired Rhyme and I together, and it made me want to vomit.

  “Fisher, shut up!”

  “Maybe you could take me before killing me,” she said with the great and terrible knowledge that she was provoking me successfully. “Gain the knowledge of my flesh. The ultimate shame.”

  “No, Fisher, I –”

  “Isn’t that what you do, Dark? Hurt people? That’s your life, right? Hurting me? I deserve to be punished, and you’d just revel in it, wouldn’t you?”

  Her eyes were dangerous when she spoke like that. I felt, for the first time I could consciously remember, the first scrapings of apprehension. I wanted to be able to stop.

  “Honestly, I don’t understand why you’re even hesitating,” she said calmly. “My life is meaningless. Why did you even stop to chat? Want the last word before you murder me?”

  “I said be quiet, Fisher!”

  It made me so angry that she could know these things without knowing me – that she could read me when I had never let another human read me before. That she would not judge me, even though she knew part of what I was. I hated that she threw the words around so casually when they caused me so much pain. I was afraid of what she would think, afraid of what she would say. She was mocking me for it.

  “What’s stopping you, Ollie?” she asked honestly. “Kill me. Just do it. Get it over with. Come on!”

  Her teeth were gritted now, and she sounded frustrated and confused.

  “It isn't like I’m different, right? Like it would be hard with me? You said it yourself!”

  “I said SHUT UP, Fisher!”

  My resolve collapsed and I pushed my body flush up next to hers, dropping my hands from her shoulders to settle uneasily at her hips. I’d given up holding her there, but she’d also given up fighting me. She stared up at me quietly, waiting for me to say something. My gaze on her was lighter than I had ever remembered it then, and I savored every second our bodies were close like that.

  “How do you know me then, Mr. Dark?” Fisher whispered softly up to me. My breath caught at the way she whispered my name. “What have I done wrong?”

  “Nothing…” I whispered calmly. “I…”

  I paused and leaned forward with my mouth, taken by an impulse. So close. So very close. My body ached, suddenly, ached and ached. Something could help it, something unthinkable.

  But then I pulled away again, resigning to the fear and panic that came with that impulse.

  She blinked in surprise, and I knew she knew what I’d just tried – and lost the nerve – to do. I knew it. We both knew it, suddenly.

  I was terrified by this.

  “What was that?” she asked, cracking at the motion.

  Sobs moved through her, and I felt them rise out of her due to our proximity. I took a step back again, and with it came a sense of clarity that was impossible when I was so close to her skin. I finally released her totally, but I was close enough.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked me, covering her face.

  “I don’t know!’ I said, hurting at the words.

  “I thought you hated me!”

  I was stunned at myself then. I had expected to agree with her. I honestly had. I had told myself so many times that I hated her – that she was Deviant scum. But I couldn’t say that I did. I was wrong again.

  “Maybe you just crave my body,” she whispered to me, looking into my eyes. “And that’s okay. Men are attracted to women faster than they are to men.”

  I didn’t want to talk about this. We couldn’t – shouldn’t – talk about this.

  “You don’t want me,” she confided in me. “I’m a murderer.”

  But I did want her, even if I couldn’t say it.

  “He was my best friend, you know…”

  She stared up at me distantly. This, more than anything, made me want to run away.

  But I was afraid of what she would do if I went.

  “We used to make up these nicknames, these codenames?” she began to explain. “Because our parents…well, his parents hated us so much, me and my family.”

  She laughed with the memories that exploded in her eyes. I was silent. I couldn’t breathe. Nobody had ever confided in me before.

  “They used to think we had imaginary friends. His name was…it was Baby.”

  She spoke uncharacteristically slow. “Because he was born a month after me…I was Shorty. I was so short. I’ve, uh…I’ve always been really short, you know? I’ve, uh, I’ve never had it easy…”

  On a normal day, I would have told her to suck it up, but something about the way she said it stayed my tongue. Something actually began to well in the back of my throat. It was a sensation totally new to me.

  “When we were little, the kids…they used to beat me up. Or they tried. My family has never been on the best side with people, you know?”

  I didn’t, but I eyed her like I knew anyway.

