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There’s a weird comfort surrounding empty caskets. A notion of belonging, a sense of resigned but incomplete closure, even if it’s manufactured. Willow doesn’t blame Jesse’s parents for holding an empty casket funeral, no matter how little time.
It’s not odd, not in Sunnydale. Most missing people are never found, and some families decide that holding onto an empty casket and a tombstone with no “here lies” is better than holding onto hope.
The only novelty of this one is that this is the first time a part of her heart is imprinted on the dark velvet.
…And she still doesn’t cry.
Quite frankly, she prefers the casket to be empty. She sees a different image every time she closes her eyes, some have his face, some are worse, an eternal peek-a-boo game where lacking object permanence is always better. It wouldn’t make it better if the person hiding were different, but the person is always the same.
Willow’s eyes stay open as long as the casket is still visible, it’s better if it stays empty. It’s better, it’s better, it’s better. But is it?
She promises Jesse’s parents their family is always welcome at her house and goes away before there’s time for them to return the sentiment, Willow insists is getting too dark to stay any longer when she must walk home, she doesn’t tell them her mom is waiting in the car.
She’s still dressed in black and playing a staring game with the wall when Xander slides in through the balcony door, leaving it unlocked before sitting on the floor.
“You missed the funeral.”
No reply.
She sighs, moving from her place at her stool to go sit next to him, head on his shoulder, no glances exchanged. Willow can hear his heart beating and her own misses more than one person. Loss is talented like that, fitting endless times in the same stitch.
They sit in silence and Willow wonders if this is the way things are meant to be like until they fade into nothingness. They were doing better, slowly rinsing their wounds and reapplying band-aids. Sometimes making them worse, but still trying. Then the McNallys petitioned to have Jesse presumed dead and they were back to the end of the line. Heavier, weaker.
Maybe they started to heal way too soon, and which is the worst betrayal? Declaring him dead? Or laughing again? At least Jesse’s parents had the decency to wait a year. Was it too soon for that too?
And it’s bizarre, to think that when they first met Willow wished she could be Xander’s only friend again. Did she make this happen years after warming up to Jesse and the idea of three as a good number? Is that the reason she can’t cry?
She takes a breath and puts the thought aside for later, stored in one of the wooden boxes under her bed.
It doesn’t matter.
★★
Monday morning, Xander enters homeroom to find Willow kneeling on the floor trying to gather something he can’t see very well inside a little wooden box he has never seen before. He walks, careful around Willow, so as to not step on whatever she’s trying to save from the slightly cracked floor.
“Starting an ant farm?” he asks after his backpack lands with a soft thud on the seat Willow left her cardigan. When he tries to put it back on her backpack, he realizes what’s happening. “Will?”
“Kyle bumped into my box, but I got them all, no biggie.” Willow sits back on her chair and takes one of the many strips of bright paper he can’t stop looking at. Willow mentions her box —her new box— so casually while he tries to remember how to breathe.
“Is ‘bumped’ some new slang for ‘threw it’?”
“It doesn’t matter.” It does, but is that what he should be focusing on when Willow is turning paper into stars at a record speed? The paper peeking from her backpack seems too bright and loud. Thinking of looking into the box makes him nauseous.
“Everything okay, Willow?” he whispers. Willow’s hands shake a little and nearly drop the paper before picking up the pace again, the end of the strip brushing against the back of his seat.
“Nightmare,” she says. “But paper folding is fun.”
Xander doesn’t need to look to know the box is at least half-full of very tiny suffocating stars. She’s only looking at him through the corner of her eye and there’s no smile.
Silence.
“Will—.”
“It’s nothing, mom hid the knives away when she heard of the funer—. I’m fine.”
Another star on the box, another piece of paper on her hands, the red tint is already spread through her thumb and index. Maybe this has been going on for longer than he realized.
“You didn’t tell me.”
Willow stops, then starts again.
“It’s just a precaution. It’s nothing.”
“Is it?”
The paper tears and then crinkles. Willow is hiding behind curtains of hair.
Xander reaches in between her hands for the crumpled paper, flattening it as best as he can against the not-so-smooth table. Once he thinks it can’t get better, he starts the pattern he’s so familiar with. “I ruined tons of paper when you were teaching me to do these things.” Xander takes another strip, the one that used to be the second half of the one already on his hands, green that’s almost yellow. “I discovered… the crinkly paper still gives them structure.” He finishes the star and notices Willow looking at him for the first time today. “…They aren’t that pretty even when I use good paper.”
Willow grabs the star and draws a smiley face on it with her favorite pen, the pink one with dots she saves for her favorite classes. This one he doesn’t mind seeing go inside the box, especially when the next thing Willow does is hand him another strip for him to practice and doesn’t take one for herself.
“It was really just a nightmare,” she starts, slowly. “But I don’t like being so weak. It’s just a box in the ground, it shouldn’t make me lose sleep.”
“You are not weak, you need time,” he says, when what he wants to say is that this is about more than a box and they both know it. Truth is that words started to feel too heavy to bring out after he realized the number of things that are his fault. The words are right there, sharp against his throat, but they only destroy things.
“How much until is too long?” Willow asks.
Xander drops another crinkly star into the box.
“It doesn’t matter.”
★★
Jesse came into their lives when Willow was eleven and struggling to understand how to talk to people. As it turns out, not everybody is truly interested in learning all about the book she read through the weekend. It’s boring and a waste of time when they only asked so they wouldn’t seem so rude the next time they wanted to copy her homework. Apparently, giving short answers to “how was your weekend?” also came out as rude and uninteresting.
Her shelter, as always, was Xander, who kept asking for the play-by-play of each and every story, because he wanted to know what happened, but didn’t find reading as easy as Willow. It was a win-win she liked to use every time they were able to put their pencils down for a second during class. She would lay every detail and revel in Xander’s reactions, and the endless notes filled with theories he would slip her when they had to go back to work. They had their rhythm and it fell in place perfectly with everything around them. Until it didn’t.
Willow was happy when she first heard of the boy Xander had met and befriended at the kiddy league. It was a breath of fresh air after countless sessions of him picking at grass and kicking rocks because nobody on the team liked him, coach included. It had been an odd idea to her, people not liking her bestest friend, but apparently one could only mess up so many games before getting dirty glances.
She was happy. Anyone who was nice to Xander she could like. Except, suddenly all the notes were about Jesse. After a few days, Xander forgot to ask about the next chapter.
The olive branch, she assumed, was introducing them right after class one Friday, a day where he repeatedly reassured her that Jesse would like her and that there was no way he would be friends with someone who didn’t think Willow was amazing. The butterflies in her stomach dissipated as soon as she talked a little too much and Jesse didn’t seem to care and was listening, Xander sent her a double thumbs up. However, the butterflies brought friends back the second the boys started to talk about movies she wasn’t even allowed to watch, and she couldn’t insert herself in the conversation again, so she silently grew thorns instead.
It was rude and it was wrong, truly, for Jesse to decide to become Xander’s new best friend, and even more for Xander to let him. The solution, she concluded, was to just go away whenever Jesse was around. Everybody would be happier that way, even if she had extra time and no one to fill it with, it would make things right.
It didn’t last. Soon enough, she was sitting on the sidewalk with Jesse, only Jesse, who had somehow found her house and dropped by asking to talk.
“I made you this,” he said as soon as they sat down, taking a dark green paracord bracelet out of his hoodie. “It’s green because of willow trees… And I didn’t have other colors.” Willow just stared at him, not taking the bracelet while a million questions settled camp on her mind.
“What?” Was the one to make it out.
“I had more colors when I was a boy scout.” More silence, at least on the outside. The thoughts on her mind were singing around the campfire. Jesse started to fiddle with the bracelet, looking at Willow nervously. “I know you don’t like me, but I want you to. I want to be friends,” he muttered. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice you were sad. I was distracted.”
Slowly, she took the bracelet, careful not to touch him. Jesse lit up and Willow offered a smile in return.
