"An ordinary girl you're not." Oh, you should talk, you frigid bitch.

I looked up to you, you know. I've always envied your strength. When I was teetering on the edge of a panic attack and Saturn was in that state that Saturn got into sometimes, you were the one who pulled us all together. No matter what happened, you never doubted, you never faltered, and you never suffered so much as a dent in your sanity.

Given what we were doing, maybe that makes you the worst of all of us.

Or maybe not. I don't know what to think anymore, but I can't bring myself to believe that it was wrong to trust him. I still love him more than anything in the world, though maybe I sort of hate him now too. He said he would make us into heroes and gods, but he only ever got around to making us into criminals. I have to believe that he's going to come back to us, that as long as I have faith it isn't really over, but I don't know how I can keep faith and still be a part of this broken, incomplete world he hated so much.

I'm not going to think about it. I'm an ordinary girl on an ordinary-girl pokémon journey. I'm having fun and letting off steam and certainly not fixating on how terrified I am of running into that brat, of what that might do to me, of what I want to do to her for the way she ruined my life. But when a kid starts crying when they lose to me, I can't help thinking of all the other brats who came before her, all the poor naïve little children who couldn't understand our goals and thought they were going to be heroes. I think of the way they cried. I think, I know how much blood a body that size can hold.

I don't think like an ordinary girl is supposed to think and I don't fight like an ordinary-girl trainer is supposed to fight. Sport battles are all about hurting your opponent as much as you can without actually destroying them, and that's the exact opposite of what I've trained myself and my pokémon to do. (It was more Jupiter's thing, I think. Though when she did it, it was to humans and it wasn't exactly fighting.) These kids cry over weak pokémon, and I'm so out of it that I don't fully realize that they're not just being sore losers until the League gets enough complaints that they revoke my license. Maybe that's a good thing; I think I need to get away from this. I need to be somewhere small and safe and unexciting. Maybe then I'll stop slipping up.

I want a job. Jobs want resumes and past-employer contacts ("First, you tear a hole in the fabric of reality…") and reasons you left your last position. All I'm asking for is work as a waitress or a cashier — the sort of things anyone could do. Why are there qualifications for something like that?

And since when did everything under the sun have to have a mission statement? I keep seeing these things in the application paperwork. The diner on the corner is "giving back to the community" and the big convenience store chain is "making the world a better place" and none of it makes any sense unless they're all just mocking me. I think they are mocking me. I think they know.

It's such a relief when the money runs out. I'm tired of pretending to be respectable.

—

I go for her purse, and the next thing I know my back hits the wall and there's a knife against my throat. She's done her hair different, so I didn't recognize her at first, but from this angle she's unmistakable.

"Commander Jupiter?"

Jupiter freezes. "Oh, you have got to be kidding," she says, but I don't think she's actually talking to me. She thaws a bit, enough to put the knife away and look at me with something closer to pity than disgust. "What happened to you? How could any of us have fallen that far?"

"I don't know," I say truthfully. "Things happened." I consider it for a moment. "And other things didn't."

She looks me over critically, and I know what she sees: stained and tattered clothes, filthy hair, dirt under the nails, bones showing beneath skin. "You've always been an embarrassment," she says. If she weren't carrying that knife, I swear I would slap her. She sees the anger, of course — I've never been good at hiding it — and sighs as she turns away from me. "I don't live far from here. Follow me. Let's get you out of the cold and cleaned up."

I do follow her. Jupiter may be a bitch, but she's a strong bitch, and I respect her more than I do myself.

Her apartment is very small and very clean. Something about it seems off to me, but then I haven't been inside a home for ages, let alone a clean one. I take a long, hot shower and change into some of Jupiter's old clothes while she brews coffee for us and warms a bowl of milk for Purugly (I sold the others a long time back, but couldn't stand to part with her — besides, I need to have some way of protecting myself). There's only one mug, so Jupiter drinks her coffee from a glass, and there's only one kitchen chair, so she stands and leans against the counter. That's the other thing I've always had to respect about Jupiter: that sort of casual selflessness that seems to comes so easily for her.

