So many people. Duluth was a small city, but it had always felt busy to her. Normally she thrived on dense crowds, but recently she’d found herself enjoying remote, empty spaces. Alaska was like that. She and Jonny had flown over glaciers and forests where there was nothing human at all, only thousands of miles without civilization, untouched and unspoiled. It was a place, like the Canadian wilderness to the north of them, owned by the animals and the earth, not the people. The loneliness and sheer size of it made her feel small, but sometimes small was a good thing. She didn’t mind being small.

She smelled caramel corn mixing with the garlic of tomato sauce and the sweetness of baking bread. The air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the heat of the day, and she felt warm in her long-sleeve red blouse and jeans. Her black hair felt like a coat on her shoulders, so she pushed it back.

Her plate of Chinese food wouldn’t go down. She picked at it, but she had no appetite. Instead, she drank Aquafina from a plastic bottle.

She kept thinking about Janine. She didn’t begrudge her friend her weaknesses as a human being. Some people dealt with pressure by taking pills. Some people drank. Some people didn’t deal with it at all. In the end, it was the same. The shame of it was knowing that Janine had a gift, and her gift was wasted now. She remembered meeting a young mother and her son in Janine’s office, a little boy with a zipper scar on his chest and his whole life in front of him because of what Janine had done for him. His was one story among hundreds of patients who owed their lives to her.

And yet what did it do to someone to know that people lived or died because of you? Cindy knew what it had done to Janine. It had made her an addict. Maybe it had made her a killer, too. She’d been so jealous of Janine’s coolness that she didn’t realize how many cracks riddled the ice queen.

She found herself watching the young people in the mall. They always made her smile. Every generation had to make the same mistakes, had to get it wrong before getting it right. They blundered on, innocent, happy, foolish. She saw a boy and girl at a table near her. Both of them looked to be about sixteen. Definitely dating. They shared a Blizzard from Dairy Queen with two spoons, and they leaned across and kissed.

That had been her and Jonny ages ago. Two teenagers in love. Cindy tried not to be too obvious about watching them, but something about their cute preoccupation with each other made it hard to look away. Mooning eyes. Whispers. Touches.