"I think I'll be brave

Starting with you

But I'll fall away if you tell me to

I'd rather be wrong

Then hope that I'm right

'Cause I can't go on with this all inside."

Brave

Tawgs Salter

I hold him in my arms as his shoulders shake and marvel at the impossibility of this whole situation. Surrounded by the memory of his mother's blood spilled in a building he called home, and the ashes of that same place—a place we all thought was invincible—he has finally broken.

Tears slide down his cheeks and into the dirt while his fingers' clutch at my clothing, desperate for an anchor. And all I do is hold onto him, unable to take away his pain.

Usually I'm the one who kneels in the dirt, needing something to hold my weight up. I've never seen him having to use it as his crutch. I've never seen him hurt this much. I've never seen tears slide down his cheeks before—never seen his shoulders shake with heart wrenching sobs. All I can do is hold him on the dirt and offer my body to share some of the weight pressing against his.

The grief of this day is palpable in the forest air that surrounds us. The memory is too. I can see her standing in the fire. I hear it crackling as it burns through beams older than either of us. I can taste the ashes that fell into my mouth as we ran. I can still hear the muffled cries of the girls standing around their home, watching it burn into nothingness. I can still feel the utter hopelessness that I know so well: The one that comes when the last thing that was giving you strength crumbles.

I also know that when that final thing crumbles, you inevitably find something else to give you support. For me, that thing is Zach.

I suddenly remember when I asked him where he went when he was looking for me. He told me that he went crazy. He knows that feeling of hopelessness too. Maybe he is more familiar with it than I am. All I know is that it has knocked on his door as well as mine. Today, he must have finally let it in.

"How can I help you?" I whisper into his hair. "What do you want me to do?"

It takes a long moment before he answers me. "Make me forget," he says.

I tilt his chin up and kiss him gently. "I can't," I tell him quietly. "I wish I could, Zach, but I can't."

He stares at me, tears rolling down his already wet cheeks. "Please?" he asks, his voice as quiet as I've ever heard it. "Please, Cammie. Make it stop."

I blink rapidly to stop myself from crying. Zach is the last person on this planet that I want to see in pain. Ever. "Come with me," I say, taking his hand in mine and pulling him to his feet. He doesn't respond, but he follows me as I lead him in the direction of the forest.

The grass we walk over is trampled and marked with the footprints of hurried spies too preoccupied to care. Hours ago, my mother lead the entire student body of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women along the path we walk now. The seventh graders were panicked, the seniors stood straight and rigid, the freshmen whispered about extra credit and whether or not this might be a drill, the staff dispersed themselves along the edges of the group in a rudimentary security perimeter. My mother and Joe walked at the head of our somber parade, leading us to somewhere that we didn't yet need to know the location of. Joe's arm was wrapped around Mom's waist, and my mother—who never leans on anybody or anything—was leaning on him. Bex, Liz, Macey, Zach, and I walked just behind them, defeated and angry, our backs as straight and rigid as every other senior's while we tried our best to hold ourselves together until we could fall apart without the prying eyes of every person around us looking.

Zach and I don't speak now, just as we didn't speak hours before as we walked over this grass. The difference is that we are no longer standing up as straight as we were earlier. Now we stagger across the trampled grass, me holding Zach's hand, Zach stumbling along a few steps behind me. He let's me lead him, and I allow him to be led.

We walk for a long time, weaving between the ever increasing number of trees around us as the forest thickens. The ground slopes upwards and the air begins to get colder, but we keep walking. The sun is setting by the time we reach the place I have been leading us to. The sounds of rushing water, which have been growing gradually louder the farther we have walked, are overpowering here. Here is a cave in the side of a towering boulder covered hill. Inside the cave, a waterfall feeds a pool of water that runs out of one of the caves walls' to form an everflowing stream. I used to come here a lot. After I first returned to Gallagher, when the music still came for me, I would sneak out of the school and spend whole days here. The sound of the waterfall would drown out the sound of the music. Here, I could be nobody and everybody. My pain, my past, my suffering and the suffering I had caused did not exist here.

Zach and I stand in the entrance to the cave for a moment. Zach is completely still, his mouth open slightly as he stares at the waterfall.

"This place is beautiful," he breathes.

That is the other reason I came here. When my world was so dark, when all I could see was the red of the blood I have spilled and the dark of the night I was perpetually living in, this place was beautiful. When I felt like the world was hopeless, this place became my hope.

"I know," I respond. I tug his hand, pulling him towards a crevice in the wall to our left. We sit in it together. "Let it in, Zach. Let it in and then try to move forward."

He does. In the fading daylight, as the water rushes, he does.