- XXIII -

* * * * *
         The voice.
         "Nurse!"
         Calling her. She's walking down the dirty white corridor, past rooms of the stable and the dying, of the strong and the pathetic, those that receive visits from family every day and those that stare at walls in the day and silently weep for their mothers in the night. To her, each and every one is a person but there's a certain wall of disassociation between her and them. Because the last thing you want to do is get too close. When you start giving sickness and death and disease a face, then you start allowing it to win. And all it needs is a toehold to take you down completely.
         "Nurse! Get over here!"
         And then there's the voice. The nurse stops in her tracks, not even sure why she does so. There's nobody in the corridor with her and yet the voice seemed to be right in her ear. Strange. A ghost maybe? She smiles a little at this pitiful attempt to quiet the sudden racing of her heart. There aren't any such things as ghosts, of course. Though if there were, the best place to find some would have to be a hospital. Spectres hissing diatribes against the living who unfairly keep plunging on with life. The dirty little secret no one ever wants to admit. No one ever wants to admit that life goes on. People live and people die and it all goes on.
         "Please! Over here, quickly!"
         Her eyes narrow, and her entire body stiffens. It really is calling to her. And for some reason she isn't finding this strange at all. This is perfectly natural. Of course it is. Especially since the voice isn't coming from invisible air anymore, she can definitely say she knows where it's coming from.          From the room right down the hall.
         As the nurse moves toward the room is question, part of her wonders why she's even bothering. That room isn't even occupied, she just passed it a while ago and she knows that they haven't brought anyone new into the ward recently. Not for the last few hours at least. No voices over the intercom, no rushing doctors and emergency medics, no clink of IV bottles and bubbling of crucial fluids. And no smell either. The sick and injured always have this certain pungent odor, no matter how dire they seem. After a while she's realized what it was. It was death, clustering around them, looking for a way in. She doesn't smell death here. There's something here but it's not death.
         "Nurse!"
         It says again. Just someone playing a joke. It must be. There's no one in the room. She tells herself that again, a bit miffed that she's even going through with this. Probably the residents playing games again, Lord knows there has to be a way to vent the tension that's always here but not like this. But she's heading for the room anyway. Just to see, she says. Just to prove to herself that there isn't anything there. Or to let the jokesters have their little laugh. If it makes them happy then what the hell, why not?
         So the nurse enters the room, bracing herself for any number of things. Except for what she actually finds.
         The lights are dim, only half of them are turned on. The bed is perpendicular to the doorway and the large windows on the wall across from her show only the creeping of morning over the night, the gradual replacement we never pay attention to. There's a certain still beauty to this transition period, night shifting into day, she thinks, madly, absurdly. She's never realized, all this time she's worked these hours and she's never seen.
         "Oh good you're here," the voice says to her, and it's a blending of every voice she's ever heard. Her mother telling her that good girls become secretaries or housewives, her father muttering something as he turns to his papers and his pipe. It's the massed voices of a protest she once heard outside her dorm, a hundred angry voices chanting words that could only convey rage and nothing more. It's the murmurs of her boyfriend as she crawls into bed with him after a long day. It's the laughter of the other nurses after a particularly dirty joke, formless and crudely directed.
         There are people in the room with her.
         Her heart starts to race again and then abruptly slows down, regulating itself back to a normal rhythm, like some weird false alarm. Or something. She's not really paying attention to it.
         Someone is on the bed.
         It's a girl. Early twenties probably, but she can't quite tell in the finely textured lighting. Her eyes are closed and she's not moving. For a second she thinks that the girl isn't breathing either and her heart threatens to speed up again. But then the chest rises slightly, ever so slightly, not rapidly enough but it means she's alive.
         "She's been drugged," the voice is telling her and apparently a man is standing next to her. His presence completely fails to surprise her, like she expected to find him here all along. Somewhere in her head it's all making perfect sense. His face isn't clear at all, it gives her a headache to look at him directly. The blur your vision becomes when someone splashes water into your eyes. It might not even be a man, it might be a woman, hell it might be that girl she thought she had a crush on back in high school. God she hasn't thought about that in years. What's going on here? But her mind isn't asking questions. Not the ones that would make sense to her. It can't. She's staring at this girl on the bed and not even wondering how she got here. Like, she wants to know but every time she goes to think about it, the question just sort of laughs at her and skips away. Saying that it's not important. That some questions just aren't necessary.
         "Some kind of date rape drug," the man continues saying and the nurse notes with a start that she's nodding along with everything he's been saying, like he's some kind of expert. Which he might very well be. But at the same time he might just be no one at all. She looks at his face and sees only cubist renderings of expression. There's no one there. No one there at all. "I did what I could for her but now it's up to you guys, okay?"
