Page 82 of Shatter

The red letters coming loose under the tiny blades, one stitch at a time, and her hands shaking so bad it took her four tries.

"The airline lady hung a plastic pouch around my neck." I can feel it there, the blue string, the edge of the passport against my chest. "So everybody would know I was alone."

Anni's hand comes up and rests on my chest, right over the spot where the pouch hung.

My breath shudders out of me.

"She couldn't come past the line." I close my eyes. "So she knelt down on the floor with people walking around us. She held my face and told me to forget her."

"Forget her?" Anni's voice cracks.

"Forget my face." I say it in Mamma's voice, the way it's been sitting in my head for twenty years. "Forget me."

The rain keeps coming down.

"I grabbed her coat." My voice has gone ragged. "She had to peel my fingers off one at a time. Then she walked away, and she didn't look back. And I stood there with a stranger holding my hand and watched her red coat go out through the doors."

I stop.

There's more.

The glass exploding, and red between her fingers.

A baby sister with a name I picked out, who never got to use it.

My throat closes around it like a fist.

I can't.

Not tonight.

My jaw works, and nothing comes out.

I stare at the fan until it blurs.

"Did you?" Anni's voice is barely a breath. "Forget her face?"

I turn my head and look at her.

She's propped up on one elbow above me, her copper-and-blonde hair falling down around her face, tear tracks shining on both cheeks in the gray light.

"No." It comes out cracked. "Not one day."

She looks at me for a long moment.

Then she lets go of my hand.

For a second, the air goes out of me.

Then she reaches up.

Her fingertips find my face in the dark.

They're cool from the rain on the glass, and they move slowly along my jaw, over two days of stubble, like she's reading something written there.

"Espen." She tries it out, soft, the way I tried hers. "Espen."

Nobody's put their mouth around my name in twenty years.