BACK IN THEIR SUITE, SIMONfolds Dez in his arms.
“What can I do?” he asks.
Dez answers by holding him tighter. She doesn’t have any tears left, but her friend’s embrace comforts her. She lets her body relax into his.
It’s after midnight, and the evening left her hollow. She feels like someone could blow on her and she’d shatter. She wishes it would happen, for all her pieces to scatter in the wind.
She’s still holding on to Simon when Yael joins them in the common room, wrapping her arms around them both. She’d never taken Yael to be one for physical affection, and Dez can’t help feeling moved. After a while, Yael presses something into Dez’s hand.
It’s Yael’s phone.
“Take it,” she says. “Call your mom.”
Dez stares at the device. She’s gotten used to life without being attached to hers. It feels strange to hold one now. She collapses heavily to the couch.
“I don’t know if she’ll want to talk to me,” Dez says. “I don’t know ifI’dwant to talk to me.”
“She’s your mom, Dez. Try,” Simon says, sinking onto the cushion next to her, hugging his knees to his chest.
Dez’s fingers quake as she dials her mother’s number, holding Yael’s phone to her ear. Her heart pounds. She doesn’t know, can’t even imagine, what she’ll say. To her own mother. Not a single word comes to mind.
It rings. And rings. And finally, when the call goes to voicemail, Dez holds her breath, hanging on her mom’s familiar, years-old, sunny voicemail recording. She doesn’t leave a message. She puts the phone down, tears in her eyes. She doesn’t know if she’s devastated or relieved.
But she feels like she’s mourning the loss of two people tonight, not one.
“I’m making my famous mourning martinis,” Yael calls from the kitchen.
“How are they different from your regular martinis?” Simon asks.
“They’re bigger.” Yael appears with a cocktail shaker, an ice bucket, and three glasses crooked between her fingers. She sets everything down on the coffee table in front of Dez, adds ice to the tumbler, and shakes. “I know the state of shock is real in here, but as your elder—”
“Yeah, how old are you?” Simon says.
“I stopped counting after six thousand.” Yael smiles, brushing fingertips across her cheekbones.
“Angel genes,” Dez says, hearing her voice distantly.
Both her roommates look at her like they didn’t know she could talk.
“That’s right, Dez,” Yael says cheerfully, “and as your resident immortal, I’m obliged to take a temperature check. A lot of shit went down tonight. So if anyone needs to freak out”—she strains the martinis into the glasses, adds a twist, and hands the first one to Dez—“let’s at least do it plastered.”
Dez takes a long, cold sip of lemon-scented gin. She swirls the twist around the glass with her finger.
“You wanna go first?” Simon asks Dez.
She closes her eyes. “I used to imagine him dying. I’ve grieved my brother so many times over the years. He was an addict, so I felt like I was always just waiting for the call. A knock on the door in the middle of the night. I never thought, when he finally went, that it would be my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Yael says.
“It was.” She swallows. “I never told you. I burned him. I killed my brother.”
“What?” Simon asks. “How?”
“Dez,”Yael says, her voice so grounded Dez opens her eyes to stare at her. “I know—without a shadow of a doubt—that your brother’s death was not your fault. Eventually, you’ll know that, too.”
“I wish that were true,” Dez says.
“It’s a simple fact,” Yael says. “Or a complicated one, depending on your point of view. The point is, if you stay here, you’ll come to learn things. Your entire relationship with death will change. You’ll grow to love it, to need it. With a devotion that borders on obsession.”