         "I . . ." and her head won't stop spinning on its axis for some weird reason, this just isn't making any sense she can't even remember how she got here to begin with, or why there's a person on the bed here and who is this person she's talking to anyway. It all happened so long ago. That's how it feels. So long ago.
         "You know what to do," the voice tells her and in that moment she does. She really does. It only takes her an instant to turn and hit the intercom on the wall and call for all the doctors and support she can. The words might be hers. She very much wants to think they are, it certainly sounds like her voice. But why does she keep feeling like she's watching her world from a fishbowl, all water and warped images, a body plucked from life, held above and shown just what it all might mean. Understanding beckons to her but she knows it's a slippery liquid she won't be able to hold in her hands. That makes her sad. It's a feeling she can't explain fully and yet it makes her so sad. Maybe it's the eyes she can feel but not see watching her. A muted sort of anguish is radiating into the room. There are shadows turned sideways in her vision. Nobody's here. It washes over her and gives her a sudden chill. There's nobody here at all. She's not sure if she's trying to convince herself or just stating a fact. It could go either way. The only thing she is sure of are the feelings penetrating deep into her head. And even then. And even then she's not sure she knows her own head.
         But sadness is a fragile entity to keep alive. The nurse turns as if in a pastel dream and sees the person on the bed and realizes with a start just how much help this girl needs. Even just looking at her, a brisk and biting concern grips her and she has to resist the urge to return to the intercom and scream for for the crew to move faster, dammit. Just standing there, she feels a sudden helplessness gripping her. That something like this can happen, when she can't even grasp what this might be. A bad thing. A very bad thing. But the fact that it even exists, that she, and consequently the hospital, has to mobilize herself to save an otherwise perfectly healthy young woman from a world crammed with people who just don't care, it twists her on the inside and renders a verdict. This should not be. Say whatever you want to say, stammer whatever excuses you can muster but when you give needless suffering a face and a name, you'll know. And she sees now. She stares into the drawn face of a girl that in another life might have been her sister and it screeches like feedback inside her head.
         It doesn't have to be like this.
         There has to be a better way.
         And a voice, not the same voice from before strangely but a different one, whispers softly to her in tones bordering on relief and stricken anguish. It matches a glimmer in her head, the slit of light that forms when you open a door into darkness. She's not sure what that means. Maybe it signals recognition. Or something even deeper.
         "Thank you," it says. "Please help her."
         Then she simply feels alone.
         Doctors rush into the room, answering the breathless summons of her call. Somehow she manages to gather her thoughts together long enough to explain the situation, not even remembering what words she uses, but knowing that they're effective, knowing what to say to spur everyone to action. And no questions are asked because they've got a person still in terrible danger right here. She stares at the still girl and can't help but feel her stomach tighten with that old gnawing fear, even as she knows that the girl is in good hands. It's going to be okay. As a nurse, she's sure of that. But as a person, she can't stop worrying. And maybe you can't be both without losing yourself but right now she's trying damn hard.
         Flurries of motion become the room and soon diagnoses are made, monitors are hooked up and set placidly beeping, orders are sent down to get medication. The whole machine is running smoothly. Everything is fine. Nothing's wrong. Every thing is just fine.
         Right now she's feeling good, like she's actually made a difference. Every day life parades the best and worst in front of her, for every uplifting event, for every child's cancer that goes into remission, there's the evil and the unfair, the woman now blind in one eye because her boyfriend didn't like her cooking that night, the man fighting the fluid seeping into his lungs because somebody thought the best way to get at the ten dollars he was carrying was to stab him in the chest for it, the elderly man beaten down by a stroke on the day after his retirement, the woman sitting on the edge of a bed and weeping in a disheveled nightgown for a family that hasn't been alive for thirty years. And through it all she soldiers on, because someone has to do it. Because in the end stumbling toward a clumsy and imperfect solution is a damn sight better than doing nothing at all.
         So in her head, there's a gentle humming, a peaceful feeling, like an soft calm has settled over her. With all the frantic activity around her, voices chiming and mingling, white coats brushing past, shoes slapping on a polished floor, she should be just like those around her, absorbing all this mad energy and processing it. But that's not happening. For what it's worth, in this second, there's not a ripple disturbing her mind. And she's not sure where the feeling is coming from, but it strikes her that questioning it might make it fade away and in the end, it's not anything she can honestly say she minds. So she just goes with it and doesn't wonder where it's coming from. In the end, it's not important. She's not sure why, but it just isn't.
