It hurts. Something wrenched out of her chest, replaced, ripped out again. It feels like the kind of pain that should, at some point, reach a peak and then start to recede, but it doesn't. It only seems to get worse, and worse, and worse.

She lifts her head and looks at Abby, trying to find some kind of reason, some kind of relief. There isn't one. Abby's crying, too. And later Clarisse will see that it was wrong to expect something so insurmountable from her. She'll understand that Abby is hurting, too, in a way that must be far more complicated and fragile than her own grief.

Right now she can't stop herself. The hurt is too huge.

"I don't understand," she chokes out, "I don't understand, I don't understand how she could just... leave, and be gone, in the middle of the night, and never come back, I—what should I have done?"

There has to be something she could have done to keep Ellie tethered to this place. She could have been better, done more, not taken it as a matter of course that she'd close her eyes and that Ellie would still be there when she opened them again. Not taken it so much for granted that someone had loved her, chosen her, out of everyone she could have had. She could have been someone worth staying for.

Clarisse puts both hands over her mouth like she's going to be sick, like if she presses hard enough she can keep her grief from spilling out. The sobs just keep coming, so forceful that she can barely breathe.

"Why wasn't I enough to keep her here?"