[Backdated, beginning of December; response to Dear You]

Noah frowned at the envelope he'd found when he got back to his room. It was unusual for Al to have written a note instead of saying whatever he had to say in person. Except for that other note, and if that meant anything ... Noah closed the door, a weightless dread settling in his stomach, and wandered over to sit on his bed.

He read the note through once, and then again, and then put it down next to him and put one foot on the edge of the bed and hugged his knee against his chest, staring blindly off into space, his thoughts roaring incoherently. He'd seen a mouse trapped in an empty bucket once; it had lost its grip on a railing in the barn and fallen into the bucket below. When he'd gone over to look into the bucket, he'd seen the mouse running in frantic circles around the bottom, scrabbling at the smooth plastic, occasionally darting across in a straight line to the other side, shrilling and panicked and looking endlessly for a way out that didn't exist. His mind felt like that now, spinning and twisting and overwhelmed by a gathering maelstrom of feeling, confusion and shock and a shiver of hurt, a stab of deep black jealousy, a murky rising cloud of guilt. Maybe he'd deserved it? He hadn't known it was that kind of choice, one that would lose him his best friend. Would it have changed anything if he'd known that? Had Al known that he was asking for that or had it just been too much to bear by now, too much to handle, a sudden overflow of feelings that resulted in the note slipped under Noah's door? No way of knowing. No way of asking.

Then, years ago, Noah had picked up the bucket, carried it carefully outside, dumped the mouse out in the tall grass, careful not to get hands or feet too close because scared animals would bite you and it wasn't their fault, that was just what they did. It had been gone in an instant, vanished into a tangle of grass, free again. He had no way of releasing the circling thoughts. His head was both the trap and the trapped.
Laz stirred, and there was the impression of an ear turned to listen to the tangle of thought in Noah's head. After a while, the weapon said, YOU DID THAT YOURSELF. YOU CHOSE.

I know, Noah answered miserably. I can't even resent it, I get it, I just.

The zombie dog sighed, a wet and windy huffing sound that conveyed both irritation and concern, and said nothing else.

Noah rested his temple on his knee and sat silently, feeling the seconds stretch, each moment perfectly capable of containing way too much sickening, anxious feeling. After a while he put his foot back down on the floor and gathered up the letter again and folded it and put it back in the envelope, because sitting here and trying to calm down was being totally ineffective and he didn't know what to do but maybe he could go and repot some of the plants in the greenhouse, there were a few that needed it, that had been left in outgrown pots too long. Repotting was careful work, work that needed attention, attention to the process of not crushing the plant's leaves as he inverted it, separated it from its too-small container, brushed the dirt gently from the intertwined mass of tangled roots and began to tug them loose, a piece at a time, root by root by root. Then the freshly prepared pot, clean earth and sufficient drainage, enough space to grow and expand and nourish the plant without forcing it to stunt its own growth. That would maybe help him stop thinking long enough to not feel nauseated.

He stood up, held the envelope in his hand, didn't quite look straight at it. He should throw it away. He should put it in a drawer. He should show it to Peyton, maybe, she'd been kind of worried about what was going on, or what wasn't going on, and this would probably reassure her. He could burn it, he had a lighter. Instead of doing any of these things, he pulled up the corner of the mattress and slid the letter underneath, far enough under that it wouldn't get pulled out accidentally when he changed the sheets, enough that it wouldn't fall out somehow or be found, dropped the mattress into place again and tucked the sheets into the side so it would look undisturbed. He was doing something wrong. He shouldn't be hiding it. He should do anything else but hide it.

The door closed with a quiet click behind him, and he headed for the greenhouse with hurried steps and hunched shoulders.