         Then it's all over but the waiting, and the assorted personnel begin to shuffle from the room, back to their other duties. Because this is a hospital full of needy people. And you can never rest, not even for a second if you plan on helping them all. As they're leaving, one of the other nurses, a male nurse turns to her as they're leaving the room, he turns to her and he says, "Wait. Two questions, Carol," as he holds up one closed hand.
         One finger rises. "How did she get here?"
         Another. "And just how did you know what was wrong with her?"
         To her it's such an obvious question that she toys with just brushing past him and not responding at all. But she's not like that. It's an honest question and it deserves an honest answer.
         "Well . . ." she confidently begins and suddenly she finds that the obvious nature of the inquiry was only a facade. And that beneath it lies a deceivingly calm sea of utter turmoil that she has to turn her face from. Or else risk drowning. And when all is said and done there's really only one answer that makes any sort of sense.
         "I don't know," she finally replies, hearing her dazed echo and sure that her expression must match the sudden confusion on the face of her colleague. But she's being honest. Blinking she looks around the room as if seeing it for the first time. With all the lights on and the machines it seems to have changed entirely. Like she had stepped into some alternate universe and now she's back here and the transition passed her by completely. And yet. And yet it was all so familiar. But she could turn her brain inside out and empty it of everything the way you empty your purse at the end of the day and there's still only one answer that seems at all proper.
         "I really don't know."

* * * * *
         "She's . . . she's going to be okay then? It's going to be all right?"
         "I don't know. I think so and if I were a betting man I'd say things will be all right for her, but the funny thing about life is that you can never be sure what's going to happen."
         "God, I'll say. It gets more true every day, I think. It really does. Can anybody see us? Because I swear someone looked right at me. I swear they did."
         "No, nobody can see us. C'mon, when you want results, don't I deliver results? By the way, that was a good idea you had, you know. Dropping her off here and not in the middle of the emergency room. I would have just put her there and hoped for the best."
         "I know you would have."
         "But it really worked out better this way."
         "Whatever. I did what was necessary. It should never have gotten to this point anyway. I can't ever forget that. This didn't need to be a decision at all."
         "Ah . . . if you say so. Do you . . . do you want to stay here or . . ."
         "I . . . really want to but . . . I don't think I have the right . . . you know, after all that happened . . ."
         "No one has more right than you. Just my uncalled for opinion. But . . . you do what you feel is best. It's your choice."
         "I know it is. And I can't stay here. Not now. I need to go somewhere to think. Think about all of this. And what it means . . . God, I just need to get my head straightened out."
         "Don't we all. Can I pick the destination at least?"
         "As long as it's not the polar ice caps like last time. I could do without that experience again."
         "Oh come on, you have to admit that they were something to see. I think everyone should get out and take a peek at them at least once. When you have natural wonders on your doorstep like that, it's just criminal not to visit."
         "Not the Martian ones."
         "Details, details. Are you done complaining now?"
         "I . . . yeah. I'm done. Let's go. Let's get out of here."
         "Are we coming back later? Just curious."
         "Ah, yes . . . maybe, I . . . God, I don't know, I just don't. I can't think about that now. I just can't."
         "Okey-doke. We'll table it for later, then. And away we go!"

* * * * *
         ". . . you may be stranded if you stick around-"
         A finger punches the CD player button and the song dies stillborn. Where do all unfinished songs go, Will wonders distantly. All that pent up energy has to be released somewhere. Floating in the air, maybe picked up by some phantom radio station. Or a mad collector, harnessing the tangled soundwaves for his own insidious purposes. It has to go somewhere. In this world, nothing even gets wasted. All energy goes somewhere. Nothing dies forever.
         Silence runs rampant around the room. Will bends down to pick up a stray bag of potato chips that somehow wound up on the floor and as he straightens it occurs to him just how much larger the room seems when everyone has gone. Not that it didn't seem large before, all those people jammed into his apartment made it seem infinitely large, bursting with life. Now it's just assorted garbage, empty glasses and an overturned cushion. The heat of life is dissipating. And the room keeps getting larger. Will read once before how the Universe has been expanding since the first day. All the planets and the stars flying further and further apart because someone tripped and broke an atom at the dawn of creation. That's what must be happening here. It's getting cooler and they're all getting farther away from each other. Soon even the phone won't be enough to bridge the distance and it'll get harder and harder.
         Will's not sure how many more parties they'll be having. Here or anywhere.
         A half open bottle of some amber colored liquid is tipped over on the bar. Absentmindedly he sets it back properly and then grabs a stray dirty paper towel to mop up what little has spilled out. After a moment's thought he takes the bottle and places it on the counter behind the bar. There's not much left. Everyone's livers are getting workouts now, leaping backwards through those flaming hoops to try and stay abreast of the surge of alcohol. Ah well, he thinks recklessly, they're young. They'll survive. Since the beginning of history that's been the idea.
