‘Probably. We should go down to the shady part of town, where the shootouts happen.’

‘Let’s.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Totally.’

‘I was fucking kidding, Tara.’

I took a long, deep drag of the cigarette and it didn’t burn enough. It wasn’t killing me fast enough. It wasn’t doing anything at all. Nothing was.

I exhaled as slowly as I could and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Asher. We are too alive for our own good.’

It was like we’d timed it to a countdown. Three, two, one, and both of us took off, running along the busy street, shouting ‘WE ARE TOO ALIVE!’ into the wind. People scattered out a path for us until we ducked into one of the little alleys that bifurcated into more alleys, and then deep into the heart of Where The Shootouts Happen.

We stopped running then. The white kid from suburbia and the girl who grew up in a bubble in India felt very much like what they were. There weren’t any people shooting or anything. Actually, there weren’t any people around, period. But just the fact of the place was enough to scare us. We situated ourselves behind a dumpster.

‘Ash AshAshAsh I’m scared I’m scared I’m scared I’m scare-’

‘Shh, Tara, shut up!’

‘Don’t hiss at me!’

‘Be quiet, then!’

‘I’m tryin—’

There was a loud crash and clatter next to us. Asher froze. I screamed. A skinny black cat stared disdainfully down from atop the dumpster.

‘Fuck.’

I laughed. ‘Yeah.’

Emboldened by our moment of jump-the-gun panic and feeling a little less alive, we executed a careful exploration of the area. We came across a crumbling house with a ‘Condemned’ sign on it. Asher said that it was clearly abandoned. We looked at each other and went in. Inside, it was very dark and very dusty. We followed the creaking staircase up to hollow bedrooms moonlit by bare windows. My skin prickled the way it used to on Caroline’s beach, and I knew there were lonely ghosts blowing around this place too.

‘Hey, Ash, let’s see if we can go up any further.’

We could. A few more stairs later, we were upon a covered rooftop patio that looked up to downtown spreading over the sky.

It was abandoned, like the rest of the house. Left behind because it was unstable. But the view was incredible and the breeze, just the right shade of slight.

I felt the fiercest desire to be right where I was. I wanted to plant my feet into that ground, into this beautiful, abandoned, broken place and never leave it behind.

Looking over at Asher, I could see that he was experiencing the same kind of wonder at peace. Right then, right there, questioning the purpose of our existence did not seem all that important. It was a great feeling.