We spent Christmas completely alone—we didn’t feel like being around my family or going to any parties. We drove to a gas station to buy junk food and ate it in a parking lot with the stereo blaring, not caring about the happy families sitting around their Christmas trees nearby.

“I hope I can get through it all somehow,” Danny said to me that night in bed, looking worried. “I think it’s starting.”

“What’s starting?”

“Little things. A while ago, my foot twitched so hard that I stalled the car. My left hand was numb for almost two days, and I feel like my whole body is shaking all the time.” His tone was indifferent, as though he were listing off problems with a computer.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I hadn’t noticed any of that.

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to cause any panic. I have to get another MRI in January, so I wanted to wait until then.”

“I’m not going to panic!” I exclaimed, sounding much too shrill. “But you have to tell me things like that. Talk to me, there’s no reason for you to go through it alone. You have to tell Jörg, too—you can’t keep secrets from us.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded.

I wrapped an arm around him. “I’m not going to leave you alone. No matter what happens. Whatever the future brings, we’ll handle it together.” Then I laid my head on his stomach and added, “I don’t regret anything. Not one day, not one second. If we could turn back time, I would choose you all over again.”

“Thank you,” Danny whispered.

“What would have become of me without you? I’d have ended up just another sheep with no idea of what life was all about. Seriously, Danny, I’m so unbelievably glad I met you.”

We had tears streaming down our cheeks almost all the time these days. We often didn’t even notice anymore. Like now. If he hadn’t wiped my tears away with his finger, I wouldn’t have realized I was crying. It wasn’t important, anyway. The important thing was that we were managing to keep on living a normal life, or at least a normal as possible. The important thing was that we spent this day happy. And then the next one, and then the one after that.

 

***

 

A sharp scream awoke me that night. I jolted upright in bed, frightened. Danny was sitting up beside me. His shirt was soaking wet, and he was trembling all over and gasping for breath.

“What’s wrong?” I exclaimed, shocked, and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. “What happened?”

“Panic!” His breathing was ragged and shallow. “Panic! I can’t breathe!” He clutched his chest in agitation, tearing at his T-shirt. I hastily scooted over and pulled his hand away.

“No, no, no. Shh, calm down!” I loosened his cramped fingers. “Breathe here,” I said, putting his flat hand on his stomach. “Down low. Breathe deep against your hand.”

“I can’t,” he wheezed.

“Yes, you can. Don’t talk. Breathe.”

Danny obeyed. We sat there for what felt like forever, focusing only on breathing in and out, until he finally calmed down a little. He kept his eyes shut, concentrating on taking deep abdominal breaths.

“I’m going to die,” he said abruptly, opening his eyes and locking them with mine. His eyes were as blue as ever, gleaming with the same lust for life. They didn’t fit his words. “It doesn’t matter what we do. I’m going to die!”

“I know.”

“What will it be like?” he asked. “Not the disease, I mean. Actually dying. Will it hurt? Is there really a light at the end of the tunnel?”

Cautiously, I grasped his hand. “Nobody can answer those questions for you.”

“The thought of just suddenly not being there anymore…gone…just gone…” His lips trembled, and he squeezed my hand tightly. “It’s scary. Just gone, extinguished. Disappeared…”

I thought back to the poem he’d written me. “Nobody is just gone, Danny. Part of them always remains. Call it their soul, call it what you want. Something stays. In people’s hearts, in their memories. In nature around us, in the light, in the wind. You wrote that yourself.”

“I hope I can watch over you from wherever I end up.” He smiled weakly. “I mean, someone’s got to.”

“I’ll be okay,” I lied. I would never be okay without him. “I’ll always have you with me.”

“What happens afterward?” His gaze shifted out into nothing again. “Do angels come and pick me up? Or is that just the end? Blackness for all eternity?”

“It keeps going somehow. There’ll be life after death in some form.”

He bit his lower lip. “Will I see Tina again?”

I pray you will, Danny. I pray you will! “I’m sure of it!”

“Will I see you again someday?”

I bit my lip, too, to keep myself from breaking down. What would it be like if we met up again in heaven? Would I be old and he be the way he was now? He’d turned twenty-three the week before. We both knew he wouldn’t live to see twenty-four. Probably not even to see my twenty-first birthday this summer.

“Stop saying goodbye again. We still have enough time.” Enough time. We could never possibly have enough time...

Abruptly, he stood and rummaged in the bottom drawer of the dresser. I knew what he was looking for. With trembling hands, he pulled out the plastic bag, along with a fresh syringe. “I won’t be able to sleep otherwise,” he murmured. “And I’m scared,” he added, as though that was the excuse for his behavior. And it was.

