The night had the heavy stillness of a summer’s early-morning hours, when the day’s heat still clings to the ground and the streetlights seem to illuminate more dust than air. Empty at that hour, the park breathed slowly: the rustle of dry leaves, the stubborn hum of an insect, the crack of a branch high overhead, perhaps stirred by a sleepless bird.

She thought about her mother. About how lucky she was to be able to take those pills and disconnect from the world. Unfortunately, Emma could not do the same.

In any case, she told herself, the pills the psychiatrist had prescribed did not do much for her. If anything, they made her migraines worse, and although her mother no longer gave them to her—so she could not hoard them and take them all at once—it made practically no difference whether she took them or not. That was why she refused when Deborah ordered her to swallow them in front of her and not go straight to her room, in case she tried to cheat. She refused for two reasons: first, to keep the migraines from getting worse, and second, to deny her mother the satisfaction of getting her way.

Now that she was no longer taking the pills, she spent her nights wide awake, barely sleeping at all—or, worse, battered by those terrible nightmares. It was better to go outside, take a walk, clear her head, and get some fresh air than to remain in the prison of her bedroom, roasting in the heat. The summer had become unbearable, and homes were reaching temperatures no one had ever seen before.

She found Alder in the same place as the day before. Or rather, the night before.

Their first encounter had not lasted long, and she left soon afterward. She felt off balance, dazed, and confused. Her head was still full of all kinds of outrageous thoughts, and the fact that she had spent all that time talking with that man was, to say the least… strange, if not something else entirely.

And yet, despite everything, she had not felt uncomfortable. Not once had she felt uneasy, and that was the reason—the only reason—why, the following night, plagued by migraines, anxiety, and that wretched insomnia, she left home again to try to see him once more.

And there he was. In the same place, at more or less the same time. As though he had not moved since she left and had remained petrified like a pillar of salt: seated on the right side of the bench, his elbows resting on the back, staring into the distance, wearing the same clothes as the day before.

When she sat down in her usual spot on the left, the old man turned his head slightly to make sure it was her, then kept looking straight ahead, as though what had arrived beside him were merely a leaf that had fallen from a tree.

For him, the encounter with Emma the day before had left a bittersweet aftertaste. Not so much because he had spent time on a bench with a woman—an unthinkable and unheard-of event that, remarkably, had taken no toll on him—but because of the desperate situation the girl was facing. When he arrived home, he felt torn apart inside because of that, not because of the other matter. Or at least, that was what he thought.

Even so, he could see no way to help her, although deep down he felt that their brief conversation the day before had accomplished something. And that satisfaction overcame all his phobias… or almost all of them.

Emma sat with her shoulders hunched forward and her hands tucked between her knees. She stared at the ground, at the gravel path, or at the yellowish pool of light cast by the streetlamp. A streetlamp that had not been working the day before, but was now.

A few minutes passed, and neither of them said a word. At last, Emma sighed and turned toward him, which he caught out of the corner of his eye. It was time to speak to her.

"Did you come from the bridge?"

The question hung between them. There was no reproach in his voice, no surprise, no audible fear. Only a tired gentleness, as though he had carefully weighed every word before letting it out.

"Yeah," she murmured, barely above a whisper. Then she lowered her head. For a moment, she seemed about to explain more, but she only pressed her lips together.

"What happened this time?"

Emma took a while to answer. Her gaze was fixed on a spot on the ground, where an insect wandered beside the leg of the bench. At that hour, even that tiny life seemed out of place.

"Same as always. I’m a coward." She paused, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand without looking at him. "You know what? A lot of the time I think that’s, like, my biggest flaw."

Alder nodded slightly and did not rush to fill the silence. Emma seemed to need it: she needed to get angry at her own words, turn them over, bite down on them before letting them out completely.

"If I were brave," she went on, "I would’ve stood up to Savannah and Madison. I’m stronger than they are, like… I could’ve beaten them. A couple of good slaps the first time, and, like, they never would’ve messed with me again."

As she said it, she finally lifted her head. There was no pride in her expression, only an old anger worn thin from being replayed so many times. The moisture in her eyes gleamed beneath the streetlamp.

"You’re gentle," Alder replied. "The gentle can’t defeat the violent."

Emma let out a short, dry laugh with no joy in it. Then her voice broke.

"I know. That’s the problem. That’s the problem!"

The shout came out far too loud for such an empty park, and she immediately seemed to regret breaking the stillness of the night. She folded in on herself and began to sob.

Alder was tempted to move closer and hug her, and in fact he did edge a little nearer. He shifted only a few inches, just enough for the wood of the bench to creak beneath his weight. But he did not dare go any farther. After all, Emma was a woman… Still, he turned toward her and tried to keep a kind expression, careful not to look at her too much.

The minutes passed slowly. Somewhere on a distant balcony, a blind was pulled shut. A dog barked once, then again, and then fell silent too.

