Adam hasn't talked much.

I think I talk too much. Even though I have no idea what to say.

When we go home at night, neither of us say a word.

Friday, Casper has instructed us not to come over. She wants to spend the day with her parents. One last family night.

Adam and I spend the day absolutely nauseous, unable to eat, unable to think about anything else. I catch him with his guitar on the balcony, plucking at the strings in a tune I instantly recognize as Bob Dylan. He stops when he notices me in the doorway, but his eyes never leave the bridge in the distance. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to. It was my promise." I step outside, hugging myself against the cold. "I don't want you to think you—"

"I need to be there for her." He tips his head back, peering at me through his mop of dark hair. "After everything she's done for us, we need to be there."

There is no argument for that. I can't even put my finger on what it is Casper's done for us, but she's done something.

And that something is why we pull up outside her house a little after midnight, and Adam sneaks to the front door to help Casper out because she can't do it so well on her own. It was only a few weeks ago that she came darting across the street in the middle of the night with no problems. A few weeks.

Only a few months since she found out about Maggie dying and said Sorry, that sucks.

A week since she touched my arm and told me she was ready to die.

Armed with the letters she wrote to her old friends, Casper lets Adam help her into the car. They sit in the back seat, hip to hip, Adam's arm around her weary frame, and I drive to the bridge.

We park in my usual spot. Casper refuses to let us carry her. She wants to walk on her own. Together the three of us, soon to be two, head down the bridge, hoods pulled up, heads down, moving slow so Casper can keep up. It's so cold. The wind is angry tonight, gnawing at our clothes, and more than once the ties on my hood smack me in the face.

Adam brought his guitar at Casper's request. We move to Jessica the Jumper's spot and sit down to shield us from the wind. "What do you want me to play?" he asks.

Casper lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "Something. Anything. Pick something you think I would like."

"Blackbird," I suggest. Adam bows his head, brushes his fingers over the guitar strings, and nods.

It's the first time I've heard him sing. His callused fingertips pluck at the chords and the rest of the world melts away as we listen to the sound of him. He has a beautiful voice. Soft and pained and I want to reach out and gather him up. Gather both of them up and promise everything will be okay. I want to protect them. To love them and go far, far away where none of this exists—not the bridge, not Casper's cancer, not Adam's mom. Not anything that breaks us down and brings us to this.