Sometimes the people we love abandon us. Not for lack of trying to love, but for this or that. This mistake or that tragedy. This choice or that inflexibility. And sometimes they abandon us against their own will.

It is not an unusual plight. It is not an original plight. It is what those people leave behind in their stead that tells the story. For each, something different. For each, something that belongs to only them.

Helena wanted to scrub it away. From her memory, from her body. Her being would be washed anew. She could make herself shine. She could let go of all of her mistakes, everything that she'd done wrong.

But she didn't really want to shine. She wanted to scrub it away until she was gone. The invisible girl.

Helena was startled out of her thoughts by a soft rap at the door of her childhood bedroom. She looked at it, but said nothing.

After a moment, another rap and a tentative voice. "Helena? Are you awake?"

She kept her eyes on the door, unmoving, unwilling to speak, unwilling to engage. But it opened anyway.

Myka peered in, attempting not to wake Helena. She looked over at the bed and, when she saw it empty, turned around to find Helena in an old, beaten up rocking chair next to the window having turned her head back to look out onto the postage stamp of a backyard.

"Helena, the people downstairs… they want…" Myka's voice had been quiet to begin with, but now it was hard to hear at all. "They want to share their condolences."

"No, thank you." She continued looking out the window. She was absentmindedly caressing a tattered stuffed frog in her lap. It had obviously been sewn back together many times. Myka hadn't seen it in the previous nights that they had slept in the room.

"Helena, there's a guy down there who went to school with your dad. He's telling all of these stories that not even your mom had heard and I really think…" Helena cut her off before she could be given the opportunity to change her mind.

"Myka, I can't."

She turned her head, but shook it back to its original position before they made eye contact. She hadn't been looking at Myka. Not for days now. She couldn't. The girl had held her hand when they turned off her father's machines. She had held her hand in the car ride home and that night and all of the days after, while she helped Helena's mother plan the funeral arrangements. She held her hand that morning when the priest had committed her father's body to the earth. The ritual of the day had been comforting in its own way, but Helena had reached the end of her ability to catch people looking at her with pity.

She didn't want to be pitied. She didn't deserve to be pitied. And the last person she wanted pitying her was Myka. So she didn't look.

"Fine. I'll go make you a plate of food and you can decide whether you want to come down when you're finished eating."

"Myka, I don't…"

"No, Helena." Myka was barely able to restrain her impatience, but she tried anyway. "You can sit up here away from everyone as much as you want, but you're not going to starve yourself doing it." And before she could hear any more protestation, she turned and shut the door.

When Myka returned to the kitchen, Charles was the only other person in there. She was surprised to feel relieved. Though he had yet to be particularly pleasant to her, Myka found herself to be comfortable in his presence. He didn't like her, that much was obvious, but he didn't go out of his way to rub it in her face. Instead, he just let her be. And right now that was all she needed.

"She's not coming down, then?"

She had thought too soon.

Giving Charles a quick smile to acknowledge that she had heard him, she began preparing a plate. "No, she's not."

"Even now, she's getting her way." Charles plopped himself down onto the counter, within Myka's eye line. What in God's name could he possibly want now? She and Helena had been here six days and this was when he was choosing to talk to Myka?

"I hardly think she's getting her way, Charles." He was making it so easy to dislike him back.

He pulled a small notebook and pen out of his jacket and started writing. Just sitting there on the counter, fully in Myka's way, scribbling notes. She circumvented him and put the plate in the microwave.

"She got to leave. He got worse after she left. Every time I'd go to see him, he'd just be angry that she wasn't with me."

Myka was trying her best to discern what Charles wanted from her. There must be some answer he was looking for.

"She left because she wanted to fix things…" Myka started but Charles had had enough. He threw his pad and pen to the floor.

"Why does she keep saying that?! There wasn't anything to FIX."

"I guess she doesn't think that's true."

The microwave added its weak "ding," ending the conversation.

As Myka walked out of the room, Charles stopped her one last time.

"She's staying though, right? She's not leaving again? She has to stay. For mum at least."

"I don't know, Charles." And she really didn't. When they had left for London, she had assumed that they would return to school together. But then, everything had been so much more than she expected. Maybe Myka had been selfish in her assumption. Helena's family needed her right now.

Myka tapped on the door lightly before she walked in. Helena hadn't moved from her position at the window. And Myka saw. Helena's family might need her right now, but there wasn't much there to give.

It was Thursday, a day before their return flight, and Myka had yet to speak to Helena about whether she intended to go back to school or not. Myka had finally been able to coax the girl out of the house, and they were taking a walk around Helena's childhood monuments. Myka asked questions – could they walk to Helena's old schools? Where had she liked to play? Did she still have any friends in the area?

Helena responded politely, but didn't elaborate on anything. Yes, she had always been within walking or biking distance from her schools, there was a park a few blocks up with lots of flora that she had liked to investigate as a child, she hadn't kept up with many people and they were probably all off at school anyway.

It had seemed odd to Myka that none of Helena's friends had come to her father's funeral, but she didn't push the issue. Myka had had a lifetime of learning how to not push the issue that had come back with alarming speed now that she needed it again.

No. No, she couldn't think that. Helena was not like her father. Helena was grieving. Her father was just stubborn and cold and put people on edge. Helena was nothing like that. All right, yes, she was stubborn, but that was mostly cute, and she had been cold this last week, but who wouldn't be? And Helena had been the first person who had ever really calmed Myka's spirits. So Myka would extend as much grace as Helena needed her to. And that was that.

Myka had obviously been having this conversation in her head for some time, because when she looked up again, having run into Helena's stopped body, they had walked all the way to the church where Helena's father's services had been held.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" Helena was looking toward the steeple, her eyes shimmering with the faintest of light desperate to stay alive in them.

"It is."

Myka had noticed the beauty of it before. The square building, made of inlaid bricks, had hand-carved stone garlands over each window. Each slightly different, delicately created. Hard and soft in one.

"My parents were married here. Charles and I both baptized. Why do people always put their beginnings and their endings in the same place? Happiness and sadness forever linked…" Helena trailed off and began to walk on.

A thought occurred to Myka. Something she had taken note of when she read it, because it had been underlined and highlighted and dog-eared as VERY. IMPORTANT. "Well, to crudely quote H.G. Wells, 'We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existence, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.' We try to live in those moments forever. So they are linked, yes. At least H.G. Wells and your father both seemed to think so."

The mention of her father stopped Helena and she turned and looked at Myka who was now a good ten feet away. She finally looked. She was surprised that it wasn't pity that she found there. Sadness, yes, but no judgment.

Helena started.

"This is too hard."

"I know."

"I want the words to go away. I want the words and the thoughts that come from the words and the feelings that come from the thoughts to go away."

"I know."

"But they're not going to."

"I know."

Neither girl moved. Helena feeling too paralyzed by it all and Myka being too unsure of the delicate balance placed between them.

"I think I have to stay here, Myka. I don't think I can go back."

It was devastating to hear, but Myka didn't know what the right thing was either. She didn't know if Helena should stay or go. She knew that all she wanted was Helena to be with her, so that she could make sure she got through this. She trusted Helena implicitly, but had seen enough of the shadows of self-doubt and hate in her in the past week, that she feared not being close to her.

But at the end of the day, it wasn't her decision, and they were both so tired, so she nodded her head in affirmation.

"I love you, Helena."

"I know."

The walked home in silence, hands linked once more.