         Will really can't believe the place is totally his, that everyone went home. But after the police came, he really can't blame them all. Just thinking back to that brings back the old fear. They came in and he had to turn the music down and they asked a lot of questions that his fogged mind could barely comprehend. Explosions, they said. Someone had reported explosions. And weird lights. Not the typical party goingons.
         And so the police came and they found someone in the parking lot. Dying. From injuries that might have come from an explosion. But there was no evidence of anything exploding. Needless to say, everyone was a bit confused. And Will hadn't been able to help at all. Nor could anyone else.
         There's a half empty glass just sitting on the bar. Will holds it up to his nose, swirling it around a little. It gives up no secrets other than its identity, piercing the veil around his nostrils, making him wrinkle his nose in slight distaste.
         Carl
         His hand starts shaking and he puts the glass down abruptly. The dull clank is the only other sound in the apartment. This has been happening several times over the last two hours or so. Out of nowhere it just strikes him. Carl. Oh God. It was Carl out there, bleeding and dying. For the first time in his life someone he really knew that wasn't a family member was dying. And nobody knew what had happened. Not the police, not the neighbors, not the people at the party itself. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything.
         And yet three people were missing when all was said and done. Three goddamn people, all entwined in the puzzle somehow.
         Tristian.
         Joe Brown.
         Lena.
         Will wants to find some sort of connection between the three of them and Carl, but he can't. He's too tired. He's been awake nearly twenty four hours really, a late night the day before is only compounding the situation. After he cleans these last few things up, he's going to bed. He's going to sleep for a whole goddamn twelve hours and not think about any of this.
         Carl
         But he can't stop. Because he only had a faraway glimpse of the broken man, lying there like some casualty of a war, blood pooling all over the parking lot, seemingly too much for just one man, like the ground itself has started sweating out the stuff. Just one look and that was enough to fuel what he's sure will be a week's worth of nightmares. A sight like that just holds you down and stamps the hot brand right into your head. Just like last time. Hell, exactly like last time. Even when it doesn't happen to you, it's something that resonates within anyway.
         Will crosses the room, idly kicking any stray trash out of the way. His entire body feels heavy and his head has a grainy sensation to it that you only get when the amount of hours you've been awake in the last few days is double the amount you've been asleep. As he gets to the stairs, he stops and stares at his door, as if he might be able to see into the hallway beyond and discover the mystery. Lying right there, all coy and decked out in finery, just waiting for him to step forward and discover it. Mysteries are like that. They think they make the world go round. But it's people who do. And if not people, then life itself. But mysteries can't exist without people. Nothing else cares enough.
         "What happened out there, Tristian?" he whispers. "How much control do you actually have?" Of the three names involved, Will is sure that only one is necessary to tell the full story. But he doesn't want to know. Will might ask questions but in the end he'll take ignorance over the revelation that knowledge can bring. He's better off not knowing.
         Who the hell does he
         Who the hell does he think he is
         Except that's not how he felt a few hours ago.
         Not what he said.
         Bastard just screws with
         Will grimaces a little at the memory. He starts to climb the stairs, as if trying to get above the memories that are all trapped downstairs. Memories can't rise. That's why plane rides are such blanks for people, the memories fall out of your head and plunge toward the earth, looking for the lowest spot. Even they're subject to gravity. Anything that has mass, is subject to gravity. And memory has more mass than most things. Just because you can't measure it doesn't mean it's not there.
         the hell kind of right does he have
         He was drunk. No, not drunk, coming down from the drunken high but he had somehow managed to compose himself for the police. But after the police had left most people had also skulked out, as if they had been consorting with something dirty and were now ashamed that the authorities had seen their actions. With only a few people left and most of them tired and drunk and getting ready to leave themselves, Will had been feeling ornery and maybe just a little bit angry. For all the wrong reasons, he realizes now. Tristian had come and, in Will's mind, screwed with his friends again. And even worse, had vanished. He's not ashamed to say it got him angry. Because it did.
         Will doesn't remember what exactly he said, only that he ranted for a good five or ten minutes, his words becoming more and more slurred and fiery with each passing minute. Some people were nodding without even hearing his words and some were staring at him with dawning expressions of horror, as if another head was slowly emerging from his chest. But he didn't care. It didn't make any damn bit of difference to him. He was mad as hell and going to say whatever it was that was on his mind.
         I swear if he was right here I'd
         Until he saw Jina.
         Something in her face. In her eyes. Something that even now makes him squeeze his own eyes shut in reflection.