“My dad doesn’t let me watch things with Christmas in them,” she explained, trying and failing to tie the ends of the bracelet. Jesse hurried to help her.
“You can come to my house; we have tons of movies on tape.”
“I’m not allowed.”
“They don’t need to know.”
With that, the bracelet was resting along the other ten bracelets on her wrist, looking right at home.
“Can you teach me to make them? I want to make one for you, it can be our thing.”
“No Xanders allowed.”
★★
Tuesday morning, Willow is the one Kyle bumps against, launching her right into her locker with the door hitting the back of her head. Arriving early to school only works to make him arrive even earlier and work up an appetite, because he’s a hyena and Willow is prey with no survival instincts left.
She picks herself up and carries on with her day pretending nothing happened. If she throws the word “new” in between the line, then she’s telling the truth. But it’s okay, as okay as it can be. Her body stopped aching a long time ago and she’s sure her heart being ripped out of her chest wouldn’t have a third of the damage her mind is already inflicting.
Willow doesn’t long for sleep anymore, she would stop blinking if she could. The smallest try at closing her eyes leaves her exposed to the vivid image of Jesse’s limbs being torn out of his body by rabid animals or worse. Willow can’t help him in her sleep, trapped on a spider web made out of her own imagination. Willow can’t save herself, looking at the ceiling and hoping for dreamless sleep. All she can do is cut her fingers paper stars, another thing she can’t quite feel, rendering all precautions useless. Yet again, that’s the issue, isn’t it? The problem and the solution overlap a little too much.
She hands a strip of paper to Xander in lieu of a greeting. Seeing him do the thing she’s supposed to be doing has been helping her cope better. It annoys her that he doesn’t complain out of worry, but she’s glad to see he’s still able to wince when he gets a cut, a sign that she can pull out of him to stop feeling useless, a sign in the form of messy paper stars with happy faces that take too long to come to life and sometimes even lull her mind, even if just for a moment.
“Another nightmare?” he says, offering his arm to Willow while they walk, so she can stop him from crashing against other people.
“Define another.” And Xander needs to unfold the paper a few times to find the spot where he went wrong.
“Should I be worried?” She knows he already is.
“I don’t know.”
That night, she finds Jesse’s favorite jacket on her bed.
★★★
Willow is silent. More silent than Xander has seen her in a while. More silent than the time he made her hack into the police’s files after Jesse went missing.
Willow is silent and Xander’s words are failing him once more.
He figures right now is not the time to ask, not when both her parents are present during dinner.
That will never stop being weird. He’s used to an empty house whenever he’s over, and for the longest time, he thought Willow was secretly an orphan. But they are here today and have always been here for a few months now. That’s the only good thing he can say is his fault. Parental overcompensation.
Mrs. Rosenberg extends him a dinner invitation at least once a week, she’s very upfront about the reason: Willow lost a friend, and Willow needs a friend. There was some sciency explanation he doesn’t remember, it had too many big words and it’s not like they wouldn’t sneak into each other’s houses at every chance if there was no invitation. The only difference is that Willow’s has moved spots in the houses-that-are-good-to-hang-at even if his own house stayed last.
Willow’s mom keeps asking loud questions and explaining why those questions are important. Nobody answers them and she doesn’t seem to notice.
Willow’s dad is too enthusiastic about the food. Xander doesn’t know if it’s shame, disinterest, personality, or all the above. He doesn’t know Willow’s parents enough to have a definite answer, he just hopes it’s one of those options and not the one his mind keeps repeating to him.
Willow is silent and she’s frowning the same way she does when she’s not sure if the test has a typo or if it’s a trick question, but she’s determined to figure it out on her own.
They finish dinner and he forgets to do the polite act of offering and insisting to help with the dishes, he’s more interested in finding out whatever is bothering Willow.
He tries to follow her to her room, only to have her turn around in the middle of the hallway and ask him to leave. No explanation, just “you shouldn’t walk alone after dark” and “I’ll see you at school”. He’s hesitant, she says: “Please.”
Xander makes his way to the front door but stops at the kitchen, dishes clanking against each other as Mrs. Rosenberg piles them next to the sink. He gets close and forces the words out in a whisper. “Are you sure Willow doesn’t know where you are hiding the knives?” Mrs. Rosenberg doesn’t bother to look back at him or keep her voice down.
“Of course, she doesn’t. But she has been doing good lately, I think she will be able to handle them in a few days.” Willow’s mom might have as well punched him in the gut.
“Don’t.” Is the only thing he can say.
“I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.” But she clearly doesn’t.
★★★
The next day, Willow is waiting next to his locker. She has a green strip of paper in her hands and she’s pulling at it in preparation to start folding it, but she’s not looking, and the motion is never completed. Her stare is as lost as yesterday.
“Hey, Will.”
Nothing.
“Will?” She finally looks at him. “Wanna make stars?” he offers, pointing at the paper with his head, hands busy with his combination, just metallic clicking and turning. Willow seems confused before attempting to hand him the strip but stopping herself.
“Your books,” she says, her voice hoarse.
“Are you sick?” Were you crying?
Xander puts a hand on her forehead and then checks for a pulse, unsure of what he should be looking for besides temperature.
“You should get your books,” Willow insists, making clear this is not a conversation she’s willing to have until all the shoulds and have-tos are taken care of. He hurries to shove his books into his backpack and snatches the paper.
“Are you sick?”
“I’m not sure.”
Xander counts to three. What a nice day to have a useless conversation, maybe he is a good-for-nothing that only wastes oxygen after all.
Willow seems happy to stay silent, except that she keeps looking everywhere and then at him.
“You’re acting weird,” he snaps, she flinches, he mentally kicks himself. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” That… makes no sense. “I just don’t know how to ask.” Xander keeps his gaze on her eyes, hoping the attention will give her the courage he knows she’s looking for. He understands the hesitation as soon as the question leaves her lips. “Have you visited Jesse’s parents recently?” Because his name has been avoided for months now.
He forces himself to reply, it doesn’t have to mean anything.
“No.” There’s a lot of air today. “Have you?”
Willow shakes her head and looks around again, same hesitance as before, but it’s gone much quicker.
“Will you go with me?” He doesn’t want to, the idea alone makes his legs ache to have a running session he never returns from, the idea alone makes him want to break something, the idea alone makes him feel like he doesn’t fit in his own body. The idea of having the idea makes his blood run cold.
But the question is not if he wants to.
They are both aware of the answer to that.
The question is if he’s willing to do it anyway. For her. For whatever is plaguing her mind.
“Okay.”
★★★
Willow is aware she’s acting like a child, holding Xander’s hand and staying behind him. She would be planning to avoid eye contact with the McNallys if she didn’t know Xander is already planning to do that.
She has visited many times since Jesse went missing, Xander hasn’t been here since the day they both learned he never got home after the Bronze. Neither of them had made it past the living room, it didn’t feel right, not without Jesse.
But it’s time, it’s time, it’s time, it’s time loops in her head. It barely ends and it’s back to the start. It’s time, it’s time, it’s time, it’s time.
Jesse’s mom opens her eyes almost as wide as the door.
Xander’s eyes are playing a very back game of tag with her.
It’s time, it’s time, it’s time, it’s time.
“Hi,” Willow says, peeking from behind Xander’s shoulder, but Natalie doesn’t look at her yet, busy chasing Xander’s gaze, ready to say “you’re it” before running herself. Willow frees one of her hands from Xander’s, one step next to him, then one in front. “Sorry for not calling before coming.”
Natalie finally looks at her, a sad, not-quite-real, not-quite-right smile adorning her face.
“That’s alright, love, I’m glad you are here,” she says. “Both of you.” She moves as an invitation for them to come in. Willow is ready to follow, but Xander is playing statue. They don’t stop holding hands, he holds her tighter and speaks low.
