I sit next to her as she stares intently at the animated screen of her phone. She doesn’t hear my hitching breath over the sounds of her gunshots. She doesn’t see the welling of tears in my eyes.

“Die! You have to DIE!” She curses at her phone, and I feel the words carve themselves on the curves of my heart. She doesn’t notice me getting up to leaven and I don’t answer when she calls my name after I close the door behind my back. I stand there for a second, listening to the sound of silence.

I stare outside the window screen of the bus, my mind wandering around streets other than my path.

It’s a different bus, one which I don’t know the destination of. I don’t know where I’m going, nor do I have any home to go back to. I get off when the driver announces that it’s the last stop, and get on another bus. My brain starts doing its wandering once again, trying to ignore the growing ache spreading over my chest. This is why I don’t fall in love; I don’t do love. It’s not my game to play. Every time I start to fall, I see no arms waiting to catch me at the bottom.