Some Quiet Place

then realize I don’t want to think about it. This in itself is strange, unsettling, dangerous.
    “If you don’t want to come, I understand,” I manage to say. My nothingness is weakening, because even though it tries to dig a deeper hole inside of me, I feel just the tiniest bit of … vulnerability. Completely unaware of anything else, I stop in the middle of the hallway, grasping at the scrap of Emotion. There is no other feeling except for this, and the taste of it is so unfamiliar. My knowledge and experience have not prepared me for it. More than ever before I realize that I do not understand humanity nearly as well as I’d once thought. My breathing quickens, and even though the floodgate is barely open, a painful fist of Emotion buries itself in my stomach.
    Grief.
    Why?
    “Elizabeth? Are you all right?” A hand cups my elbow. Joshua looks down at me with concerned eyes.
    “Elizabeth?” Sally Morrison stands in the doorway of the office, gazing at me worriedly, her forehead all scrunched and wrinkled.
    Please come back, please …
    You killed me.
    Then, inexplicably, I envision that shadow standing over the girl and the dead body of the boy. The red eyes, the fog of beetles. Coming after me. Now the breath hitches in my throat.
    “Your terror tastes just as I imagined, Elizabeth,” Fear whispers into my ear. The sweet scent of strawberries wafts past my senses. He’s pressed to my back, and for the first time his touch affects me! My heart hammers, and past the dread I’m seized by a fierce desire to turn, press my palm to his chest, and experience his lips against mine again—
    And just like that, a brick slams into place and the wall is whole again. The power is stronger than ever. The fragile memory of feeling is gone. Black ink drips through my soul, the nothingness darting every which way to swallow me whole. Fear sighs with both satisfaction and disappointment, stepping back to observe. “It must be the boy,” he mutters to himself.
    I pull away from Joshua, regarding him thoroughly. Was he really the one to bring on the tide of Emotions? No—the strange girl said it was almost time. So this connection with Joshua Hayes is no longer logical. He takes up time and effort, and the very idea of him enrages Fear. Not to mention Tim. Courage may have believed I would need this boy, but unlike the hooded girl, Courage is not particularly powerful. It’s unbeneficial for me to listen to him.
    “I’m fine, thank you,” I say to Joshua, and Fear makes another satisfied sound in his throat. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late for class.” I look at Sally. “I’m fine,” I repeat, smiling for good measure.
    “What about the project? The poem? Did you finish?” Joshua calls after me. “They’re due tomorrow, you know!”
    Fear walks beside me. I ignore Joshua and pick up my pace to make it to Chemistry class. Fear is quiet; unusual for him. At the doorway, I pause. No one else is around, save for a tall boy hurrying to his own class farther down the hall.
    “You won’t ever taste me again,” I tell Fear in my flat way. “I hope you savored it.” Mildly, I wonder why there had been that sudden impulse to kiss him.
    Surprisingly, given his nature, he is not smug or quick to react. He touches my cheek, leans in, and inhales me. “I should be glad you’ve decided to break all ties with the boy,” he murmurs. He runs his hand down my arm. “But in a way, he was good for you. I think, little by little, he was breaking through.”
    “No one can break through,” I lie. Yet again I think, the girl did say it was only a matter of time …
    Fear picks up on the false note in the words, and it isn’t until he raises his pale brows at me that I comprehend I’ve said that last part out loud. “You’ve discovered something,” he states with interest. “And you’re not going to tell me.” It wouldn’t be sensible to have Fear hunting the girl down; she won’t tell him anything. I open my mouth to give him more excuses, but the Chemistry teacher notices me standing outside the door and glares.
    The bell is going to ring any second. Turning aside so my teacher won’t see me talking to myself, I say out of the corner of my mouth, “I’ll tell you what I know if you do something for me.”
    Fear is intrigued. He tilts his head in question.
    I wave at the teacher in reassurance, then face Fear again. “I want you to come with me to a birthday party Saturday night. I don’t