“I’m sorry.” A pause. “About last time.” Eyes still running away. “I— Sorry.” Because the last time they spoke it was at Willow’s house and Xander slammed the door on his way out. Now, Natalie is hugging Xander as an answer, an answer Xander seems hesitant to return, never letting go of Willow’s hand.
★★★
Xander is suddenly exhausted, the conversation goes by in a blur and he’s not sure if he has said anything at all. It’s probably going well, but he can’t tell for sure.
Apologizing to adults, fathers or not, has never gone well for him.
He just lets Willow take the lead, not even realizing the silent Willow from yesterday is nowhere to be seen. She holds his hand during the whole thing, she guides him to Jesse’s room, untouched down to the attempts at an essay thrown in a bin, and the finger skateboard on his bedside table, which makes him smile, which makes Willow smile.
She places a smiley green star on top of it.
“To make up for the yogurt cups they had to take out,” she explains without prompt, stopping his knee-jerk reaction upon seeing one of the dreaded stars.
He can be okay with this one.
He can be okay with all of them if they mean Willow won’t go away.
As she reaches to hug him, she’s brighter than he has seen her in more than a year.
“Thank you.”
That night, Willow sneaks into his room after dinner. She seems unbothered in her sleep, and he’s at peace.
★★★
Xander has disappointed his father too many times to count. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to find out his father was displeased at his sonograms, Xander already suspects the positive pregnancy test wasn’t well received.
It’s not like Xander doesn’t try, it’s just hard because his only talents are sarcasm and repression. One of those talents is never welcomed, the other… the entire objective of his other talent is to stay unnoticed. The objective is that, if he can’t learn the appropriate times to do stuff, maybe he just shouldn’t do any of the stuff. Because one second is time to laugh and the next this isn’t a laughing matter, next thing he knows there’s the sound of glass breaking.
No reaction is the reaction, except when it is.
There’s no winning, so let’s not play the game.
Except he really wants to play the game, he wants to win it. The prize is a taste of approval and that’s the one thing he really craves, the one thing he’s never going to get.
Willow and Xander wake up to a loud frantic call from Willow’s mom. They both got so caught on things feeling somewhat normal again that they forgot Willow can’t get away with spending the night away anymore.
He makes his way to the kitchen to give her privacy while she talks to her mom, but also because they might as well just start to get ready for school. He tells he not to worry, he tells her his father is a heavy sleeper, but Anthony Harris is already sitting at the table looking at him carefully.
“Hi?” Xander kind of greets while grabbing some cereal and inexistent milk. His father is still staring. Xander can hear both their breaths despite the distance, one slow, one fast. The ceiling seems very white, the floor seems too far away.
“I want details,” his father says, slipping him twenty dollars before going away. Xander wonders what kind of new mind trick this is or what he did this time, but there’s no time to think about it, he and Willow will probably have to leave soon.
He makes his way back to his room, where Willow is no longer on the phone, and has her face buried on her knees.
“How did it go?” he asks, bowls of dry cereal clinking against the floor. Her voice is muffled but he makes out the words.
“Did you know we’re old enough for sleepovers to be misinterpreted?”
“Misinterpreted? What are you talking abou—?” His father’s approval, once given context, makes his skin itch and burn. “It was nice meeting you.” The worst part is that, even as he notices the creepy smile his father throws at Willow when they leave, Xander can’t help but crave more of it.
★★★
After a very uncomfortable stop at her house where Willow’s parents make clear that they are going to have a stern talk after school, she and Xander walk together to school, apart and in silence, which is a downgrade even by last year’s standards. Even with all the on and off silence from the past year, they never stopped being physically close. Physically close in a very-innocent-so-not-what-her-parents-are-thinking way, thank you very much. There was always something nice and comforting and familiar waiting for her, something she didn’t know she could miss this much. That last part is mainly because she never thought losing it was a possibility, not until they started to miss entire nights of sleep trying to find Jesse.
Xander is the one and only constant in her life now, she’s not interested in losing another piece of that constant, especially not when she just managed to pick up two of the fallen pieces this week, even if one of those pieces she still doesn’t have a concrete explanation for.
Jesse’s jacket had appeared on her bed with no explanation on Tuesday, it had stayed there all night, tucked away under her pillow. It was there before and after school two days in a row, but it was gone the night after visiting Jesse’s parents and before going to Xander’s.
Willow turned her room upside down and the down upside to no avail. She offered to do laundry as an excuse to snoop in her parents’ room, just in case, but the result had been the same. Not a trace of the jacket she knows she didn’t imagine. She had touched and held it, and she had made sure it wasn’t in Jesse’s room.
The memory is way too clear to be fabricated.
The conclusion she reached the night before was that it doesn’t matter, it still helped her find her way back to Xander, her way back to being connected to him. Plus, last night she didn’t dream at all, there was just pleasant nothingness, mere welcomed rest.
Whatever happened with Jesse’s jacket, both appearing and disappearing, had helped, so it shouldn’t matter, but it does. Willow thinks Jesse would tell her if he was alive and hiding. At the very least, he wouldn’t be so cryptic… unless he was in danger. Isn’t that what hiding is for?
★★★
The first time Willow hacked into anything was an accident, just an innocent coding experiment that granted her access to information she shouldn’t have had access to. Nobody noticed.
The subsequent times weren’t accidents, and with each one she kept pushing her luck. It was nice, all the being good at something so useful and potentially powerful, even if it never had any real use. Not to her, at least.
The day it finally had an actual use came in the form of school days without Jesse and police officers who had Xander as their only lead, he had been the last person to speak with Jesse, him, and the blonde girl Jesse had been flirting with. But the girl was not only missing, but she also was practically inexistent, nobody could recognize the police sketch and Xander didn’t have a name.
Xander and Willow agreed the police wasn’t doing enough, they hadn’t even looked through Jesse’s room, so they went into their files together, opening every file and case remotely like Jesse’s only to find a bunch of unsolved cases full of speculation about gangs and family issues, numbers skyrocketing after Jesse disappeared. Missing people were either never found or found dead, some from blood loss, some from lost organs, and some that made Willow sick with descriptions only.
“Is it bad to hope he’s already dead?” she asked Xander one night, eyes red from two weeks of reading police reports and morbidly looking at photos of body parts stacked one on top of the another, all from the same body, but cut in different days. People, they used to be people. Xander kicked her out of his house and stayed angry until the day he was quiet instead, just a few days after Willow stopped taking notes for classes she didn’t take, just a few days after she stopped rolling up her sleeves during lab.
After the jacket disappears, Willow hacks into the police files again and is surprised to find the photos of bodies don’t make her stomach churn anymore. They are just very pale and still bodies in abandoned houses and alleys, not very different from a morgue. They still don’t seem like people, but the meaning of it is different. They no longer seem like people because they no longer feel any of it, and that is what being human is all about: pain. Feeling pain, fearing pain, connecting through pain, and trying to avoid it anyway.
Willow stopped feeling pain a long time ago, she has been pressing fresh lemons against her cuts long enough to stop hoping for the sting. Is Jesse living the same way, or did she abandon him being human? Not knowing which is worse, she clicks away and wonders why she’s getting another chance, wonders about her dreamless night, wonders about the few hours where everything seemed peaceful and normal, wonders if this is here to stay or if it’s just another little break.
Once again, everything fades into nothingness. No dreams, but no Jesse choking on his own blood either.
★★★
Xander is almost late for class, but he notices the stars are gone. Instead, Willow is reading a book and doesn’t know Heidi is trying to give her a haircut. Xander takes three long strides from the door to where they are sitting and steals the scissors, throwing them under the teacher’s desk. Heidi throws him a dirty look, Xander ignores her and uses his hand to place Willow’s hair over her shoulder. Willow turns and smiles at him.
“Trade seats with me,” he asks, she complies without questions. Is better that way, and Willow is too happy talking about her new book anyway. He doesn’t even tell her this is the one book he has read before her. He would be lying if he said he didn’t miss having such an easy topic of conversation, so he just nods and follows the routine. He would also be lying if he said touching Willow’s hair wasn’t an accident. He has been avoiding any sort of touching between the two of them because he feels guilty, but the habit made him forget for a second, and Willow’s smile made him forget to notice. It’s hard to remember to be awkward when that smile is back.
