Page 119 of Shatter

I've never been so tired.

Her mouth moves against my chest.

I feel it, soft, her lips shaping something over my heart, again and again.

The last thing I feel before sleep takes me is her lips moving against my chest, shaping words I can't hear.

Cold wakes me.

Not the room.

The room's warm, gray light is already leaking around the edges of the window.

The cold is on my chest, where she was.

I reach for her before my eyes are open.

My hand finds a sheet.

Cool sheet, smoothed flat, like she's been gone long enough for the warmth to leave it.

My eyes snap open.

Her side of the bed is empty.

The pillow still has the dent of her head in it.

"Anni?" My voice comes out cracked with sleep.

Nothing.

The bathroom door's standing open, the light off.

I sit up.

My head swims, and I grab the edge of the mattress.

Her hoodie's gone from the back of the chair, and her shoes are gone from beside the door.

The photo of her grandmother, the one she propped against the lamp, is gone.

Then I see the paper on her pillow.

A square torn off one of Aziza's order pads, pink, with Zizi’s Treats printed across the top in loopy letters.

I pick it up.

My hands are shaking so hard the paper rattles.

Her handwriting is small and neat, a bookkeeper's print, the letters pressed so hard into the paper they've almost torn through.

Five words.

I love you. I'm sorry.

My eyes run over it again, and again.

I love you.