Leni knew it wasn’t a good thing, not a normal mom-and-dad thing, to compare your love to a drug that could hollow your body and fry your brain and leave you for dead. But they said it to each other all the time. They said it the way Ali McGraw in Love Story said love means never having to say you’re sorry, as if it were gospel true.

She wanted his regret, his shame and sadness to be enough for her. She wanted to follow her mother’s lead as she always had. She wanted to believe that last night had been some terrible anomaly and that it wouldn’t happen again.

He reached out, touched her cold cheek. “You know how much I love you.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“It won’t happen again.”

She had to believe him, to believe in him. What would her world be without that? She nodded and got out of the bus. She trudged through the snow and climbed the steps and entered the warm school.

Silence greeted her.

No one was talking.

Students were in their seats and Ms. Rhodes was at the chalkboard, writing, WWII. Alaska was the only state invaded by Japanese. The skritch-skritch-skritch of her chalk was the only sound in the room. None of the kids was talking or giggling or shoving each other.

Matthew sat at his desk.

Leni hung her Cowichan sweater on a hook alongside someone’s parka, and stomped the snow from her bunny boots. No one turned to look at her.

She put away her lunch box and headed to her desk, taking her seat next to Matthew. “Hey,” she said.

He gave her a barely-there smile and didn’t make eye contact. “Hey.”

Ms. Rhodes turned to face the students. Her gaze landed on Matthew, softened. She cleared her throat. “Okay. For Axle, Matthew, and Leni, turn to page 172 of your state history books. On the morning of June sixth, 1942, five hundred Japanese soldiers invaded Kiska Island, in the Aleutian chain. It is the only battle of that war fought on American soil. Many people have forgotten it, but…”

Leni wanted to reach under the table and hold Matthew’s hand, to feel the comfort of a friend’s touch, but what if he pulled away? What would she say then?

She couldn’t complain that her family had turned out to be fragile and that she no longer felt safe in her home, not after what he’d been through.

She could have said it before—maybe—when life had felt different for both of them, but not now, when he was so broken he couldn’t even sit up straight.

She almost said, It will get better, to him, but then she saw the tears in his eyes and she closed her mouth. Neither one of them needed platitudes right now.

What they needed was help.

*   *   *