She flicked off the light, almost as quickly, in sympathy, in sudden fear, as if she couldn’t contextualize the violence past a certain point, couldn’t cope with its full extent. She crossed the room again, in the dark, turned on a lamp—warmer, forgiving light—and dropped her blade and sat down beside her friend, against the bookshelves.

For some reason, she thought of Hannah; she remembered the hour she’d spent alone in Hannah’s car outside the house in the fall, during the party. It occurred to her now that something had been happening to Hannah while Sarah sat there bored, thumbing the volume knob on the dormant radio, something Sarah had missed, something that conditioned Hannah to shriek so fiercely when she turned the keys in the ignition and the radio ripped out at earsplitting volume before she pitched it down to nothing. It was a different Hannah who had gone into the house than had come out of it. Sarah couldn’t put it all together—there was a dissonance where the revelation should be, a gulf she was just shy of crossing—but she knew there was violence there, there was violence all around them, buried in those shadows.

Along Beth’s neck she saw a string of faint bruises, a sickly purple against her skin, and for the first time Sarah thought, Someone did that. Beth was sitting there beside her in the lamplight, making herself as small as possible, and she was intact, but also: she was terribly wounded. We thought you were dead.

Sarah pulled her lips into her mouth and imagined how big this house must feel with just one person in it, how devoid of sympathy. The smell: old breath, blood, and ripe sweat—it was fear. She took Beth’s shoulders into her arms, fit Beth’s smaller body alongside hers, wrapping it as best as she could. Despite the lamplight, ambient darkness returned to them both. Beth startled at the initial contact, and then she settled into it.

Next to her, Beth imagined a light flickering: an orange base, a bluish purple tinge. Maybe a ring of residual red. She knew it wasn’t real—she knew she had no brothers or sisters left. But it was enough for her. She recognized that it was Sarah holding her, and human warmth was human warmth, but at the same time, she felt like she was finally, mercifully alone.

They, too, were there until morning.