  “We’ve never been liked by anyone. I didn’t understand until I was older that it was the Taint, the Bad People. I wanted to remind everyone that I was related to Rhyme and Skate and Gabby, that if I was, they were too, but it was my mother they hated. My mom’s side. She was the one who brought the Taint to our family. So I was Tainted too.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this information.

  “They used to try to steal our stuff,” she continued. “One time, there was this, uh, this boy. He tried to steal my necklace – I found it outside with Skate. They said I had a crush on him and that he had given it to me. I don’t think anyone in town could bear to realize ‘that strange girl’ was his cousin, you know?”

  She paused.

  “Skate hit him so hard for that…”

  She reached her hand up to her neck and pulled a long necklace from it. It was surprisingly silver and intact. She rolled it around in her fingers. There was a round gr
een orb at the end of an old silver ring, a stone that looked scratched in only one spot. The stone was embedded into the metal like it was fighting to make its way out.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

  She nodded forlornly.

  “They always tried to steal this…”

  She began to cry in earnest.

  “Worthless piece of garbage now,” she snapped.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, blinking in surprise. “It’s a pretty ring.”

  “Because he always told me it would bring me luck!” she said loudly. “That it would save me! That it would help me out! And he still died! And he’s dead because I couldn’t save him!”

  “I bet it could bring you luck,” I said quietly.

  “Then, you take it!” she snapped, thrusting it around my neck in disgust. “Because I’m tired of hoping for luck that won’t come.”

  I took it off my neck again and held it loosely in my hands, uncertain of how to proceed.

  “You need it more than I do,” I whispered to her finally.

  She made a noise of disgust and stopped me.

  “Skate used to say that too,” she said bitterly. “And look where we are.”

  I bit my lip painfully. Her words progressed slowly into tears. It hurt me further in the back of my throat, at the pit of my stomach. I had never felt hurt like that. I didn’t feel that kind of pain.

  There was silence. Finally, I whispered,

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Skate always saved me…”

  She leaned her head back, crying out. She collapsed against the wall, and I collapsed with her, wanting to touch, not knowing where I should.

  “Why? Why couldn’t I save him? I didn’t do anything wrong! Why are they taking him from me? I just don’t understand! He didn’t do anything! He didn’t do anything, and he’s gone!”

  The dam broke and she shrieked now, sobs rising out of her.

  “Why couldn’t I do it? Why! Why didn’t I get back in time? Why did he go there without me?”

  “I –”

  “Did he want to die? Did he want to abandon me here, like this? Why did he leave me behind? I would have died to keep him from dying like that! I would have gone anywhere to get him! Didn’t he know that?”

  I tried to speak, but words couldn’t do justice to my feelings.

  “Didn’t he know that I loved him?” she shrieked. “Was he unhappy? Did he want to die? Didn’t he know I’d go look for him? I looked so hard for him, Ollie, so hard! I spent nights outside, looking the first few days! I couldn’t leave him alone out there like that! I couldn’t let him die! Doesn’t he know that I was looking for him?”

  I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know how.

  “Why didn’t he love me enough?” she shrieked, rocking in agony. “Why didn’t he want to stay here with me? Why? I don’t understand!”

  This became her new mantra.

  “I don’t understand! I don’t understand! How did this happen? How could I let this happen?”

  “Let it?” I asked breathlessly. “You did everything you could do, Fisher. This isn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it is!” she shrieked. “They went to Peak for me and I don’t even know why! I don’t even know why! Why didn’t I see it? Why couldn’t I stop it?”

  “Fisher…” I began, but I didn’t know what to say. “This isn’t your fault,” I finally said again.

  It took her a moment to temper her despair.

  “If you haven’t come to kill me…” she began slowly. “Then…I will do what must be done.”

  “What must be done?” I asked weakly.

  “I don’t know what you’d call it in your land,” she said back. “Taking your own life…”

  “Suicide?” I asked breathlessly. “You can’t die like that.”

  “But I’ve failed! I am useless and pathetic! I’ve lost everyone!”

  Not Chess, I thought desperately. Not me.

  “It’s the only way…” she sobbed, wanting a hand to sob into.

