Simon

I don't even realize I've gotten to my feet by the time Ebb returns the old fashioned handset to its cradle. But I'm standing next to her, so I must have gotten up. I can't read the expression on her face. Which scares me. Ebb's face is usually like mine, easy to read as a nursery rhyme.

"'Twas Nicky, that," she says with a nod of her head. I'd gathered that much from her half of the conversation. But I don't understand how it could be him. Isn't her brother dead? I think back over everything she's told me about Nicky. I realize that she's never said he was dead. Just that he was gone. I thought she was being conventionally metaphorical. I should have known better. There's nothing conventional about Ebb.

"Are you ok? Do you want to, um, talk? I mean, about it? About him? Nicky, I mean." I stutter, stupidly. These are all the wrong things to say. But what other words can I use?

"No, child," she says straight, confirming my failure. "But there's not a lick of this that's your doing. I think I might be out of stories, though, for tonight. You'll come tomorrow?" she asks, and I try to nod but there's no air in my lungs.

She's asking me to leave, because I shouldn't even be here. She said it's not my doing. A lie. Of course it's my doing. Davy being here is my doing. My being here is my doing. Her hearing from Nicky and then losing him again in the same moment. The crushing sadness on her face. My doing. I don't understand exactly what it has to do with Davy, but I'm sure it does. I bring Davy wherever I go, and Davy brings loss and pain.

I should know better than to pull other people into this mess. I should know better than to get close to people, make them feel responsible for my weakness, for my sorry life. Make them bring me home. And with me, all my darkness. I bring my darkness with me everywhere I go.

I cringe at my own selfishness. Wanting closeness, wanting people, when all it can do is hurt them. The least I can do for someone who's been so kind to me is to stay out of the rest of her life. What am I even doing here? I feel like I'm stuck in some dream, trying to blink sense back into myself.

"Yeah," I manage to breathe. "Tomorrow. I'll, um. I'll come to work tomorrow?" I hope I still have a job. Or maybe that's wrong too? What's selfishness, what's responsibility? What is survival?

She nods, though, somewhat absently. "That's settled then," she says, her mind clearly elsewhere. "Unless you want to stay here tonight? I have a room…"

"No," I say quickly. Maybe too quickly. Too loud. Like everything about me. "I mean. I. We'll um. No. But, thank you?" I'm fairly certain the look that passes across her face is relief. But honestly, who knows. I'm kind of a mess.

Ebb turns to Baz.

"The call was actually for you, Basilton." I'm probably the only one in the room that can tell how shocked he is. His face barely changes.

"Nicky," she pauses long enough to make me wonder if she's going to say anything else. But then she breathes again, and continues. "He says you're to go this bank," she writes something on a piece of paper and hands it to him. "You're to go there and ask for a key that's being held in your name. It's for a safe deposit box. It's a bit too late for it today, but you'd best go in the morning. Early, I suppose. I reckon it's urgent. I don't know what it's about. But I know that I haven't heard that voice in more than twenty years."

I watch in horror as Baz takes the paper, says ok. As he gets pulled into this trap. No. Not Baz, too. He has nothing to do with this. None of them do. I need to put a stop to all this.

I need to find Davy. He wants me, not them. It's already too late for me. I'm already broken. I can spend the rest of my life pretending I'm not, but it won't change the fact that I am. I can't protect myself at the expense of the people I love.

I feel the resolve solidify inside me. It straightens my shoulders, clears my eyes. Raises my head. I'll find him tomorrow. I'll put a stop to the rest of it. I've always known this is how it has to happen. It's always been my fate. I've tried to dodge it long enough. I have to stop running from it before I burn down everything I touch.

I feel a little bad about lying to Ebb. Because I probably won't be at work tomorrow after all. Wherever I end up after I surrender myself to Davy, it's unlikely to be the bakery. Wherever I am after I leave my friends safely to the rest of their lives, and draw Davy far away from all of them.