         Meeting her gaze, it was enough to derail his tirade right off the tracks. And he just stood there, with no doubt a ridiculous expression of his face that he hopes to God nobody caught on camera.
         For a second Jina just stood there. Thoughts were swirling behind her eyes. But she wasn't going to say anything. She wasn't going to say anything at all. Will's sure of that.
         Except that he couldn't keep quiet.
         something you want to say
         want to defend that bastard
         is that what you want
         And it was almost painful to watch her blink, it was so slow. Now, he thinks about her face and realizes what seemed so strange about it at the time. It was red and pale and stricken raw. Tracks drawn like clown lines on her face. It didn't hit him then but it strikes him now.
         Crying.
         Jina was.
         She had looked as if she had been crying.
         Will halts his passage up the stairs, as if trying to rest for a second before attempting to attain the summit, that last peaceful moment before the final push. He glances up at the textured darkness hiding behind the corner of the hallway and wonders if that's what the soldiers in the trenches saw before they went over. If in those eternal seconds, with fractured dawn crouching just over the edge, before they went over the top and ran into a sideways rain of cutting bullets, they clustered in the darkness of their dirty wounds in the open wrists of the earth and grabbed hold of a peace that people like Will can only envy. But only envy. Will's not ready to die for that kind of peace, Will's not ready to die period.
         carl
         still
         did you see him
         he was still
         so still
         in the parking
         in the parking lot
         He wasn't moving. Paramedics worked on him and thrust tubes into him and injected fluids all in the epileptic moaning of the silent flashing lights and no matter what they were doing to him, Carl didn't move. It didn't even look like Carl, it looked like of one those special effects they truck out in the big action movies when they're too lazy to hire extras to lie down and pretend to be dead so they just use a whole bunch of realistic appearing dummies. A dummy. Just some straw dummy with paint and stuffing, all propped up and arranged to look as human as possible.
         A tremor ripples in his chest, the panic inducing kind that seem to come out of nowhere, especially when you're alone and there's nobody to tell you that no, you're not having a heart attack it's just some pain. But without any patronizing assurances, it's the end of the world radiating from your atria.
         But Will knows what it is. A delayed reaction. A coping mechanism. All the terminology in the world can't make it go away. He clutches the bannister tightly, trying to throttle it and closes his eyes to help relieve the pressure. Each breath is being forced out against the grip of a vice.
         Jina's face hovers ghost-like in the void.
         Barely dried tracks of tears are painted in glistening trails down her face.
         Her lips are moving
         But someone's unplugged the sound.
         Or maybe he's gone deaf.
         Oh God
         Oh God
         He feels so afraid. And not even stupid nameless fears, his fears all have the proper nametags and freely introduce themselves like the best salesmen often do, with a firm handshake, a just sincere enough smile and eye contact that rivets your gaze and makes your blood freeze over. Blurred images of his life slide by, seen through a dirty window on a warm summer day, sitting inside because you'd rather watch the other kids play.
         His grandfather's still face forever gazing up to heaven, as if trying to sense his astral self, hands folded placidly over his chest. Like he had just crawled in there on a whim. Like he had just crawled in there and had fallen asleep. And somewhere along had just forgotten to breath.
         Will proceeds up the steps but someone's tied weights to his ankles, part of him just wants to curl up on the stairs and not move at all until the feeling passes. But it won't. Not for a long time. Because he can't get the two images out of his head. Because someone coated them in rubber cement and he held them too close for too long and now they're sewn to his psyche. Removing them would hurt too much.
         Carl
         not moving
         But keeping them near creates a pain equally insidious.
         her face
         tracks
         she must have been
         Jina must have been
         Will's head reels back and forth in time, a wobbling rotation without direction. Nobody is at the wheel. That's life for you. That's just life. The face in the mirror isn't the driver. Moments dovetail and then reconnect. Just when we convince ourselves that history is an upward progression, that everything in the world is constantly trying to move to a higher state of grace, the world reminds us violently that it's all cyclical. Things happen. And then they happen again. We go through the motions and pretend to be surprised when deep down inside we're hoping it's just not as bad this time.
         His grandfather in the polished coffin, looking better than he had the week before when he could barely stand without coughing and his eyes were bloodshot and yellow and his skin was laced with veins, where it was almost like a loose fitting costume that his skeleton had decided to put on for a night on the town.
         You hope they get better.
         And they always do.
         Right before they die.
         But Will's not thinking about that tonight, that's not the stuff that's running through his sweat caked head right now. He can feel the stilted hardness of the wall prodding into his back. Tears keep racing to his eyes and then dashing back out of reach before the gates open, mischievous children playing Halloween pranks. Ring the doorbell and run. Perhaps they just like the sound.
         she looked
         she looked as if she'd been
         His grandfather.
