I rolled my eyes at her. “Don’t be silly, you can’t ignore me. I said you’re not going back. Okay?”

“Look, I don’t like it either, As?ghara, but I think it’s a good idea to get some help.”

“It’s like you’re not hearing me, Ada. I don’t want you to see her again.”

Ada set her jaw, getting ready to answer back, but I’d had enough of arguing with flesh. I collected power in my hand and ran it across the marble, sending a deep streak of pain through her skull. Ada gasped and clutched her head, but I didn’t stop. I sank my fists into the marble and split her head open with a crashing migraine, and it worked. She never went back to that therapist again.

That was how I kept us all safe, from doctors and diagnoses and the medications they surely would’ve shoved into Ada if they ever saw exactly what her mind looked like. I needed her to rely on only me, so I could take her home and we could be with our brothersisters again and it would be as if none of this had ever happened. The way up is the way down.

It’s not easy to persuade a human to end their life—they’re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it’s not the decision to cross back that’s difficult; it’s the crossing itself. I had high hopes, sha, since Ada was in a lot of pain. It was always easier to push my agenda when she was hurting, and to be fair, she was always hurting, but this one was different. This one was about Ewan.

Ada and Ewan had been on and off since her graduation, instant messaging and e-mailing each other, then finally meeting up on the coast of Texas, where he pressed her against a yellow soft-top Jeep and told her that he’d fallen in love with her from the moment he saw her, all the way back in that blue room. It was as if he’d forgotten that he left her in Virginia, back when he’d told her that it was his girlfriend who made him happy. Now he was full of fresh confessions.

“You’re the woman I’ve dreamed about all my life, but I’ve got nothing to offer you,” he said. He was drunk. “You deserve so much more than I can give. You make me feel like I can do anything I dream of.”

The wind whipped dust around them. The town they were in was close to the southern border.

“I can’t imagine my life if you’re not in it.”

Inside the marble, Ada turned and whispered to me. “He thinks I’m too good to be true,” she said.

“You are,” I answered sourly. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of loving Ewan again. She could do it alone if she wanted. Me, I’d been on Skype with one of Ewan’s friends just a few weeks before, watching the boy strip off his clothes, his eyes a narrow and hungry blue. We were in New Jersey because Ada was visiting some Christian friends of hers, sitting in the same room as these good girls while the boy stroked his erection in the Skype window. I kept the laptop screen angled away from them and I thought it was fucking hilarious—they would’ve lost their minds if they knew what I was looking at. Like most people, they kept thinking that Ada was still just Ada. I kept my headphones in as he shuddered and moaned, spilling semen over his tight stomach.

He and Ewan played tennis together in Texas, so I knew it could only go so far, but still, it was fun to play. I sent the boy pictures of Ada, her skin bared and brown.

“I haven’t been working out as much as I used to,” I added.

“You have the smoothest body I’ve ever seen,” he said, and that was when I knew I could have him. It wasn’t a surprise—it never is.

He was the one who picked Ada up from the airport in Texas and took her to Ewan. He even went out drinking with them that night and never mentioned to Ewan any of the obscene things he’d said and done over the flattened glass of a computer screen, all for me. I liked that boy. He was a bad person—he was almost as interesting as Soren. I would’ve liked to fuck him, but Ada had chosen Ewan and it was impossible to get away.

She was na?ve, sha. She actually thought things would change after Ewan told her he loved her, but of course, they didn’t. He still had his girlfriend and he acted as if his confession by the yellow Jeep never happened. I can say a lot about Ada, but even she has limits, so she ended things with him and Ewan didn’t fight it. It was their second breakup if you count the one in Virginia, and honestly, I wouldn’t have allowed all this nonsense back and forth if it had been anyone else. But it was Ewan, and so the wheel kept turning. This time there were no e-mails, there was no contact, and Ada found herself enveloped by her first real heartbreak. I tried to help, to distract her with new lovers, but she was inconsolable. The girl couldn’t even listen to most of her music because he’d given it to her and all the songs reminded her of lying in bed with him when it was winter outside. It was pathetic. I had loved him too, in my way, but after he left, I knew it had been a mistake. Ewan was just a man, after all, just flesh—selfish and typical flesh upon that. Besides, he’d mostly been spending time with me, not her, and I didn’t expect anyone to be able to see their filthy wants reflected in my eyes and still stay.

In the middle of Ada’s pain, I kept looking for a window I could use to take her home. She didn’t have the strength to fight me, and my plan could’ve worked then, except that one day, Ada got a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. When she picked up, Ewan’s voice poured into her ear.