The day was rainy, and cold. Loshis tenth, he remembered. He'd run out of his house early in the morning, eager to share the bit of chocolate he'd been saving to buy for Alice. It was cheap chocolate, not the sort that the vendors kept locked up, but he was a fifteen-year-old kid doing city messenger work. It was special to him, and Alice didn't get sweets often anyway. It was her sixteenth birthday today. It'd be his in a few weeks too, but he never expected anything for his birthday, especially not from Alice. But he always got something for her, even if it was a small piece of chocolate like today, or a flower picked from a neighbor's garden or begged off a street stall, or a small story he'd written for her, as he often did. The stories were riddled with spelling errors, the chocolate wasn't the expensive stuff saved for the people with money, the flowers were sometimes a little brown, but they were still good, in the way that sometimes only imperfect things can be. Perfect things you're always afraid you're going to break. Like Alice, sometimes. Sometimes when they were talking she shone and sharpened in such a way that he felt she was going to shatter right there.

One day she did.

Warm air usually floated out of the Sonnet house from the ever-lit fireplace, especially on a day like this, but today the house was as cold as the air outside. Strange. He started up the stairs to go to Alice's room, to wake her up for her birthday, but he was intercepted by her mother. Mrs. Sonnet was a thin, worried, and haggard woman, with all the breakability of her daughter but none of the real crystal Alice had to her being. She was more like dusty glass, hidden in a garden shed. She wouldn't break until someone disturbed her place on the shelf, but that was likely someday. And looking at her, someone or something had. Mrs. Sonnet had shattered into a million pieces somehow; he could see it behind her eyes. She looked like and unlike Alice in that moment; she was small and pale and huddled, but Alice never had that look in her eyes, even on her worst day. On her worst days, when she was coughing up everything and struggling to breathe and move, she still had hope. Yesterday had been a day like that.

"Ali, how are you doing?" He said that every day, and sometimes he got an answer.
"O...okay. Sorry. Could you pour me some water, maybe?" She spasmed into coughs then, and he felt a little piece of his heart wither. He hated seeing her bad days, but it was worse when he wasn't there and he knew she'd had one. He got her the water without saying anything. She drank it, coughing a bit up. A bead of water rolled down her chin and landed on her nightdress. He saw her in that nightdress more and more now. When they had met when they were eleven, playing a game on the street with some other kids from around somewhere (he remembered them then but he didn't remember them now) she had played, and had played as well as any of them. She'd gone home with him and some of the other kids and eaten lunch at his house, and she'd eaten what everybody else ate. It was only when she was thirteen that she got sick. Even then they still went out, she still dragged him around the city in search of whatever she wanted to see that day. Somehow Alice always knew what she wanted. She'd cough sometimes when it was damp, but he barely noticed. When she was fourteen and she told him she loved him, she had to stay in bed some days. But the last year had been bad. The days they could go out were as rare as the days they couldn't used to be.
"Er."
"Hmm?"
"Kiss me?"
He never had until that point. It'd been a year, but looking back it wasn't much boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, at least the stuff he'd heard about when he was younger. They mostly just talked, and last year they had gone places, just the two of them. But it was really mostly talking. He obliged, and scooting onto the bed next to her, touched his lips to hers. It felt kind of weird, but he figured it was mostly because she was too weak to kiss him back.
"Mmm...thanks."
"Tomorrow's your birthday, right?"
"And yours in two weeks."
"Weird to think you're older than me."
"Two weeks."
"But still, Ali." He stole some of her pillow.
"Hey!" What would have been a little squeak from a normal girl was a whispered little squeak from Alice.
He nestled into the half he'd gotten more, and she resigned to the fact that he wasn't moving. He looked at her face then, and noticed the shining, the sharpening. She coughed, then. Couldn't stop. Without being asked, he went and poured some more water. She stopped, finally, breathing raggedly and propping herself up weakly into a half-sitting position. He handed her the glass, and she couldn't quite get her hand to grip it tightly enough. It fell, and shattered on the worn wooden floor.

Alice's mother hadn't spoken in all the time he was thinking. She should have. Maybe then he wouldn't have gone up the stairs. He did, though, and he went up them quickly, not knowing. He was going to wake up Alice on her birthday and give her her present, and she'd love it. He thought these thoughts until he got to the door of her room. The shut door. Alice never, ever shut her door. He knocked, wondering if maybe she had shut it because she was changing or something. No answer. He opened the door then, and what he saw shocked him.
"Ali, I brought you--" Her room was empty. The bed was made perfectly, as if no one had ever slept in it. He knew then, but he deluded himself into thinking it wasn't true. It couldn't be. She was having a good day today, and she was already awake and waiting for him. Maybe she was having breakfast downstairs. Yeah, that was it. He came down the stairs as quickly as he'd come up, still clutching the chocolate in his hands.

She wasn't at the table, either. Little Mrs. Sonnet came up to him then, said what she couldn't get out before.
"Er..Eran. She's gone. Alice is gone." She almost cried then, but Eran didn't see.
"She left this early?"
"N-no, she...last night. After you left." And then she did cry, and Eran knew, and, leaving the chocolate on the table, ran out of the house and back home.

That was possibly the worst day of his life. He'd lived in sort of a half-lighted haze until he'd been drafted, and then even the half-light had gone without his parents there, and his familiar house. The light was coming back on now, though. People were starting to care again, he supposed. Campion was a bit like Alice in some ways, he thought. Possibly the smile. Alice had smiled right up till the last moment he saw her, and he had no doubt his friend would do the same. Alice had made him like her. It was how she worked. And it had worked. He still hated her birthday even now, sixteen years later. It might have been a little better if Campion was here, but that couldn't be helped. He was off doing things. Didn't need him being all clingy. Or really need him at all. He was stupid to need someone who didn't need him, but it'd always been that way with other people. He got the chocolate he'd bought for today from the counter, unwrapped it, and took a bite.