Chapter 26: The Darkness and the Dawn

Theresa sipped her coffee, watching Alexandria. She was trying to be sympathetic, but mostly she was just amused. Her friend seemed so shaken, but there was no good reason for it.

“Dear, it's fine for you to have worried about me, but I'm quite alright now.”

“Theresa, worried doesn't really begin to cover it. You're one of my best friends, and you totally fell off the map! You were involved with this guy that you didn't know at all, and you stopped talking to me! What was I supposed to think, what was I supposed to do? It was like you were a completely different person.”

“Yes, I suppose I did act that way, a bit, didn't I?” Theresa had tried to reach Alexandria to talk to her about her decision to break it off with Adrian, but then, she had been in the mountains. The fact that it had been a swift decision didn't help it either. “If you want to talk about it, that's fine, but I'm also interested in what your break so far has been like.”

Alexandria waved it off. “Later,” she said. “What happened? Why did you break it off?”

Theresa stood up, and walked over to the window. “It was over Christmas dinner, with my family,” she said. “They asked me whether I was happy with him.” She looked back at her. “You know how families are.”

Alexandria didn't. “It sure sounded like you were happy whenever you talked to me,” said Alexandria. “Which made no sense at all.”

“Yes,” Theresa said, still thinking. “And I told them as much as I told you. But when I said it, dear, I realized that I wasn't happy about it now. Well, then, I mean. I suppose I had that known it earlier, but whenever I would spend time with him, I would be happy again, but whenever I wasn't with him... I guess forget about it. It would take another date with him, to remember.”

“It was the brews,” said Alexandria. Theresa raised her eyebrow. Sometimes her friend just couldn't help herself.

“I'm not going to say you're wrong,” said Theresa, delicately, “but I suspect it was myself, too. Oh, and a whole host of other things. But it doesn't really matter what it was. The facts were that I was happy when I was with him, but I wasn't happy about the relationship when I wasn't with him.” She laughed. “I admit, dear, that I don't really know myself well enough to fully explain why. But that realization was enough for me.”

But it was clear by this point that Alexandria didn't want to hear any other explanation.

“Was Adrian upset?” Alexandria asked.

“Oh, no, dear. The decision was mutual. Well, not mutual. I made it, but he was fine with it.”

Alexandria looked like the didn't believe it one bit. Theresa moved over to her, and sat down.

“Lex,” she said softly, “you need to consider that, sometimes, you don't have all the answers. You don't know what's going on in other people's minds. He wasn't upset. Really.” Theresa felt a bit annoyed at this point. “And neither was I.”

Alexandria nodded. She was showing remarkable restraint, at least.

Theresa eased back into the couch, relaxing. “Now, dear, tell me about your break.”

“Some other time, maybe.” Alexandria stood up. “It was scary, it was sad, it was beautiful. I'm really sorry to do this to you, Theresa, but I need to go home and think about a few things.”

Theresa waved. “I understand. I'll get the full story from you eventually, I suppose.”

Theresa watched her friend put on her winter coat and head out the door. She went to the window again, and looked out at the campus.

She saw the head of the Neptune River, still wide and lazy before the canyon at the library. It had iced over during Christmas, but despite the rigid and broken surface, there was still cold and clear water flowing underneath.

She saw Alexandria exit her apartment building, her long brown hair trailing out from under her winter hat. The winds blew, and Alexandria's coat was pushed to either side, open. She had not buttoned it shut.

She watched the sky grow dark blue, knowing that the sun was setting behind her in the west. Even after the bulk of winter, it felt wrong to have the night come on this early.

As the sky faded to black and Alexandria moved out of her sight, Theresa remembered that the solstice had already passed, and the night would be pushed back further and further, until, one day, she would be walking under the evening sun amidst the flowers of spring.

“That's a very, very interesting story,” Adrian said. He was lying on Miranda's couch, as she sat in her desk chair.

“I thought it was terrible,” she replied. “But it's all true. The cops went up there a couple days after we left, confirmed the whole thing.”