  I wanted to give her that hand. I even reached out to her face a little bit in strange desperation to make her stop, but my hand couldn’t touch her face. It was like it was afraid. I knew I was. My hand retracted.

  I tried to comfort her. It felt strange. I realized in a moment of agony that it was the first time I’d ever comforted anyone. I was terrible at it.

  “You’re wrong,” I finally whispered.

  “What a surprise.”

  She scowled through those tears, staring up at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, biting back pain. “I’m trying.”

  “Why?” she snapped.

  I retracted in embarrassment. Did I comfort her incorrectly? Did normal people do that? I thought they did. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had said the wrong thing. She was going to be angry with me for saying the wrong thing and then she would hate me. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t say the wrong thing. I opened my mouth a few times. I couldn’t think of anything. Panic descended upon me as I struggled to learn for the first time what humans did to comfort one another. As I struggled, her eyes grew from pleading to pained to disgusted.

  “Just go, Ollie!” she finally shouted, standing tall.

  I stood with her, but hesitated, and she shoved me. I fell back. And then I heard a shuffle and a click. And there was a gun to her head. Her own hand held it there. My entire head went numb. I froze without knowing what to say. That was the effect she had on me.

  But I shouted,

  “No – wait!”

  She waited. It was a start.

  “I didn’t know you meant it,” I said to her.

  I extended my hands imploringly, palms upward, almost like I was looking for a hug.

  “Just wait. Please. Let’s talk for a little. Just you and me.”

  “Why would you want to talk to me about anything?” she whispered to me.

  “Well, I’m asking now, aren’t I?” I asked desperately. “Please. I want to talk. Can you do that?”

  I felt awake. My senses zoomed into my body acutely, and I could hear, feel, smell, and almost taste every ounce of pain and fatigue that spilled from her body like blood. She pulled back the safety to the pistol in her hand. It was my pistol. It would be my bullet.

  “This is what I deserve, Ollie,” she said coldly.

  All tears had fled. The maniacal self-loathing was now in control.

  How often had I heard that voice in myself? How often had I quelled the rise of that monster that I now saw in her eyes?

  Too often.

  If I had one purpose on this Earth, it seemed to be for that moment, those seconds. I had to save her from that monster that I knew. This was the reason I was alive. I had to save her.

  “This is how I deserve to die,” she whispered.

  “No! NO!”

  “I can do it quietly, Ollie. It’s okay. You’ll feel better after it’s done.”

  It was like she was explaining how to make love quietly in a public place, like she was enticing me to allow her to do something we both knew she shouldn’t. I felt like a child in her shadow right then, and I wanted to get my power back. The only way for me to do it would be if I got that gun. Or she would die.

  “You can’t die,” I said to her, shaking my head.

  She was invincible. Fisher didn’t die. Only people died. Not Fisher. She wasn’t part of “people.”

  “This is what I need to do,” she said quietly.

  “No, it doesn’t have to be like this. You – you don’t have to do this.”

  I wanted to run at her and take it. I couldn’t. I wanted to, knowing that I couldn’t.

  “I do have to do this…” she said back, shaking her head.

  Stronger emotion than I had felt in years enveloped me. I didn’t even know what to say. I was powerless to convey the depth of the regret I felt inside of me. This all felt like my fault.

  “You were so st
rong, Fisher,” I whispered. “What happened? What happened to you?”

  “I’m not strong,” she snapped bitterly. “I am weak and pathetic, useless and sad. I am a waste.”

  “You’re not a waste!” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Says the man who talks of me like dirt,” she snapped back. “What do you know about strength?”

  “Would this make you strong to end your own suffering? Is that what you think brave is?”

  I barely knew her anymore. I couldn’t imagine that I, who prided myself in reading people as well as I could books, hadn’t even seen a glimpse of the pain she had experienced in the last seven days.

  “You can’t quit halfway through,” I whispered to her fervently.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want you to.”

  “I don’t care about what you want anymore,” she snapped.

  I winced.

  “I’m so sorry I let it get to this,” was my reply.

  “No, you’re not!” she shouted, pressing the gun harder to her skull. “You told the others you wished I was dead! I hear you talk! I hear the awful things you say about me behind my back!”

  Guilt flooded in.

