"Casper—"

She looks back at us with a grin. "What? Oh, come on; don't look at me like that. I'm not gonna jump. You should try this, though. The view..." Her face turns away from us. The wind whips and pulls at her short hair and bright clothes, wanting to pluck her off the bridge and into the river below. I imagine her tiny body hitting the surface, bones shattering into a million pieces before the water even enters her lungs. Instant death.

Then I think of her dying as she is now. The sickness eating away at her insides until there's nothing left. Which one would really be harder to watch?

I don't let myself think as I move forward and swing a leg over the rail to join her. Adam's breath hitches, but he doesn't follow.

The ledge isn't even wide enough for my feet to fit on completely. I hang onto the rail tightly and do as Casper does...leaning out slowly over the water. Like this, there is no safety. No rail to catch me if I slip. I'm almost flying. Between me and death, there is...nothing. Nothing in the way but my own decision to hang on.

For a second, that thought, that feeling...is freeing.

"You feel like you could float away," Casper whispers. I think it's something I'm not meant to hear.

"Guys..."

Adam's voice is so soft, so pleading and lonely and it drags me back. Away from the water, back over the railing alongside Casper until our feet are planted firmly on the ground again. He's watching us with eyes so wide I can see myself in them. His shoulders are squared tightly with tension.

I am guilty.

I bite my lip. Casper must notice it, too, because she groans and puts her arms around Adam's neck. "Hey, don't look like that. We weren't gonna jump."

"I know that," he mutters. But with the way he doesn't meet our eyes, I'm not so sure he does.

#

I don't want to bring Adam and Casper home with me because it isn't much of a home to show off. But Casper insists and I'm out of ideas for where else we should go. So I drive back to the apartment complex and lead them into my gloomy abode next to the noisy neighbors, where the single lamp illuminates only a small corner of the studio.

Shrugging out of my coat, I make it a point not to look at my guests. "I would give you the tour, but, uh, here it is."

Casper ventures inside without hesitation, shimmying out of her jacket and tossing it onto my bed. "This is awesome."

"Not really, no."

"Yeah, it is. It's your own place. How cool is that? I'd kill for a place of my own." When she puts it that way...I guess it is kind of cool. She stands in the center of the room. It looks bigger with her there because she's so small. The walls might swallow her up.