Emma’s sobs gradually subsided. She remained where she was, arms folded and eyes fixed straight ahead. That allowed Alder to do the same, and he stopped looking at her directly.

"Why do you want to kill yourself?" he asked gently. He did not say it like someone looking for a logical explanation, but like someone trying to hold a door open before it closed. The word sounded terrible in the middle of the night, but he did not avoid it. Neither did Emma. She shrugged and replied:

"Because it hurts too much. All the time. The migraines, the anxiety, the nightmares… like… You know what I mean?"

As she asked the last question, she looked at him. It was a quick, almost challenging glance, as though she expected him to say no—that no one could know what it was like, that she was alone even in that.

"I think I do," Alder replied, nodding slowly without looking at her. "I have nightmares too. Terrible ones. Hellish…"

He said nothing else. Emma studied his profile, half-lit by the streetlamp. There was something rigid in his jaw, a way he kept his eyes closed a second too long, as though those nightmares refused to stay in the past.

"Then you can imagine how I feel. Like… And there’s also this feeling that I’m worthless. That nobody loves me. That I’m never going to be okay. Nobody cares about me…"

The last sentence came out very softly. It was barely a sentence at all—more like surrender.

"Don’t you have any friends? Girls or guys?"

"Not a single one."

Alder let the answer breathe. Sometimes, he thought, you could recognize loneliness by how quickly someone said "no," as though they had already counted every closed door too many times.

"You’ve never had any?"

"Well, when I was little… like… there was Alicia."

"Who’s that?"

"A classmate’s sister. We live close by, and, like… I think she’s the only friend I’ve ever had."

"And she isn’t anymore?"

"No. The little creep stopped talking to me. She said, ‘As I’m sure you understand’"—she put on a silly little-girl voice, exaggerating the sweetness until it turned poisonous—"I can’t let people see me with you, or they’ll do to me what they do to you.’"

She fell silent after imitating her. The mockery dissolved in her mouth. She had meant to sound cruel, but the pain had slipped through underneath.

"So you became an outcast."

"Yeah, like… that’s what happened. But don’t get the wrong idea. Alicia got bullied too."

"She did?"

"Yeah. Like… she’s Ethan’s sister."

Alder made a puzzled gesture. Emma took a deep breath, as though she had to arrange too many broken pieces before she could explain the picture.

"Ethan’s a classmate… Well, we’re not in the same class anymore because I… like, repeated a couple of grades. But I know him pretty well. The tough guys smack him around, like… every day. Well, not so much anymore. But they used to, like…"

"And they do it to his sister too."

"Well, like… they did something similar to her. She looks like her brother, like… well, not exactly. I mean, like… she’s never been chubby, but she just… like… well… she has a dumb-looking face. That’s it. She has a dumb-looking face."

"Oh, and that’s why."

"Yeah. I think that was why. Anyway, like… when she ended up alone… like… she tried to come back to me… but I turned her away."

"Why did you do that?" He looked at her.

"What goes around comes around, like… isn’t that what they say?"

"Yes, that’s what they say."

"Exactly. Like, why should I talk to her now?"

A warm gust stirred the leaves in the park trees. Above them, the sky was a very dark blue, almost black, with only a few visible stars shining like tiny points of light dimmed by the city’s glow.

"Well, you could’ve supported each other. You’d have a friend…"

"A friend like that? A traitor?"

"It would be something, wouldn’t it? At least you wouldn’t be so alone."

Emma shook her head. There was an almost proud firmness in the gesture, but something more fragile lay beneath it. Deep down, she knew from experience that loneliness was also a form of punishment, and she herself had learned how to hand it out.

"In any case, you’ll always have your parents. They love you, and at least to them, you matter."

"That’s not enough."

"If you kill yourself, you’ll hurt them badly."

"I don’t care. They’ve never cared about me! They’ve only cared about themselves, like… and I’ve been… like their pet."

"That’s true. They can’t have cared enough about you. Otherwise, they wouldn’t let someone so young… a child, wander around at night."

"Well, that’s because, like… my mother spends all day half asleep. She’s drugged up on pills, and she has no idea whether I come or go."

"What pills?"

"The ones she uses to sleep. At least she can take them. Like… they don’t give her migraines. I had to stop taking mine because of that, and look where it’s gotten me."

What a shame, the wanderer thought. Taking pills at her age already… That never used to happen, he told himself, and he immediately knew why: there was no solution except a return to traditional life.

"They prescribed her some new pills because the old ones—the ones I took—like… don’t work for her anymore. I think if I took those, like… I could end all of this once and for all."

Alder looked at her gravely but said nothing. She continued:

"But she keeps them in a safe, the…"

"In a safe?"

"Yeah. So I can’t take them. And she sleeps with the key on a chain around her neck. Like… she doesn’t even take it off to shower, the…"

"She doesn’t trust you…"

"No."

The wanderer nodded, and she understood the gesture:

"I mean, like… if I were her, I’d do the same thing."

"She knows you."

"Yeah, too well. There’s no fooling her…"