         Not moving.
         Water spills over the lens.
         Dead people don't move.
         Carl wasn't moving.
         Will can't stand this. Can't stand this not knowing. Everyone lies to you, tells you that ignorance is bliss. It's a lie, a goddamn awful lie. Because right now he has to keep tensing his body to avoid shuddering like an addict about to nosedive into withdrawal because he can't take not knowing. Ignorance only works when no one else knows. When everyone else is as utterly clueless as you are. Because, even if you know that one person might have part of a map to a key to the room where there's a chest that might hold the answers, it ruins it all. The house of cards gets caught in a downpour and just falls apart. When you know that one person might know, it's all you can think about, it takes up all your time, a computer devoting all its time to taking pi out as far as it will go. More and more resources for an increasingly useless purpose. You can keep calculating but you'll never get there.
         Carl knew. It wasn't random what had happened to him. Will knows that. He saw something that he shouldn't have. Or did something. Will knows his friend wasn't so innocent, hell, none of them could really claim otherwise. Tristian was the only one who never got his hands dirty but he was in a different class altogether. Not a man you measured yourself up to. Like he was trying to make up for something else. A shortcoming, but not really, like being smarter or faster than everyone else and feeling guilty about it. Like it's somehow your fault.
         So Carl knew. And he went to the hospital for it. Or because of it. And Will's afraid for him. Because he's a guy he laughed with, a guy he played cards or watched movies with until late in the night, someone who isn't just one of the names you read in the obituaries, your entire life reduced to three or four lines of newsprint, like you're in some sort of personals column for the dead. Want a ninety year old with ten surviving grandchildren? Or perhaps a wife who died at twenty in a car accident. A whole page for cancer victims. Or the children. Who wouldn't want a sweet adorable deceased child? Cherubic faces smiling, snapshots caught in time, everyone is always happy in pictures. Somewhere in his room Will has a picture of him and Lena and Tristian and Jina from a New Years party. Everyone's smiling, even Tristian, and it's not the same anymore. That was then. A year. A year and everything changes. Everything is different now. You look at a photo and you want to shout to those ignorant mannequins, smiling vapidly into the flash, how the hell couldn't have you known, why didn't you see? How could you not have seen what was about to happen? It was just around the corner, the next day even. And you had no idea. You stupid fools. Goddamn stupid fools, refusing to see.
         And a year later you're sitting on the top of your steps in an empty apartment while someone you know lies in the hospital.
         is there something you want to say to me
         Clutching your head and trying to block out the world that's trying to claw and bite it's way into your skull.
         is there
         Will suddenly can't breathe. Yellow and black static flails across his vision, and his head won't stop trying to float away. He feels heavy. So goddamn heavy. And he closes his eyes and he keeps seeing Carl and Jina. Jina lying on the ground with a broken body. Carl biting his lip to keep from crying again, wetness filling his eyes. It's all screwed up. Everything is screwed up. How did their lives get like this, Will can't shake the sensation that nothing is ever going to be the same, that it's always going to get worse and worse until they're all afraid to even move, fearful of disrupting a balance that was never in their favor to begin with. And that's when the sky falls in on them anyway. God likes to play these little games. If there even is a God. Maybe there's only Tristian's little friend. Oh damn, that would be just wonderful, billions of people every day question the existence of God and he's shared the same table at a restaurant with it.
         He's having a panic attack. Or something similar. Rationally he knows that's what it is and he wishes very much that it would stop. But it doesn't and he feels closed and trapped, the walls are breathing right down his neck. And he feels so dizzy and heavy, like gravity has sent grappling hooks right into his flesh and is ready to yank him down a flight of stairs. Bump bump bump. Watch him fall. Right down the stairs. But even if he gave in to the mad impulse rush outside into the night, the sight of the wide open sky, gradually lightening with the onset of morning would scare him even more. The stars aren't what he wants to see tonight. Will doesn't want the reminder.
         It's not like the textbook. It's not. You read about panic attacks in Psychology Today and it's all laid out nice and neat and clinical, bloodless. Simple facts, stripped of anything human. Like all good fiction should be. But it's not fiction, it's real. There are real people this happens to. And he's one of them, oh God it won't stop. Make it stop. Facts never prepare you for anything. He tries to talk himself through the facts anyway, ground himself with mental anchors, remind himself that it's all in his head. But that's just the problem. It's all in his head. All up where it can do the most damage. And he can't find the valve to let it all go.
         Instead he keeps panting, red rimming his vision, trying to make his chest rise and fall. It's an effort. An effort of will. Of Will. Ha. His grandfather couldn't do that. And so they judged him unfit to live and gave him a pretty box to inhabit in the ground. Oh God. God help me. He hasn't thought about his grandfather in years and now he can't stop thinking about him. About the funeral. And Carl. And Jina. And his grandfather.
