At the top of my lungs.

It earned me a ferocious scowl from the cook-nurse, but at least it let Simone piss in peace. We heard the flush and a moment later, she came out from behind the curtain and tossed the dripping stick of plastic at the older woman. “Have fun. Go report. Just get out.”

“Don’t you want to—”

“No. Get out.” Simone threw herself onto the bed, draping her upper half over my lap. “Will you keep reading?”

I laid the book across her back, hiding the dull brown wings of a Mitchell’s Satyr, and picked back up where we’d left off. She slept through much of the afternoon, waking up from time to time to hurl herself toward the toilet. Danelle joined us for a bit later on, brushing Simone’s dark brown hair into an elegant twist. Bliss brought us dinner, and pinned small polymer larkspur blooms into the twist, and when I’d eaten and Simone had pushed her food around the plate, Bliss took the trays back to the kitchen for Lorraine.

As the deepening evening made the shadows shift in the hallway, the Gardener appeared in the doorway.

With a dress.

It was a multi-layered confection of sheer silks in shades of brown and creams, all meant to echo her wings and flatter her dusky skin tone. Simone looked up at our sudden silence, saw the dress, and quickly turned her face away before he could see her tears.

“Ladies?”

Blinking rapidly, Danelle kissed the curve of Simone’s ear, the closest to her face she could reach, and silently left the room. Simone slowly pushed herself up to sitting and wrapped her arms around me, burying her nose in my shoulder. I squeezed back as tightly as I could, feeling the tremors start.

“My name is Rachel,” she whispered against my skin. “Rachel Young. Will you remember?”

“I will.” I kissed her cheek and reluctantly let her go. With the book of fairy tales in hand, I walked to the doorway, where the Gardener lightly kissed me.

“She won’t be in pain,” he murmured.

She’ll be dead.

This was the part where I was supposed to go back to my room, or Bliss’s room, or Danelle’s room. This was the part where we were supposed to gather in small groups, pretending we’re anything other than what we are, and mourn the loss that hadn’t actually happened yet. This was where we were supposed to wait for Simone to die.

And for the first time, I couldn’t do it.

I just couldn’t do it.

The lights flickered, our warning to get to our rooms before the walls came down over the doorways. I stepped out onto the sand path, aware of movement in the shadows in the far side of the Garden. I wasn’t sure if it was Avery, Desmond, or another of the girls, and at the moment I didn’t care. The lights went out and the walls hissed behind me, settling into their grooves with heavy thumps that fell flat against the silence.

Walking deeper into the Garden, I stepped along the bank of the stream until I reached the waterfall. I dropped the book on a rock a safe distance from the water and spray and crossed my arms across my stomach, clutching my elbows against a solid weight growing in my chest. My head lolled back on my neck and, leaning against the cliff, I stared up at the panes of glass overhead. Stars were winking into sight against the deepening night, some bright and silver, some pale and blue or yellow and one lone red light that might have been a plane.

A tiny flash of light streaked across the sky, and even though I knew the science—knew that it was just space debris, just rock or metal or scrap from a satellite burning up in the atmosphere—all I could think of was that stupid story. “Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.

And that stupid little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in those harsh moments of reality between matches, because even though matches can burn, they’re light, not heat.

My breath caught against that solid, expanding weight and couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t breathe in, couldn’t breathe out, just this knot of stale air choking me. Leaves and branches rattled in the distance as I fell to my knees, gasping for breaths that wouldn’t come. I curled my hand into a fist and pounded it into my chest but aside from a second, throbbing pain, nothing changed. Why couldn’t I breathe?

A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around, slapping it away as I fell back from the uncoordinated movement.

Desmond.

I rolled onto my hands and knees, scrambled to my feet and through the waterfall into the cave, but he followed me, catching me when I tripped on a dip in the floor and fell again. He lowered me gently to the ground and knelt in front of me. He studied my face as I struggled for air. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but do it anyway, just for a minute.”

His hand came toward my face and I slapped it away again. Shaking his head, he spun me quickly and pinned my arms to my side with one arm, and his other hand covered my nose and mouth. “Breathe in,” he whispered against my ear. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a full breath, you’ll still get some air. Breathe in.”

I tried, and maybe he was right, maybe there was some, but I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was his hand between me and what I needed to live.

“All I’m doing is forcing you to breathe in a high concentration of carbon dioxide,” he continued calmly. “Breathe in. The carbon dioxide attaches to your bloodstream in place of oxygen and slows your body’s responses. Breathe in. When your body gets to a critical point, when you’re on the verge of passing out, your body’s natural responses push past the psychological factors. Breathe in.”

Each time he gave me the instruction, I tried to obey, I truly did, but there just wasn’t any air. I stopped struggling, my limbs leaden and heavy, and sagged against his chest. His hand stayed sealed over my nose and mouth. With all of me so heavy, I could barely feel the weight in my chest, and slowly, as he periodically repeated his instruction, air trickled in. My head swam with sudden light-headedness, but I was breathing. He moved his hand to my shoulder, rubbing it up and down my arm as he continued to whisper, “Breathe in.”

Eventually it became a habit again, something I didn’t have to think about, and I closed my eyes against a blinding sense of shame. I’d never had a panic attack before, though I’d seen them plenty in others, and my own inability to do anything sensible was mortifying. More so, having someone else witness it. When I felt fifty percent sure I wouldn’t fall flat on my face if I stood, I tried to push to my feet.

Desmond’s arms tightened around me. Not painfully, but enough that I wasn’t going anywhere without a fight. “I’m a coward,” he said quietly. “And worse than that, I think I may be my father’s son; but if I can help you this way, please let me.”

If the little match girl had someone curled around her like this, someone warm and solid against her back, his own body wrapped around her, would she have survived?

Or would they have both frozen?