It is almost time, and they are on the roof.
The same roof he nearly stepped off a year before, the same one where he stood with the devil and made his deal. It is a full-circle moment, and he doesn’t know if it has to be here, if he has to be here, but it feels right.
Addie’s hand is linked in his, and that feels right, too. A grounding force against a rising storm.
There is still a little time, the hand on the watch a fraction of a fraction of a fraction from midnight, and he can hear Bea’s voice in his head.
Only you would arrive early to your own death.
And Henry smiles, despite himself, and wishes he had said more to Bea, and Robbie, but the simple fact is he didn’t trust himself. He has made his good-byes, though they will not know it until he’s gone, and he is sorry for that, for them, for whatever pain he might cause. He is glad they have each other.
Addie’s hand tightens in his.
It is almost time, and he wonders what it will feel like, to lose a soul.
If it will be like a heart attack, sudden and violent, or as easy as falling asleep. Death takes so many forms. Perhaps this does, too. Will the darkness appear and reach a hand into his chest, and pull his soul out between his ribs like a magic trick? Or will some force compel him to finish what he started? To walk to the edge of the roof, and step off? Will he be found on the street below, as if he’d jumped?
Or will they find him up here, on the roof? He does not know.
He does not need to know.
He is ready.
He is not ready.
He wasn’t ready last year on the roof, when the stranger held out his hand. He wasn’t ready then, and he isn’t ready now, and he is beginning to suspect no one is ever ready, not when the moment comes, not when the darkness reaches out to claim its prize.
Music streams, thin and tinny, through a neighbor’s open window, and Henry pulls his thoughts back from death, and the edge of the roof, to the girl with her hand in his, the one telling him to dance with her.
He pulls her close, and she smells of summer, she smells of time, she smells of home.
“I’m here,” she says.
Addie has promised to stay with him until the end. The end. The end. The end.
It echoes through his head like the striking of a clock, but it’s not time, he still has time, though it is vanishing so fast.
They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time—angry, lonely, content—but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid.
But he is not alone.
It is beginning to rain again, the air gone damp with the metallic scent of storms in the city, and Henry doesn’t care, thinks there is something to be said for symmetry.
They turn in a slow circle on the roof.
He has not slept well in days, and it has made his legs heavy, his mind too slow, the minutes speeding up around him, and he wishes the music were louder, wishes the sky were lighter, wishes he had just a little more time.
No one is ever ready to die.
Even when they think they want to. No one is ready.
He isn’t ready. But it is time. It is time.
Addie is saying something, but the watch has stopped moving, it hangs weightless on him now, and it is time, and he can feel himself slipping, can
feel the edges of his mind going soft, the night heavy, and any moment the stranger will step out of the dark.
Addie is guiding his face to hers, she is saying something, and he doesn’t want to listen, he’s afraid it’s a good-bye, he just wants to hold on to this moment, to make it last, to will it still, turn the film into a freeze frame, let that be the end, not darkness, not nothing, just a permanent moment. A memory, trapped in amber, in glass, in time.
But she is still speaking.
“You promised you would listen,” she says, “you promised you would write it down.”
He doesn’t understand. The journals are on the shelf. He has written her story—every part.
“I did,” he says. “I did.”
But Addie is shaking her head.
“Henry,” she says. “I haven’t told you how it ends.”