         At the funeral.
         Pan the liquid lens right, try to bring it back into focus.
         But you can't.
         And you're staring to the right and your sister is sitting next to you and tears are running freely down her face, her face is all crunched up like she's smelling something terrible and her chest keeps heaving and she's staring at your grandfather and at nothing at all
         She turned to look at you.
         That's all it took.
         Jina
         It's the little things that drive barbs into our memories. A girl crying is one of those things that Will will always take to his grave. Not just sobbing, but honest tears, the kind that you cry when you're sad and hurting and you don't give a damn about who is looking at you. When you're past caring about anything. The kind that you don't even bother to wipe away. Will's only seen that a few times in his life, each time for a different reason, a different facet of pain. And there is nothing in the world that can make him feel more helpless. Nothing. Even the restaurant with Tristian's pet deity wrecking havoc wasn't something he ever had a prayer of having control over, like your house getting knocked over by a hurricane. Forces of nature. Swirling around them. How much control does anyone have? How many choices do we actually make for ourselves and how many are we forced into, sneering mobsters standing over us at gunpoint, our kneecaps throbbing even before the contract is signed.
         Jina's face.
         Crying.
         She had been.
         She said.
         you don't understand you don't know
         you don't know what you're talking about
         Will finds his chest tightening again but the panicked feeling has passed, now it's just tied up tension, the remnants of night's memories replaying, someone tripped over the projector switch and started it up again.
         Jina's face floating in the air. No matter where he gazes, there she is. Can't avoid her liquid eyes. Her eyes wet and shimmering in the dimmed apartment lighting.
         He keeps hearing her voice.
         you don't know a damn thing about what went on
         she said.
         is that so?
         he snarled back, high on his own self satisfied anger. He's in the comedown period now, that's just what he's feeling, streaks of utter loneliness peeling away his emotions, returning his nerves like a piano string, gentle fingers plucking in all the right places. Will's used to the afterparty feeling, that spot of emptiness in your chest, the knowledge that for a few hours you were someone people looked up to, you were someone people cared about and really paid attention to and they liked you. And then they all leave and you're just another poor soul trying not to fly off the planet.
         is that so he had said and before she could even answer he was yelling at her, not even aware he was yelling because the music had messed his hearing up and everything was muted, cotton rammed into his ears, her face was huge in his eyes because his big fat face was right in hers. Screaming right at her. Screaming right through her tears. As if saying something louder somehow makes it more true.
         everytime, everytime goddamn Tristian comes along he goddamn messes our lives up or he really tries and-
         it wasn't Tristian
         oh wait, are you saying that he had nothing that he had nothin to do with this at all not one stinking goddamn bit is that what you're saying?
         no, he was, no, you don't, you don't understand
         And she started to cry again.
         At the time Will remembers feeling an absurd sense of triumph, as if this had been his goal the entire time. Now the memory just soils his head, a spot of filth, the bloody smear a person leaves behind when they finally give up and jump. He made her cry. Jina. The girl who he had worked with on a history project, spent hours bent over a table with, or in the library or the one night where she spent the night on his couch because it had gone on longer than either of them had expected. The girl who had called him for advice when she was trying to work up the courage to get Brian to ask her out.
         Everything changes.
         what the hell don't I understand, that Tristian is just going to keep hurting us, going to keep messing with us because he's not even in control of his own life anymore
         why don't you listen, you're not listening
         And then it changes again.
         the first time we were all hurt, this time someone winds up in the hospital, do we, do we wind up dead next time, you or me or anyone else, is that what happens?
         no, dammit, you don't, why don't you understand, why don't you
         Her face seemed to crumple internally, and that was the moment when Will realized it had passed the point of going too far a long time ago. Thinking about it now, his stomach tries to rebel. A lack of food throughout the night is the only thing that keeps him from sending a river of bile right down his steps. He wouldn't even have the strength to get up, his legs were replaced with blocks of wood, a cripple with healthy aspirations.
         She had been trying not to get upset. Had been trying to hold it in. So they didn't know something was wrong. There was something she hadn't been telling them, Will knows that now. And he thinks he might have an idea of what that could be. But he can't bring himself to even think that. He just can't. Unwelcome thoughts. Not allowed to join the clubhouse. You boys just stay outside there and don't show your goddamn faces, okay? Your kind just isn't wanted here. You thoughts bring nothing but trouble. You hear me? Nothing but damn trouble.
         you don't understand, none of you understand what it's all about, what's going on, nobody understands
         and it was hard to even make out what she was saying, because tears were clogging her throat, thickening her voice to molasses, Jina was slowing down while the rest of them were just watching her fall behind
         he deserved it
         he did
         If Will said something in response, he thankfully doesn't remember it. Mercy smiles on him for just this once.
