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By the time I woke up the next morning, reading my father's letters the night before felt like nothing more than a strange dream. Just like I had felt then, it seemed like the night had been something separate from reality, separate from myself. I had read the letters, I knew that, but on some level the fact didn't quite reach me, orit only reached some other me, and I could take that other self and hide her as easily as the shoebox I'd kept my father's letters in. I decided I could live with that idea; the distance comforted me, I think.

But, I'd be lying if I said there was anything else I could take comfort in. In the new light of day, I realized that I had distanced myself from everything, everyone, around me. That strange dream had been a long one, and those letters were just the closing notes, signalling me to wake up at last.

If Holly wasn't smiling when she first woke up that morning, he face beamed brighter than I could ever remember upon seeing me, like the light of a clear dawn streaming through a window; and yet, it only served to make the cold stone in my stomach sink even deeper. For no reason I could understand in the moment, she skipped up to my side and wrapped me in a bear hug. "Welcome back," she said.

I gave her a perplexed stare. "Where did I go?"

For a second, I thought the ironic half-smile that creased her lips was the only response I would get. Finally, she shrugged. "Where do you ever go?" she asked, rhetorically, curling a lock of my hair around her finger before tucking it behind my ear. "Somewhere in your head, I guess. I can always see you when you're there, but I can never get to you. It's like you're running away from me."

I shook my head. "I'm not running away from you," I muttered, "You're the reason I come running back." It was corny and stupid, granted, but sometimes corny is what you need--and besides, a part of me was just getting used to actually talking again. It's hard, coming out of autopilot when you don't realize you were in it to begin with. I sighed. "I'm sorry, Holly."

She shook her head, still smiling. "Don't be. There's nothing to be sorry for, you silly goose."

My laugh was more than a little rueful. Dad--our father was wrong. I wasn't Holly's strength, at least not anymore; she was mine. I don't know if that made the prospect of losing her less or more difficult to imagine. Still, there was one thing I had to be sorry for. "Mom's dead," I reminded her. I'm not sure what reaction I expected from her, but it wasn't a smack in the face.

It was the first time either of us had hit the other. Though, I daresay, I deserved it--for reasons wholly contrary to the ones Holly'd had in mind, of course. "Don't, Hannah. Just...don't. Don't even try to blame yourself for that. He killed Mom, not you." We held each other's gazes for a long moment, each as stubborn as the other, but in the end it was Holly who gave up, and I watched her expression shift to sorrow as she moved in to hug me. By some deeper instinct, we both twined a hand through the other's hair, silently exchanging small pieces of our personal griefs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you, I just--"

"I know." I smiled into her hair.

She pulled back, just a fraction, to look into my eyes again. I felt her hand tighten in my hair, just barely, and her eyes narrowed in thought. Or, I think, contemplation might be a better word for it. So many thoughts were racing through her mind, reaching out at me through her eyes and being pulled back with force, that I couldn't pick out any single one. Her lips pouted a little, then parted, ready to say something even before she had decided what--or maybe before she could decide against it; in a flash, a single thought came through, a single emotion, so strong it nearly sent me reeling to the floor. Holly's face flushed from neck to hairline, and she pushed me away from her--or ripped herself away from me, I'm still not entirely sure. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I know, you--you're--I didn't mean to do that."

"You didn't do anything." I laughed, but it only made Holly cringe.

"I know. I never do anything. But I thought about it, and that's just as bad, with you."

I walked up behind Holly, wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Holly, I don't know--"

She shrugged me away again. "Yes, you do. And I should've known better. I know how much you--you've tried so hard to--and I come along and--God, I can't even think." She shook her head, sighed.

"Holly, whatever you think happened, or didn't happen, or whatever...it's not your fault, hey?"

"No, it is my fault. It's my fault for letting you think you still need to protect me. Like you used to when our parents were fighting. Except this time it's something else, something...what if I don't want to be protected from it? How can you make a decision like that if you can't even trust me knowing about it?" My mouth opened, trying to respond, but nothing I thought of sounded right, felt right. Holly sighed again. "And then the whole thing with Gerard, I mean--"

That, I couldn't help chuckling at. "What? You having a boyfriend is a bad thing, now?"

"He's not my boyfriend, he's an excuse."

"Gerard's been our best friend since kindergarten," I corrected, more than a little confused.

"He's an excuse to be normal. Or a way to pretend we're normal. Or something, I don't know! But it's not just him, it's everything. Everyone. Susan and Jerry, Marie and Mr Dunsworth."

"Okay," I said, crinkling my nose, "you've lost me. What do they have to do with...whatever we're talking about? What are we talking about, anyway?"

