“You have ten minutes,” she says. “And then I want you out. Understood?”
“Thank you, Ava,” Nora says, reaching over to pat the officer on the arm. Ava gives her a curt look.
“Thank you,” I repeat. Ava waves a hand and takes a few steps away from the door. Not leaving but no longer guarding the room.
Nora reaches me before I get to the door and pulls me into a fierce hug. I’m a little surprised by it, hesitant only a moment before I’m hugging her back with one arm.
I pull back, and Nora’s arms fall away, but she doesn’t move. Her eyes shine with unshed tears.
“You look like hell, Jo,” she says.
I laugh, but it’s more of a croak.
“I don’t even know what to say.” She sniffles. “You’re one of the only people who believed me. Believed in him.”
“I mean, it wasn’t that hard, considering he planted himself in my bedroom. I couldn’t not believe in him if I wanted.”
Nora lets out a tiny laugh. “Yeah, he filled me in.”
I shift my weight. “How’s he doing?” Last I saw him, he was barely conscious, fighting hard to stay on his feet. He was weak and thin, a hand practically stretched out to Death’s.
“Doctors are still trying to figure out the extent of the damage. It’s like everything is depleted or something. It’ll be a while before he feels back to normal.”
Relief lifts some of the weight off my chest. “He’s okay, though?” I ask.
Nora nods.
“You should ask him yourself. I’m in desperate need of coffee, and my mom and stepdad went to buy him some clothes and stuff, so maybe you can hang out with him until I get back.”
Alone, she’s saying. I mean, sure, Officer Ava is right outside the door, and it’s hardly the first time Finn and I have been alone, but we’ve never been on the same plane of existence.
All the fears about closeness I was able to strangle into submission have rocketed back to the surface. Finn isn’t a phantom anymore. He’s as real as I am.
I fold my arms tight across my torso, leaning into the railing. “Why is all of this so hard?” I ask.
She gives me a grim smile. “Caring about people is dirty work,” she says.
She’s right.
All of the anger is armor. It’s a spiky exterior I’ve cultivated to be impenetrable.
Beneath it is the fear of having someone else to lose. And the other emotions, too, the ones I’m still not brave enough to give a voice to.
“I don’t think I can handle losing anyone else.”
“Tough shit,” Nora says, and again there’s nothing harsh about her tone. It’s brutal honesty. “Everybody loses everybody. We’re born, and then we die, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. The only thing we can do is make it a little more bearable while we’re here.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say.
“Yeah, you do,” Nora says. “You did it with me. I know you did it with Finn and Sloane and Aisha. So, yeah, it might be horrible and painful and sad, but it’s better than the alternative. Better than being alone.”
“Hell is other people,” I say, thinking of that Jean-Paul Sartre play; we have a dozen copies in the store, and we even had an existentialism endcap for a bit.
“You’re not wrong,” Nora says. “But they’re all we have.”
To my horror, tears well in my eyes. I reach up to swipe them away angrily.
“No one’s saying it’s easy. But if you can break into a madman’s bunker and rescue four kids, surely you can tell my teenage brother how you feel.”
