I thought she would run, but she grabbed my arms, squeezing with her fingers and shaking us both. “Why am I so horrible that you won’t even love me when I’m the only one around, the only friend you have, the last girl in your entire world and you still won’t love me!”
I wrapped her in a hug, hoping the physical contact might help to bring her back and calm her down. I pressed my cheek against hers, felt her trembling and sobbing, felt cold tears on her skin. I held her and shushed her and calmed her, rocking her slowly, sitting us down again, trying to think of something I could do to make her happy again. I wanted to love her—I wanted it more than anything—but I couldn’t tell her that. It would only make it worse that I didn’t.
“I suck at loving people,” I said at last. “I did it once, and she’s dead now.”
“That’s why you can’t give her up,” Brooke croaked. “A corpse is your perfect woman.”
“I’m the most screwed up loser you’ve ever met,” I said. “My perfect woman is the last thing you want to be.”
“One day I’m going to do it,” she whispered. “I’m going to kill myself, and you won’t be around to stop me.”
“Then I’ll go into Hell,” I said, “and I’ll bring you back.”
We leaned against that tree for another hour before she finally fell asleep. I stared at the empty sky above us. She’d said couldn’t do it anymore, and I honestly didn’t know if I could, either. I needed to light a fire. I shifted her gently, inch by inch, until I was out from underneath her, and I laid her down with her head on my backpack. She moved in her sleep, finding a better position, but she didn’t wake up. I crawled through the dirt on my knees, gathering twigs and pinecones fallen from the branches above us, finding them all by touch in the darkness. I piled them up in a tent shape, barely the size of my fists, and pulled a matchbook from the pocket of my jeans. I lit a match and it flared to life, brilliant in the blackness. I tried it in the kindling but it didn’t catch so I dropped it in the center of my pile and lit another, bright and orange, like a beacon of life in a sea of nothing. I shielded the flame with my hand and put it in the heart of the kindling, and this time it worked, spreading slowly from match to dead grass to stick. I tended the flame carefully, feeding it more fuel, watching the wood turn black and the grass curl up. It caught in the heart of a pinecone and burned it from the inside out, bits of wood and sap snapping and crackling in the heat. It wasn’t a big fire, but I didn’t need it for warmth. I just needed it. I watched it burn and listened to its voice, and when it went to sleep I did too, curled up on the ground next to Brooke and Boy Dog, my messed up little family in the middle of nowhere.
When I woke up Brooke was still there, breathing softly. We’d made it through another night. I watched the sky grow lighter, the black mass of the horizon slowly resolving into a row of trees on the edge of a field. A crow hopped on a fencepost, watching us from the other side of the road, then cawed roughly and flapped away. I let Brooke sleep as long as I could, and when she stirred she looked at me blearily.
“Where to next?”
“Attina,” I said.
She nodded. “No one’s heard from him in decades, but the last contact was in a town called Dillon.”
“What do you remember about him?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Brooke watched the sky, though there wasn’t anything in it. “Attina doesn’t come from my past, just my memories of Kanta’s notes—all I remember is one line: ‘Last seen in Dillon, Oklahoma. Probably useless.’ I don’t know what he can do, how he can do it, or anything.”
“That’s not much to work with,” I said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said quickly. “We have a location, so we go there and start looking.”