But first, there's one more night. And I want to spend it with Baz. I want one last normal night, before. Before I give up this fantasy and return to the other world. The one where I know I really belong.

Penny

I watch Simon's face change as Ebb turns away from him. I hadn't known there was room for it to fall farther than it already had. The exhausted fear that until now had dominated his expression, concentrates into an expression of loss. Grief. I don't know what just happened. I couldn't hear what she said. I wait for Ebb to turn back to him, to help him. She's better at reading people than anyone I've ever seen. And she loves Simon. Whatever he thinks she just said, he has to be wrong.

But she doesn't turn back. She walks to Baz, hands him an address on a piece of paper, and disappears down the hallway. Baz stares mutely at the paper in his hand, not looking at anything else. Not looking at Simon.

I turn back to Simon. But by now, his face has transformed again. He looks steady. Serious and determined. Seems like a reasonable enough emotional response to the situation. So I shrug off my uneasiness and follow him as he gathers up our jackets and heads to the door.

Baz

As we near the dorm, I start to worry. Simon is obviously not ok. The more ok he tries to act, the more worried I get. I assumed Penny would come back with us, but she peels off when we pass 114th. Simon actually starts acting a little less weird, so I guess it was a good call on her part. He accepts my hand when I offer it this time, and something loosens inside me.

He stays a couple of steps away, though. Letting our hands hang between us. Not leaving any opening for my arm to circle him like it aches to do. I want to wrap him up and hide him away from the world. So I honestly can't blame him for treating me like I'm being overly clingy. I have no idea what's going on in his head. He's been talking about the football game this morning and about the movie we had planned on seeing later tonight. As though everything in between never happened.

I have no idea what to do in this situation. Any sense of power I felt when I sat beside him, facing off against Davy, has evaporated in the heat of my building helplessness. I try to reason it out as I walk beside him. Since I have no idea what will help or hurt, the best plan seems to go along with Simon's deception. Even though we both know he's lying. Even though every instinct screams at me to ignore his unspoken request to pretend nothing happened. My instincts don't have a great track record. Acknowledging what's wrong might be worse. Catastrophically worse. I have no way to know. In which case, helping him play his self-protective charade seems like the best way to protect him.

So that's what I do. I go out to eat with him, like we planned. We laugh and gossip about our friends. Or rather, he tells endearing stories about his friends and I make snide comments. We see a stupid movie that I will have to re-see if, in some unlikely future, my life depends on having a bloody clue as to what it was about. Or who the main characters were, or whether it was a buddy film or a fucking documentary about prize-winning ranunculi.

The only sign that Simon knows this is a farce is that he lets me pay for everything. His wallet is still back in our room, where he left it. With his phone. And everything else he didn't have time to grab before being abducted by his father.

The whole game almost works. He genuinely seems ok as we walk back to the dorm. I'm congratulating myself for making the right call as I turn the key and open the door, politely waiting for Simon to walk in first.

I see the tension return to his shoulders and back as soon as he steps through the doorway. I figure what's wrong immediately, but I'm still too late. I know what he's looking at. That fucking muffin on its fucking plate. Of all times for our avaricious roommates to decide not to eat someone else's food, today was not the day. A muffin should not remain uneaten all day when left on the kitchen counter in a college dorm.

It's only a second though, before Simon steps fully into the room and picks up the thread of whatever he'd been going on about before we got home. Something about the movie. (Soul searching in Las Vegas? Ideal soil conditions for dense petal growth?) He keeps talking, pretending not to see me sweep the muffin up and dump it into the trash as quickly as I can.

My misgivings grow as he ignores his bag, still in the corner of our room. As he kicks off his sneakers, still muddy from his game this morning. As he peels off the sweaty t-shirt he never got to change, and gathers his shit for the shower he never got to take.

