“So amazing.” Tears sprang to my eyes, as much from the memory of Helen’s story as from the realization that was settling into my stomach. That I was losing my best friend in the world. “She died knowing she hadn’t accomplished everything she wanted to accomplish, making all the changes she wanted to make in the world. But she died happy, because she knew she did everything in her power to make those things happen.”

For a while I would get messages from him, on social media platforms. For a while he would send postcards—from Montana, from Saskatchewan.

Then he wouldn’t.

Sitting there, watching the sun slip away, I could feel the loss of him even though he wasn’t yet lost. I couldn’t control what I saw. I got the outline, but not the details. Did he become a hugely successful rock star? Did he find a boy he loved, who loved him back, and then build an incredible life together? Solomon strummed a chord, which came out muffled with his mittens on.

I’d been reading a lot, about people with severe mental illnesses. Their memoirs, their essays. Books and articles by the people who loved them. I knew what weird, twisted paths their lives took. How often they ended up in jail, or dead in a ditch after a knife fight, or a cabin in the woods with no contact at all with the outside world.

But those weren’t the only stories. People got treatment, found jobs, built families. Created great art. Made the world a better place.

His life would be full of pain, but also beauty and love. So would mine. So was everyone’s.

Solomon could be happy, in a life I couldn’t imagine. One where I played no part, not because he didn’t love me, but because life would take us down two different roads.

He would be okay. So would I.

He held his guitar closer. Strummed three chords. A shiver went through me. The telltale tingle.

“Play me a song,” I said.

He smiled, and started to play. I shut my eyes and saw, as clearly as when I looked through the lens, the story he was telling. Great clouds and bubbles and spreading ink stains of emotion. The eerie power of what he was making, and how his emotions could transfer to me. How he could make me feel what he felt. Music was magic, and he summoned it up from somewhere (the other side) I could not imagine.

“You’re going to do great things,” I said.

“So will you,” he said. “You fucking lunatic. I pity the fools you go up against.”

At the exact same time, we both said, “It takes a certain kind of crazy to change the world.” Then we laughed together. Then we fell silent.