"Thank you, Jupiter," I say.

She sighs again. "You know you can call me by my real name now, right?"

I can't help but bristle at that. "Isn't it your real name?"

"Olive," Jupiter begins in that slow, authoritative tone mothers use when their children are acting thick, "don't be—"

I cut her off. "My real name is Mars, the name Master Cyrus gave me."

"He's gone, Olive. It's over."

"No, it isn't. I know he's coming back."

"You never found a way into the Distortion World, did you?" I look down at my drink. The mug is plain off-white ceramic, undecorated. It isn't at all interesting, but that doesn't stop me from studying it intently.

"I did," Jupiter continues, and my eyes snap right back to her in spite of myself. "I searched as far in as I could go. He wasn't there. I don't think he's anywhere anymore." I put down the mug; suddenly my throat is too tight to swallow even a small sip. "I've accepted it, and I loved him as much as any woman has ever loved a man."

"He was more than just a man." I don't know how I can even whisper. I don't know how I can even breathe.

"Then why the past-tense?"

"I can't—" I choke on the words, and for a moment I think my throat is going to close off completely, but I force myself to keep talking. "How can you just accept that it's over? How can you just accept that all of that was for nothing? Do you know what that makes us?"

"I do, and that's something I've come to terms with." She looks at me steadily as she speaks, not flinching or recoiling even a little. God, I envy her strength. This woman journeyed to an alternate dimension, then journeyed back and built a normal life from scratch. No wonder she thinks I'm a disgrace.

"How do you do it?" I ask her. "How do you live among ordinary people and not want to curl into yourself and die?"

Jupiter, unbelievably, smiles at that. "Let me tell you a little story about ordinary people," she says.

"I am currently working as a secretary for an attorney. This attorney is suing a certain company that produced a certain product that malfunctioned and killed a couple hundred people. Now, that's all very tragic, but such is life; things go wrong, people die.

"Here's the kicker, though: my firm has dug up some files that show this company knew things had gone wrong before people started to die. They ran some calculations and realized that it would cost more to recall all the defective units than it would to pay off the wrongful death lawsuits. Think about that for a second. This decision was worked out by a battalion of number-crunching grunts and signed off on by several levels of management. There were board meetings where a bunch of suits sat around a table and concluded that, unfortunate as it might be, killing hundreds of people was the only cost-efficient course of action possible. Tell me, Olive, how is this legitimate business any different from a syndicate of murderous thugs like, say, Team Rocket?"

"It isn't." I suppose I should be shocked, but what she said about Master Cyrus is still setting in. It's like someone pelting you with pebbles when you're caught beneath a rockslide.

"And how are the 'ordinary people' involved any different from you or me?"

That comparison is just offensive. "It was never about money for us," I remind her. "Everything we did, we did because we believed in something bigger than ourselves."

"Exactly. And I refuse to be ashamed of that when all I see around me are hordes of soul-whoring hypocrites." There's fire in her eyes and ice in her voice. How does a person like this end up as someone's secretary? Jupiter was meant to be a goddess. Can destiny make mistakes?

Master Cyrus was a god, or a prophet, or something not quite of this world —something better than anything in this world. Yet Master Cyrus made mistakes, terrible ones that cost us everything. Then he abandoned us. I keep thinking it must have been because we weren't worthy, that it's my own fault he's not coming back, but now I'm looking at Jupiter, and I wonder what more he could have asked for.

"Anyhow," says Jupiter, "that's what happened. Here's what's going to happen: thanks to this discovery, my boss is going to be able to make these people pay more than they bargained for — but still not enough to majorly inconvenience them. Those most responsible will spread the costs around the lower echelons and themselves pocket the same absurdly high salaries as always. They could, theoretically, be brought up on criminal charges, but they won't be. Normally in a case like this they'd get on with their obscenely prosperous lives, and only God would know if they slept any worse for it. In this particular instance, however, they will instead disappear in the middle of the night and never be heard from again. Nothing about any of that is right or just, but at least when it's all over I'll be able to get a good night's sleep."