I still haven't figured out what to do when he returns a couple of minutes later, fully dressed. Which is unusual, but not unprecedented. The rough pink that dulls his slightly manic eyes is the only thing that belies the cheerful expression on his face. A month ago I wouldn't have been able to tell that he was hiding. He probably thinks I still can't tell. He probably thinks I believe that he's happy. That I have no idea that inside he's screaming. My playing along with going out on that mockery of a date with him didn't help convince him otherwise.

I can't stand for him to think I don't know. Which is why I finally give in to myself. I walk over to him, reach my arm out. He clumsily avoids my hand, mutters an apology about being really tired and wanting to go straight to bed. I try not to feel hurt.

"Don't do this," I hear myself saying. "Simon, don't leave me out…"

Except that I never get to say "out," the intended last word of that sentence. Because something goes strange in his face at the words "don't leave me" and I realize that oh fuck, he's planning to leave me. He's actually planning to leave me. The pain hits me like like a crowbar, cracking everything it touches. I fucked up. I did it wrong. I chose wrong, and now he's leaving. I can't breathe.

He doesn't outright deny it. Instead, he tries to cover his shock with "what would even make you think that?"

I can't answer (the only words that come to mind are "actually it was the look on your face when you misunderstood my incomplete sentence") so I, too, evade his question with my own.

"Why?" I breathe. The bizarre shift in the conversation has robbed me of the capacity to hold back my tears or school my face to hide the grief and horror. I try to fight my feelings down. I don't want to let him make this about me. I don't want to let him avoid his own pain by deflecting it with a new pain, one of his doing. But what I want doesn't matter. My whole body is reacting to the sick feeling of finding out I've been wrong, this isn't different, this isn't going to all be ok. Why don't I ever learn this lesson? Everyone leaves. Everyone. I can't stand it. I'm breaking.

"No. Don't. Why?" I stumble over my words, finally understanding what he must feel like all the time. Filled with emotions too big to hold, confused by the incomprehensible things people around him are doing. "I'm sorry, Simon," I hear myself saying. "For whatever I did. I'm sorry. Give me another chance, please don't leave me."

And this is bullshit. I do not get to passively hear myself whining pathetically. I need to get a grip on myself and say useful things. I need to hold down the anger that follows in the wake of my helplessness. But my heart is breaking, and no matter how much I explain to myself that this is just an unconscious ploy to ignore his own feelings, I feel like I'm drowning. I actually grab on to him as though I am.

His eyes are wide, as though shocked by my objection. Shocked that I don't want him to leave me. What the hell is going on in his head?

Oh. Oh, fucking YA bullshit. Fucking Twilight. He thinks he's protecting me. He is such an idiot that my terror starts to ebb. I can see the moment that his resolve cracks. Something goes loose in his shoulders, his face. I wrap my arms around him, and this time he lets me. He hugs me back.

"But it's better…" he starts to say. I hush him with my lips, hug him tighter, put my mouth near his ear. I feel his pulse in his chest and his neck, and I feel like I need to hold him so he doesn't bleed out and disappear.

"Simon, I love you. I fucking love you. Leaving me would not be helping me. Any time you find yourself thinking like Edward Cullen, you should take it as a sign that your plan is messed up. Sacrificing yourself to save the person you love never works out right. Because they love you back. They love you back so much. All they want is you."

He's crying and shuddering on my shoulder and I hold him. I hold him and hold him and let myself realize that he loves me. Whatever idiotic thing he was planning to do (and really, what the hell was he planning to do? I don't actually want to know. I give myself permission to wait until later to figure all that out) was out of a misguided, messed up feeling of love. The knowledge is like a blade through the ropes constricting my breath, undoing the noose around my heart that he pulled tight by wanting to abandon me. I can focus again, my thoughts are my own again. And my thoughts are on him.

"b'rooda no" he mumbles, words garbled by my shirt and his tears. Except the No. He almost screams it, voice anguished, then cries even harder. I don't want to fake my way through this minefield. On the other hand, I also don't want to say, pardon me, Simon, but would you mind repeating whatever words ripped you to shreds just a second ago, right before you broke down sobbing? It's a conundrum. I compromise. When he's calmer, I whisper "what?" He answers, but it doesn't really clarify. "Me. About me." I try repeating myself. "What, Simon? What about you?"

