Page 88 of Nobody in Particular

“We watched him die,” I whisper to Molly.

She looks at me sharply. “Yeah.”

We watched it. He was alive, and then he wasn’t. And there was nothing we could do. Not by the time we found him. One momenthe was everything, alive, and smiling, full of worries and hopes and a future. And then he was nothing. Like a lamp switch.

On, then off.

I wanted another chance. I wanted to do it differently, all of it, because it didn’t feel possible that the worst thing, the worst possible thing, could have happened in the span of only a few minutes. It didn’t seem fair, and therefore, it didn’t seem real.

Hasn’t seemed real.

But it is real.

Oscar doesn’t get a life anymore. He’s gone, and I will never speak to him again. Nor will Molly. We will never run into him at a gathering. We can’t send him a message and ask to see him.

There is no him.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t… I can’t… I’m sorry, Molly. I just didn’t… I couldn’t, but, I should have…”

It happened, didn’t it? I watched someone die. Not someone. Oscar. I watched as Molly screamed for him. I stared at his body, only flesh and bone, still warm from the blood that was pumping through it until it wasn’t.

And Molly. God, Molly.

“Then I left you,” I say. “I wouldn’t leave you while it was happening, then I left you after that night anyway.”

“Rose…”

“I just couldn’t think about it,” I say. “I know I needed to, but I couldn’t.”

“I know,” Molly says.

“No,” I insist. “I mean, I just… collapsed inward. You needed to talk about that night and I just… I—I couldn’t. It was like I was short-circuiting.”

“I understand.”

“It wasn’tnormal. Every time I tried to think about it—and I mean everysingletime, Molly—the channel changed. I completely abandoned you, and you were in so much pain, and I feltnothing.”

Molly’s eyes are glassy, and she arches her neck to stare at the ceiling.

“You should still hate me,” I say with conviction. Molly climbsonto the bed, and I realize with a surge of revulsion at myself that she means to reassure me. “Don’t,” I gasp, sitting up with a start. “It’s not your job to comfort me.”

It was real.

The fact settles somewhere in my throat, and I have the sensation of being strangled from the inside. When I finally manage to force the breath from my lungs, it comes out in a thin sob—a sound I wasn’t expecting at all. I raise my hand as though to muffle myself, but it settles on my collarbone, and I hunch over as I gasp for another breath. For the first time, my mind allows me to understand that I watched my friend die, and he’s never coming back. I’m here in the moment, feeling all of it, and it weighs too much to stand under.

Molly touches my arm, but I shake her off. “No.”

“For me,” she insists. I drop my arm back to my side and allow her to wrap her own around me. We’re stiff for a moment, and then, together, we fold into our center, her fingers digging into my back like talons. I’m crying, I think, although it isn’t how I’ve seen others cry. Mine is more of a series of anguished, tearless breaths, punctuated by whines. Molly has tears—tears have always come easily enough to her—and they dampen my shoulder where she rests her head.

“I don’t want to feel this,” I whimper.

“I know,” she says.

Though tears do come easily to her, it’s been months since I’ve seen her cry over Oscar. She was healing, and now look at what I’ve done.

“I’m sorry,” I manage between breaths. “I’ve brought it all up again.”

Molly shakes her head and pulls me in tighter. I am enveloped, pinned in place. Anchored. “No,” she says. “It’s the first time I haven’t cried alone.”

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