"Anyway,” she says with much difficulty. “There's a music showcase down at Emel Hall. It's mostly sweaty dudes dicking around with drums and Alice in Chains covers. You should come, and educate yourself on the merits of true music."

"Wait, whoa, are we just gonna ignore the fact you -"

Yvette suddenly repurposes a vast amount of soup as floor cleaner. “That I what?” She snaps.

"Uh, nothing. Nevermind. Yeah, I'll come. Is there a cover fee, or?"

She relaxes visibly. "It's free. I'll see you at seven, then?"

I answer with a mean air-guitar rift, and she smirks and leaves. I take my pizza slice out onto the balcony, where the dying sun paints everything in pale golds and silvers. The tree shadows grow long, tangling in the shadows of passerbys and untangling again.

And that’s when I see him.

I try hard not to see him. I really do. My brain gives a sputter, and I forget how to swallow. My skin crawls, hot at first, then so terribly cold I might as well be in Alaska. I start sweating, and my eyes dart around looking for all the exits off the terrace – the stairs, the back stairs, through the cafeteria and out the door. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. I’m reacting instead of thinking as I pick up my plate and dump it in a whirling flash, two seconds is all it takes, two seconds and the terror has a complete and total hold over me as I dash inside the cafeteria and watch him approach through the window.

Curly, dark brown hair falls into his eyes. Steel-colored eyes, a blue so dark you can’t see the light through them. The color of swords and the ocean, both terrifying, both sharp, both can kill you. He killed a little part of me. His eyebrows are thick and his mouth pleasant, and if you squint he could be in a British boy-band, maybe, possibly. The freckles on his nose are still there, the freckles I’d written stupid poetry about. He’s taller than I remember – taller than most of the boys here and his biceps are huge, he’s been lifting and it’d make any girl swoon but it just makes me want to barf. All I want to do is puke, right here, all over the potted plant I’m hiding behind. But above the panic-static that’s currently turning my brain to mush, another part of me screams wordlessly.

What! The! Fuck! Is Nameless! Doing! Here!

Here, of all places, here, of all goddamn colleges. It has to be a joke. He has to be visiting a friend, or something. He can’t be enrolled here, learning here, sleeping within the same ten miles of me. He can’t be. He just can’t. I came here to avoid him. I moved to an entire state to leave him behind, and now he’s found me again. No, shit, there’s no way he’s here just for me. It’s a coincidence. His shitty, threatening emails earlier in the year were just last-gasp effort taunts, his way of – of – of what? Somewhere in the back of my mind, Dr. Mernich’s sessions stick with me, burning dark and hard. Triggered. His way of triggering me. He wanted me to remember. And now he’s going to get to see me remember. In person.

“H-Hey, are you okay?”

I look up. A girl with honey-colored hair and huge gray eyes behind glasses blinks at me. She smells faintly of musky roses. My stellar powers of observation alert me to the fact she has tits even bigger than Kayla’s and a thick, soft, belly, but I barely register it through my haze of panic.

“I’m decidedly not okay,” I say, my voice thin and high.

“Yeah you look like crap,” The girl covers her mouth, then whispers. “Um, not in general. But right now you look sick, is all. Bad-sick. Not, um. Rad-sick.”

Rad-sick. I can feel the literal stars beginning to gleam in my eyes as history unfurls and I discover the only person on the planet Earth who may have beaten I, Isis Blake, in making stupid puns. And having fabulous curves. And smelling like roses. But then I remember I’d been in the midst of undergoing a mild panic attack.

“You are really cute and all,” I say quickly. “But I’m currently facing down the fact my ex-boyfriend goes to this college, which is extreme grossness. You probably don’t want to stick around for something that’s the same level of gross as, like, a vat of Nickelodeon slime, so if you could just leave so I can get back in the mood of being terrorized helplessly, I’d appreciate it.”

Glasses-girl frowns, and searches the crowd. “He terrorizes you? I’m so not down with that, fryslice. Which one is he?”

“Oh, he’s the one with the hellish menacing aura barely concealed beneath a mask of vague antisocial tendencies and abs and he’s currently walking into this very room and oh my god I have to go. To space.”

I dart out the back door just as Nameless pushes into the cafeteria. I gulp twilight air and my steps are so big and frantic I almost trip. Glasses-girl steadies me by grabbing my elbow.

“Hey, um, seriously, do you want me to take you to the nurse?”

I consider her for a long moment. “You know, that would be lovely. But first, I’m going to puke on your shoes so you probably won’t want to do that, or even be remotely nice to me anymore.”

“Okay.”

I unceremoniously puke on her shoes. When I’m not making attractive hurling noises anymore, the girl laughs.

“I’m Diana. These are my roommate’s shoes. She’s a bitch.”

“Oh man,” I wipe my mouth. “I love messing up bitch-shoes. I’ve done it so often. Mostly to this one stupid pretty boy. And now you. Not that you’re a stupid pretty boy. Because you have boobs, not a penis. Obviously. Um.”

There’s a thoughtful pause. Diana looks thoroughly informed of her own gender.

“I’m Isis.”

“Nice to meet you, Egyptian goddess of fertility,” Diana smiles.

“She was full of magical spells and almost always naked, which is coolio except for probably sand in her hooha, but I’m not actually into marrying my own brother – sidenote: grody – and if I had Isis’ banging magic powers – pun totally intended – I would be hexing dudes, not sexing them, and I’d definitely not stay here for four years to figure out what I don’t mind doing to make money until I die and oh god I need to lie down.”

So I do. On the sidewalk. Diana watches me with unmistakable morbid curiosity.

“Your puke puddle is right by your head,” She points out helpfully.

I wrinkle my nose and scooch five feet sideways into the grass. And the grass turns into a hill and I’m rolling and it smells like earth and new fresh green sproutbabies, and when the world stops spinning and I stop moving and Diana teeters down the hill asking if I’m okay, bringing that soft smell of roses with her, and I start laughing.

All the terror in my chest was spun out by the rolling fall. It broke the hard, icy grip of Nameless. The smell of the sun-warmed ground and the feel of grass tickling my butt reminds me it’ll pass. He’ll pass. He’ll die, also, someday, and then I’ll really be free, but it’s not the end of the world. He’s here. I’m here. But we’re different people now. I’m stronger, because of everything that’s happened. Because of him, and the pain. But mostly because of Sophia, and Jack, and Kayla and Wren.

I want to be happier. Happy like Sophia is now. Happy like I want Jack to be, now.

Even if they’re both gone. Even if they’re all gone.