"Everything. The things. You don't know" [ah, it was know, not no] "about. Me. You don't know the things I've done, Baz. That's why you still think. That's why you still want. That's why you think you don't want. But you don't know, Baz. You don't know."

I stroke his hair and his back and try not to break apart as I reason my way through his words. But reason is the wrong strategy here. This is the looking glass world of childhood fear. Cause and effect work differently there. When the effect is pain, the cause is always "me." Even when "me" is a tiny kid. In your own imagination, you're never too small to be wrong, terribly awfully wrong. I know it all too well.

"It's not your fault," I start to say.

And suddenly he's furious. He pulls away from me and spits "you don't fucking know anything. Don't give me that bullshit. You don't know any of it. You don't know what I've done. I've told you bits and pieces of what he did, and you think you know. But you don't fucking know. You don't know the things I've done." I can see the fury and the terror warring for control of him. I start to say, "but you were only …" but he cuts me off again viciously.

"Don't. Don't tell me I was a kid, that it couldn't be my fault. Don't fucking pretend to have any fucking clue."

He's trying to hurt me again. To make me push back. To push until I break so he knows he's right, that I don't want him. That I'm better off without him. That he is nothing but pain, that leaving me is the only someone like him should express love.

But it doesn't work this time. He can't try breaking my heart again, I'm not stupid enough to fall for it twice in an hour. His worst nightmares don't know what they're up against. That they've met their match. That I won't let them have him. I won't let them take him from me. There's no fucking way the nightmares win.

So I hold his eyes with mine, and keep them there as I drag his hand up from his side and unclench his fist until his fingertips rest on the scar at the side of my neck. I hold them there until I can see that he understands. I let him see me, too. I let him see into my worst fears, into the endless death of my own self loathing. He's gone silent and still.

He starts to croak out, "but that was…" and I shake my head before he can say the word different.

"I called her," I confess. "I called her." I want to explain the rest. That if I'd called my father instead, maybe my father would be dead instead of my mother. If I hadn't called for anyone, if I'd just screamed, maybe my father would have come with his gun before my mother came with nothing. Then maybe the killer would have died instead of my mother. And, most damning. If I hadn't called out at all. If I'd stayed silent and still and brave, maybe I would have. Maybe I would have died instead of her.

I can't say any of it. And he doesn't know the form of it, but I can see in his eyes that he knows enough. I can see it in his eyes and in the soft motion of his mouth, moving but not making a sound. He doesn't understand, but he knows.

We will always be guilty. It doesn't matter that we understand perfectly well that we're not. We can form the sentence: It's not my fault. We can understand the words, what they mean when arranged in that particular order.

But that kind of understanding is bullshit. We may form sentences, we may even firmly assert their truth. But it doesn't change what we know. We know that it is our fault. We don't think it's our fault, we don't believe it. We know it. We know it as clearly as we know what bitter tastes like, as directly as we know how pain feels. It's knowing, and it can't be changed.

It can't be changed, but it can be tempered. Our narrative-hungry minds can form another layer of knowing. Because there's more that I know, now. I know it's not Simon's fault. I know it in the same way I know what his lips taste like, I know it as directly as I know how his arms around me feel.

And I know that he knows the same about me. So the two types of knowledge can sit together. Knowing that it is, and knowing that it isn't. His fault. My fault. It'll never take away the knowing that it is. Not for him, either, much as I wish it could. But at least there's the comfort of someone else next to you, knowing it isn't. Layering their knowing over yours, protecting you from the full power of your own lonely consciousness.

We hold each other and try. Try to know. Try not to be alone. And it doesn't change anything. I don't get my mother back. He doesn't get his childhood back. It doesn't change a fucking thing, but it helps. It still helps. So we hold on. We don't let go.