I don’t. Whatever it is, I don’t do it. I’m too useless to do anything. I can’t even think. I could think my way through problems because I didn’t care about anything. I sent my brother into this snake pit and left him here because I forgot how to care. I was an empty shell, and Sarah filled me. Now my brother’s dead and I’m too empty to mourn him the way he deserves.

“Don’t need no car to get to Junktown.” I say the line flatly, with none of the joyful melodies of childhood.

“No train, no boat, no bicycle.” Oria’s line is so low I barely hear it.

“Just two feet and… I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“… some snacks for the ride.” She’s crying, mumbling something that could be the rest of the Junktown song or the national anthem.

I let her go on, apologizing in my own murmur, but I can’t forgive myself.

“People abandoned their cars back there. Or maybe it was the only parking spot. We used to break the windows with this brick. And then one day the brick was gone.” I tuck the razorblade under my waistband. I can’t conceive of using it on myself right now. Not when there’s the slightest shard of hope.

“Ladder, stairs, and fences riding hard going…” Oria answers.

“And Nico who was so fucking smart. Do you remember how smart that little fucker was?”

“… where no buffalo roam, just big iron beasts.”

“So we had no brick and he said, ‘Just a pebble and enough pressure,’ and he was right. But a few days later, we couldn’t find a pebble. That’s how much they cleaned it out to stop us. Can you believe…”

There’s a circle in a streak of stew. A very different shape from the right angle of the razor blade, but the same geometry.

“With big toothy buckets…”

Crawling on my hands and knees, I reach for it.

It’s her Tiffany ring. The diamond is covered in oily brown sauce, and a lentil is stuck between a prong and the stone… which is perfect, like the woman I gave it to.

“Can you believe,” I say to Oria, but not loud enough for her to hear, “she sent me a pebble.”

I didn’t believe him. That first brickless day, I threw a little piece of broken concrete at the windshield, which did nothing.

Standing by the wall, I put the ring halfway down my forefinger while Oria sings our Junktown song.