It’s too much to think about, too much to put into a text or a phone call, so she pushes her phone into her pocket and decides she’ll figure out as much as she can before she tells anyone else.

It’s not until the Q pulls up and she sees Jane that it occurs to her this might have finally been too much for Jane too.

Jane’s sitting there, staring straight ahead. There’s a rip in her shirt collar and a fresh cut on her lip. She’s flexing her right hand over and over in her lap.

“What happened?” August says, rushing onto the car and dropping her bag to kneel in front of her. She takes Jane’s face in her hands. “Hey, talk to me.”

Jane shrugs, impassive.

“Some guy called me some shit I’d rather not repeat,” she finally says. “That old racist-homophobic combo. Always a winner.”

“Oh my God, did he hit you? I’ll kill him.”

She laughs darkly, eyes flat. “No, I hit him. The lip is from when someone else pulled me off him.”

August tries to brush her thumb by Jane’s mouth, but she jerks away.

“Jesus,” August hisses. “Did they call the cops?”

“Nah. Me and some guy shoved him off at the next stop, and I doubt his ego could handle calling the cops on a skinny Chinese girl.”

“I meant for you. You’re hurt.”

Jane knocks August’s hands off of her, finally making eye contact. August flinches at the razor’s edge there.

“I don’t fuck with pigs. You know I don’t fuck with pigs.”

August sits back on her heels. There’s something off about Jane, in the air around her. Usually, it’s like August can feel the frequency she vibrates at, like she’s a space heater or a live wire, but it’s still. Eerily still.

“No, of course, that was stupid,” August says slowly. “Hey, are you … okay?”

“What do you fucking think, August?” she snaps.

“I know—it’s, it’s fucked up,” August tells her. She’s thinking about the fire, the things that drove Jane from city to city. “But I promise, most people aren’t like that anymore. If you could go out, you’d see.”

Jane grabs a pole and heaves herself to her feet. Her eyes are slate, flint, stone. The train takes a curve. She doesn’t falter.

“That’s not what it’s about.”

“Then what, Jane?”

“God, you don’t—you don’t get it. You can’t.”

For a second, August feels like she did that night after the séance, when she put her hand on Jane’s wrist and felt the pulse buzzing impossibly fast under her fingers, when she talked to Jane like she was on a ledge. Jane might as well be hanging out the emergency exit.

“Try me.”

“Okay, fine, it’s like—I woke up one day and half the people I ever loved were dead, and the other half had lived a whole life without me, and I never got a chance to see it,” Jane says. “I never got a chance to be at their weddings or their art shows. I never got to see my sisters grow up. I never got to tell my parents why I left. I never got to make it right. I mean, fuck, my friend Frankie had just gotten a new boyfriend who was so annoying, and I was gonna tell him to dump him, and I never even got to do that. Do you see what I mean? Have you ever thought about what this is like for me?”

“Of course I—”

“It’s like I died,” she cuts in. Her voice cracks in the middle. “I died, except I have to feel it. And on top of that, I have to feel everything else I’ve ever felt all over again. I have to get the bad news again every day, I have to deal with the choices I made, and I can’t fix it. I can’t even run from it. It’s miserable, August.”

Okay. This is it. Jane’s been shockingly casual about her entire existential predicament. August wondered when something like this was coming.

“I know,” August says. The seat creaks faintly as she pushes herself to her feet, and Jane watches her sway closer with wide eyes, like she could bolt at any second. August moves until she’s close enough to touch her. She doesn’t. But she could. “I’m sorry. But it’s—it’s not too late to fix some of it. We’re gonna figure it out, and we’ll get you back to where you’re supposed to be, and—”

“I swear to fucking God, August, can you for once not act like you know everything?”

“Okay,” August says, feeling something defensive prick up her spine. Jane’s not the only one who’s spent the last day in a fighting mood. “Jesus.”

Jane’s teeth work her split lip for a second, like she’s thinking. She backs up another three steps, out of reach.

“God, it’s—you’re so sure there’s an answer, but there’s no reason to believe there is one. None of this makes any fucking sense.”

“Is that why you’ve been acting like you don’t care about the case? Because you don’t think I can solve it?”

“I’m not a fucking case to be solved, August.”

“I know that—”

“What if I’m on the line forever, huh?” Jane asks her. “It’s all interesting and exciting right now, but one day you’re gonna be thirty, and I’ll be twenty-four and here, and you’re gonna get bored, and I’m just gonna stay. Alone.”

“I’m not gonna leave you,” August says.

August sees the riot girl in the way Jane rolls her eyes and says, “You should. I would.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” August snaps.

That stops them both. August didn’t mean to say it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” August twists her hands into fists in her pockets. “Look, I’m not the one you’re mad at. I didn’t get you stuck here.”

“No, you didn’t,” Jane agrees. She turns her face away, hair falling in her eyes. “But you made me realize it. You made me remember. And maybe that’s worse.”

August swallows. “You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t know what I mean,” she says hoarsely. “August, I’m tired. I want to sleep in a bed. I want my life back, I want—I want you and I want to go back and I can’t want those things at the same time, and everything’s too much, and I—I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“I’m trying,” August says helplessly.

“What if you didn’t?” Jane says. “What if you stopped?”

In the silence that follows, August remembers how it feels to hit an ice patch on a frigid morning, those few seconds of terrible suspension before you scrape all the skin off your knees, when your stomach drops out and the only thought is, This is about to kick my ass.

“Stopped what?”

“Stopped trying,” Jane says. “Just—just let it go. Get a new train. Don’t see me anymore.”

“No. No. I can’t—I can’t leave, Jane—if I leave, you’re gone. That’s the whole reason September matters. It’s me, it’s us, it’s whatever the hell is happening between us, that’s what’s keeping you here.” She staggers closer, grasping at Jane’s jacket. “Come on, I know you feel it. The first time you saw me, you recognized me—my name, my face, the way I smelled, it made you remember.” Her hand moves gracelessly to Jane’s chest, over her heart. “This is what’s keeping you here. It’s not just fucking dumplings and Patti Smith songs, Jane, it’s us.”