Xander can’t forgive himself, but Willow can. That’s enough.
★★★
Willow gets a second chance the night she finds a bracelet on her bed, the first bracelet she ever gifted to Jesse, the same one she saw tied to Jesse’s backpack every day for years. It’s hard to convince herself when she might as well be holding it while wearing thick gloves but, at least by sight, the paracord bracelet is there, same washed-off colors and same beginner mistakes.
If they are going to follow patterns, the bracelet will disappear at night when she’s not in her room.
She can’t let this one go.
Willow grabs one of the strips of paper she has set aside for stars and uses it to write before taping it to the bracelet now under her pillow.
"Are you in trouble?" It reads.
She leaves her favorite pen next to it, just to make sure.
★★★
Xander is carrying his backpack on one shoulder. That’s not new, he started to make a point of always carrying it like that since they reached high school and decided that was the cool thing to do.
Every day, he forgets to do it when he’s tired of having to shift it from shoulder to shoulder. Today seems to be an exception, as he has not once used his right shoulder to carry it, and that detail is all Willow needs to make sure to always walk on his right and turn into a shield while still avoiding being the one bumping into him. She needs to tread carefully so as not to spook him out of talking to her again. It’s never fun when they fight, and their last fight was especially ugly, nothing to wish to repeat.
“You know what I remembered?” Willow starts once they are out of school and decide to risk going to the only ice cream parlor that hasn’t shut down yet. “The reason I have a copy of Brave New World is that you read it for extra credits two years ago.”
Xander almost shifts his backpack to the other shoulder. “Eh, I skipped a lot of it.” Except Willow remembers his report didn’t skip a single thing because he really needed to improve his grade.
“You could have stopped me from boring you.” To that, Xander throws up his free and still hurting arm around her shoulders. He flinches a little, her heart becomes crystal and shatters.
“Don’t be silly, your version is always better.”
“Do you want my version of Apocalypse Now?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
Willow feigns disappointment while Xander goes on a rant about how no amount of talent will ever compare to the real experience. She’s okay with that, she has never seen an entire military movie despite sitting through them with Xander ever since he first discovered them.
“If it wasn’t so long, we could watch it after dinner,” she says, carefully weaving a way to reassure him she’s there for him in return. Xander’s hesitation, however, is not something she sees coming.
“…am I going to get the shovel talk?” he finally asks, his arm leaving her.
“No, no.” Willow focuses on the sidewalk. “I made sure they know nothing happened, and my mom thinks that’s an antiquated idea anyway.” Xander finds her gaze, looking for the truth there. “We can’t close the door anymore.”
“Darn, how are we gonna do drugs now?”
Willow rolls her eyes, but at least Xander will be safe tonight, or at least as safe as she can keep him while she tries not to crumble when they go into her room and find the glass door wide open, a quick shadow moving through the darkness.
Willow closes the door before giving in to the desire of following, not wanting to give Xander any false hope, not wanting any ammunition for another fight, so she only looks under her pillows once he is looking away.
Nothing.
How sure is she of her own memories?
How sure is she of really seeing something out there?
“You saw my pink pen,” she says. “The one with dots. You saw it today, right?”
“I don’t think so, did you lose it?” Willow gives another look at the now closed door.
“Maybe it will come back,” she murmurs, and the topic is forgotten soon enough.
★★★
The first time Xander went to Jesse’s house, he was weirded out. One look at Willow told him he wasn’t alone in that feeling.
Before that day, their experiences with parents were either empty houses with occasional condescendence or disinterested small talk with backhanded comments in the mix. It was surprising to learn that Jesse dropping a glass earned him worry first, instructions to be careful while cleaning second, and yelling never.
Naturally, they silently called bullshit. Xander would talk about how good his own mother was at covering for his father in front of others, and Willow would go on and on about how Jesse was always welcome at her house if he ever felt alone. It took them a few months to be convinced that the McNallys were really like that.
The first clue for Xander, was learning that the McNally last name belonged to Jesse’s mom, and that Jesse’s stepdad had taken it after they married. Xander’s father had laughed at the idea, Mr. McNally suddenly took the habit of telling Xander he didn’t have to like baseball. Xander didn’t understand the relationship, but it still happened back-to-back.
The second clue took longer to hit him but, on Willow’s birthday, he realized they never had to tell anything to them. Jesse’s parents knew their names without an introduction, Mr. McNally knew Xander’s favorite foods, and Jesse’s mom knew Willow’s birthday was that day. When Xander wondered about it out loud, Jesse said he had told them as if that was all it took.
The thing that finally cemented the idea in Xander’s head was that he wasn’t afraid to take them up on calling them Martin and Natalie instead of Mr. and Mrs. McNally. In fact, he started looking forward to going to Jesse’s house, and not only for Jesse, which is why he ended up in a fight with the McNallys.
They were watching a movie at Willow’s house, almost eight months into the Rosenbergs’ new approach to parenting, which included “deep” conversations and attempts at befriending Xander.
He doesn’t remember the movie, just that he had his head on Willow’s lap while she was trying to find a way to get rid of a few paper towels without getting up, his hands were cold for some reason. Cold and numb way before he heard the doorbell ring and a hushed conversation in the hallway, muffled steps approaching.
Jesse’s parents entered the living room and the screen turned black. He sat upright, Willow’s hand wasn’t cold, but it was holding onto his for dear life. The McNallys were talking, but it all felt like random noises since their words made no sense at all, their voices sounded as if they were underwater and, once put together, they were gibberish.
“I have lived in Sunnydale long enough to know he’s not coming back. We think this is for the best,” Jesse’s mom said after a long string of rubbish. Everything was silent except for the buzzing in his ears.
“So, you’re just giving up?” he finally said, throat dry.
“It’s not giving up, it’s—”
“It is!” He could vaguely hear Willow calling his name and pulling him back towards the couch. He let go of her hand and stayed right on Mrs. McNally’s face. “You are declaring him dead without even knowing he’s dead, are you sure you haven’t been praying for him to never come back?!”
Mr. McNally got up as well and stood in the middle of Xander and his wife. “That’s enough. Xander, I know it’s upsetting but—”
Something broke inside of Xander. “You are just like his real dad.” And he went away, not noticing Willow was following him until he broke down crying in the middle of the street. He was the one who made Jesse go away.
★★★
Four days go by without any new incidents and Willow fills them with little sleep, looking at pictures in search of a sign of Jesse, as it occurs to her that maybe this is not him, but the one who made him go away. What the game is about is anybody’s guess.
Willow is back to wondering which is worse because living is pain, and it only gets worse as the ending nears. Does she want this to be Jesse? Alive but possibly still losing blood? Having been walking on broken glass for so long he can only reach out through pieces of his former life? Or does she want to be the one the weapon is aiming at? With Jesse dead and never found but untouchable by any evil? On some level, she knows which is better, she knows that hoping for her friend to be alive is selfish at best, that it would help everyone but Jesse.
She’s willing to stand in the line of fire if that means he has been dead for as long as he has been missing.
Willow keeps hoping to find Jesse’s face among the lifeless bodies, to have a glimpse of his shirt or his watch, but she comes out empty-handed and hollow. She then hates herself for hoping to find him dead.
She does find reports about a blonde girl. A blonde girl in the files of people that went missing after being seen with her, before and after the Bronze closed for good. The police sketches match each other, even the ones from sixty years ago.
Willow stares at the screen.
Willow wonders.
Willow grabs her left wrist and presses with her nails.
Willow doesn’t feel a thing.
How is she supposed to know anything for sure?
How is she supposed to know she’s still alive?
Willow walks to Xander’s house because what else is there to do? There’s no point in researching if she can’t be sure of the things she’s seeing.
Willow knocks on Xander’s window, unusually closed.
Xander’s eyes are bloodshot when he climbs outside.
“Are you okay?” asked at the same time and same levels of concern by both. Willow looks through the window, everything looks normal, except for the barricaded door.
“Hospital bill.” Is all he says before holding her hand and taking her away from his house. They walk to the park, careful to follow each other under the light of streetlamps. “He’s the one who keeps showing up drunk to job interviews, but he’s mad about not having money,” Xander tells her, so close they don’t have to speak up. He’s standing on the side of the sidewalk that is next to the street as if that would stop Willow from running after the car taking him away. “At least he only yells.”
She waits for him to continue, when he doesn’t, she takes a shot in the dark. “Do you want me to ask about your shoulder?” The answer comes quicker and more easily than she expects.
“I was trying to get out of the car.” Xander guides her to the swing set without her protest. “I don’t want to meet his friend.”
Willow knows the topic is over once they stop holding hands and sit on the swings. She still stretches one hand from behind the chain. “I bet his friend is stinky,” she says. Xander snorts and takes her hand again.
“I bet she is.” A pause. “What about you?” Squeezing her hand.
“I’m not stinky,” she says with a frown.
“Not what I meant.” Xander twists his swing to face her and switches the hand he’s holding hers with. “Why did you want to see me?” He leans into the chain. She goes to speak, he interrupts her by reading her intentions. “Don’t say you always want to see me.” Willow pouts. “Very sweet of you, but I already called dibs on evasion, you can’t have it.”
Willow swings the tiniest bit, the line where the grass stops growing around the swings is sharp. Xander gives her hand another squeeze.
“Did I give up too soon on Jesse?” She knows Xander’s thoughts by the faltering grasp of his hand. She holds onto it harder without looking and hopes he won’t let go. The silence she can live with, physical absence not so much.
“Don’t go looking for him,” he says. “Please.”
“But was it too soon?”
“You shouldn’t have been looking.” Willow closes her eyes and breathes deep, she doesn’t cry, but she thinks Xander is about to. “Don’t look,” he repeats. “I’ll destroy your computer if you try. I don’t care if you hate me.”
She hopes he cares.
She knows he cares.
But is caring about her what is right?
“I don’t want to visit an empty grave,” she says.
Did she condemn him?
Does he blame her?
“Then don’t.”
Can she make amends for her weakness?
“I won’t.”
The piece of paper has returned to her bed when she’s back home.
No pen, but what is a missing pen when Jesse’s handwriting is looking back at her?
“I don’t know.”
★★★
There is no sign of new stars when Xander visits Willow on Sunday, there are no signs of new stars when he comes back on Monday and stays almost the entire day. He resists the urge to ask Willow to roll up her sleeves.
They pretend they never went to the park and Willow forces him to do homework. She seems fine, and he wants to believe it.
Willow’s mom is no longer locking the knives away, they clink as they go inside the drawer as the rest of the cutlery.
His heart races and his skin feels too tight.
He can’t fail, not again.
He can’t fail, not her.
Willow is staring, Willow is talking, Xander can’t hear, the room is too bright, there’s too much air in his lungs. Willow is walking away, the way she should have walked away a long time ago and saved herself. His thoughts are too loud, his arms are too shaky, there’s something in his blood.
Willow is back.
Willow is back.
Willow is back.
There’s a cold sting on his hand, Willow just put ice on his hand, Willow is holding his hand close to her face and breathing against it.
Right.
Willow wants him to follow. Exhale, and hold, and inhale, or something like that.
“I’m here,” she says, but it’s like she’s underwater. “It’s okay.” But is it? Is it? Is it? “It’s going to be okay. Just keep breathing.” And he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t help her, but she doesn’t go away. “I’m here.” She’s here. “I’m here.” Willow is here.
He breathes.
Then he breathes some more.
The ice is gone by the time his breathing evens out, he thinks he cried.
Willow is still here, and she grabs some paper towels without letting him go. She dries his hands and dries his face, cupping his face with her hand, looking into his eyes with familiar softness. “It’s okay.”
And Xander wants to believe so bad.
Willow reads him a book, he doesn’t know which one, his hands are cold for some reason.
★★★
Xander ends up passing out on Willow’s lap. The door is open, and they are both on the floor, there’s always pretending he doesn’t need to go anywhere. Willow doesn’t want to let go, so she holds on tight.
This is not the first time she tries to help him escape his own mind, not the first time she pleads for him to breathe, but it is the first time he’s too exhausted to stay awake, the first time in a long time he doesn’t immediately put on a mask of normalcy.
She has always known the mask could only cover him for so long before breaking. Willow is worried he will try to glue it back.
She’s a lifeboat in an ocean with no one to save, Xander would rather pretend he’s not drowning. Maybe she’s just made of paper, and he knows that trying would doom him.
Still, she wishes.
She strokes his hair and counts his breath, trying to match him, wishing him only good dreams or no dreams at all, wishing for answers as to how not to ever let him go, wishing for answers as to how to make time go back.
Over five hundred stars under her bed, and not even one that can get it right.
★★★
“What do you mean?” She wrote back.
“I want to help you.” No answer.
★★★
Willow takes to drawing on his arms. The drawings aren’t good and most of the time it takes a few tries before the color pens start to leave any ink. They are too old, but she insists on using those specific pens as she sticks her tongue out a little while his arms get a lot of lines of red and no ink.
It’s endearing and bothersome at the same time since he needs to either wear long sleeves or try to get rid of them at the park’s fountain. Xander doesn’t feel like giving his father any excuses to bring up the Willow topic again.
At least they are not stars.
He sticks with long sleeves and asks Willow to not draw too close to his hands. She frowns but she complies, no questions asked.
Today’s theme is the ocean, yesterday’s was the forest. Xander is starting to think Willow just wants to go on vacation, and he doesn’t blame her, he would be out the door if it weren’t for their lack of money and independence. Sunnydale gets more and more suffocating by the second and his only hope is for Willow to tuck him in her bag once she moves out to a fancy college in a faraway country. They could run away together if her parents were to decide they want her home forever.
It's surreal to think about that detail, the sudden need for parental permission. Needing approval has always existed for the both of them, but permission was the one thing they had due to lack of asking. Jesse was the only one to ever ask for permission.
The air leaves as soon as his mind goes near Jesse’s name.
He almost always got permission, but he always had to ask.
Maybe Jesse shouldn’t have asked to go to the Bronze.
Maybe Jesse shouldn’t have asked for his help.
Maybe Jesse shouldn’t have ever looked at Xander in the first place.
Maybe that way Jesse would be—.
Xander snaps back to reality as Willow stabs him with her pen. They look at each other, Willow’s hand gripping his wrist. He didn’t even notice his heart had started to race.
“We are at school,” Willow says. Right, he can’t make a fool of himself. “That’s not what I meant,” she adds, loosening her grip on his wrist but not letting go. She rubs his hand on the spot she hurt. “I meant we are not where your mind was at. We are at school, and we are okay.”
Right.
Except he doesn’t know for sure if he’s okay.
★★★
Willow gets an answer from Jesse on Tuesday night.
“You can’t.” Written in a new piece of paper taken from one of her notebooks.
She can’t.
The thought stings.
Willow wants to believe is a chivalrous thing, that she can’t because Jesse wants to keep her safe, but there’s something he knows she can do, a reason to contact her in the first place. She wants to believe it but can’t push aside the idea that he means she’s way too brittle to do anything that wouldn’t make everything ten times worse. She can’t push aside the knowledge that she has already failed him once because it’s too easy for her to break.
Jesse must have realized it by now.
He must have realized that she’s also letting Xander down.
Jesse must have realized, and this is a warning to stop trying.
“Let me try.” She writes that Tuesday.
“Please.” She writes on Wednesday.
“Jesse?” She writes on Thursday.
Same paper, no new answer.
Maybe it’s time to fake a smile.