"We're talking about us, Hannah. I know I'm only thirteen, and you're so much stronger and braver and smarter than I am. But did you ever stop to think that maybe being so strong might not be a good thing? Like maybe trying to protect me--from yourself, from whatever--it's affecting everyone else, too? People who care about us, who care about you, but you're so sucked up in this...whatever...that you can't seen what you're doing to everybody. We're all going nuts out of our heads to try and help you, and you just cruise by on autopilot, with your heart turned off because you're afraid to break mine. In what universe does that make sense?"

I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to say, didn't know what to think. She couldn't be talking about--no, that wasn't possible. I tried to push the thought from my mind, but stopped. Holly was right, in a way. She deserved my honesty, even if I couldn't face the truth, myself. "Holly, I--"

I was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Are you girls almost ready?" It was Jerry.

Holly wiped the tears off of her cheeks and out of her voice. "Just another minute or two," she called through the door, "I still can't decide what to wear."

Jerry's laugh boomed through the walls. "I knew having that much choice wouldn't be a good thing. Just make sure we're not late, hey?"

I listened as his footsteps retreated down the hall, then turned to Holly, confused. "Late? For what?"

"Yea, nice talk. I think we resolved some real issues, don't you?" Holly dropped her gaze to the floor, shook her head. "I'm sorry, you don't deserve that. Yet. It's Sunday, we're going out for breakfast at Joey Dee's." I was beginning to worry that the dumb look on my face was going to become a permanent fixture. "The diner Steph works at? Jerry's sister? We've gone every week since before Christmas." Somewhere, though, beneath all the disappointment, I saw the faintest hint of a smile tug at Holly's heart. "Here," she said, rummaging through the closet and throwing a shirt and some pants at me, "just wear this, and try to smile."

I held the outfit up in front of me, crinkled my nose. "Is this what I've been hearing?" I tossed the offending articles onto my bed, and replaced Holly in the closet's entryway. "Are these yours or mine?" I asked, holding out a pair of jeans to her.

"Well, judging by the fact that you'd never be caught dead in--" I leveled a questioning gaze at Holly, and she threw her arms in the air. "But, of course you can borrow them. After all, what are sisters for?" I held up a top to go with the jeans and, with a sigh, she waved me a go-ahead.

If Holly thought any more about it, she didn't say anything to me. We emerged from our bedroom bright and fresh, and every step I took on my way downstairs took me two steps further away from my ordeals the night before. I stopped at the foot of the stairs, half-shocked, and Susan matched my expression to a T; she was as surprised to see me in what I assumed were Holly's clothes as I was to see her, by her own standards, entirely underdressed for a day out, even if it was just a diner breakfast. Susan's gaze moved from me to Holly with an unsubtle question in her eyes. "Holly, are those--"

Holly laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but don't ask, I don't even know, myself."

Susan frowned with contemplation for a moment, then offered me a warm smile. "You look good today, Hannah. You girls have fun, alright?" With that, she fluttered out to the kitchen, and I gave Holly a worried glance. She's not coming with us?

Holly shrugged, held my gaze for a moment. I'll tell you later. I nodded, and we started walking again, outside now, where Jerry was waiting for us in his truck. With most of the city in church or in bed, the streets were mostly clear, and it was a short drive to the diner, where Steph greeted us with a smile. She took a double-take when she saw me, eyed Holly suspiciously, who threw her arms up in innocence. "She picked the outfit herself, I swear."

Steph looked skeptical for a moment, but eventually smiled, bending down to wrap me in a hug. "I was expecting a few things when you finally came back to us, but a fashion sense wasn't one of them." She chuckled to herself while I rolled my eyes. "You look good today, kiddo. Don't run away on us anymore, hey?" Holly laced her arm through mine to punctuate Steph's statement, and Jerry nodded in agreement. I had to wonder, though--more than a little afraid of the answer--why everyone was making a point of telling me how good I looked. I asked Holly about it, once we got home, and without a word she dug out an old photo album and showed me baby pictures from before and after she was born. The brightness of my smile on Christmas day, the dull absence of...existence, just a week earlier. For months on end now and without respite, the light had gone out of my eyes, out of my spirit. I felt almost as guilty for that as I did for Mom...

Steph brought us our meals surprisingly quickly, bacon and eggs for everyone, a milkshake and a side-plate of fries that she set between herself and me with a wink as she sat down next to Jerry. I smiled, a little nostalgic, as we both dug into the fries first, while a horror-stricken Jerry gave us both an incredulous stare. "So how's Gerard doing?" Steph asked Holly around a mouthful of strawberry-flavored potato.

