Lumaira woke the next morning after a fitful night to find Even quietly inspecting a book that had been lying on his bedside table and looking much healthier than he had last night. His skin was still pale, almost papery it looked so easy to break, but his cheeks had an encouraging little flush of pink across them and even his breathing seemed to be more solid, chest steadily rising and falling. Even didn't seem to notice Lumaira uncurl from the chair next to the bed, peering intently as he was at the back cover, lips parting a little every time he mouthed a word he couldn't quite make out. So Lumaira coughed pointedly, hoping to attract the other boy's attention.

"Hey."

Even glanced up and set the book back on the side.

"Good morning."

"How do you feel?" Lumaira asked, cracking his neck as Even carefully flexed a little life back into his fingers.

"Better. But that's not exactly hard."

Lumaira nodded encouragingly.

"That's good." He said, ever so gently laying a hand on Even's shoulder. "I'll go make us something for breakfast before mum comes back."

Even seemed to tense a little at the mention of a parental figure, but nodded silently.

"She's a nurse, you see," Lumaira explained. "She works night shifts at the hospital. Maybe she'll be able to fix up your cuts a bit."

Even didn't reply again, so Lumaira slipped out of the door, closing it softly behind him and tiptoeing downstairs. He was almost afraid to leave Even alone in case he tried to hurt himself again, but he supposed that the boy must've had a chance before he'd woken up, and if he hadn't then then hopefully he wouldn't now.

Breakfast came in the form of toast and boiled eggs because Lumaira supposed that Even would want - or if not want, at least need - something filling. He was perfectly used to cooking for two, often leaving breakfast out for his mother for when she came home in the morning. Balancing two cups of tea and two full plates up the stairs was an interesting affair, though, and eventually have gave up and carried everything on a tray, setting Even's carefully down on his lap.

"Here."

Even fumbled a little in picking up the fork, and the thick-rimmed glasses suddenly popped into Lumaira's mind.

"You can use my mum's reading glasses, if you like."

"I don't think they'd do much good," Even replied sourly. "My eyesight is atrocious."

Lumaira felt too awkward to suggest the magnifying glass he had lying around in his room somewhere, and opted instead for watching Even eat his breakfast with more than a little difficulty. Eventually he did offer to cut up the toast into squares, though, which Even grudgingly agreed to.

"Thanks."

"It's okay. I'll get you some glasses or something this afternoon, if you'd like."

Even shook his head. "You'd have to get prescription. I can live without."

"Well... if you're sure."

"I might not live much longer anyway," Even whispered in a small, strangled voice. Lumaira felt his chest tighten.

"Don't say that," He insisted. "You're okay now."

"I still feel like hell," Even admitted.

Lumaira shivered involuntarily, feeling panic for Even take hold.

"I'll get my mum to have a look at you," He said. "She'll know what you need. Maybe you should go to the hospital too."

Even scowled and looked away.

"I don't want to go to the hospital. People will know I'm alive if I go to the hospital."

"Why's that such a bad thing?" Lumaira asked.

"They'll think it was a joke, won't they," Even hissed. "They'll think it was all some stupid hoax and they'll take me even less seriously than before."

Lumaira remembered seeing Even dead for the first time and vehemently shook his head.

"There were a dozen of us that saw you that night," He said. "We know that wasn't faked."

"Then how am I alive," Even replied bluntly, posing the question that both boys had been evading since last night. "How can I be alive again if I was dead before? How is that scientifically possible?"

A cough or maybe a sob bubbled up through Lumaira's throat and he realised that he'd begun to rock a little, back and forth on his seat. Back and forth, back and forth.

"I don't know," He said. "I don't know. You're the one who knows everything."

Even stiffened and suddenly Lumaira remembered all the taunts of nerd, geek, teacher's pet, know it all that Even must have suffered through.

"H-hey. I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry. I was just saying you're really smart."

Even's shoulders sagged and he pushed away his half-eaten breakfast, no appetite left.

"It's okay."

Lumaira felt the urge to hug Even but he restrained himself in the knowledge that it probably wasn't appropriate considering that he barely even knew the boy.

"You should eat that," He said instead, pointing to the leftover toast and egg. "You need to keep yourself healthy."

Even opened his mouth as though to argue, but Lumaira gave him a determined glare so he unwillingly pulled the tray back onto his lap and took a few bites.

"You must be starving," Lumaira, who'd already finished, said.

"A little," Even admitted, pushing toast around the plate with his fork. "But you sort of get used to it after a while."

Lumaira forced Even to finish every last mouthful.

