“Levi,” I say, because it’s the name that must feel the most real to him. He’s as much Levi as I’m Emma. He and I meant something to each other this year, in a way no one else will ever know, or understand. What he and I had, it has to have mattered. I have to believe that it did.

The room has stopped shaking, and Levi pulls me close to him, presses his lips to my cheek.

“Before it happens,” he breathes into my ear. “Before we forget it all…”

“I’m scared,” I admit to him.

“Me too,” he answers back. “I don’t want to leave this life. I don’t want to leave you,” he says, his voice so tender it almost kills me to hear it. “Not before we’ve gotten a real chance to live it. But maybe it’s better this way, if we forget. When we die—we won’t know, will we?”

“We could throw a chair through the window,” I tell him, tasting the salt of tears in my mouth. I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying. “We could jump…”

Levi doesn’t answer me, and I know we’re thinking the same thing: jump to what life? In moments, we won’t even know who we are. Would living like that—with no thoughts, no identity, no way to survive—even be worth it? That thought is scarier than letting the smoke overtake us. Much scarier than dying here, together, knowing we did everything we could for the people we love.

“It was always you, Emma,” he chokes. I can’t answer him. It hurts too much to talk.

So we stand there, holding each other. I smell the smoke that’s right outside the door, and in a few minutes I walk to it, to open it. The doorknob is scalding, and I snatch my hand away. A wall of thick, black fumes stops me from leaving. I don’t want to walk through that. I don’t know what might greet me on the other side. White-hot fire? Flames that would burn my flesh?

It’s a strange sensation, losing all of one’s memories and thoughts and feelings. It starts out small. I feel vaguely foggy, like someone’s drugged me. Thoughts flit in and out of my head, but they are mere musings. They linger like flies, buzzing around my consciousness. I hope my friends are safe. I don’t remember why I wish for this, but I do. I know I love the boy who’s sitting on the floor next to me, holding my hand. We’ve ducked down low, because that’s what you do in a fire. Isn’t it?

I look down at my own hand, threaded through the boy’s. Whose hands are these?

Why am I coughing so violently?

Oh. There’s smoke billowing through the door.