I'm still too numb for this. "You're a monster," I tell her, but there's no bite in it. I can't really be angry at Jupiter, because I am the same thing she is. She's just better at it.

"I know," she says dispassionately.

"Do you care?" She doesn't answer, and suddenly I am upset. "Do you torture them before you kill them?" I ask. "For old time's sake?" I have to poke the beast. I have to make her snap at me, because I'm wearing her clothes and drinking her coffee, and how can I be so at ease around someone like that?

Jupiter doesn't snap, but I do catch her tensing almost imperceptibly. "Human garbage," she says. "I feel perfectly justified using trash like that however I please." Liar. She's already said there's no justice.

"Did you join because you're that sort of person? Or did being one of us for so long make you this way?" I actually would like to know the answer to this — certainly more than I wanted to know the answer to that last question.

"I don't know, Olive," Jupiter says, once again slipping into her condescending mother voice. "What was it for you?"

So I've gotten under her skin — and now I wish I hadn't. She's been too good to me today to have to put up with my childishness. I turn away from her, ashamed, and let my eyes wander as though all the answers are hidden around her apartment. "I don't know either. That's why I was asking. You've always been better at understanding things than I am. I just…" Oh. That's what's strange.

"You just what?"

"Do you really live here, Jupiter?"

"Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"

"Because it doesn't look like anyone does."

"What do you mean?"

"It's blank. There's nothing on the walls."

"Must there be things on the walls?"

"There's no color. The drapes, the bed sheets, the bathroom rugs… it's all just sort of beige."

"Do you have a problem with neutral—"

"There's no pictures. No books."

"I can buy them digitally, or check them out from the library, or— Why am I trying to justify this? Honestly, Olive, what's gotten into you?"

"I don't know." I pull my scattered thoughts together and force myself to turn back to her. "I'm sorry. You've been so kind to me, and I've done nothing but annoy you."

"I'm not annoyed," she lies. She hesitates for a moment, then adds, "It's really no trouble for me. I've been… well…" She pauses to smile sarcastically and roll her eyes. I think that makes it easier for her to say it. "Lonely, I guess." Again, I probably should be surprised — because how can someone be a goddess and a monster and human all at once? — and yet, again, I'm somehow not.

"Jupiter, do you really want me to call you Mary?" I ask.

"You don't have to," she says, because she really doesn't.

"I really want you to call me Mars."

"Fine. Mars." She drains the last of her coffee and crosses the kitchen to the phone. "I suppose I should probably order in some dinner."

I knew she would understand. Deep down, she's the same as I am: not ready to give up on being a goddess. The difference is that she seems to think that the monster is second best, and I just wish I could feel a bit more human.

—

"There's no way. It looked like her, I'll admit, but there's just no way."

"Why not? She has to eat somewhere, right? I don't really follow pokémon battling, but it's still pretty —oh, hey, Olive! Did you see her?"

Those are my coworkers. I work as a waitress now — Jupiter helped set me up. She's really been an amazing friend to me, even letting me stay with her until I saved up enough money to rent my own place. I still see her from time to time. Talking to Jupiter can be intense, but I think I really need it. I can be something close to honest with her. It's strange that the person I feel safest with should be the second most dangerous person I've ever met, but that's how it is.

"Olive? Hello? She must have passed right by you as you were coming in. Did you see?"

"I wasn't looking," I tell them. "I was thinking about stuff."

The two of them giggle, as girls do. They're younger than me, kids working their way through school. I know I used to giggle at that age, but in my memory it never sounds as natural and innocent as they do. I think of cheesy movies and the way you can tell what side a character's playing on by the way they laugh. I don't laugh much these days, but when I do I'm pretty sure I mostly just sound nervous.

