I can do something.
* * *
When we make it back to the ALC, we’re swarmed with eager, curious people. It’s the first excitement I’ve seen from them since I arrived. Someone offers to split half a canned peach with me in thanks, but I feel too guilty to eat it and wave Salvador over instead, because xe’ll appreciate it more than I could. Now that I know where this comes from, now that I’m another mouth to feed, food might as well be wet cardboard. I’m sickened at the idea of taking it from a person who might need it more.
I distract myself by tracking down Nick to tell him my decision, but he’s nowhere to be found. Erin is so caught up trying to organize the food and the people that it would be a dick move to add one more thing to her plate. So I spend the rest of the day helping Sadaf catalog her dwindling medical supplies, even if, halfway through, I have to duck out into the courtyard, into the weeds in the back corner, to throw up more of my organs. A piece gets stuck in my throat. I have to pull it out with my fingers.
The LORD’s gift is not an easy one to bear. It is painful—but the reverend mother says no blessing worth having comes without pain. You will suffer sickness, agony, and rage beyond your imagining. Bear it with dignity, for salvation is forever yours. （But I would make it easier, God, if only I could.）
—Sister Kipling’s notes on the Flood
Trevor’s funeral is the next evening. The whole day, the ALC is still as a corpse. Nobody will so much as breathe until the oppressive taste of the air is gone, until the terrible thing seeping into our lungs is looked in the eyes.
The funeral is held in the courtyard at the back of the ALC, boxed in by a bank and the gate. It can barely hold all forty people, let alone the shoebox-size open grave marked by a rock. I’ve never been to a funeral before. Angels look down on them. Mom’s uncle died when I was eight, and her side of the family stopped speaking to her after she refused to attend the service. Funerals are a function of grief and therefore sacrilege. Loss is God’s plan. How dare you grieve what was always His to take?
It’s getting dark, and the sky is orange and indigo. The only person not gathered around the grave is the sniper on the roof, who sits with her legs dangling over the edge.
I’m the last one out. I ease the door shut behind me, where it hits the brick keeping it propped open. People clump together like algae on the pond in Wagner Commons. The Watch clusters by the gate. Erin stands behind the grave, whispering to someone I can’t see. And Nick stands away from everybody, alone except for his bead lizard.
Faith tries to wave me over to the Watch. Aisha is leaning against her shoulder, desperately trying to wipe away tears. I wave back, offering a smile I hope comes across behind my mask, but make my way over to Nick. After watching him crumble in front of the Vanguard, I don’t like the idea of him standing by himself. Or something. I don’t know.
Nick is focused on his lizard. He stares at each bead as he goes over it with his fingers. I like that we don’t have to say anything. It’s easier this way.
“Thank you all for being here,” Erin says, just loud enough to carry across the courtyard and no more. Erin changes when she’s in front of a crowd. There’s no waver to her voice, no uncertain twitches or nervous tugs at her braids. “The past few days have been difficult, and I am incredibly proud of how we’ve soldiered through. But keeping a stiff upper lip for too long hurts everybody. It would mean a lot to Trevor that we’re letting ourselves come together like this, even for just a little bit.”
How dare you grieve what was always His to take? I haven’t been able to cry for years. The Angels made sure of it; Mom made sure of it. I watched my father die, and all I did was keep it crammed in my chest where nothing can get out except my own literal guts. I watched his head cave around the bullet, turning his face into a bloody flower of skull and tongue, and I accepted it and kept running because I couldn’t do anything else.
“Trevor was our heart,” Erin says. A girl sobs into her sleeve. “He fought for us because he loved us. He stormed City Hall when our funding was cut, and he stuck with us through That Day and every day after. He died for us because he loved us.”