Page 128 of Heartless Game

“Tovah, please,” I begged. “You’re okay. Be okay.”

“I need you to live,” she was crying, reaching an arm toward me. “Live, please.Live.”

I reached out my arm and felt cooling skin as my fingertips touched hers. It was barely contact, but I grasped for it like it was the only lifeline left.

“Isaac,” she whispered, her eyes shutting. “I’m so?—”

And then she stopped breathing.

Someone roared with so much anguish, it shook the house. I didn’t even realize it came from me.

Someone was trying to drag her away from me. I grasped onto her hand, but the barely-there sensation of her fingers disappeared from under mine, like she’d never been there at all. Like she was already a ghost, and god, please fucking god, let her haunt me forever, let me not be alone for long.

Someone was pressing down on my chest, trying to staunch my bleeding, speaking to me. I didn’t hear them.

I didn’t pay attention to any of it. Didn’t respond to any of it.

My hand was empty.

She was gone.

Tovah, my bashert, was gone.

My own eyesight was going, my heart was stuttering, I was losing the will to breathe. To live. My father had the right idea. I’d go with her.

My eyes shut and I saw her face in front of mine.

Live,she said.

Not without you.

And then finally, thankfully, it was quiet.

54

Tovah

When I was a freshman, I wrote an article about guns forThe Daily Queen. I’d learned that in close quarters, there are about 1.5 seconds between the moment a gun fires and it hits its target.

A lot can happen in 1.5 seconds.

A lifetime can flash in front of your eyes in 1.5 seconds.

Or the same person, from a million different angles.

1.5 seconds.

1500 milliseconds.

1500 moments with Isaac, flashing in my mind, as I tried to grab his hand.

1500 moments, as he slipped away from me.

1500 moments, as I slipped away, too.

And then they were gone.

55

---