Aidy did topple over, but Bigs was so close behind, he caught her by the shirt. She responded by pretending it didn’t happen, and yelled, “Are you hurt? Is Ruby with you?”

It was impossible to understand what Harrison said back, so I told everyone, “I’ll go down and get him. I owe him that.”

No one protested. Not even Teeny, for all her claims that we were to stay aboveground. Aidy reapplied her forgotten scowl as I took off my backpack and set down my frozen peas. She kept her snarled face fixed on me until I disappeared out of view.

Back down the ladder and into the tunnel, I yelled Harrison’s name, following the sound of his voice like it was a game of Marco Polo. “You got me,” he said when I somehow ended up with a fistful of his hair in my hand.

I startled, leaping back, trying to see his form amid the blackness, but finding nothing. The proof of him seemed more impossible than my Marley. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m sitting.”

“So I’ve learned.”

“I can’t leave.”

“Because you’re hurt?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m here to help.”

He laughed at that one.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” I said.

“Can you go now?”

I tried to use the power of my imagination to implant Harrison-like features onto the amorphous shadow using his voice. Sloping nose. Slender cheeks. Cutting jaw. Full eyebrows that grew in perfect arches. Brown eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Imagining you,” I said.

“That’s very weird.”

“So is sitting alone in a sewer.”

“Touché.”

We went quiet.

Not until Harrison said, “Yeah, I know, I’m crying,” did I realize he was. The throaty, snotty sound of his tears pushed to the forefront of sounds around me.

“Oh, wow. You are,” I said.

“Don’t even start.”

“I’m not. I swear.”

For another yawning stretch of time, our cloaked world became consumed by his ragged breaths. Each of his inhales sounded gasping and hopeful, determined to be the one fresh and full enough to renew him. Eventually, he found the breath that was, and said, through a jerky sniffle, “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve done things that should make me mad. But I never am.” He wiped his nose on what I could only guess was his arm. “I haven’t seen you much since I went to college. Not that we were close before that. I’m not trying to rewrite history. But I realized something down here. You’ve been a part of my life for as long as I’ve lived in Cadence, and that’s the only life that’s ever mattered to me. You’re not only my girlfriend’s sister. You’re my family.”

I listened on, stunned.