ELLIS: I wish I could believe you.

VADA: want a selfie where I look all Xena Warrior Princess?

ELLIS: God.

VADA: you laughed

ELLIS: Vada?

VADA: yeah?

ELLIS: Have you moved on?

VADA: interesting question

VADA: let’s examine the evidence

VADA: exhibit a: I have your pics over my bed

VADA: exhibit b: I’ve paid a small fortune to redheaded cam girls who look vaguely like you

ELLIS: Wait, seriously?

VADA: quiet in the court

VADA: exhibit c: my cammer name is Morgan

VADA: your honor, clearly I have hang-ups about my former BFF/life partner/soulmate

VADA: the prosecution rests

ELLIS: You’re such a dork.

ELLIS: Do you really have hang-ups about me?

VADA: si, mi pajarito rojo

VADA: I really do

ELLIS: Good.

ELLIS: Because I have them about you, too.

The next day we sat in her kitchen, poring over data from the cloned drive. Ryan Vandermeer’s life read like a checklist of the All-American bro:

• Varsity baseball.

• ACT score: 20 (51st percentile).

• No college applications.

• Two arrests for alcohol possession as a minor.

• Application to United States Marine Corps (rejected).

“Huh,” I said. “Weird. Max told me Ryan signed up for the Marines, but not that he was rejected. Wonder why.”

“They’ll reject you for anything. It could’ve been something like asthma.”

“Yeah, but the rest? Cutting, arrests, shitty test scores? Something heavy was going on.”

Ellis took a nervous hit off her vaping pen. “Those are symptoms. We don’t know the cause.”

“Or do we?” I tapped my fingers on the counter. “On Tumblr he said he looked like a stranger to himself. He felt like there was a bomb inside him.”

She took another hit. She’d been going at it nonstop since I showed up with food: fresh prawns for asopao de camarones—Puerto Rican shrimp soup—and plantains to mash up for mofongo. Now I pulled ingredients from paper bags, and brand-new copper pots, shiny as mint pennies, and a bottle of wine.

“What is all of this?” she said.

“Happy housewarming.”

Her face softened. “Why are you so sweet to me?”

Our little phrase.

I looked away. My chest felt like an atrium full of small, ecstatic birds whirling around madly, smashing in puffs of bright feathers, no regard for glass or each other.

Her cheer didn’t last. She got up to pace, trailing a ghost ribbon of steam.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Max is digging into my life, looking for—I don’t even know. We’re both under the microscope. How can you be so calm?”

“Low blood pressure, little bit of weed.”

“I’m serious, Vada.”

In that case:

Guilt.

Fatalism.

Fatigue.

I knew what Max would find out about me. In a way I looked forward to it, letting that weight roll off my back. Letting go and seeing if I’d sink or float.

There’s a bit of a self-destructive streak in me. Nero fiddled while he watched his city burn. I pressed harder on the gas pedal.

People who create have to do a little destroying to stay sane.

“What about this Skylar person?” I said. “The other log-in on the laptop.”

“Dead end.”

Skylar had deleted her data shortly before Ryan’s death, and Elle couldn’t recover it. This girl knew how to hide her tracks.

“What if she knows stuff? Like why Ryan was so fucked-up, and why he hurt himself?”

“Those are some big what-ifs.”

“Got a better idea?”

Elle shrugged.

“She’s our best lead,” I insisted. “She was important enough to have an account on his computer.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘she’? ‘Skylar’ is gender-neutral.”

“Her log-in icon is a high heel.”

“Which proves what?”

“I’m not gender stereotyping. I’m making an educated guess based on statistical probabilities, Professor.”

She frowned. “What if the name was Ellis? What would you assume?”

“I’d assume it was you.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Just you.”

Elle exhaled, her eyes focused on something far off. This was my chance, I realized. To ask about Emily.

“It’s weird,” I said. “Your parents never struck me as the type who like gender-neutral names.”

“They’re not.”

“I guess people are full of surprises, huh?”

“They are.”

She’d never introduced us. Her parents were toxic, pretty much convinced their gay atheist daughter was the Antichrist. “But don’t pity me,” she’d said. “I don’t fear them anymore. I feel sad for them.”

I met her mother once. But I never told Ellis.

Me and my secrets.

There was no way I could prod more without setting off alarms.

“Put the wand down, Hermione,” I said. “We’re making lunch.”

She was better with sharp things and I was better with fire, so she cut and I cooked. I started the broth and peeled prawns, clumsy but determined; threw in minced garlic and cilantro; swept chilies from the cutting board while Elle was still chopping; and she grinned to herself and I knew she was remembering things, as I was. All those nights back in Chicago when we’d cook by candlelight and invite our friends over. Blythe and Armin from school, Hector from the ink parlor. Blythe joked that we were like an old married couple, and Elle blushed, and later Elle and Blythe hooked up and I joked to myself that old married couples were essentially platonic anyway, and besides, it wasn’t like I knew what the fuck I wanted.

I still didn’t.

We set the coffee table with tin camping plates, poured Chablis into jelly jars. Laughed at how fucking rustic it was. City people out here on a rocky shard of earth floating in a cold ocean. It felt more like home than anything had in a very long time.

We raised our wine and paused, fumbling for a toast.

“To good friends?” Ellis said finally.

“To good friends.”

Clink.

The cabin was heady with the scent of shrimp and spicy-sweet herbs. A water curtain of light moved across the table, gold and green spilling over us, pooling, running off. She’d taken the floor this time and left me the couch. I watched her hands, silver twirling through her fingers.

“Are you okay?” she said.

I should have burned my sketchbooks. Keeping them was sick. Like keeping the bones and teeth of a child, fragments of a precious thing, lost before it could reach its potential.

“I’m fine.” I ate a spoonful of something red and tasted only the metal.

Elle got up and fetched the wine bottle and topped me off without a word. I touched her wrist as she poured and the ribbon of pear-gold silk twisted, broke into ragged threads. The splatter on the table looked like drops of liquid sun.

My touch could still do that. Make her tremble.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she said, sitting beside me on the sofa.

“Not really.”

“When has bottling it up ever not backfired and exploded in your face?”

“I’m not bottling it up,” I said, literally stuffing the cork back into the wine bottle.

She tried not to laugh. “Come on. You’re supposed to be the one who’s in touch with her feelings.”

“I’m in touch with feeling stupid and whiny. Other people have it worse.”

“It’s not whiny, Vada. It’s life-altering. You’re allowed to freak out.”

“Freaking out means accepting that I’m a freak. I’m still in denial, and I like it here.”

“What are you afraid of?”

I made a fist with my bad hand and a razor thread pulled at my spine. “I’m not afraid. I’m resigned. This is it, Elle. It’s not going to heal more.”

“Are you taking pain meds?”

“I don’t need them.”

“I’ve seen you grit your teeth when you think I’m not looking.”

“I don’t fucking need them.” I picked up my spoon and tried to hold it level. After a second my hand spasmed and drooped. “This is the problem. Not the pain. This.” I tossed the spoon onto the table. “It’s fucking gone. I’m as weak as a baby and I’ll be like this the rest of my life. I can’t draw, I can’t do shit. All I have left is jerking off for random creeps on the Internet, like the loser I am.”