The Second Friend

Elliot stared at Anna in puzzlement when she gave him no answer. She stood there with her lips pushed out in a sulk, then lifted her eyes just a fraction.

"It hurts."

"The skin's broken. Of course it hurts."

"It hurts so much I can't walk."

Good God. Elliot was too stunned to go on. Was the girl standing before him now, complaining of pain, truly the same stubborn creature who hadn't let out so much as a groan when a dog bit her?

"We're nearly home. Just hold on a little longer."

"I can't. It hurts too much."

"For heaven's sake. It is your heel that hurts, isn't it? Not somewhere else?"

At his appalled reaction, Anna's face grew sulkier still. Strangely, something like resentment seemed to flicker through her eyes.

"Carry me."

She even held both arms out, as if begging.

Elliot, who had been staring at her blankly, finally found his voice.

"...Me?"

"Yes."

"You're not a child. Why would I—"

"You're always telling me I'm a child."

"And every time, you insist you're not."

The corners of Anna's mouth sank lower. Now she truly looked as if she might cry. He couldn't begin to understand why, and yet he had the distinct feeling he was committing some terrible wrong. Leave her like this, and guilt would keep him awake all night.

"All right, all right. Climb on. Quickly."

Elliot turned and offered her his back. At once the face that had crumpled toward tears smoothed out completely, and Anna, a bright smile already blooming, scrambled up onto him.

Somehow, I feel as though I'm being had.

Clicking his tongue inwardly, he braced his legs and stood. Beneath Anna's slender arms, wound about his neck like a snake, a pair of white shoes dangled and swayed.

"...Does being carried make you that happy?"

Anna, who had buried her nose against the nape of his neck and was laughing under her breath, shook her head as if to hide the smile. It was far too late to pretend. He could feel both the sound of her laughter and the tremor of it, and Elliot snorted.

"Now that I look at you, you're an absolute spoiled child. Are you really nineteen?"

"No."

"No? Then how old are you?"

"It's a secret."

And then, as if something were endlessly amusing, she pressed her nose to his shoulder and laughed again. He was glad she was glad, and yet every time she did it Elliot felt a little undone, because wherever she buried her nose and laughed, it tickled past all enduring.

"Don't just laugh. Make a wish on the moon while you're at it."

Only then did Anna stop, and lift her head ever so slightly. Elliot followed her gaze up to the round moon in the night sky.

"You said you wanted to walk a street where the moonlight falls."

Anna, who had been listening quietly, slowly let her eyes close. Into a hush too still for him to hear, the first wish she offered the moon was surely on its way.

After a stretch of quiet, Elliot asked softly.

"Did you make a wish?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"May I tell you?"

"I don't see why not."

Anna held his neck a little tighter. Then, as if she were unbearably shy, or unbearably earnest, she carefully pressed her lips to his ear.

His steps slowed by degrees, swaying as though they might stop at any moment.

All at once Elliot hitched up her slipping body. The faltering stride found its pace again in an instant. Anna said nothing, only burrowed into the nape of his neck, and like a stray cat starving for affection she rubbed her cheek against his bare skin and nuzzled him with her nose.

She had said she had been abused her whole life.

Her parents had died early, and the only blood she had left was her maternal grandfather—and it was that very man, she said, who had ruined the life of this nineteen-year-old girl. Like a princess shut in a tower in some old tale, she had never once walked a night street, and so she had drifted and drifted until she arrived here.

That Anna was no ordinary girl no longer mattered. What weighed on him more heavily was the life she had spent imprisoned, the body that had been left bloodied, and the fact that a day utterly ordinary to anyone else could be, for her, more extraordinary than any day that had come before.

Perhaps all of it is special simply because it is the first time.

Perhaps I, whom she has known for barely a month, am all the more special because of that.

Perhaps that is why she looks at me with eyes that expect more, hope for more, hunger for so much more. Because I am the first person this child has ever met in the world.

"Anna."

Once more he lifted his gaze to the round moon. Day after day he had believed it was all he could manage just to look after himself.

This is against the rules. How am I supposed to turn away from you now?

"Will you be my friend?"

He felt Anna, draped sulkily over his shoulder, jerk her head up. Elliot bit his lip to keep from laughing.

"Friends?"

"Yes. Friends."

"...Earlier, you said we weren't."

"Then we can start being friends now."

Whatever she was thinking, Anna gave no answer for a long while. Rather than press her, Elliot walked on, one step and then another. The house on the hill, which seemed forever on the point of drawing near and yet never did, was still far off.

"If we become friends, what number friend would I be?"

