It’s just so ridiculous that I could feel this alone, a guy like me. I spend my whole damn life avoiding having to talk to people, and then bang it’s gone and I’m all on my own, so all I can think about is getting them back. For what? So I can avoid them again, so I can snipe and threaten and bitch at anyone who tries to get near me over and over until everyone stops giving a shit and it’s all just routine, in and out like the tides. I guess that’s the way it works, and I like the way it works, misery loves company and I loved their company and their misery. But I loved her misery the most, and I’m not saying that to make you think I got in there because I didn’t and I never wanted to either. She’s on a completely other level to me, something I couldn’t get a handle on even when she knew who the fuck I was, and now she’s had so much time alone I wonder if she’s even the same girl any more, the same cursing, sulking, shining star I knew and loved. And I did love her, the deep, aching love of comrades, the miserable in arms. When we were trapped together all that time, I never assumed that I knew anything about her, or that she could read me any better than I could read her, but man was I wrong. She could see through my stupid thick skull as though she’d built me herself, as though every thought in my head she’d had first and put into me just to keep it warm. I don’t know if that’s one of her things, or maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was at hiding.

We were on the roof one night, I was leaning over the guard rail, right over the edge and looking down at the tarmac below, letting myself get dizzy. I’d just started smoking again for like the third time, and when I lit one up she turned her head down from the stars and said to me, “this shit is getting to you isn’t it?” I figured she’d decided my smoking was because of what was going on back then, but like I said she’s on some higher level. She said, “I can see you jumping right off this building, Drey, and it won’t help you. Look at the stars.” Cryptic, that’s her. All the time, saying all these things that didn’t make any sense. But I looked at the stars, and I smoked my cigarette, and the next night I did it again.

Maybe three weeks later when Lan and me had gotten over that thing we had, we went up to the roof with a bottle of something that burned my throat, just to remember who we were and why we were there. We were sitting up against the rail and I was so damn drunk that when I stood up and leaned back against it the whole world tipped right upside down, so I looked down over the edge of the building and all I had in my eyes was the desperate, endless the stars swinging around me, and the floor wasn’t even far away any more it was right there for me to touch, infinity sitting before me and shining. I guess Lan grabbed my ass and pulled me back, but the whole thing just shows that Riy was right inside my head the whole time, spinning the world out of focus.

And that’s what I loved about her, the god damned unpredictability of it all, the way she’d just sit and let the darkness pour in as if it welcomed her and she welcomed it. I wanted more than anything to be like that, to just let it all flow through me like I was a part of it, but I that’s not the person I am. That’s why seeing her now disturbs me in a way I didn’t anticipate at all, like stuff is still moving through but she’s not standing still and watching it, understanding it any more, it’s carrying her and she can’t control it. I watch her drink and throw up her food like it makes perfect sense to break yourself up that way, as if she didn’t save me from that over and over again, only I can’t save her because she’s on a higher god damn level and wouldn’t listen to me if I screamed or whispered or begged. And that’s why it’s all fucked up, because I spent all this time escaping her, and all the others, and then all this time finding and rescuing them, only to find there’s no rescuing some things. There’s no escaping the fact that I’m not really good enough to do this alone, however much I want to.