For the rest of the day, Even slept fitfully. Lumaira's mother came home briefly, but had to leave for a meeting and didn't even have time to listen to Lumaira's confession that there was a dead boy in his room. It was disheartening, all of it was disheartening, because the longer Lumaira had to think about it the harder he realised saving Even's life would be. It wasn't just a one off thing like in the movies, a little speech and a hug that would make everything okay, it was like pulling Even up to the surface in the middle of the sea and knowing that there was the whole swim to the shore still to go.

And the worst thing was that, looking at the boy now, pale and unattractive, Even had good reasons backing what he did. His parents didn't care. His schoolmates bullied him incessantly. His friends? He didn't even have any. And he didn't have any because he wasn't sociable, because he was reclusive and intellectual, clumsy and unfashionable and not the sort of person anybody would be seen dead with, whoever he actually was deep down inside.

At one point, somewhere around midday, Lumaira had found himself carefully evaluating Even's face. After all, that was where it had started, wasn't it? In the first year of school, the fat kid with boggle eyes... he'd grown into his features a little more now. Sure, he had acne - just like every other teenage boy in the world - and he was already developing a little wrinkle between his eyebrows from frowning so much. But his high cheekbones and narrow jawline was just features, and the rest - insipid skin, sunken eyes and a haunted expression - was less to do with his actual appearance and more to do with his recent brush with death. He wasn't that unattractive, really, just sort of... normal...

Lumaira closed his eyes and imagined Even but healthier, not overweight or terrifyingly thin, the tangles of his hair ironed out and his skin tanned to a more healthy shade of pink. He imagined how it would look if Even smiled - genuinely, not just bitterly. He imagined the wind blowing through the boy's hair, and the grassy flowers of a meadow surrounding his long limbs. He imagined contact lenses instead of glasses. He imagined happiness with the boy called Even.

It wasn't so bad, really.

But then Lumaira opened his eyes again and saw misery with the boy called Even, and remembered that Even was dead just a handful of hours ago and with it the horror of utter impossibility. But it was fading now, his mind simply leaving the mystery unsolved and plodding slowly on, a little dazed and numb, but trying to make the best of a bad job. That was what Even was trying to do, wasn't it? Make the best of a bad job. Except he'd given up.

Except that even that hadn't worked.

Lumaira bit his lip, compelled to wake Even just to tell him that Lumaira would be his friend if he wanted, no matter what anybody else would care to say, because at the end of the day there was only one thing that Even really needed and that was a friend.

But Even needed to rest, so Lumaira simply leaned over and squeezed his shoulders a little then let him be.

Half an hour later, his phone rang. L'Erena, his best friend. They went back years.

"Hey, Lulu. Why didn't you call?"

Lumaira glanced at Even, who'd shifted in his sleep and was now curled around a bump in the duvet. It was sort of sweet.

"I... I'm busy. Sorry."

"Thought you said your mum was gonna be out this morning. I was gonna come around, remember?"

"Yeah, well, there's been complications," Lumaira said uncomfortably. People rising from the dead sort of complications.

"You don't sound so good."

"I'm not."

"How'd the funeral go?"

Lumaira winced, remembering last night, the guilt and the pain and the fear.

"Not so good."

"Who was there?"

"Um... Even's parents, two of the teachers, a few people I didn't know, and me. And Even,"
"'Cept Even's dead."

Lumaira glanced at the boy, hypnotised for a moment by his slow, rhythmic breathing as he slept.

"Lulu?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, of course."

"So why was it awful?"

Lumaira rolled his eyes a little like the movement would somehow disguise the stab of pain in his chest. For all the stupid things L'Erena frequently said, that had to have been one of the worst.

"Rennie, it was a funeral." And nobody was there and every word the priest said was bullshit and nobody cared and then Even had climbed out of his own grave and nearly died all over again in Lumaira's bathtub last night.

"It was Even's funeral," L'Erena corrected.

"That just made it worse."

"Why?"

L'Erena didn't understand. L'Erena, his goddamn best friend and only true friend, just didn't understand. Lumaira wanted to tell her that Even was alive, Even was here, sleeping softly still, but his thought tightened uncomfortably and he couldn't.

"We killed him, Rennie."

L'Erena sighed audibly.

"Lulu. We've had this conversation before. He killed himself. Sure, it must have sucked pretty damn bad to see him like that but he killed himself. He brought it on himself. It didn't even have anything to do with you, so just forget about Even. He's six feet under now. There's nothing you can do."

Lumaira glanced at Even again. No, he thought. There was a lot he could do for Even.

"So can't you come around?"

"I have chores."

"I'll help you."

Lumaira knew that it would be too suspicious if he kept making excuses - after all, L'Erena knew him like the back of her hand, and would easily find out what was wrong. He could move Even into his mother's room, he supposed. L'Erena wouldn't go in there, would she?

"... Okay."

"I'll be around in ten. Love you!"