“I can’t believe you talked to them,” Kai said, as we walked back. “You shouldn’t have talked to them.”

“Did you even hear what they were saying?” I asked incredulously. “They were talking about Kris. They wanted to help him!”

“I don’t trust them,” he said curtly. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“I don’t either, but that doesn’t mean they lied to us.”

“They might have been lying,” he argued. He sounded half-hearted, as if even he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.

“They weren’t.” I said impatiently. “Think for a moment. Why would they have gone to all that trouble just to lie to us?” He opened his mouth, but I cut him off with a sharp wave of my hand.

“What’s really bothering you?” I asked. “Because our current conversation is pointless. I don’t think they gave us false information, and they didn’t even hurt us.”

Kai stopped walking, and suddenly he was shouting. It was the first time he had ever raised his voice with me.  

“Do you hear yourself? Oh, it’s alright, because they didn’t even hurt us! Don’t you understand? Tonight was a lucky fluke. We – we could have been mugged or killed, or even worse. You saw them. There were more than ten guys, and only one of me. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything if they’d tried to hurt you.”

“Kai, you idiot,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Nothing happened. I understand we’re incredibly lucky, and I’m thankful for that. Can’t you just be thankful and forget about this?”

“No.” His anger had subsided, and now he only sounded weary.

“Why not?” I was not trying to make my point any longer. I was curious as to what this happy-go-lucky boy of the streets could not let go.

“If you’d gotten hurt,” he mumbled, “it would have been because of me. You might have died because I made you come out this late at night with me.”

For an impossibly long time, we looked at each other as if for the first time. I do not know what Kai saw when he looked at me, but I saw a boy with heavy regret in his dark eyes. Perhaps I had not looked closely enough before, perhaps it had never been there before tonight. But it was there now, terribly alive and heavy.

I took his hand in mine. Both of ours were cold from the rain. A horrible feeling, of coldness and wetness, made worse by the limpness of his hand.

“Feel this,” I said, squeezing his hand. A momentary tingling that simultaneously warmed us and hurt us. A good kind of pain. “We’re lucky to be alive. But we’re alive, and it’s good to be alive.”

He looked down at our hands.

Cold hands, wet hands, but not dead hands. Cold, wet hands that would soon be warm and dry.

Living hands.

He said nothing, but he did not let go of my hand.

And I did not let go of his.