         She might have said something else but it was hard to understand her, she kept wiping at her face, it was almost embarrassing to watch her because her emotion was so naked, open wounds bleeding right over them. Drowning them. Something opens their wrists to the world and you just stand there with blood splattering your face and you can't stop watching. We like when things fall apart. Nobody will watch a building be constructed but everyone gathers when they knock it down. If the world wasn't constantly crumbling to pieces, we'd create our own destruction. Because it fascinates us. Because the entire world is geared toward building everything up and yet it will spare no expense to break us down to nothing. If Jina had dissolved into salty tears right then and there people probably would have collected her in cups for souvenirs, your very own bowl of Jina. Will giggles, but bites his lip to keep it from going any further, caging the beast before it gets too used to freedom.
         Running slick hands over his dry face, Will feels tired. He needs to sleep. Sleep for days and days and hopefully this will all be resolved and it'll be just like a distant nightmare, like those brutal dreams when everyone you know is dead and you wake up and you find it's okay. And you're so relieved because you were so convinced it was only you left in the entire world.
         It's too quiet in his apartment now. With nobody around, all he can hear is his own breathing. Even the air conditioner has been turned off. Silence hangs stagnant in the air.
         And he keeps seeing Jina's face.
         Just before she grabbed her keys from the bar, turned on her heel and fled from the room.
         Nobody moved to stop her.
         Will vaguely remembers hearing a voice like his saying that she should just keep walking. But she was a friend. You don't say stuff like that to friends. Why are we so cruel to each other?
         And she went outside and got into her car and drove away and nobody has seen her since. Nobody knows where she went. She hasn't called, didn't leave a number. He called her house and nobody was there. Not even Lena. Not Tristian. Not Joe. Just an empty ringing phone. And if it keeps ringing and there's nobody around to answer it, does it count as a call?
         Will wishes she would come back.
         He keeps waiting to hear the door click open and hear her rapid footsteps pad into the apartment. But there's no sound. Just his breathing. Regular. Even. Normal. No anxiety. Calm.          But nobody has seen Jina.
         Will doesn't know what to do. Maybe there is nothing to do. Maybe all he can do is wait until options decide to come out of hiding and present themselves properly.
         His legs are starting to ache from keeping them at perfect right angles on the steps. Bending his body, he stands up, his head swimming a little as the blood all decides to head south. He doesn't have the strength to yawn but it's what he'd be doing right now, if he were able.
         Will crosses over to the hallway, Jina's words rummaging through the spaces in his head. Chopped up bits of conversation floating through the polluted soup of his mind.
         you don't understand
         she kept saying
         you don't understand
         Coming up to the mirror, he finds he can't resist taking a look at himself in it. Stupid vanity. He wishes the goddamn thing weren't there and feels the sudden primal urge to strike it, to release the aggression piling up inside of him, knowing full well that it will do no good and not solve any problems. Breaking glass never made anything better. And his bloodshot eyes staring back at him from either one pane or a million fractured shards would tell him the same story. But he'd still do it anyway, simply to do something. Maybe in the end it's better than being idle. But maybe it isn't. And that's why he does nothing.
         Nothing but stares at his own pale image. Too pale. And he needs to lose some weight, all that drinking is building a jelly like fortress around his gut. That won't do. It just won't do at all. That's right, Will, think of mundane matters. As if that will make any bit of difference.
         In the mirror he can't see his hands shaking. But he can feel them, tiny earthquakes in the muscles.
         Tearing himself away from his own reflection, Will spins toward his room, crossing the threshold into the comfortable darkness. He doesn't even bother to change, just throws himself onto the bed, trying to derive some relief in the soft comfort of the mattress, the gentle curves of the blackness coating the walls, the firm support of his pillow. He picks a spot on the uniform void painted on the ceiling and stares at it, letting his breathing fall into a peaceful rhythm.
         He expects to fall asleep right away.
         He's not surprised when he doesn't.
         you don't understand
         What were you trying to say, Jina?
         you don't understand
         Jina, dammit, what were you trying to tell us?
         he deserved it
         Jina?
         you don't understand
         he deserved it
         Oh.
         Oh, Jina. I think I see. I think I see now.
         you don't understand
         No, Jina, I do. I do. And I'm sorry.
         he deserved it
         I know, Jina, I know.
         But we're all so scared.
         Some time later, and for reasons that aren't very clear to him, Will begins to cry.