★★★
Xander and Willow got into a fight a few days after learning about Jesse’s funeral. It wasn’t their first fight by a long shot, they met as toddlers and had their first fight as such, but it was yet another fight they thought shouldn’t have happened. Two fights in a row about Jesse, who wasn’t even around. But that was the problem, that he wasn’t around and Xander refused to acknowledge his absence might be permanent. At least, he refused to acknowledge it when he wasn’t refusing to talk about him at all.
“Things don’t disappear just because you don’t talk about them, Xander,” she said after yet another attempt to make him talk, she was tired of it, but not ready for Xander’s biting response.
“Well, people aren’t dead just because you don’t care about them enough to keep looking.” Willow’s veins turned to rivers of ice way before Xander could react. “That came out wrong. Will, I didn’t—.”
“Get out of my house.” She couldn’t look at him. “In fact, get out of my life.” Somehow, her voice was icier than her blood. Xander tried to protest. “Get out. I don’t care enough anyway, right? Stupid Willow doesn’t care enough about Jesse, so she made up some lies to stop helping.” She was sure she was going to cry, but the dam never broke, it was frozen along with everything else.
“I didn’t mean you.”
“But you did.”
Somehow, she managed to kick him out.
Somehow, she convinced herself she didn’t care if she didn’t see him again.
Somehow, she remained convinced of that until Xander’s mom made her a call.
Xander was at the hospital, and it was her fault.
She made her first stars in months while sitting in the waiting room, softly repeating don’t go away, don’t go away, don’t go away.
“Visiting hours don’t start until later.” Instead of a doctor, Willow found the school librarian, who was wearing a neck brace. “Miss Rosenberg, correct?” She nodded and hid the paper in her hands.
“Are you okay?”
“I am, thank you,” he replied and sat down. “Your friend is going to recover as well.” Willow perked up at that, nobody had told her anything about Xander since her arrival at the hospital except that she couldn’t see him. Mr. Giles seemed to notice. “I was driving nearby when he was attacked. I may have run them over with my car. I admit it is not the most orthodox approach, but it did scare his attackers away.”
Willow didn’t say anything, she didn’t know what could be said to that. She sat on the information for a long time.
“Plural?” she asked later, maybe too late for Mr. Giles to follow. “Attackers, plural?”
“Yes. Attackers, plural.” She almost lost Xander. “But it is daytime now and there are many windows in here. He’s still alive.”
★★★
A few days later, Willow went to the school library looking for Mr. Giles, he was still wearing a neck brace but asked about Xander’s wellbeing immediately. Willow smiled.
“He actually wanted me to return this for him,” she started, placing a book and money for the late fee on the table. “He feels kind of awkward having an overdue book when you saved his life.”
Mr. Giles took the book but gave her the money back. “I believe being hospitalized grants a pardon.” She didn’t mention Xander owed way more than what he sent.
“I didn’t get a chance at the hospital… Thank you. For saving Xander.” Willow reached inside her backpack. “I made you this. I even weaved a little book on it… It’s not much but… It’s going to take a lifetime to even start repaying you… Maybe two lifetimes.” And she handed him a green paracord keychain.
★★★
Friday after school, Willow drags Xander to her house to bake brownies. It’s not so much dragging since Xander is always excited about food, but he still makes a fuss about having to help.
“It will be way faster if I just sit here, and you do the rest.”
She still makes him help.
Truth be told, it’s all for spectacle; if Jesse has a way to know she has been unable to help him in the past, he can also have a way to see that she’s allowed to use the kitchen unsupervised again and, once she rolls up her sleeves, he will see she has no new scars.
It’s a weak plan at best, brownies can’t fight whatever Jesse is running from, but she has no other ideas. Either way, her plan gets her to forget there was a plan in the first place, and just have a moment of true peace while they wait for the brownies to cool down, sitting on the couch and watching TV after their weak attempts at getting the flour out of their clothes because, of course, Xander decided to start throwing it to try and get banned from the kitchen.
Willow is fighting not to fall asleep as Xander keeps stroking her hair in silence. She doesn’t even know what they are watching anymore, she could swear Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t the protagonist a few minutes ago, but now he’s constantly in the movie.
“Xander,” she whispers even though is just the two of them in the living room and it’s still daytime. He hums in response. “You changed the channel?”
“No, don’t you remember Schwarzenegger’s acclaimed role in Sixteen Candles?” Willow rolls her eyes and tries to get an explanation for what’s happening onscreen. “It’s not my fault you’re falling asleep.”
“Is too. You keep playing with my hair.” He stops, she pouts at him, he laughs and starts again. She pokes him in the ribs. “Tell me what’s happening.” He tugs her hair a little and refuses to speak. Willow sits up and tries to push Xander to the floor. “I’m going to give you a bunch of mini-braids then.” Xander doesn’t budge, trying to make her go back to her former, more relaxed position.
“Be asleep again.”
Then it happens. A bunch of m&m’s fall for Xander’s side and to the floor. The ones she told him five times were for the brownies and too many for him to eat alone.
Xander crouches to pick up a handful of chocolates from the floor before presenting them to Willow. “Want m&m’s?” She just stares before she bursts out laughing.
They don’t decorate the brownies. They eat all the frosting with a spoon instead.
That night, Willow goes to sleep smiling and has no dreams.
★★★
In the morning she finds a polaroid of Xander in his room, in which he’s only visible thanks to the light of a lamp. Jesse has written a message underneath.
“He’s next.”
Willow stares at the letters for a long time without moving, a foreign hand going through her chest ready to rip off the rest of her heart in slow motion.
She doesn’t know what Jesse knows, she doesn’t know how she even knows, but she has to assume that a year in hiding gives him knowledge about what constitutes danger, way more knowledge than she will ever be able to handle.
She decides not to ask. Instead, she calls Xander and keeps him on the line as long as she can, unable to shake the feeling that Jesse was right when he told her she can’t help. Is this what she wanted? To learn that Xander is about to go away and not know what to do about it?
★★★
Willow calls him many times through the weekend and it’s hard to make it work while his father is home and Willow is reluctant to have him visit her instead. Willow doesn’t explain, Xander doesn’t ask, but he has to abruptly hang up the phone and go to check the other landline every time he thinks he’s hearing another breath. His father fakes innocence each time, and Xander doesn’t confront him, he never does, he just goes back to his room and tries to make sure he’s the one to pick up the phone when it rings.
There are lots of insults thrown his way in between calls.
Xander doesn’t know how to get Willow to stop calling and stop fueling his father’s ideas. At least she hasn’t shown up yet, her knock on the door or his window is just what it will take to unleash whatever comes next.
During Sunday’s third call, Xander asks Willow to not call again.
“I’ll explain tomorrow.” He stays on the line long enough to hear her hanging up and then never hangs up himself. His chest is heavy, and he doesn’t know if it’s the guilt or the fear.
“You’re the problem then,” his father says, standing at Xander’s door. Xander wonders what sound a human skull cracking would make, then shakes off the idea. “The girl is practically throwing herself at you, you’re not ‘just friends’” Xander keeps himself from getting up to shut the door on his father’s face. “And then you won’t even let the fucking prostitute take what I paid her to take.” His father sneers then goes away with a “you sure you’re a man?”
Xander closes the door and starts barricading it once again, but a hammer is starting to sound like a good idea.
Breathe out, thought out.
He’s not his father, he’s not going there.
★★★
When Xander gets out of the house on Monday, Willow is waiting for him right next to the door. He thinks he brought this on himself, but at least she waited outside and didn’t call the door.
“Walk with me to school,” she says immediately.
“You do remember your house is closer, right?”
Willow frowns a little at the ground and takes him by his free arm to make him walk. “I can still want to walk with you.”
Xander doesn’t ask more questions, but his heart keeps panging.
“I can pick you up tomorrow,” he says. “It will be easier than you walking twice.” But the message doesn’t land.
“Did I get you in trouble yesterday?” Willow asks instead. “With all the calling?” Xander takes the opportunity.
“Yes.” Willow looks back at the house for a second before walking faster.
