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passed four stories beneath our home. Although it was December, the
large, smudged window she sat behind was flung wide open so that
the smoke wouldn't set off the fire alarm. I knew this was probably the
biggest contributing factor to the place feeling like a fucking igloo but I
wasn't about to push the issue today. It would only make everything that
much more unbearable and every specialist I had talked to had told me
the same thing: be gentle with her.

This was an entirely understandable advisement. Aggie looked
more fragile and frail every morning. Her skin, which used to be the en-
viable peaches-and-cream complexion found in L'Oreal advertisements,
was sallow and unnervingly translucent; I could see faint lines of blue
and purple swerving all over the underside of her skin, her own personal
map of connecting subway lines. She had long chestnut hair the first
day I met her freshman year of college, but now it was dyed an awful
dark color much like the shade of ink when it explodes from a fountain
pen onto a new sheet of paper. It was thin now, too, urging itself to
grow longer and stronger than it could, getting tired and giving up in
the middle of its fight. Her bony body was swimming in the oversized
sweaters and blue jeans she adopted wearing. Boyfriend chic, she called
it. I chose to describe it as terrifying.

Oh, and another thing: Aggie never smiled. She used to, just
like she used to wear makeup, play in a band, and take the more danger-
ous choice in a late-night, dormitory-wide game of Truth or Dare. One
day, she just stopped.

I opened the refrigerator door slowly, knowing the vacuum
suction of its rubber seal would break Aggie from her daze. I tried to be
as nonchalant as possible, keeping to my business of rummaging for an
alibi among the roasted red pepper hummus and Woodchuck cider.

"Did we run out of half-and-half again?" I asked, my head so
far in the fridge that only the eggs probably heard me clearly.

"Yeah, I think you used the last of it for your Kahlua," Aggie
murmured, exhaling a long train of gray smog. She always smoked like
a French person, or rather what I assume a madame or monsieur would
look like finishing a cigarette. She pouts her lips in a lazy 0, and lets
the cloud tumble from her mouth, slowly floating upward like an Na-
tive American's signal, becoming evanescent before any rescue could
respond. She languished in those drags. I guess she realized what she

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