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The emotions that she experienced when she slid the jump drive into a slot on her netbook and powered it up were somewhat akin to euphoria. She didn’t even know what it was that she was opening, and she was already ecstatic over the fact that she had some tangible indication that she wasn’t all on her own there at her fingertips.
When the message popped up on her screen indicating that she had internet access, she nearly burst into tears. She had internet access. She had a way to talk to Anna, Connor, and Kyle. She could get all of this information out of her head. She could let Connor know what she thought was happening. She could talk to Kyle. She missed talking to Kyle. She missed talking to anyone, but she really, really missed talking to Kyle. Talking to Kyle had come to represent a perfect version of what normal should be in her world, and she wanted so much to have something in her life to return to what normal should be.
It didn’t matter if he hadn’t missed talking to her as much as she had missed talking to him. It didn’t matter if her absence hadn’t left the space in his life that his absence had left in hers. Kyle was above all kind. He wouldn’t turn down her conversation, and she was desperate enough for someone that she could talk things through with that she didn’t care if he was only humoring her because he was feeling sympathetic.
That, however, would have to wait. She had to get all of the facts and names and places out of her head before she lost some of them. That came first. That was far more important than her personal mental health needs. They needed to know. A message to Anna came first. Later, there would be Kyle. That thought finally broke her composure, and she did let herself cry.
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“How do you still look at me like that?”
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like you still believe that I can do this? Like I haven’t shattered everything I’ve touched?”
“Nothing’s shattered, Roderick, and you can do this. You are doing it.”
“What are you seeing that I am not?”
“Everything that you can’t see because you’re standing in the middle of it.”
Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall