Of course, that’s not how it works. Maybe it slowed it down some, dulled the temptation to forget for a while, but it wouldn’t have worked forever. Time always leaves you behind.
If I’d deteriorated any faster, I think we would have just stayed there until there was nothing left of me. But by the fourth day, when we realized that I was still pretty together, you couldn’t argue anymore with me that at some point you were going to have to go look for food, to keep us alive. That’s when we decided you’d go as soon as it was light enough to see, to scavenge ruthlessly to collect a last Hail Mary stash, one that would allow us to then live out our last few . . . days? weeks? together. You could be there for me then, when it really started to happen, you said.
After you fell asleep, into that deep, heavy unconsciousness you can put yourself into when you know you have to go scavenge the next day, I peeled back a little corner of the cardboard over the window in our bedroom—I know, I know, but I was careful not to crease it—and I watched the moon for a long time.
You don’t know this, Ory, but since it happened, I’ve barely slept. Maybe that’s a side effect. I stay in the bed with you, limbs tangled, but while you’re snoring softly, my eyes are open. I lift my hands over my head and just stare at them. Or rather, at where they should be, but I can’t see them, because it’s too dark. The blackness is so heavy, and it’s so hard to see the outline of my fingers, that for those few hours every night, it almost feels like I still have a shadow. I never would have realized that not having one feels different from having one, but it does. And the only time I can relieve that feeling is then, when it’s really dark and I can’t see any of myself, let alone the subtle shape I should cast beneath me.
I sat there at the window watching the moon shift silently across the sky until I heard you stir. I crawled back in beside you, jammed my nose into your neck. Even after six days without bathing, you still smelled kind of sweet, like faint vanilla that was sharpening.
You clutched at me aimlessly, still half-unconscious, and squeezed me to you with a sleep-heavy leg that you wrapped over me. “But I have a confession about that last play,” you murmured, dreamlost, face searching for my shoulder to bury itself. You don’t know this, Ory, but you talk in your sleep when you’re upset. We sometimes have entire conversations you don’t remember at all. Your own tiny version of shadowlessness. “I have a confession to make.”
“I know,” I whispered, trying to calm you.
I knew where your memories were leading you. You were talking about the football game where we met.
The sky was piercing gray that day. We were huddled together on the bleachers, shivering in our windbreakers as tiny colored dots dashed back and forth across a field far below us. You leaned closer, looking like a boy, nervous and brash at the same time. A whistle shrieked. My friends had vanished into the crowd like fog burning off a lake in late morning, Marion herding them away—and yours had pulled back just far enough to watch you make a fool of yourself. I didn’t know them then, but Paul and Imanuel were in that group, watching us. Plastic armor crashed.
“I actually don’t know anything . . . about football.” You trailed off into a soft snore. “I’m only here because my friend Paul made me . . .”
I shifted, fixing your pillow gently.
“You ready to get out of here?” you asked, the same way you had the first time. Later you told me it was the most daring, stupid way you’d ever invited a girl to dinner—that you were convinced you had to seem nonchalant to impress me, but were terrified you’d just blown it as soon as the words were out.
“Shh,” I hummed into your ear, but you didn’t quiet. I knew you wouldn’t until I repeated what I’d said—whenever you had this dream, you never did until I answered. “I’m always ready,” I finally said.
You settled, smiling faintly. I stroked your hair until I thought you’d drifted back down.
“It’s so strange,” you mumbled suddenly. Your voice was so clear that I looked at you in surprise in the darkness, but you were still asleep, eyes still closed. Your fingers dawdled clumsily at the collar of your shirt, where the single silver chain necklace you always wear disappeared beneath the cotton collar. “My ring is gone.”
“What ring?” I asked.
“My wedding ring,” you answered.
Deep inside me, something horrible bloomed. A drowning, drowning dread.
“I don’t know how I could have lost it . . .” Your eyelids fluttered. “Don’t know.”
“Maybe you took it off and put it somewhere,” I whispered. I tried to hide the horror in my voice.
“I never take it off.” You smiled faintly at me from the other side of sleep. “You know that.”