I stare at Blake, this girl, this being, made of fire and steel and strength, her emotions more powerful than the universe itself, as she looks up at me in the cold light of the library with deadened eyes. The beginnings of tears fill their grey depths like a murky ocean of anguish. She attempts a smile and fails, her head dropping suddenly to her chest. A drop of water falls from her eye, and I gently remove her silver glasses so they will not be smudged with the substance. I slide off of the cushioned seat to the floor and kneel before her. She looks so sad, so utterly gone from the world. And I think to myself and to her, ‘No. No, no, you can’t do this. You’re the one person who has made me feel something. The one person. You can’t do this to me. What do I say?’

I clear my throat awkwardly, about to say something, when she cuts me off.

“Adrian?” she asks, her voice wobbly, her accent distinct and Welsh.

“Yeah?” I inquire, glad for the silence to be filled.

“Before you ask me for details, know that I’ve never talked to anyone about this before.”

“Oh,” I say, gulping. “Okay. Uh, well, do you even want to talk about it?”

“I need to. I’m not ready and I never will be, but jumping in later doesn’t make the water warmer.”

‘I love the way you speak,’ I want to say, but I don’t, because she won’t believe me, even if it is the truest thing ever.

Instead I say, “Then jump. I’ll keep you from getting hypothermia.”

She looks like she wants to laugh, to smile, to sob, but she does none of these things. She just begins.

“It was all so sudden, for one thing. My mum and I, we were just walking, walking down this trail we’d gone on so many times before. We were surrounded by trees and the wilderness. The only difference was that we usually walked during the day, but at that point it was getting dark. She was holding my hand and humming this lullaby she used to sing to me all the time, when, out of nowhere, there was this man in a cloak. We couldn’t see his face, but once I did, I couldn’t unsee it. It was covered in scars and tissue his eyes looked just like mine. Except there was something in his, something deeper, where everything had snapped. Whether it happened over time or just suddenly one day, I don’t know. But it was terrifying to look into them.

“He stepped towards my mum, asked her if she had a husband. She shook her head. My dad died when I was four; this was all three years later. Anyway, he kept advancing, and she started moving in front of me, and I was so confused. I didn’t know who he was or if he was dangerous. I didn’t know what was happening. He…he touched her, and she tried to fight him off, and he just kept doing it until she screamed for help and told me to run. She pushed me away and I ran and the next thing I heard was a gunshot. I remember whipping around right as her body hit the ground. The sound it made was sickening. I keep hearing it in my head, thump, thump, thump. There was a hole in her head. There were blood spatters on the dirt. An even bigger puddle was forming around her head. And the guy, he just stood there, with his arms extended, the gun in his hands. Then he took it and turned it around and…pulled the trigger.”

Blake pauses, shuddering, her eyes shut, taking deep breaths, in and out in and out in our in out in, “I watched two people die that day.”

I don’t know what to say, what to do. I don’t want to be the first person she opens up to about this, nor do I want to be the last. But once again, she saves me from embarrassment by filling the silence.

“I’m scared,” she whispers, barely audible. I scoot closer to her. “I’m so scared that I’ll end up like him.”

“You won’t,” I say, and for once I am more than confident in my words. “You won’t. You’re strong, and beautiful, and perfect, and you won’t.”

And that, I am sure of.

For once in my life.

Surety.