Myka had never been happier than she was at the beginning of the second semester of their first year.

She was basking in the glory of ancient culture, language, and literature, and Professor Nielsen had become a mentor to her, though he continued to grumble about it.

She had arguably the best friends who were ever patient with her occasional abrasiveness and made her laugh more than she knew she could.

Even things with her parents were running smoothly. They had not been nearly as disappointed in her change to classics as she had assumed. And though she had yet to mention Helena as more than a friend to her mom, it seemed by Jeannie's perpetual effort to include mentions of Helena in their conversations that the information had been passed along.

And Helena. Helena was a continual source of all of the good things the world offered in one perpetually entrancing being.

She did occasionally forgot to text Myka to tell her if it would be a particularly late night and she also got so distracted by her work that she disengaged completely when Myka went out of her way to try to be helpful. Oh the "thank yous" that had been left unsaid…

But, sometimes, really, it was enough to just be grateful. So she was.

On one of their Sunday nights together, Helena convinced Myka to go join the boys in their room while they finished up their readings for Monday. It was a rather strange twist on their normal dynamic, and Myka would have preferred the option where they did homework mostly undressed, but she was willing to make the sacrifice.

"Hey, Mykes, guess what Jinksy and I did today?" Whatever it was, Pete was pretty proud of it, judging from his excitement. Before Myka could respond, Helena interrupted.

"Pete, why is it that everyone around you has nicknames, but you don't have one yourself?"

They all stopped and considered it.

"Because I'm a more thoughtful friend than the rest of you? I DUNNO H.G." he teased. Helena scowled at him while Steve snorted out a laugh and Myka catapulted herself across the couch to punch Pete on the arm.

"You can't call her that, Pete, only I can call her that. Get your own nickname."

Pete rubbed his shoulder, looking dismayed by Myka's vehemence.

"Fine! Jeez!" He started taunting her with a hug and she pushed him off playfully before returning to his desk (a desk that basically belonged to Myka at this point, since Pete never used it).

"Anyway, what I was saying before I was so RUDELY interrupted is that we applied for internships for the summer. I'm gonna be a super-secret secret service agent man." Pete was stealthily miming holding a gun and talking into his wrist.

"It's for one of our classes." Steve explained, "We applied to a bunch of agencies. CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA…"

"Basically anything that has an acronym?" Helena antagonized.

"Except the FDA." Steve grinned back.

Pete quit his pantomime and opened the fridge to grab a snack. "What are you guys doing this summer?"

"I…" Myka started and shot a look at Helena, who kept her eyes on her computer. She continued "We hadn't really talked about it."

"You might want to," Pete managed to barely get the words out of his overfull mouth, "stuff's due like yesterday."

Myka had thought about her options. Professor Neilsen had mentioned that he wouldn't mind having a project assistant for the summer and she was sure that her parents also wouldn't mind having an extra set of hands in the bookstore. But until she and Helena talked about it, she wasn't sure what she wanted.

The prospect of months apart? Winter break had been painful enough.

"Dr. Frederic had me apply for some grants to continue my work here… there's also an internship at MIT and one at the Hickock Center for Brain Injury. I'm waiting to hear back."

Well, that was new information. Completely new. Utterly unknown to Myka until this very moment. Awesome.

"Myka?" Helena sounded confused and Myka realized that her face must not have been concealing the conversation going on in her head very well. She looked back down at her work without responding.

"Myka, what?" Less confusion this time, more annoyance.

"Nothing, Helena. I'm glad your summer is shaping up so nicely."

If the girls had been looking at Steve and Pete, they would have seen two people who were doing their best to sink into themselves, two people who really wished the door was a little closer and the air in the room was a little thinner.

"Bugger." The word itself was barely audible. The tone, however, was remarkably clear.

"It's fine." Myka snipped and went back to her reading. She wasn't going to argue with Helena in front of Steve and Pete and she'd rather just not talk to her at all right now. If she had a little bit more time to process the hurt she was feeling, it would likely be better for everyone.

"Myka, I didn't…" she cut Helena off with a "Not now."

