He remembered the day he stole his mother's birthday schnapps.
It was the pause after a whole evening of rain, and maybe there was a leak in the kitchen somewhere because it smelled like petrichor.
There was a jam jar situated on the same shelf.
Of course, he ignored it, got absolutely sloshed, and missed his mother's birthday dinner party with people who should've had better things to do but didn't after all.
His mother, she had told him stormily in his muddled memories, would never forgive him.
Today, at Monmouth Manufacturing, there was a jam jar on Gansey's table. Empty, valueless.
Noah tried to screw it open; to pop the lid and peek inside at the emptiness someone valued so much that they put it in a jam jar.
Placing his fingers around the top, he turned and turned until—nothing. He could have tried harder, but he was dead and the dead didn't try very hard.
After a multitude trials, the jam jar still remained unopened, pristine glass and a checkered-red cloth beneath the lid. Noah dropped down and acted out his death scene within eleven minutes out of misplaced distress.
Eleven minutes and twenty seconds later, the front door squeaked alive and Blue's flushed face poked in. Noah wanted to pet her hair, but he was still on the floor.
Blue was a good sport and laid on the wood beside him, her scraggly ponytail smushing flat.
"What were you thinking?" Her voice floated out into the air and up to the rafters. "When you were dying?"
Truthfully, Noah was not thinking much of anything, other than the feel of his cheek caving in. He did not tell her this.
"That I should have opened the first jam jar."
Much later on, when everyone came home to Monmouth Manufacturing, they opened the jam jar and filled it with strawberry jam Gansey brought back. It looked much too empty, Gansey explained. They agreed.
Then they stored the jam jar in a cupboard, next to a nonexistent pack of birthday schnapps.