For some reason, I felt stronger here, holding Elisa up. She weighted me down to the present, made me focus on the definite things. It was always easier to be a hero for someone else. Being your own savior was the hard part.
“They’re saying she killed herself,” Elisa sobbed. She barely got the words out. “She wouldn’t do that, Kaira. She wouldn’t kill herself. Not without saying something. Not without reaching out.”
“I know. I know, it doesn’t make any sense.” Again, that small tell of a lie. It doesn’t make sense, and that’s why I feel responsible.
“We just saw her. We sat with her at lunch and she was happy.”
I bit my lip. I knew the words to say, but that didn’t make saying them any easier.
“Sometimes it’s easy to hide behind smiles. Some people are really, really good at it.”
“But why? Why would she do it? She wasn’t depressed. She was my friend, Kaira, and she never said anything about it.”
“Secrets like that are hard to share,” I said. “Who knows how much stress she was under?”
“I did. We told each other everything. Everything.”
I sighed. “I know. And I don’t understand it either.”
Elisa took a deep, sobbing breath and pulled back. Her eyes were reddened and haloed with smudged mascara. She looked like an angel in mourning.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, thinking of Munin perched on my shoulder. I’d never felt more honest in my life.
? ? ?
Our second school assembly was called that night. Right at sign-in, when we’d normally be sequestered to our dorms, we trudged out in the snow and back into the theatre we’d huddled in one week ago.
I sat in the back once more, Elisa on one side and Ethan and Oliver on the other. I spotted Chris up front, with some other boys from his dorm. He didn’t look my way. Not once. I hated admitting to myself how much it hurt. Why did you push him away?
Why did you want him closer?
Ms. Kenton took to the stage again. The place was already in transition for Elisa’s play, with gray platforms and chains and swathes of fabric. Our president looked like a shadow among the ruins of the set, a ghost.
I didn’t listen to a word she said. I couldn’t focus on her, just the back of Chris’s head and the shadows leaking into the corners of the room like ravens through the trees. I picked out a few words—like “solidarity” and “mourning” and “support groups”—but there was no point listening to her talk about how suicide wasn’t the answer, that there were people here who loved us and wanted us to flourish and were always there to listen.
“Are you okay?” Ethan whispered into my ear.
I jolted to the side, nearly knocking into Elisa.
I didn’t risk speaking, so I shrugged and nodded and kept my eyes on Ms. Kenton, who was now saying that please, everyone, life was precious. Let’s not forget that.
Ethan took my hand as we left the theatre and wandered back through the thickening snow. I ignored the crows lined up on the streetlamps. I ignored Chris, who walked a little farther ahead of me. It felt like I was a character in a video game controlled by someone else. And I was perfectly okay with that. I didn’t want to be responsible. I didn’t want to be here.
But that was the problem with boarding school. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.
? ? ?
“Promise me,” Elisa said in the darkness. “Promise me you’ll never leave me. Not like that.”
“I promise,” I whispered back.
Elisa mumbled something else. It sounded like a prayer to Jane, her words begging forgiveness for not being there. I turned over and buried my head under the comforter. I didn’t like listening in.
The tea from Mom warmed me, slipping me in and out of my heavy consciousness. Mugwort and chamomile, peppermint and rose hips. To calm and strengthen the dreaming mind, to promote deep sleep. I prayed to the gods it would work.
I squeezed the crystal in my hand. I didn’t want to talk to him. Not tonight. Not yet.
I’m not ready to go back. I’m not ready for you to take me.
When sleep finally came, it wasn’t the lull of the tide or slipping under into dream. It was the flap of raven wings and the scent of burnt ash.
I woke up the next morning to a blessed lack of dreams and a few texts from Ethan. I hope you’re okay, this shit’s getting cray and I can’t believe I just rhymed okay and cray. I’m gayer than I thought—don’t tell Oliver. And finally, We need to get out of here.
A grin broke across my face in spite of myself. Leave it to Ethan to be able to cheer me up, even when things were about as shitty as they could be.
If you ever say “cray” again I’ll de-friend you, I typed back. Also, yes please. I need out.