“I won’t call again.”
She still insists on walking him to his house after school, he catches a glimpse of her still looking at the door when he opens his window.
★★★
Willow’s arms were wrapped in bandages she didn’t mind very much, it had been easier to face her parents with cotton on the way. What hadn’t been easier were the assumptions of what had been going through her mind, assumptions of her wanting to end her life, assumptions they refused to give up on despite Willow’s insistence. Nothing new, it still made her roll her eyes and turn back to look at the hands of the other girl staying in the same hospital room, Willow’s parents became static noise while Willow tried to decipher where the paper tearing was leading to.
She just wanted to feel something.
“My parents were the same at the beginning,” the girl said, Willow snapped out of her trance, blue eyes looking back at her, parents long gone. “My mom didn’t quit her job though.”
“What are you doing?” Willow asked instead, the other girl stood and sat at Willow’s side with all her paper pieces. She gave her one.
“Shred it. It makes me remember where I am,” the girl said, looking at her expectantly. “I don’t know if that’s what’s wrong with you, but it could help.” Willow tore a long strip.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me either.”
The girl left the next day, leaving her a lot of leftover paper.
Willow became a paper-tearing robot. No listening, no seeing, no talking, eating just enough to appease the nurses, barely looking at her mom during her newly acquired helicopter parenting. Just strip after strip of paper.
Until Xander finally visited.
She hadn’t been expecting him to do so.
She tried to keep it up, shred after shred while Xander stood at the door and her mom took a break from Willow-watch.
Xander was the one to break the month-long silence, stepping into the room.
“That’s a lot of paper.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing with it?”
Willow shrugged, Xander bore a hole into the floor with his stare, and the clock kept ticking.
“I wasn’t trying to die,” she said once again.
“You called the non-emergency line.” She shredded two entire sheets of paper before replying.
“Didn’t seem urgent.” Time started to be measured in sheets of paper gone. “Do you still hate me?”
“I never—.”
“You don’t have to stop just because you think I’m stupid.” A few strips of paper, Xander’s hand on her hand to stop her.
“I don’t hate you.” His eyes on hers. “And the day I think you are stupid… Well, the world will be ending. Just don’t go away before that happens.”
“I wasn’t trying to die.” Why was that so hard to understand?
“Don’t go away in any sense.”
She nodded and they called it progress.
★★★
Willow’s nightmares return once she’s unable to keep calling Xander, he keeps burning from the inside out and Jesse keep looking at her while she screams for help. Jesse smiles, Willow can’t move, and Xander doesn’t seem to die, not completely, he just keeps burning and screaming in agony, flesh turning to coal. Willow wakes up in a sweat and rushes to Xander’s house, knocking desperately on his window, which is closed again.
She jumps inside as soon as Xander opens the window, he has no signs of fire or wounds. She hugs him and buries her head on his chest.
“Will?” Xander’s voice is raspy, the fact that he was asleep, and that she woke him up, is just now catching up.
“I’ll go,” she says, voice muffled by the closeness. “I just needed to make sure.” Xander doesn’t speak, just holds her and rocks her a little with a hushing sound. Willow closes her eyes and whispers. “Don’t go away.”
“Is this permission to skip school?” Willow doesn’t answer, doesn’t let go, doesn’t cry, doesn’t breathe for long.
Xander’s door is barricaded again, and she wonders if his bruised arm was truly about getting out of the car. What else has she been missing? Not for the first time, Willow wonders if Xander’s house is a bigger threat than any criminal they can find on the street, she wonders if this is truly about Jesse having information or just pointing out the obvious.
She can’t fail, not again.
She can’t fail, not him.
“Come home with me,” she blurts, still looking at the door. Xander lets her go.
“I can’t.”
“No one will notice.”
“I can’t.” The answer is final, and she can’t stay either. She settles for refusing to be walked back home. She can’t protect him from anything, and the message she finds on her bed when she gets back seems to read her mind.
“You can’t save him.” Under a photo of the two of them hugging just an hour ago.
“Help him.” She writes.
“Please.” The next day.
“Don’t let him die.” And that’s what seems to break him.
“Meet me at midnight.” Under a picture of his grave.
★★★
The last night Xander ever went to the Bronze was also the last time he ever saw Jesse.
Jesse had asked for his help to get Cordelia to dance with him, Xander had been determined to get him to dance with anyone but Cordelia. Xander spent most of the night playing wingman. A very terrible wingman, but that part hadn’t been intentional. It wasn’t his fault Jesse was so goddamn fixated on the one girl to pay attention to anyone else.
“That one!” Xander yelled as loudly as he could to be heard over the music. “The blonde one that’s checking you out! Go!” And he started to push Jesse out of his seat.
“It didn’t work the last five times!” Jesse replied, stubborn to keep his seat.
“But she’s already checking you out! At least try as a jealously thing!”
Xander pushed him again as Jesse made a whole act of drinking deeply to get courage even though their fake IDs hadn’t worked and his glass was just soda.
Later that night, Xander shot him a double thumbs up when he saw Jesse leave with the girl.
★★★
Friday makes Xander smile.
He makes it out of the house in the morning and doesn’t find Willow waiting at the door, instead, he finds her kneeling on the pavement as she pets the next-door neighbor’s cat.
“Xander, she’s purring!” Willow whisper-yells, eyes sparkling.
“It sounds like an old truck,” he teases, looking from afar.
“The cutest old truck.” She kisses the cat’s head, Xander doesn’t mention he has absolutely seen that cat swimming in trash cans. “I just love her.” And she keeps petting the cat for another five minutes before the slowest goodbye ever.
He makes a mental note to sneak some food to the cat later.
★★★
Friday makes Xander smile.
They get their tests back and Harmony is pissed, just now learning that Willow and Ms. Jackson had come up with an arrangement after Willow grew tired of helping Harmony’s GPA.
“The tests are all the same, but mine has the questions in a different order,” Willow explains in the hallway, a little skip to her step.
No wonder she made him promise not to copy her in that class.
★★★
Friday makes Xander smile.
Dinner at Willow’s goes as usual, but once that’s over Willow forces him to watch some old kids’ movie about a talking pig. It’s not so fun to have her point at random animals and tell him “That’s you” like a little kid, but maybe that’s the point, and he does the same to her until they fall into a heavy discussion of geese versus pigs.
★★★
Friday makes Xander smile.
Willow tells him she has a feeling there won’t be nightmares tonight.
★★★
Willow takes a deep breath, holds, then exhales.
Four, seven, eight.
She pretended to go to sleep early, but she’s sitting in the dark, the photo of Jesse’s grave tucked inside one of the pockets of her cardigan, a reassurance that Jesse does want to see her again, that Jesse wants to keep Xander alive.
It was easy enough to keep her nerves at bay while Xander was with her; she could see he was safe, and the meeting seemed far away. She tries to convince herself that he’s as safe as he can be at the moment, the meeting seems farther away than before, this time in a tortuous way. The clock ticks, but midnight doesn’t near.
Jesse is allowing her back in his life.
She’s excited, she’s fearful, a part of her keeps repeating he’s going to yell at her. She can take it if it means her boys are safe and alive. Truly alive, not whatever she has been doing lately. They could run away without her, and Willow would be at peace knowing they are okay.
It would break her heart, but it would make things right.
She slides outside through the glass door at 10:30.
Jesse will save Xander, it will be alright.
Willow makes her way to the graveyard, then tries to recall the way to the grave she never felt like visiting once the funeral was over. She can at least be glad to know visiting would have been even more pointless than she once thought.
Through the darkness, memory comes alive, more alive as she gets closer, it breathes and it guides, then it turns into silence.
Someone dug up Jesse’s grave, a pile of dirt and a shovel still laying nearby.
Willow gets as close as she can without risking a fall, Jesse’s empty casket is open and bare.
She doesn’t understand.
She doesn’t want to understand.
A hand covers her mouth while the other one holds her close.
