Chapter 5

What did you say then? On that night of our honest conversation, when you spun me the story of your love? That you didn't need anyone but our girl next door?

Then what the hell, Al, why did you make that choice?! What the hell gave you the right to die?! Idiot! Why didn't you think about how I'd live without you?..

I'll never forgive you. Never!

And I won't let you go.

One soul for two, remember? Mine tore loose at the root that day and could never grow back.

I can scream at you, but you're still here because I need you. Like air.

Oh, no, I'm not ready to let you go, do you hear me?! No!

I stand on the Bluff among human husks, sweaty and filthy with the traces of other people's hands and blood on my clenched fist, drawn tight as an angry bowstring, and I understand: you were better than every one of us. So why you, and not me, Al? Why?! Who in this fucking world is responsible for justice?!

I look at you as if you're alive, and a scream grows inside me. It tears out of every cell of my body in jagged little grains, slices my veins open with razor blades, and expands in my chest as a burning knot of pain... My heart is tearing itself to pieces. Again.

One day it will tear all the way through, and I'll let you go so I can cast myself down into hell. But not now. Not now, Al!

"Carter, no!"

You hold your hands out in front of you, but I'm already running, already tearing forward. I rip off my T-shirt and throw myself from the cliff into the black abyss... Down to where the ocean roars in the darkness below us. To put out this flare of pain I can't handle.

To be closer to you.

Even for a second.

Falling into the cold water, I scream first with my soul, then with my throat. I throw myself into the high waves again and again, pulling myself forward with broad strokes until I have no voice and no strength left, and until the waves finally spit me onto the shore.