"Of course," says one of them. "Well, better get your head in the game now, at any rate. Work to do!"

"Right."

Six what-will-you-be-havings later, I remember.

"Hey," I say, catching one of the other waitresses. "Who is 'she?'"

"Huh?"

"The person you were talking about when I came in."

"Oh, that! Get this: Dawn Platinum, the Sinnoh League Champion!"

"No!" The shriek comes too quickly to guard against. She was here. She walked right by me without my noticing. I don't know whether I should curse or thank my luck for that, but either way it's intensely unsettling. With just a little bit of warning I could have handled the news, but now I feel the hairs on my neck rise as I realize how badly I've slipped. Everyone in the restaurant turns to shoot a searching glare in my direction — and then turns back to their food.

My coworker giggles again. "Ooh, sorry, I had no idea you were such a fan of the League. But try to keep it down, 'kay?" She pats my shoulder. "And hey, you never know; maybe she'll come back! 'Scuse me."

"I hate you," I whisper, but fortunately she's already gone to refill someone's drink.

Maybe she'll come back. I get five orders wrong. Maybe six. I'm not counting.

Maybe she'll come back. That night I lie in bed for hours without falling asleep. Purugly keeps fussing at me. She almost has to maul me before I realize I forgot to feed her.

Maybe she'll come back. "Hey, Jupiter!" I say, pinning the phone between my ear and shoulder as I work the can opener.

"Why?" the voice on the other end complains groggily. "Just… why?"

"I was wondering, what would you do if you met that girl again?"

"Girl?"

"Dawn Platinum."

"You wake me up at two-o-clock in the morning to ask me a question you already know the answer to?"

I dump the chunky pink-brown substance from the can into Purugly's bowl, and she pounces on it like it still has a throat to rip out. "But why?" I ask Jupiter. "It wouldn't do any good, you know. I mean, I keep thinking maybe if I just do something big for him, something to show I haven't lost faith, maybe then he'll come back, but I don't really believe that."

"Mars. I have no idea what is going on in that messed up little head of yours, but I am not your God damned therapist. Go to bed."

"Jupiter, what you said that once about sleeping at night—" She hangs up before I can finish.

Maybe she'll come back. Except that she almost certainly won't. They weren't even sure it was her in the first place. I need to stop worrying. I need to stop hoping. I need to focus on my work so I don't screw up like I did yesterday, and to stop reaching into my apron pocket to check that the sewing needle I put in it this morning is still there.

Only, she does come back, just half an hour before closing — the little bitch, keeping me strung-out all day long like that. Actually, though, she's not so little anymore. In fact, she's about as old as I was when we first met. She dresses differently too, all pink Lolita and ribbon-tied ponytails, but it's still unmistakably her. I hope I'm not as unmistakably me, but just in case I try to stay out of her sight.

Naturally, she gets one of my tables.

"Good evening." My mouth is so dry it almost cracks on the words. "I'm Olive, and I'll be your server for today. What would you like to drink?"

"Good evening, Olive!" She doesn't just smile back at me; she positively beams. She's radiating friendliness and innocence. My hand slips into my pocket and begins to toy with the needle. "You have strawberry lemonade here, right? I think that's what I had last time."

She doesn't recognize me. She ruined my life and then forgot my face. I prick my finger — on purpose, to distract from the burning in my chest. "Do you already know what you want to eat as well?"

She orders the soup. I let go of the needle and think of that once I almost bought rodent poison before deciding Purugly could take care of it.

And Purugly did take care of it — Purugly, whom I take with me to work so that I can have her to call on walking home in the dark.

The girl leaves right at closing time. I hurry through my end-of-the-day routines so that I can tail her. "Did you get an autograph?" asks the waitress who tipped me off to her coming here yesterday. I should probably say something, but my mouth doesn't open. The waitress sighs at me and walks away.