"Let's see... I've never really counted, so I couldn't say."

"Can't I be the first?"

"Of all the places, that one's definitely taken."

"By whom?"

"Frederick."

He didn't need to look to picture the face she would make. She wrinkled her nose whenever Frederick's name came up.

"Why him, of all people?"

"Ask all you like. I don't have much of an answer. We met when we were very small."

Elliot turned Frederick's handsome face over in his mind. Most of the time the man was irritating enough to make him want to hit him, but when it came down to it, they were something like brothers.

"Don't hate him quite so much. He isn't a bad sort by nature."

"As if."

"Since when do you say things like that?"

Elliot let out a short laugh, as if he were proud of her.

"Be my second friend instead. You already have a first of your own, don't you?"

"I do?"

"Luke. You were the one who asked him to be friends first, earlier."

"Oh."

Anna, swinging her shoes beneath his neck while she thought it over, answered readily.

"All right. Let's be second friends."

"There. Then hold on tight, to mark the occasion."

Before Anna could ask what he meant by that sudden remark, Elliot kicked hard off the ground. The gentle spring breeze slammed into them all at once.

"E-Elliot, you're too fast!"

The words she blurted out in startled confusion slowly colored into laughter. Anna, who had squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in his shoulder, found the courage to lift her head. The laughter that had been shaking her shoulders in silence broke from the tip of her tongue as she straightened her neck.

"I said you're too fast!"

"You can't call this fast. Get in a plane and it's much faster than this!"

"A plane..."

Anna tilted her head back and looked up into the high sky. This night, with the moonlight falling. A dream long held was coming true, and a new dream was putting out its first shoot.

"...I want to."

"What?"

"I want to ride in a plane too!"

Anna laughed aloud and slowly let her eyes fall shut. Wind followed the swing of her hair. The air rushing in was no longer fierce, and Elliot, running, no longer felt fast.

A world in which only touch remained. Swimming through the soft air, she was already high above a night sky thick with stars.

The night had grown deep.

With a lamp set upon the desk, Elliot was going through the papers one sheet at a time. All of it was what he had gathered so far at the library on Marquis Baldwin.

His lowered green eyes darkened. Ten years ago—when Anna was nine. The same age he had been when he lost his mother.

He turned a page, and this time there was a photograph of a woman who looked exactly like Anna. Written beneath it:

Elliot gazed for a long while at the face of the woman smiling with such confidence, then suddenly began gathering the papers spread across the desk and setting them in order. The thick bundle went spilling into the bottom drawer.

Don't dig any further.

He had started looking into it so that, if the storm proved more than he could weather, he might step out of the way first. However Frederick had asked, he could hardly stake his life for Anna when she was a perfect stranger.

But that excuse was finished now. Only last week she had been a stranger; today she was a friend. Knowing the distance would snap shut the moment he took a single step closer, he had measured it with obsessive care, and all of it had come to nothing.

Yesterday, a stranger. Today, a friend. And tomorrow—how much nearer might they be?

Fool that he was, it seemed some lingering attachment to other people remained in him, even after he had sent so many of them away. Each time he lost someone he had sworn, and sworn again, that he would rather live alone and lonely than endure such a thing twice. And in the end, here he was once more.

As always, he surrendered to the hope that this time might be different.

This time, perhaps I can protect someone. This time, perhaps I won't have to let go. This time, they won't leave me behind.

He who had always been forsaken by the world thought, Just this once, please let it be different.

He closed the open drawer. At the click of the key turning in the lock, the doors on the doubt and the fear inside him shut as well.

He rose without lingering. If he had decided that no matter what happened he would not leave Anna, then all he had to do was act on it. What need was there to unearth a secret he could not bear, and spend the night awake on needless torment?

He put out the lamp on the desk and collapsed onto the bed. He lay facedown upon the blanket without stirring, and before long he had fallen into a soft, even sleep.

An unusually bright night of the full moon.

Cold moonlight poured through the window beside the bed. The light that had been shining on the sleeping Elliot slowly widened its reach, seeping into every corner of the room: a black-and-white photograph of him with the men of his flight, a fighter plane behind them; the dog tags Major Keaton had left behind; a portrait of some woman, laughing brightly, all alone.

The moonlight, spreading like a tide, reached the doorway before he knew it. There the woman from the photograph stood, perfectly still.

Tousled golden hair. Blue eyes drowned in tears. A mouth bound shut with a gag. Standing in utter disarray, the woman only wept without a sound. From a mouth stopped by the gag, no word would ever come.

The night only deepened.

The one who slept could not hear, and the dead had nothing to say.