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“IT ISN’T FAIR,” Emma says out loud. “She deserved better.”

And so did Claire.

But maybe the idea of deserving anything at all is meaningless.

Do babies born today deserve to grow up in a world of war and hunger, mental illness and loneliness, hurricanes and deforestation?

They don’t ask to be born in the first place, and they definitely don’t ask to be born in the middle of worldwide crises.

Emma wishes, with every molecule in her body, that she could still talk to Claire the way she used to.

“Oh, Claire,” Emma says to the empty, anonymous room. “Why did you have to go?” She shakes her head. “But you didn’t have to. You chose to. And I will never understand why.”

Once again, Emma can’t sit still. As she paces, she keeps talking out loud, because hearing her voice makes her feel less alone. It’s almost like she can imagine the words somehow reaching Claire, wherever she is. She barely notices the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“No one understands why I’m making my choice either.

But if I’m honest, Claire, I think part of me was never sure that I was going to go through with it.

Like maybe it’d be enough to raise all those issues and make that terrible threat.

” She shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

Finds a lone Tic Tac, which she tosses into the corner.

The room needs a good vacuuming anyway. “Not that the whole thing was an empty threat from the start. But I guess I thought there was a chance that I could, like, talk the talk but not have to walk the walk.” She laughs awkwardly.

“God, I sound like our PE teacher. Mr. Briggs. You never had him. He only speaks in clichés. ‘You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take,’ and stuff like that. It’s so dumb.

“But now I’m getting distracted. I guess what I’m saying, Claire, is that this whole thing has gotten so much bigger than me.

People are paying attention, just like I wanted them to.

They’re marching and having rallies. They’re making videos and calling for change.

So suddenly it feels like there’s no way I can back down.

” She pauses in front of the sheep painting.

It really is ugly. “I won’t miss that, ” she says.

“There’s a lot of things I won’t miss, I guess.

So maybe there’s a bright side to having to burn myself alive. ”