I manage to catch up to her. It's easy enough to make her out in the well-lit main streets, but after just a couple minutes of following her, she turns into an alley and is swallowed up in shadow. I can only barely see her, but between the faint silhouette and the sound of footsteps I am able to keep up. I get Purugly's pokéball ready, but don't send her out just yet. I don't know what exactly I'm waiting for, but I know that something here is wrong. Why is she going this way? Where is she headed that she couldn't take a safer path?

Why am I even doing this?

The buildings around us get smaller, enough so that light from the main streets can come in over and around them. Not long after, we run into a dead end. Dawn Platinum stops. She must have gone the wrong way. In just a moment, she's going to turn around to retrace her steps and see me following her. This is my last chance. My throwing arm coils back, thumb on the release button. And stays there. I know I should send Purugly out, but nothing happens. I know I should run and duck out of her line of sight, but nothing happens. I know she'll turn around any second — this second — this second — this second. But nothing happens.

The attack order I've been choking on escapes from my mouth as a mangled, unintelligible scream. It lasts for only a moment before silence oozes in around me to seal up the break, and still for a very long time nothing happens.

"Well, Commander?" the girl says at last.

She knows. She's known from the start. I'm too tired for this. "I don't command anything anymore," I tell her.

"No? Not even pokémon?" She turns to face me, and her left arm twitches just slightly. I suddenly realize she's had her hand in her pocket this whole time, and why that might be.

"Well, Purugly's a cat." The words come blurting out. "She pretty much commands me." Instead of crying like I feel I want to, my body dissolves into cheesy-movie villain laughter.

"My God," she says, all contempt and no fear. "What's wrong with you?"

I cross the space between us. Her hand comes out of her pocket — wrapped around a pokéball, just as I'd suspected — but I'm there first. I slap her across the face, and she just stands stunned. "Oh yeah? What's wrong with you?" I slap her again. "You recognized me from the very beginning, didn't you — when you passed by me yesterday? And instead of calling the police like you should have, you came back and did whatever the Hell it is you think you're doing!" I slap her again.

She doesn't even try to move out of the way. And why should she? There's more feeling than force behind the blows; my arm is so weak, it's shaking. She just stands there, smiling bitterly, and when I've finished my rant she asks, "What becomes of someone who does the most meaningful thing they'll ever accomplish when they're ten years old?"

"Don't be stupid," I say. "Nothing can be truly meaningful in a world like this one."

"I helped save the universe."

"So what? It's doomed anyway." She looks at me more oddly than before, so I explain as best I can. "It's something about energy decaying, or there not being enough heat to go around as it expands."

"You were going to stop entropy? Okay, I have to hand it to you — that's a good one." She stands in silence for a moment, trying not to make eye contact, then suddenly gives off a short, embarrassed laugh. "Oh well, you're right about one thing — this is unbelievably stupid. Good bye."

She pushes past me and walks away. I go after her without thinking. She increases her speed, and so do I. I catch up to her without figuring out why I wanted to, and keep pace with her in silence. Meeting her again after so long has to be important. I don't want to lose sight of her just yet. Something has to happen first. Something has to change.

After a while she seems to resign herself to my following her and slows down. "I'm a bit less naïve than I was back then.," she says for no apparent reason. "I was just discovering the world, and I was so terribly in love with it all. I couldn't understand why anyone would think it needed to be remade. Now I can — and I wouldn't trust the best human being in the universe to do the job. And you were all deeply horrible people."

I should probably react to that, but I don't really know how. I think I've been reacting to her too quickly anyhow. I don't at all know how we got to this point in the conversation, and I think it's because I haven't actually been listening. When I try going over it in my head, something clicks. "You wanted me to kill you."

"Not necessarily. What I wanted you to do was make me fight for my life."

"What made you so sure I'd give you a chance to fight? You let me handle your food."

"I've already said it was stupid, all right? Why are you following me?"

"Why are you letting me?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either."