Holly shrugged. "He's good, I guess. He almost flunked our history test, despite all the help I gave him studying. He wants to take me out on, like, a date or something, but..." she trailed off, and her eyes darted in my direction before she could check herself. I smiled my encouragement. "I don't know," she said, waving her fork in the air for emphasis, "maybe I'll go."

Steph looked dumbstruck. "I thought you two've been official for--how long? You've never been on a real date?"

"Almost a year, now," Holly admitted, a little sullen. She glanced at me again, but it was too quick to glean whatever she was thinking. "But we've been friends since we were five, it's...kinda weird." It was a half-truth, an excuse--and a lame one at that--but Steph and Jerry either didn't catch it or let it go. Gerard's an excuse, she had said earlier. I couldn't kill the feeling that she had meant something more by that than how she'd explained it.

After breakfast, as we were getting ready to leave, Steph pulled me aside. It's Gerard, isn't it? The boy from before, that Holly was kissing?"

It took me an age to figure out what she was talking about, but finally the memory surfaced: the day in the diner, when we talked. I'd seen Holly and Gerard kissing on our doorstep, when I was on the bus home from...it was the day before Mom finally left the hospital. "Yeah, something like that," I said, shaking the tears out of my thoughts--I didn't want to go back to that...whatever. It feels like you're running away from me...

Steph nodded. "I know that was right before you--well. I was just wondering if you managed to come to any conclusions about that. You haven't exactly been, um, talkative, recently."

I tried to smile at that, but it somehow came out wrong. I looked out through the storefront window, where Jerry was starting up the truck and Holly was staring at me, tapping her foot on the asphalt with an ironic smile. "It's...something we've been trying to talk about for a while now, I think. Something always keeps coming up, though."

Steph smiled, brushed a hand over the top of my head. "Well, just remember what I told you before," she said, evoking a confused stare from me. She clarified: "Don't try to run away from it. Especially after the way she's taken care of you through all this, it's even more evident than before how much you two need each other. Don't lose her the way I'd lost Jerry."

I looked out at Holly again, suppressed a frown. Steph's heart was in the right place, but her advice was inherently self-conflicting. Laying everything out was the surest way I had of losing Holly forever. Still, judging by the knowing look on Holly's face, I could guess that Steph was at least a little right--I wouldn't be able to run away from this forever.

Description
By the time I woke up the next morning, reading my father's letters the night before felt like nothing more than a strange dream. Just like I had felt then, it seemed like the night had been something separate from reality, separate from myself. I had read the letters, I knew that, but on some level the fact didn't quite reach me, orit only reached some other me, and I could take that other self and hide her as easily as the shoebox I'd kept my father's letters in. I decided I could live with that idea; the distance comforted me, I think.

But, I'd be lying if I said there was anything else I could take comfort in. In the new light of day, I realized that I had distanced myself from everything, everyone, around me. That strange dream had been a long one, and those letters were just the closing notes, signalling me to wake up at last.

If Holly wasn't smiling when she first woke up that morning, he face beamed brighter than I could ever remember upon seeing me, like the light of a clear dawn streaming through a window; and yet, it only served to make the cold stone in my stomach sink even deeper. For no reason I could understand in the moment, she skipped up to my side and wrapped me in a bear hug. "Welcome back," she said.

I gave her a perplexed stare. "Where did I go?"

For a second, I thought the ironic half-smile that creased her lips was the only response I would get. Finally, she shrugged. "Where do you ever go?" she asked, rhetorically, curling a lock of my hair around her finger before tucking it behind my ear. "Somewhere in your head, I guess. I can always see you when you're there, but I can never get to you. It's like you're running away from me."

I shook my head. "I'm not running away from you," I muttered, "You're the reason I come running back." It was corny and stupid, granted, but sometimes corny is what you need--and besides, a part of me was just getting used to actually talking again. It's hard, coming out of autopilot when you don't realize you were in it to begin with. I sighed. "I'm sorry, Holly."

She shook her head, still smiling. "Don't be. There's nothing to be sorry for, you silly goose."

My laugh was more than a little rueful. Dad--our father was wrong. I wasn't Holly's strength, at least not anymore; she was mine. I don't know if that made the prospect of losing her less or more difficult to imagine. Still, there was one thing I had to be sorry for. "Mom's dead," I reminded her. I'm not sure what reaction I expected from her, but it wasn't a smack in the face.