Pete, ever incapable of dealing with uncomfortable situations, turned the television on and pretended to be completely entranced in a re-run ofRevenge, teasing Steve about the show that he actually did love, about which he had sworn Pete to secrecy. The look Pete received in response to his jests was enough to get him to murmer, "Sorry, dude…" sheepishly. The entire room was now fraught with awkwardness.

The girls were both too stubborn to try to talk about it, and neither of the boys wanted to make them leave. So they carried on in silence until Helena's phone rang.

Myka heard the echo of a "Hello Charles," before the door had closed behind Helena.

"Jesus, Mykes." Pete needed the tension lifted immediately, but Myka was having none of it.

"No, Pete. I'm not doing this, I'm not discussing this with you."

"Don't you think…"

"I said no." Myka cut him off again. She knew she was being slightly irrational. Maybe more than slightly. But she didn't intend to say something she would regret and everything she wanted to say right now? She would regret.

I mean, the total and complete lack of awareness in a person who notices everything is just…

Myka's train of thought was cut off by the door opening once again and her stomach lurched when she saw the look of anguish on Helena's face.

"Myka… it's my dad…"

Myka set up the Skype call with her parents. She only had about a half hour between classes, but she had to ask them now.

When they picked up, her mom had her face up to the camera like she was inspecting it.

"Hey, mom, I can see you, you don't have to be that close."

"Oh, Myka! Good, hi!" The consternation in Jeannie's face dissipated and she sat back. Myka's dad was emptying boxes of books onto shelves in the background and Myka called to him,

"I need to talk to you too, Dad." He inaudibly sighed (the shoulders gave him away) and came to sit next to his wife.

"I need to ask you both for something and it's very important to me, so please don't respond until you've really considered it."

Jeannie nodded and Warren barely hid his eye-roll. Well, this was the version of her dad she was getting today. It wasn't great timing, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

"It's Helena's dad…"

Myka told the entire story of what had befallen Helena's father – the accident, the changes, how his own brain had turned on him completely.

"It's gotten worse. Much worse. Apparently he infrequently had seizures due to the damage, but a series of large ones hit him yesterday… and… they're just waiting until Helena can get back to say goodbye."

Her heart broke just saying the words. And she could see pain in her parents' eyes as well. Myka didn't know what it was to lose a parent, but they did. Their looks made her wish she was having this conversation in person, so she could collapse in her mother's lap. But no, she was having it over the computer, in a hallway where students kept noisily passing her, interrupting her thoughts.

The conversation was hard already, but it was only going to get harder. She had promised herself she would never do this…

"Helena doesn't have the money to fly back to England… and… and she needs me to go with her. I would pay you back, we would pay you back. But I can't make her do this on her own."

Jeannie looked over at Warren who remained still. Myka couldn't tell if he was looking at her or somewhere else on the computer screen, but it felt like he was staring straight into her. This was becoming a habit with them.

"When?"

"We'd need to leave tomorrow or Wednesday."

Myka noted the subtle widening of Warren's eyes and she quickly picked up her argument, "Spring break starts Thursday, so I wouldn't miss very many classes and I'll work in the store all summer and get a second job to pay you back. I'll get a third job if I have to. Dad. She needs me."

Warren pursed his lips, "Your mother will send you the itinerary later today." He walked away from the screen and Myka saw him leave through the back door of the storefront. Jeannie followed him with her eyes and turned back to her daughter.

"Mom," Myka was doing her best to keep it together, "I don't know how to do this."

A pained smile appeared on her mother's face. "Myka, my love. Yes you do."

She was starting to panic, "No, no, I don't. This is huge and I'm just me and I want to fix it, but I can't. I can't fix it."

"No, you can't. So, you pack her bag for her. You sit next to her on the plane and you hold her hand. You make sure she eats. You make sure she bathes. You carry tissues with you wherever you go. You do the things that are too easy and too hard."

Myka had begun to take deep breaths, staying in sync with her mother's calming words.

"What if I don't do it right?"

"Sweetie, no one alive knows how to handle this kind of thing perfectly. It takes necessary courage to even try. But God, does the trying matter." Tears were in the corners of her mother's eyes and she knew this was something deeper than this moment. Myka couldn't say any of the thousand things running through her head. They all felt insubstantial right now. And so did she.