We end up at a hotel. In the lobby, Dawn Platinum stops and turns to me, looking at me for the first time since she ran off. "What?" she asks. "You want to come up? Maybe have a cup of coffee?"

I say, "Okay."

She makes a strange noise in the back of her throat and covers her face with one of her hands. "Dear God," she says, and shows me to the elevator.

The moment we get to her room, she goes for the minibar. "What's your poison?" she asks me as she rummages around in it.

"Um," I say. "I thought you had coffee."

"Well, you know, it's not like this can get any more awkward!"

"I'm not allowed to have alcohol."

She pulls her face out of the fridge to fix me with a blank stare. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize," she deadpans. "You look very mature, you know."

"No," I tell her, "it's like what you said earlier. I don't drink poison, and… and, 'Alcohol is a poison. It plays havoc upon the channels of the mind, obstructing the flow of rationality while opening the floodgates to all manner of base emotions and unseemly impulses.'"

Dawn looks confused for a moment, then smiles crookedly. "Ah, I get it. 'Loose lips sink ships.'"

"That's not what that means at all."

"No, but it's more to the point. And catchier. Did he make you learn all that by rote?"

"No. He only said it once." She doesn't answer; she's gotten some bottles out, and is too caught up in mixing herself a drink. "You had lemonade at the restaurant. Pink lemonade."

"Do you have a problem with pink?" she asks, taking a chug. "Because I don't think we'll get along very well if you do. The rest of it I can forgive, but that…" The deadpan breaks, and she bursts out laughing. "My God, what am I doing? You're evil."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are! I don't know what you've done personally, but I know what you were complicit in: grand theft, kidnapping, murder — and then an attempt at something so awful we don't even have a word for it. 'Genocide' doesn't begin to cover it. Mundicide. Omnicide. Do you think if I give it a name, someone else will try it?" I stand speechless while she finishes the glass and pours herself more. "Just between you and me, I sometimes kind of wish that someone would. I can tell you that. You're no one to judge. I mean, I don't think it seriously, you understand." She turns to me suddenly, and for a moment looks very lost. "You do understand, don't you?"

"Not at all," I admit, and she scowls.

"I could have seen it coming, you know, if I'd looked a bit harder. I should have paid more attention when I met Volkner. Only for him it was just pokémon battles, and for me it's everything. It's life. And he had a back-up plan: going for the championship. And he had Flint. And he had me."

I want to slap her again. "Stop that. You aren't allowed to be miserable. You won."

"I don't think I'm miserable, exactly," she says. "Sometimes I'm very content. And sometimes… sometimes I feel absolutely nothing." She flashes me another pale smile. "Cyrus was an idiot."

I don't slap her. I tackle her to the ground and break a bottle on the way down.

"Where is he?" I ask, holding the jagged edge to her throat.

"There, you see?" She grins. "I told you you weren't a good person."

"I don't care! I don't care what kind of a person I am! I just want him back! Tell me where he is!"

She should be struggling, but she's more relaxed than she's been since the restaurant. All this time there's been something tense about the way she held herself, something in her shoulders and neck, like Purugly watching a bird, or a bird watching Purugly. Now she's so limp that she seems to be sinking into the floor. It must be the alcohol. I hope it's the alcohol. I thought she said she wanted to fight. "I told you the first time you asked," she says. "That was over a decade ago."

"You lied!" My hands are shaking. The glass scratches little pink scores on the underside of her chin, and she just keeps grinning. "Jupiter went to the Distortion World. He wasn't there."

"Maybe she missed him. Maybe he left. Maybe it ate him up and turned him into the kind of stuff it's made of. I was there too, Mars. It was a weird place. Every step I took, I felt like it was trying to reject me like a body rejects a disease."

"He's not dead," I insist. "He's not. He's—" An idea occurs to me, and I can't help but laugh. "Of course you felt like that. He said it was like his perfect world, right? You're human. You're incomplete. Of course it would reject you, but he's so much better."