It was the first time either of us had hit the other. Though, I daresay, I deserved it--for reasons wholly contrary to the ones Holly'd had in mind, of course. "Don't, Hannah. Just...don't. Don't even try to blame yourself for that. He killed Mom, not you." We held each other's gazes for a long moment, each as stubborn as the other, but in the end it was Holly who gave up, and I watched her expression shift to sorrow as she moved in to hug me. By some deeper instinct, we both twined a hand through the other's hair, silently exchanging small pieces of our personal griefs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you, I just--"

"I know." I smiled into her hair.

She pulled back, just a fraction, to look into my eyes again. I felt her hand tighten in my hair, just barely, and her eyes narrowed in thought. Or, I think, contemplation might be a better word for it. So many thoughts were racing through her mind, reaching out at me through her eyes and being pulled back with force, that I couldn't pick out any single one. Her lips pouted a little, then parted, ready to say something even before she had decided what--or maybe before she could decide against it; in a flash, a single thought came through, a single emotion, so strong it nearly sent me reeling to the floor. Holly's face flushed from neck to hairline, and she pushed me away from her--or ripped herself away from me, I'm still not entirely sure. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I know, you--you're--I didn't mean to do that."

"You didn't do anything." I laughed, but it only made Holly cringe.

"I know. I never do anything. But I thought about it, and that's just as bad, with you."

I walked up behind Holly, wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Holly, I don't know--"

She shrugged me away again. "Yes, you do. And I should've known better. I know how much you--you've tried so hard to--and I come along and--God, I can't even think." She shook her head, sighed.

"Holly, whatever you think happened, or didn't happen, or whatever...it's not your fault, hey?"

"No, it is my fault. It's my fault for letting you think you still need to protect me. Like you used to when our parents were fighting. Except this time it's something else, something...what if I don't want to be protected from it? How can you make a decision like that if you can't even trust me knowing about it?" My mouth opened, trying to respond, but nothing I thought of sounded right, felt right. Holly sighed again. "And then the whole thing with Gerard, I mean--"

That, I couldn't help chuckling at. "What? You having a boyfriend is a bad thing, now?"

"He's not my boyfriend, he's an excuse."

"Gerard's been our best friend since kindergarten," I corrected, more than a little confused.

"He's an excuse to be normal. Or a way to pretend we're normal. Or something, I don't know! But it's not just him, it's everything. Everyone. Susan and Jerry, Marie and Mr Dunsworth."

"Okay," I said, crinkling my nose, "you've lost me. What do they have to do with...whatever we're talking about? What are we talking about, anyway?"

"We're talking about us, Hannah. I know I'm only thirteen, and you're so much stronger and braver and smarter than I am. But did you ever stop to think that maybe being so strong might not be a good thing? Like maybe trying to protect me--from yourself, from whatever--it's affecting everyone else, too? People who care about us, who care about you, but you're so sucked up in this...whatever...that you can't seen what you're doing to everybody. We're all going nuts out of our heads to try and help you, and you just cruise by on autopilot, with your heart turned off because you're afraid to break mine. In what universe does that make sense?"

I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to say, didn't know what to think. She couldn't be talking about--no, that wasn't possible. I tried to push the thought from my mind, but stopped. Holly was right, in a way. She deserved my honesty, even if I couldn't face the truth, myself. "Holly, I--"

I was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Are you girls almost ready?" It was Jerry.

Holly wiped the tears off of her cheeks and out of her voice. "Just another minute or two," she called through the door, "I still can't decide what to wear."

Jerry's laugh boomed through the walls. "I knew having that much choice wouldn't be a good thing. Just make sure we're not late, hey?"

I listened as his footsteps retreated down the hall, then turned to Holly, confused. "Late? For what?"

"Yea, nice talk. I think we resolved some real issues, don't you?" Holly dropped her gaze to the floor, shook her head. "I'm sorry, you don't deserve that. Yet. It's Sunday, we're going out for breakfast at Joey Dee's." I was beginning to worry that the dumb look on my face was going to become a permanent fixture. "The diner Steph works at? Jerry's sister? We've gone every week since before Christmas." Somewhere, though, beneath all the disappointment, I saw the faintest hint of a smile tug at Holly's heart. "Here," she said, rummaging through the closet and throwing a shirt and some pants at me, "just wear this, and try to smile."

I held the outfit up in front of me, crinkled my nose. "Is this what I've been hearing?" I tossed the offending articles onto my bed, and replaced Holly in the closet's entryway. "Are these yours or mine?" I asked, holding out a pair of jeans to her.

"Well, judging by the fact that you'd never be caught dead in--" I leveled a questioning gaze at Holly, and she threw her arms in the air. "But, of course you can borrow them. After all, what are sisters for?" I held up a top to go with the jeans and, with a sigh, she waved me a go-ahead.