He stretched and yawned. When he had finished, he said, “And you still don't understand why the man in the lighthouse did that?”

Miranda looked at him. “Are you going to tell me I can't be a therapist again? That's mean.”

“True things can be mean. They often are.”

“It just doesn't seem real,” said Miranda, softly. “It's too incredible.”

“Which is why you grabbed at the coldest and simplest explanation,” Adrian said. “Maybe you should consider the fact that you just fundamentally don't understand people.”

Miranda turned to look at Adrian. “Are you like this because that Theresa girl dumped you and you're upset about it?”

Adrian smiled. “Don't diagnose me just yet, doctor. You can't figure out people the same way you can figure out a biology diagram, or solve a chemical equation.”

Miranda folded her arms. “Sometimes, I don't know why I'm friends with you. I've... I've done tons of stuff for people. I'm a great girlfriend to Al, I'm... well, I hope I'm a good friend to you.” Adrian just looked at her, and said nothing. “We've played games where we predict people together! So don't say that I can't do it.” She looked down, afraid to say what she said next. “I don't like it when you belittle me.”

“If you never break, you will never know how much you can safely bend,” said Adrian, getting up off of the couch. “And despite whatever you think, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm trying to show you what you're missing. And you're missing a lot. You think your boyfriend is happy?”

“I know he's not! I'm trying to fix him, and I'm doing the best I can!”

“You can't fix people in that way, Miranda.” He got his shoes from before the door, and started to put them on.

“Well, what are you doing, then? Are you trying to fix me? Are you trying to diagnose me? Huh?” Miranda stood up from her chair, her fists balled. She had worked so hard to keep Al under control all week, and going home to the most unsympathetic person in the world was not what she needed right now.

Adrian looked up at her from tying his shoes. He cocked his head to one side, slightly.

“You're tired,” he said. “You're tired because you don't get along with Calvin, you hate Lex, and you love Al. But you can't be yourself around any of them. You're tired because you've been acting all week; you've been acting strong, you've been acting sure, and you're not. Because if you falter before Lex, she will rip you apart, and if you falter before Al, he will destroy himself. And you've been doing a good job.”

He stood up, and started to put on his coat.

“As to what I'm doing... I'll be honest with you, Miranda. Perhaps more honest than I've ever been to anyone before. You think you can diagnose people individually? You cannot. I cannot. People aren't a puzzle you can solve. People aren't a chart you can follow. People aren't a story you can read.”

The zipper moved up his jacket, slowly.

“And yet... we say people have free will. We say people have choice. You have a choice as to what you do, you have a choice as to what you say, you have a choice as to what you think. But the actuarial tables say otherwise. The advertisement analysts say that thirty percent of a specific group will buy this car, and those people do. The actuaries say that eight percent of another group will die due to car accidents, and those people do. The political scientists say that fifty eight percent of people will vote for this guy, and those people do.”

“All these people, all these souls with their own clever, clever minds, living and dying with roughly calculable regularity. That's the beautiful, horrifying thing about humanity. You cannot predict a person. But people... yes, you can predict people. You can predict them very well.”

“You learn to play the long game, Miranda. You learn to sit night after night at the table, trying to pass off your losses, because even thought you might not get it right away, one of those nights, you're dealt a killer hand. And then you run the god damned table.”

He stepped out the door, and gave her a small smile. “Goodnight, Miranda. Sleep well.”

Miranda stood there, fists clenched, shaking. She felt as if she was a glass doll, fragile and transparent, that some child had picked up and examined, but decided not to smash. She did not understand what Adrian was trying to tell her, what he was trying to say.

Or maybe he wasn't trying to tell her anything. He had said that he was being honest, but did he really believe all that? Especially after perfectly predicting her struggles during that week, did he really think you couldn't model people in that way?

At the same time, she felt that Adrian was exactly right about one thing: she was missing something, she was missing a lot of things, and she knew that it was desperately important that she figure out what those things were.

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