  “It’s just talk, Fisher, just talk. It’s not real!”

  I saw that now.

  “It doesn’t matter!” she shouted. “You’re right! About everything!”

  “No, I’m not!” I shouted back. “You make me feel calm! You’re the only person in the world that can make me feel calm! You can’t go away! I won’t let you!”

  “And what are you going to do about it?” she taunted, sneering as I stood helplessly mere feet from where she stood.

  “I’ll…I’ll make you feel calm. If you let me. Let me try.”

  You can’t die! my head screamed. You don’t need to die!

  I wanted to give her a reason not to.

  “You just need to be near me, just for a little more, just listen.”

  “Shut UP!” she shouted. “You’re not making sense! You’re supposed to hate me!”

  I saw that my desperation gave her pause. It was the hook, the hook I’d needed.

  I hadn’t realized how far down I’d have to hook her to drag her wriggling back to the surface. My Fisher was down there somewhere, locked away, reasonable and strong, just trapped and scared.

  I had to get her back.

  “I think that you are brilliant,” I admitted out loud. “And beautiful. And I think…there is nothing you could do that could change that.”

  I couldn’t even understand how she didn’t see it, how she couldn’t feel it in herself.

  “Stop it, Ollie!”

  “You don’t understand how great you are, how many people want to follow you just because you’re you.”

  “Please – Ollie…”

  “Please – what do you need from me? What can I do to make you see that?”

  “YOU’RE LYING!” she shrieked.

  “I’m not lying!” I whispered back. “I can prove it to you. But to do that I just need…time.”

  Her eyes moved back and forth between two nothings. They searched for me without finding them. She looked so lost. She was shutting down piece by piece.

  “You’re lying!” she whispered now, almost pleading to the universe that I was.

  The pain in her voice was now so deeply entrenched that it hurt my heart to hear her speak at all. There was nothing I could do for that pain, for her, for anyone. And I wanted to, suddenly. I wanted to help.

  But what good was I in believing in anything? Even I didn’t believe in good things anymore. But she made me want to.

  “You’re manipulating me, Ollie.”

  Her words made me suffer in a stranger way than I could have imagined. Her pain was my own pain. Her agony was mine. Her death…I knew already that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. We were just so similar, and she was like my new half. What good was I as only a half?

  Her finger finally moved to the trigger.

  “NO!” I shouted.

  I raised my hands, begging her to stop.

  “No, no, no, stop! No!”

  I had to take a breath. My throat felt tight and there was a ball forming in the depths of my pharynx, nearly crippling it.

  “Let me help you. Please! I want to help you!”

  I took a step forward. She yelled out, as if she were being beaten, as if when I approached it hurt her. The frustration grew in the depths of my stomach, turning me into an animal of need.

  “Please – I can fix this! I can help you! I want to help you! Please, let me help you!”

  I had never asked for something so hard in my entire life. I had never needed to beg.

  “I don’t want help,” she whispered softly.

  I couldn’t stand it. She was mere seconds from death. I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying hard to figure out what to do. Why wasn’t I helping? I felt vulnerable. It was a new feeling for me. Why was I the way that I was? Why wasn’t I somebody better?

  “I can’t – I can’t let you die,” I admitted. “Give me the gun.”

  I almost chanted it.

  “Come on…you can’t die – can’t die…”

  “This is the punishment I deserve,” she said again.

  The gun was to her temple, tighter. She took a breath.

  A final breath.

  “No…NO!”

  There might have been actual tears in my eyes.

  “You can’t! No!”

  I became adamant. I was at her mercy, and her life was the bargaining chip.

  “No…”

  I realized what I felt. It was anguish. She opened her mouth to speak, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “No!”

  I couldn’t help her, so I would beg. It was the first time I had ever begged for anything in my entire life. I realized it over and over. I needed to beg. I wanted to beg.

  “Please…please, stay here. Please, please…I didn’t come here to kill you! I came because I was worried about you! I had to see you! That you were okay, not to kill you! I don’t want you to die. I need you to stay alive for me. Please.”

  I breathed it over and over again into the darkness, into her head, into her.

  “Don’t ask me that, Ollie – come on…”

  She sobbed more and her face twisted with the pain.