If Holly thought any more about it, she didn't say anything to me. We emerged from our bedroom bright and fresh, and every step I took on my way downstairs took me two steps further away from my ordeals the night before. I stopped at the foot of the stairs, half-shocked, and Susan matched my expression to a T; she was as surprised to see me in what I assumed were Holly's clothes as I was to see her, by her own standards, entirely underdressed for a day out, even if it was just a diner breakfast. Susan's gaze moved from me to Holly with an unsubtle question in her eyes. "Holly, are those--"

Holly laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but don't ask, I don't even know, myself."

Susan frowned with contemplation for a moment, then offered me a warm smile. "You look good today, Hannah. You girls have fun, alright?" With that, she fluttered out to the kitchen, and I gave Holly a worried glance. She's not coming with us?

Holly shrugged, held my gaze for a moment. I'll tell you later. I nodded, and we started walking again, outside now, where Jerry was waiting for us in his truck. With most of the city in church or in bed, the streets were mostly clear, and it was a short drive to the diner, where Steph greeted us with a smile. She took a double-take when she saw me, eyed Holly suspiciously, who threw her arms up in innocence. "She picked the outfit herself, I swear."

Steph looked skeptical for a moment, but eventually smiled, bending down to wrap me in a hug. "I was expecting a few things when you finally came back to us, but a fashion sense wasn't one of them." She chuckled to herself while I rolled my eyes. "You look good today, kiddo. Don't run away on us anymore, hey?" Holly laced her arm through mine to punctuate Steph's statement, and Jerry nodded in agreement. I had to wonder, though--more than a little afraid of the answer--why everyone was making a point of telling me how good I looked. I asked Holly about it, once we got home, and without a word she dug out an old photo album and showed me baby pictures from before and after she was born. The brightness of my smile on Christmas day, the dull absence of...existence, just a week earlier. For months on end now and without respite, the light had gone out of my eyes, out of my spirit. I felt almost as guilty for that as I did for Mom...

Steph brought us our meals surprisingly quickly, bacon and eggs for everyone, a milkshake and a side-plate of fries that she set between herself and me with a wink as she sat down next to Jerry. I smiled, a little nostalgic, as we both dug into the fries first, while a horror-stricken Jerry gave us both an incredulous stare. "So how's Gerard doing?" Steph asked Holly around a mouthful of strawberry-flavored potato.

Holly shrugged. "He's good, I guess. He almost flunked our history test, despite all the help I gave him studying. He wants to take me out on, like, a date or something, but..." she trailed off, and her eyes darted in my direction before she could check herself. I smiled my encouragement. "I don't know," she said, waving her fork in the air for emphasis, "maybe I'll go."

Steph looked dumbstruck. "I thought you two've been official for--how long? You've never been on a real date?"

"Almost a year, now," Holly admitted, a little sullen. She glanced at me again, but it was too quick to glean whatever she was thinking. "But we've been friends since we were five, it's...kinda weird." It was a half-truth, an excuse--and a lame one at that--but Steph and Jerry either didn't catch it or let it go. Gerard's an excuse, she had said earlier. I couldn't kill the feeling that she had meant something more by that than how she'd explained it.

After breakfast, as we were getting ready to leave, Steph pulled me aside. It's Gerard, isn't it? The boy from before, that Holly was kissing?"

It took me an age to figure out what she was talking about, but finally the memory surfaced: the day in the diner, when we talked. I'd seen Holly and Gerard kissing on our doorstep, when I was on the bus home from...it was the day before Mom finally left the hospital. "Yeah, something like that," I said, shaking the tears out of my thoughts--I didn't want to go back to that...whatever. It feels like you're running away from me...

Steph nodded. "I know that was right before you--well. I was just wondering if you managed to come to any conclusions about that. You haven't exactly been, um, talkative, recently."

I tried to smile at that, but it somehow came out wrong. I looked out through the storefront window, where Jerry was starting up the truck and Holly was staring at me, tapping her foot on the asphalt with an ironic smile. "It's...something we've been trying to talk about for a while now, I think. Something always keeps coming up, though."

Steph smiled, brushed a hand over the top of my head. "Well, just remember what I told you before," she said, evoking a confused stare from me. She clarified: "Don't try to run away from it. Especially after the way she's taken care of you through all this, it's even more evident than before how much you two need each other. Don't lose her the way I'd lost Jerry."

I looked out at Holly again, suppressed a frown. Steph's heart was in the right place, but her advice was inherently self-conflicting. Laying everything out was the surest way I had of losing Holly forever. Still, judging by the knowing look on Holly's face, I could guess that Steph was at least a little right--I wouldn't be able to run away from this forever.