“Listen to me, Sarah. I can’t turn myself in. I can’t sit in a police station and try to explain how an entire school was destroyed and how five people were killed. How am I supposed to explain Henri? Those documents they found in our house? I can’t get arrested. I mean, Six would absolutely kill me right now if she knew I was here talking to you.”

Sarah sniffs and wipes her tears away with the backs of her hands. “Why would Six kill you if she knew you were here?”

“Because she needs me right now and it’s dangerous for me to be here.”

“She needs you? She does? I need you, John. I need you here to tell me everything is going to be okay, that all this is worth it.”

Sarah walks slowly over to a bench marked with initials. I sit down next to her and lean my shoulder onto hers. We’re out of the light and I can’t see her face very well.

I don’t know where it comes from, but Sarah leans away from me and says, “Six is very pretty.”

“She is,” I agree. I shouldn’t have, but it just fell out of my mouth. “Not as pretty as you, though. You’re the prettiest girl I know. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

“But you don’t have to stay away from Six like you have to with me.”

“When we go on walks we have to be invisible, Sarah! It’s not like we can just hold hands and walk down the street. We have to hide from the entire world. I’m hiding just as much when I’m with her as when I am with you.”

Sarah shoots off of the bench and turns around. “You go on walks with her? Do you hold her hand when you two walk down the street?”

I stand up and approach her with my arms out, the sleeves of my coat still caked with dirt. “We have to. It’s the only way I can be invisible.”

“Have you kissed her?”

“What?”

“Answer me.” There’s something new in her voice. It’s a mixture of jealousy and loneliness, and enough anger to give each word a kick.

I shake my head. “Sarah, I love you. I don’t really know what else to say. I mean, nothing’s happened.” A tsunami of discomfort crashes into me, and I rifle through my vocabulary to piece together the right words.

She’s furious. “It was a simple question, John. Have you kissed her?”

“I haven’t kissed Six, Sarah. We haven’t kissed. I love you,” I say, and then I cringe at the acidity of the words, the sentence sounding far worse than I thought it would.