  “I just…I need…I need…”

  “What do you need?” I asked her plaintively. “What can I do?”

  “Make the hurt stop!” she shrieked desperately.

  How did I do that? I wondered. How did people comfort one another? Obviously, correcting her was wrong. What did people do?

  They admitted wrongdoing.

  I had to apologize.

  It was worth it.

  “I’m so sorry – for everything…”

  I tried to take a step closer to her. She yelled out to me in warning, as if to tell me to stay back.

  “Nothing you can say will make the hurt go away!” she cried.

  “But I want to try!” I shouted honestly. “Let me try to say that I’m sorry for what I’ve done!”

  “You’re not sorry,” she whispered.

  “But I am!” I said, eyes closed, hands raised.

  “For what?” she snapped.

  I clenched my jaw before speaking.

  “For hurting you.”

  “How did you hurt me?”

  “I…I lie and I cheat. I scare you, and I’m sorry. I talk about you behind your back. I’m mean and ungrateful. You’ve done so much for me, and all I…”

  I got carried away and the wound inside of me opened up, became real.

  It was no longer an act.

  “I’m so, so sorry…” I whispered, feeling tears in my eyes. “I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  I heard a noise, and she slid down the wall a little. Her knees buckled with fatigue, and dark bags under her eyes haunted me. I wondered when it was the las
t time she slept. I felt my arms yearn to have her there. It was surprising, that need. Her sobs became more intense at her weakness.

  “Just let me die, Ollie,” she said. “Why are you telling me these things?”

  She tried to open her eyes, but they’d become half lidded now, so exhausted that they barely functioned. I could see by the size of her eyes that it was what she had been doing for the past week. I felt horrified that I had not seen it or willed myself to ignore it.

  I was scum.

  “Please, don’t die…” I whispered.

  The only purpose I had was to keep her awake. I was struggling to do so, but there was no other purpose. There could be no other purpose. I wanted too much just to shake her.

  “Think of everything that’s still here,” I tried desperately. “Everything and everyone that would miss you.”

  “Chess and Foot, end of list,” she snapped.

  “But we need you…” I whispered.

  I stopped breathing, trying hard to think about how irrelevant her salvation was. That it was my job to kill her. I couldn’t. I could never hurt her.

  I already knew that I would fail My Master.

  “We?” she asked.

  I hadn’t realized I’d said it that way, and I held my breath.

  “You need me?” she asked.

  I looked deeply into her eyes.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  My face crumpled at how true the words were.

  “You don’t even understand how much I need you.”

  I didn’t want to need anyone. But I did want her.

  “Do you like me after all?”

  “Yes, I like you,” I whispered fervently in reply.

  “Would you miss me?”

  I swallowed. It was difficult.

  “More than I’ve ever missed anything in the world,” I said back.

  There was a long, long silence. Then, with a cry of pain that rang all the way into me, deep into my heart, she dropped her hand from her gun. I rushed to her as she collapsed. She was so weak – so small.

  I pulled her close to me, to my coldly racing chest and shaking body. I moved closer against the wall, holding her. I put her into my lap where she fell, her head leaning heavily into my chest. She held onto me, cried into my shirt, sobbed into my chest, as if I were her friend. Her very best friend.

  As she passed into sleep, I realized I still held her necklace. I tried to give it back to her, but this was too soon. Wait, she said. I should keep it until she needed it again. I squeezed it in my own hands, feeling how warm it made the tips of my fingers. Just until she felt ready to have it again, she’d told me.

  I cherished it more than I had ever cherished anything tangible. I held it as I fell asleep beneath her, holding her safe in my arms.

  I knew, right then, right at that moment, that something was happening to me. She meant something to me. It wasn’t a huge something, what she meant, but it was something more than I had ever had in a friend. I had never had friends. I had never needed them. They had never needed me. But, in those moments, Fisher was my very best friend.

  The next morning she didn’t say anything at all. She was silent but calm. There was a new glow about her that I couldn’t explain. We walked back together in silence. She left for work. When she came back, she brought me more food than I had ever had in Washington, and it was the best meal I had had in months. It was her way of thanking me, and I loved her for it.