Friendship. Pure, sparkling friendship shines between them, and I wonder at the thickness of the thread that has bound them through years and tragedies.

Jenna prickles at my thoughts, and I half wonder whether the thread that binds us is made stronger or weaker by her death. Or maybe it was cut in half the moment she died and now I’m untethered and desperately trying to do anything I can to reconnect us.

Nolan’s hand tightens around mine, grounding me. “I’m okay with it,” he says to Alex. “It’s her choice. Whatever she wants.”

We put our bleeding hearts away to begin lighting the trees. Alex keeps stealing looks at me when he thinks I’m too busy unwinding lights, but instead of looking away when our eyes meet, he just smiles down at me from where he and Nolan sit perched on the low branches of the same tree.

It goes quickly. Alex is surprisingly slapdash with his application and even tells Nolan not to be so “precious” about it.

“It’s going to look cool even if you don’t wrap every single knot.”

Nolan doesn’t look up from wrapping the world’s tiniest twig. “I want it to be perfect,” he says.

“I blame you for this, you know.” Alex glares at me. “What have you done with my devil-may-care friend?”

I grin. “I canoodled him,” I say simply.

Even if we were to string up enough lights to cover the forest of the lost golden-haired princess, it still wouldn’t be as bright as Alex’s and Nolan’s laughter.

That night, when I leave my bed to go to the Orman room, I run the last few steps down the hallway, eager to see Nolan’s face after an evening spent with him and Alex, exchanging stories about Jenna and Emily and Avery beside the fireplace downstairs.

We talked for hours, and the more Nolan spoke of Avery’s precociousness and Emily’s sweetness, the more Alex recounted stories of “those Endsley kids” causing trouble in the lighthouse room, the less dead they seemed. I said so to Nolan, after telling them how Jenna and I met, how she saved me from my own darkness and showed me a real family.

“Talking about her makes me feel like I haven’t lost her.”

“You haven’t,” Nolan said. “We haven’t lost them. They’re not gone; they’re just somewhere else.”

“Somewhere we aren’t, though.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “That’s the part that’s complete shit.”

I thought talking about Jenna for so long would hurt, but I feel lighter than air, a helium balloon held to Nolan’s fist by the line between us.

We said our good nights when the store closed, but I had only been in bed for an hour when I felt a tug on the thread, a low pulse.

Come away, come away.