“You are so stupid.” Where she had hoped to hear Jesse’s voice, there’s Kyle’s instead, smiling into her ear. As far as a fight or flight response goes, Willow freezes. “Did you really think some dead guy was writing you?”
Laughter.
Kyle’s friends are here, rejoicing in making a fool out of her.
Kyle lets her go, Willow doesn’t move.
Instead, she does the one thing she thought she would never do again.
Willow cries.
“What’s wrong with you?” She asks in the middle of a sob.
Kyle forces her to turn around.
“What’s wrong with you?” Do you seriously think he’s coming back?” Kyle stalks forward and Willow lets him get on her face. “Why would he come back for someone so pathetic as you?” Willow closes her eyes, ready for him to shove her six feet under.
She only hears yelling.
Someone, something, has dragged Kyle away and is laughing as Kyle pleads and his friends run.
Willow just stares at it, tears still running through her face. They lock eyes and it grins.
It snaps Kyle’s neck and lets him crumble to the ground, then walks towards her.
Willow stays.
“You aren’t running?” A female voice to match the long blonde curls.
Willow’s voice is dead, she barely puts up a fight as the monster goes for her neck and feeds her blood.
Willow stares at Kyle’s still body as everything fades to black.
The last thing she gets to see is a flash of blonde hair and the lid of Jesse’s empty casket going down.
No longer empty, no longer his.
★
Xander wakes up to a loud frantic call from Willow’s mom, but Willow is not with him because she is at her own house, except for the part where Mrs. Rosenberg tells him she’s not.
He spends the day yelling her name until his vocal cords are burnt, he breaks into the closed school, he visits everyone in town, even the people he has never talked to, even Cordelia and all her friends.
Jesse’s dad goes pale, but he gets Xander into his car and joins the search.
Nobody saw her after she went to bed, nobody saw her nor the other eight kids he can’t bring himself to care about.
Maybe she’s baking. Maybe she’s studying. Maybe she’s sleeping. Maybe she’s chasing and befriending another neighbor’s stinky cat. Maybe she’s crying. Maybe she’s screaming. Maybe she’s dying. Maybe she did end up having a nightmare. Maybe something happened on the way to his house. Maybe he should have stayed. Maybe it’s his fault all over again.
There is no news when he reaches Willow’s house, Xander exhausts his words when the police officer asks him questions, it starts to bring back an old but not forgotten taste to his mouth.
He guides himself to Willow’s room, untouched down to the eternally unlocked glass door, and the scraps of paper on the bedside table, which makes him cry, which doesn’t bring Willow back.
Xander knows how this story goes.
His lungs burn and his hands don’t get cold somehow.
★
Xander starts making stars of his own.
They are messy, and they are flimsy, and they get crushed at the bottom of his backpack. The teachers are too busy making pity faces to tell him to stop and pay attention to class. He’s only here because Willow’s parents forced him to leave his spot in their living room.
He gets paper cuts on his fingers, and blood will have to be a part of the messiness because there’s no use tending to a wound that is just going to get open all over again.
Xander sees something from the corner of his eye.
His hands stop, his heart stops.
Seating a few spots to his right is Heidi, writing with a pink pen with dots.
Willow’s pen.
Willow’s favorite pen.
Willow’s favorite and missing pen she was hoping to get back.
Xander takes three long strides from his chair to where she is sitting and grabs Heidi’s wrist, snatching Willow’s pen from her.
“Where did you get this?” he asks, voice low, not registering the dead silence in the classroom. Heidi is looking at her wrist with panic. “This is Willow’s, she’s been looking for it, I know she wouldn’t let you borrow it.” Xander lets go of her wrist, and pushes her chair to the ground, Heidi still on it. “Why do you have it?”
He doesn’t remember much from there, but his throat is sore at the principal’s office.
★
Xander gets suspended. His mother is berating him in the car about how she had to leave work to pick him up and something about Heidi’s parents pressing charges, she almost crashes the car twice and then compares Xander to his father.
He wonders if it even matters anymore, everyone he cares about is gone and he couldn’t even get Willow’s pen back.
Mess up after mess up and nobody will ever stay.
“That poor girl’s friend is dead, Alexander, but you don’t see her beating up people,” his mother says. Xander wonders if Kyle helped Heidi steal Willow’s pen. “All over a stupid dead girl.”
If he was the one driving, he would have yelled and kicked his mother out of the car.
He settles for getting out at the next red light and going away in the opposite direction.
★
Xander uses the rest of the day pretending he can find Willow, he doesn’t even bother trying to hide, no need to hide when nobody is looking for him. Either Willow is hiding or he’s playing pretend. He knows by now that going missing and dying are pretty much the same.
He could go missing too, go wherever Willow and Jesse are now. Xander wishes to run into whoever they ran into, to be reunited, to have something, anything, again.
He falls asleep on a park bench very well into the night and doesn’t wake up until the sun is too harsh on his face. He’s hot and he’s sticky and he’s wrapped in a dirt-covered light green cardigan.
Willow’s cardigan.
The one he saw her wearing last.
Xander looks around, craving a glimpse of her.
Something falls out of her cardigan, and he finds Jesse’s handwriting looking back at him.
“Meet me at midnight.” Under a picture of his grave.
★
Xander’s eyes are glued to Jesse’s grave, clutching Willow’s cardigan with both hands. The sun just went down. It has to mean something that neither of them had the patience to wait until midnight.
Willow steps out of hiding, looking at Xander, who is facing the other way. Just a few more seconds to savor the moment, to count his last breaths. This is as normal as it gets before their new life, their last moments adrift.
“Xander?” she calls. Willow can see him mouthing her name as he turns to see her, she’s already getting drunk on it before he runs and envelops her in the tightest embrace. She drowns in it. Willow can feel again, she feels more than she ever felt in life, she’s not letting any sensation go away again, not the rush of the wind, not the ground beneath her feet, not the faint brushing of Xander’s hands while he puts her cardigan over her shoulders. She will gladly overwhelm her senses over and over again. She reaches for a kiss and Xander allows her to drag him to the bottom of the ocean. Everything is back in place. “Don’t scream,” Willow whispers against his neck before sinking her teeth in.
Xander’s scream is muffled, and Willow catches him when he starts to fall. “It’s okay,” she says, drawing blood from her own neck. “Here.” As she makes him drink. “I’m here.” And she keeps reassuring him as he drinks until he starts to fade away. She lowers them both to the ground, Xander’s head on her lap. “It’s going to be okay.” As she strokes his hair. “Just stop breathing.” Because no one is ever going away.
★★
It's raining when Xander regains conscience, laying on the bed from the tiny ranger cabin Willow claimed for the two of them after learning there was no more Jesse to save. It’s okay, the second-best option at the very least, and it’s a topic that can wait. Xander needs to feed.
“Hi,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing some hair out of his face. “I promise it will be less confusing soon.”
She cuts through the skin of her left arm with a knife and makes him drink from her again. He doesn’t know the difference yet. She lets him remain in the shadows for a little longer, it will be better that way. She lets him drink just enough for the thirst to start to quell but not disappear. Then replaces her arm with the knife before she puts bandages on slowly.
She sets the bandages aside and takes the knife away from him, both abandoned on the floor.
“You didn’t go home last night,” she starts, looking at the closed door. “Your parents are kinda cranky because of it.” Their gazes meet, a hand on his hand as she leans over to whisper. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we can fix it over dinner.”
She can see his pupils dilating before she guides him by the hand to the room where his parents are sitting on the couch, tied and gagged, hearts still beating, ready for him.
Willow unties his mother first, smiling as the woman tries to fight her way out. Willow shoves her to the ground at Xander’s feet, and he doesn’t hesitate.
Willow sits front row with Xander’s father, reveling in the spectacle of Xander draining the color from his mother’s face. Willow leans to whisper into the trembling man’s ear. “He’s going to be full soon. You know that’s when he starts playing with his food.”
And she makes him keep his eyes open the whole time.
Anthony Harris gets to see his son one day more.