Page 97 of Assassin Anonymous

So simple that it’s almost ridiculous, and I didn’t hear it when I needed to, but I hear it now. Loud and clear.

Don’t slip.

Simple as that.

I climb off Stuart to find Astrid crawling toward me, a trail of blood streaked on the floor behind her, a kitchen knife grasped in her hand.

“We have to help him,” I tell her.

“Let him die,” she says.

I don’t see a phone handy. No way we can get an ambulance here in time to save him. I need to save him. I need to keep my fist from closing around the paper crane I’ve been cradling in my heart. I came too far. Maybe Stuart deserves to die. No, he does, he really really does. But it’s not for me to decide.

I’m not death.

We can do a tracheotomy. I pull the felt marker out of my pocket, yank the ends out with my teeth. “Astrid, please.” I offer it to her. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She falls onto her back, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard. “No.”

“If he dies…”

She spits. “If he dies, what?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I tell her, searching for the words. The right thing to say. Some perfect thing that will convey this impossible feeling inside me. It’s just there, at the edge of my fingertips, and I need her to see it. I need her to see me…

“The world will be a better place without him,” she says.

“And if he dies, I’ll be worse. Look at what this life gave us. This isn’t living, Astrid.”

She laughs, long and deep, her eyes closed. “You think we can change? It’s kind of adorable.”

“We can,” I tell her. “We can, okay?” And I find it. That perfect thing to say: “Yesterday matters. Today matters more.”

She turns over and stares at me. I think that did it. I think she sees it, that pulsing light at the center of me, dimmed for my entire life and finally free. That feeling that the world used to be so small, and now it’s bigger.

She rolls her eyes and pushes her body into a crawl. She gets over Stuart and holds out her hand. I give her the marker. She looks at it for a moment, studying it, like she’s never seen one before.

Then she tosses it aside and plunges the knife through Stuart’s eye.

He stops choking.

His body goes slack.

Astrid falls back onto the floor. “You’re right. Today matters more.”

I slump on the floor next to her, close my eyes. Adrenaline abandons me and the pain comes roaring through the door, rattling the foundations. I allow it to sink its teeth into me. It covers up all the other things I’m feeling in this terrible, crushing moment.

14

We’re all just walking each other home.

—Ram Dass

Jericho, New York

One Year Later

Breathe. Four seconds in, hold for four, out for four, empty lungs for four.