"Then why don't you go to him?" she asks. "Jupiter knows a way."

Because I'm scared. "Because I'm not worthy. Not yet. That's why…" I apply a little more pressure with the bottle and watch the edges of the glass tint red. "That's why I'm going to kill you. That's it, isn't it? Just as I thought, that's where all of this is supposed to go. I failed to stop you and he left, so if I kill you now, then surely… then surely…"

There's a click, and a stream of red light, and a small mewling sound. My arms jump back to my sides and lock there, and without anything touching me I am lifted into the air and away from Dawn. When I look down at her, I can see that she managed to get her hand into her pocket; I had been watching her face, and she must have moved so slowly that I couldn't feel it. Then she rolls out from under me and gets to her feet, and I'm set down. When I turn around, I find myself looking into the very angry eyes of the Pokémon of Lake Verity.

"So you can keep them, but I can't," I say without thinking.

"Mesprit chose me," is all she has to say to that.

"Why?"

The deadpan comes back in full effect. "People say it's because I'm pure of heart."

I turn back to her. She's smiling at me, still, after everything, and somehow I can't help but smile back. "What do you say?"

"I don't know. It could be something close to that. Maybe Mesprit knows that if there's ever serious trouble in the region again, I'll be there, so traveling with me is just a more efficient way of doing the whole guardian bit than waiting around in a lake. Or maybe it's the opposite; maybe Mesprit thinks I could be dangerous, so it's keeping an eye on me."

"Then shouldn't I have one trailing me?" I joke. I think that's a joke.

She doesn't say anything. She just looks at me with pity written all over her face.

"I think I should go," I tell her.

"Well, yeah," she says. "But hey, maybe I'll see you around sometime!"

"Don't sound so hopeful. It's disgusting."

On my way out, I only slam the door a little.

—

The night is thick and black now, and I don't know my way home from here. I wander aimlessly for a bit, wind up at a park, and find a bench to curl up on until it gets light.

I can't get to sleep, though. It's not that I'm uncomfortable; I've slept on plenty of benches before this one. It's not that I'm not tired. I'm too tired, and lost, and alone, and I don't know what to do. Jupiter doesn't have the answers. Dawn Platinum doesn't have the answers. I don't know where Cyrus is, but even if I did I wouldn't go to him. I'm too afraid he might not have the answers either, and then the ground will fall away and I'll be worse than lost; I'll be nowhere, adrift in a void emptier and more featureless than Jupiter's apartment.

I notice there's a hoothoot perched on the streetlight above the bench. "Hey," I say, sitting up. "Do you know how to live? I mean, what do people… what do people do? How do they not feel terrible all the time? What am I missing?"

It blinks at me once, twice — and then flies off.

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

I don't want to be out here tonight. I want to be safe in my room where it's warm and things are in the order I put them in. Jupiter will help me get home, I decide. She won't be happy about it, but she'll do it. I fish out my phone and dial her number.

"Is this going to be a thing, Mars?" she says as soon as she picks up. "Because if it's going to be a thing, I think I'd rather not know you."

"What?" It takes me a moment to remember the call late last night. "Oh, no! No, this is different, it's really important!"

"Fine. Spit it out."

"Thank you! I just need—"

I stop suddenly. The call late last night. That's important, somehow. I don't know why, but it is. Something has to be.

When I speak again, my voice sounds just a little too far away to be coming from my mouth. "She's at the Cliffview Hotel," I say. "Room 302. Her pokémon are with her, and they're very powerful, but she's had a lot to drink, so if you're lucky she'll be sleeping quite soundly."

I hang up before Jupiter can respond, then spend the next five minutes staring at the phone to see if she'll call me back. She doesn't.

I don't know why I did that. The truth is, I don't really know why I do anything. But when I lie back down on the bench, a sense of peace washes over me. Whatever comes next, whether anything happens, whether anything changes — and it probably won't, because nothing ever does, but still — it's out of my hands.

That's the way I like it.