Danny took the cord out of the bag and wrapped it around his right arm, using his left hand and his teeth to pull it tight. I watched him sadly. His sweaty hair stuck out in every direction, and his wet T-shirt clung to his body. He’d gotten skinny, I realized—without all that muscle mass, he’d lost quite a bit of weight.

Images from the past three years flickered through my mind. The way he’d forced me to give him my phone number at the festival, with an unheard-of amount of self-confidence. Him leaning against the limousine, looking like he’d stepped off the pages of a glossy magazine. His desperate attempts to keep me away from him. Our first kiss, which had given him such a guilty conscience. How helpful he’d been to Christina and everyone else around him. I saw him in the ring, winning one kickboxing match after another. Him effortlessly taking on five guys at once in order to protect me, and beating up that pathetic loser, Angelo, for ramming a knife into Ricky’s side. I recalled every detail of the night he’d told me the truth about himself and his life. The way he’d learned to trust me and give himself over to me, bit by bit. And then there were the painful memories—of Christina’s death, him breaking his hand in a rage, his endless screaming into the nights that followed.

Now he was sitting on the floor, dissolving the heroin. His downward spiral had been like something out of a movie. Nothing would come of his big modeling career, and he would never again be a world champion kickboxer, because he’d been sentenced to death.

Christina’s death had been what triggered it. I had no doubt of that. Danny had identified with her too strongly to be able to handle losing her, which was why his body had broken down so suddenly. If Christina hadn’t lost her life in that tragic way, Danny probably would have been able to stay healthy for years to come. Probably even long enough for the medical world to find a way to stop the disease from progressing.

Christina’s killer had two deaths on his conscience.

For the thousandth time, I wondered what Danny’s life would have been like if his goddamn father hadn’t destroyed everything. But now, for the first time, I also asked myself whether my life wouldn’t have been different without him as well. The worst part was, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been warned. I’d slid into the catastrophe fully aware and with my eyes open. But what I’d told Danny before had been the truth: if someone had turned back time and I ended up back at the moment that defined my entire life, I’d have picked Danny again. Even if I’d known from the beginning how it would all turn out, and how it would influence my life. Maybe even because of that.

I thought back to what he said to me at the paddock about having never had a chance at a normal life. The words were so true, they hurt my soul. Fate really was a cruel mistress. She even sent him a guardian angel on the exact day he’d rather not have had one. When I’d first seen his demolished car, I was shocked at myself for thinking it, but I still knew it was the truth: it would have been more humane for him if he’d just died behind the wheel that morning. But fate hadn’t even granted him that.

Danny’s fingers were trembling so violently that he missed the vein for the fourth time. Sighing, I got up and went over to sit beside him on the floor. “Give it here.” I held out my hand.

He gave me a skeptical look but then hesitantly put the syringe in my palm. I placed his arm on my knee and got the vein on the first try, pressing the liquid out of the syringe in one quick motion and then pulling the needle out again. I held my thumb over the injection site for a moment to keep it from bleeding and then undid the cord and put everything back into the bag. I wrapped the used syringe up in foil and disposed of it in a closed trash container. Finally, I joined Danny on the bed as though it was all the most natural thing in the world.

“I love you,” Danny said. “More than my entire worthless life.”

“How long you live isn’t what decides whether your life is worth something or not. You’ve probably lived more intensely than thousands of people who’ve died of old age.” I took his hand. “Your life has been more than valuable. You’ve left a mark on the world!”

He smiled weakly. “Nothing is really dead,” he said quietly. “It just changes, takes on another form. Don’t forget that later.”

“You’ll live on inside me,” I promised. “I love you more than my life, too.”

Danny sank down onto his pillow and rolled onto his side. I snuggled up against his back and put my hand on his stomach. He took my hand in his, pushed it up underneath his T-shirt, and placed it on his chest. After all this time, even though that position had become almost a ritual for us, the gesture still touched me.

I felt his heartbeat slow when he finally fell asleep. A storm was howling outside; dawn was already approaching. In the light of the streetlamps, I could see tree branches bending in the icy wind tearing at the window shutters. It was blowing from the north, I could have sworn it.

Slowly, I stood up and went to the window. I spent a long time just standing there, staring into the dark night sky, searching for that place Danny had shown me from the roof.

The north wind, I thought. I remembered a poem I’d once read:

I feel the north wind again, the promise of the horizon. How many possibilities has he who knows the north wind?

I go with the north wind, I need not know the way.