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into
agreeing to attend. She had a tendency to forget this kind of
things ever since Liam…
    Shutting down that line of thought, she offered
Alice an apologetic smile. “Sorry?”
    Alice crossed her arms as she frowned. “Sorry
isn’t going to cut it this time. Don’t you dare move.”
    With that warning, she walked out, and through
the open door, Lena could hear her high heels clicking down the
hallway. The sound ceased before it became too faint to hear, then
resumed after a few seconds. When Alice reappeared, her smile was
ferocious.
    “There,” she said, handing a plastic bag to
Lena. “You can wear these. I was going to put them on with the
horns but I changed my mind.”
    With some trepidation, Lena pulled out of the
bag a bundle of white tulle and glitter. A moment of confusion
passed before she recognized what she was holding.
    “Wings?”
    She raised a dumbfounded look toward Alice, who
eyed Lena’s jeans and plain white shirt critically.
    “You won’t make the classiest angel, but I guess
you can pull it off as long as you smile. Come on, let me put these
on you.”
    Lena glanced back at the wings in her hands. She
could see that Alice had good intentions, and her friend’s support
was the reason why she hadn’t quit the school during those first
few weeks after Liam’s disappearance. But good intentions or not,
the prospect of dressing up to go to a Halloween party seemed even
more silly now than it had every time Alice had mentioned it over
the past week.
    “Listen,” she said gently as she stood and
folded the wings back in a bundle, “you’re the best for asking me
to come along—”
    “The next words out of your mouth had better not
be ‘but I’m not coming’,” Alice cut in. “You love Halloween. You’ve
always loved Halloween. You’ve made me dress up in ridiculous
costumes for three years in a row, there’s no way I’m not returning
the favor. Now hurry up and give me those wings. Carlos and his
friend are probably waiting for us by now.”
    The casual mention of this ‘friend’ didn’t
escape Lena and she tensed, knowing all too well what Alice had in
mind. Her eyes flickered toward the bedside table—toward Liam’s
picture—in an almost instinctive glance.
    “It’s not a good idea,” she protested again,
looking back at Alice. She expected more reproaches and protests,
but not the sad smile that tugged at Alice’s lips.
    “You’ve been locked up here for months, Lena. If
you’re not in class, you’re at the library or in your room
studying. And if you’re not studying, you’re putting up posters and
pestering the police. Do you really think he would have wanted you
to stop living?”
    They’d had this discussion a dozen times over
the past weeks. Alice had supported Lena for months, but like
everyone else, she had eventually accepted that Liam wouldn’t
return, nor would he be found alive. Everyone accepted as much,
save for Lena. She refused to let go of hope. It was the flame that
kept her sane, day after day, that allowed her to keep living and
keep waiting for Liam.
    However, after hearing Alice repeat it with
increasing force as the weeks passed, it was slowly sinking in that
what she had been doing, since her fiancé’s disappearance, couldn’t
be called ‘living’. At most, she was surviving. Moreover, that
wasn’t something Liam would have ever tolerated. He would have
glued those wings to her back if needed, and dragged her to the
nearest club. He would have made her dance, then smile, then laugh.
He would have made her love him even more.
    Without a word, she handed over the wings to
Alice and then turned her back toward her. Alice was equally silent
as she slipped the translucent straps onto her friend’s arms before
tightening them, securing the wings on Lena’s back over her
shirt.
    Alice was beaming when Lena turned back toward
her.
    “You look lovely.”
    With a murmured word of thanks, Lena stepped
over to where she kept her shoes by